The masked figure in black swallowed. Fear climbed from the pit of his stomach like ice water flooding a well.

Cold air nipped his back. Heat licked in threads. Firelight drove the porcelain moonlight away and painted the wall a fevered red.

A girl’s voice rang in his ear, clear and bell-like. The Abyss slammed into Mana. Invisible ripples spread like rings in a dark pond.

“Who are you?”

Through the mirror on Lingchen Yao’s desk, with the fire’s glow for a lantern, he barely made out the girl’s getup. A red‑and‑black high‑waisted gown. Silver‑ash hair tumbling long. Twin pupils, black shot with molten gold.

Girls dressed like that were usually Cantata Two. He was only First Symphony. He couldn’t stand against her storm.

He set the dagger down. Hands lifted, fingers splayed like bare branches. He turned slow. He crouched into the corner’s shadow.

“She’s guarded by a Cantata Two? Who is this guy really? That doesn’t match the brief!”

The complaint came muffled from under the mask. Night Frost cupped her palm, drew the flame in like a tide, and somehow produced a rope. She bound the girl tight, knotting every escape like a spider finishing its web.

“What brief?”

Night Frost plucked off the mask. A sweep of pitch‑black hair spilled under the moonlight like a silver river, bright on ink.

She didn’t pity soft looks. She checked the mask, methodical as winter. Then her dark‑gold vertical pupils leaned in. A breath of Abyssal Aura wrapped the girl in a chill. The questioning began.

“What’s your name? And don’t be cute. You know what lying costs. Eye Orb.”

Behind the Cantata Two Magic Maiden, an Eye Orb uncoiled from the dark. It was ugly, all wrong angles, its sclera mapped in dusky veins. A blue lance fired from the pupil’s heart and raked over the girl’s body like a cold scanner.

She knew there was no road back. Refuse, and Night Frost would erase her. Speak, and the boss behind her would. She could only stall and spin, pray her boss sent someone. Slim hope, like a candle in rain.

“Uh… I’m here to negotiate.”

She said it. Night Frost didn’t buy it. The Eye Orb didn’t blink. Even she didn’t buy it. Who negotiates dressed in black, climbing windows at midnight, dagger ready?

Night Frost brought a flame close to the girl’s hair. Heat breathed like a furnace. The girl shrank into the corner by instinct. The blaze forced her eyes shut.

A vague guilt pricked Night Frost, like a thorn under the nail.

She kicked it aside. The girl had come to probe her strength. She just didn’t know Lingchen Yao carried a Magic Maiden within. Caught in one move.

The girl was a Magic Maiden too. First Symphony. Night Frost saw nothing special in her aura, nothing that sang unusual. If this was an assassin, sending one like her was a thin blade for a thick tree.

“People and bodies aren’t as plentiful as you think,” the Eye Orb answered Lingchen Yao’s doubt, voice dry as paper. “In many small outfits, the strongest barely reach Cantata Two. They’re built on masses of ordinary folk and on augmented men stronger than ordinary folk, but most of those flawed cyborgs are weaker than a First Symphony.”

Among Magic Maidens, Chapter Three was rare. If every boss sat at Chapter Three, the world would already be a shattered chessboard.

“So you’re backed by a small outfit?”

The girl said nothing. Silence nodded for her. As the Eye Orb said, her organization was small. The boss was only Cantata Two. Any group with Chapter Three strutted like an empire, able to meet the area’s Magic Maidens eye to eye.

“What’s your real objective?”

Night Frost pushed and prodded, but the girl clamped her jaw. It left Night Frost with a headache like a tight band. Dawn was hours off. If she held the transformation, her thick Abyssal Aura would call powerful Order Keepers like wolves to blood.

Lingchen Yao’s cover would likely burn away. And her time staying transformed was short.

If she dropped it now, the girl would learn who she was. The girl herself was a grenade with the pin pulled. Even with a foe capped at Cantata Two, Night Frost could only barely slip away under that pressure with her current strength.

And that was ignoring the organization behind her. Enough First Symphonies could still take her down, drop by drop.

“I have an idea,” the Eye Orb whispered at Night Frost’s ear, voice soft as moth wings.

“So that’s an option. Never thought of that.”

Keeping the girl would breed more trouble. Weighing blade against balm, Night Frost chose to let her go. Face a Cantata Two‑level outfit, or face the stronger Order Keepers. She chose the former without a tremor.

She grabbed a time‑release capsule from the drawer. She shoved it between the girl’s lips and forced her to swallow. A thin bitterness spread across the girl’s tongue like wilted tea.

“I’m out of patience…”

The flame in Night Frost’s palm kissed the rope. It split with a hiss, and the warning in her cold dark‑gold eyes cut deeper than fire.

“You just swallowed my poison. Every ten days, you’ll need the antidote from me, or your skin will rot and you’ll die. Only we at Aklatia hold it. I’m giving you three days to choose your side.”

“Tell that Cantata Two behind you and make me your enemy. Or walk away from your outfit and work with me. We’re both Cantata Two at the top—come to my side. Think carefully.”

The girl froze like a deer under a torch. She heard “I’m out of patience” and thought the flames would fall. She braced for death.

In a heartbeat, memory reeled—orders from the chief, her family’s faces—like a lantern carousel spinning in her skull. Words jammed in her throat like a flood behind a crumbling dam.

The judgment never came. Heat didn’t bite skin. She opened her eyes. The rope binding her had collapsed into gray ash.

Night Frost’s words fell into her ears, clear and exact. Without a doubt, she was free. And, just as surely, she had lost her freedom.

Her gaze clung for a breath to the floor. Her scattered Magic Tools. Her files. No time to gather any of it. She feared this “Cantata Two” would rethink mercy.

She didn’t look back. She vaulted through the window and vanished into the night like a spark swallowed by sea.

On the run, she rewound Night Frost’s voice. Poison. Ten days. She could report Night Frost honestly to her boss. Or hide it and join Night Frost’s camp.

She knew little about Aklatia. Only this: in the Twelfth District, it had been a massive underground research outfit. The Order Keepers tore it up by the roots in a single night. Its products had flooded the dark market, pushing gear forward by years.

And her mission tonight had been because of Aklatia.

With Aklatia fallen, many circled to feast. Her small organization was no exception. Even weak lions will bite if the prey promises a throne. One piece of tech, and they could lure talent and rise like morning wind.

Exaggerated, maybe. But a single result could feed them for a long winter.

She hadn’t expected a suspected Aklatia remnant guarded by a Cantata Two. That snapped their ladder clean in two.

They’d tried to steal a chicken, and lost the grain. She’d gained no useful intel. She’d been force‑fed “poison.” By Night Frost’s claim, it was Aklatia’s. Her outfit didn’t have the weight to make an antidote. They wouldn’t make enemies of a Cantata Two for a First Symphony’s sake.

She’d joined to make money. If the coin’s honest, the flag matters less. As long as Aklatia offered a fair price.

But joining Aklatia carried its own blade. The Order Keepers had crushed it. Every major force watched its relics like hungry tigers. Aklatia lived in a storm.

Maybe get a hospital test first, she thought. Then decide.

She slipped through the night like a fish in ink. After dozens of alleys, she pried up a manhole cover. She lowered herself, careful as a cat, into the dark.

This was her organization’s base. Also, home. Street property was too dear, and debt rode her shoulders like a yoke. The sewer was all she could afford.

Even below, peace had cracked. In recent days, the Twelfth District’s Order Keepers had begun sweeping the underground. New resistance outfits were sprouting like weeds. The Magic Maiden side chose to cut back the growth early, with steel.

Strong organizations could meet the blow. Weak ones could only shrink their borders and hold their breath. Aklatia’s tech was a rope to climb and a roof to hide under.

Her outfit had lost its breathing room under the sweeps. Funds thin, research weak, manpower only barely enough. They were at the end of the road.

She wavered, heart seesawing like a scale.

“Boss.”

She pushed a rust‑scarred iron door. She stepped into the shabby council room. She stood behind the boss, who sat before an old LCD, exhaling pale smoke like winter fog.

“How’d it go? The Aklatia remnants?”

She didn’t dare speak truth. She forced the words out like grit.

“They’re strong. I got poisoned. I couldn’t win. I had to pull out early.”

The boss flicked ash. He drew deep, then waved. Hands grabbed her and dragged her away. The iron door slammed, a lid on a drum. Muffled voices rumbled behind it.

“I’m giving you one last chance…”