Put simply, if your Mana’s frequency and nature echo the original owner’s, you can wield that Magic Stone.

Eye Orb kept the explanation short, like a pebble skimming a dark lake. Today’s goal wasn’t theory; it was the prize at the lakebed.

They pocketed several Magic Stones with their Abyssal Aura scrubbed clean, like knives wiped dry. Then Night Frost led them across the villa’s wooden floor, and down to the first level like leaves drifting with gravity.

Eye Orb had reshaped the first floor, carving rooms into small labs like hive cells. Only the first room past the front door was a living room, a lobby dressed as a decoy.

A room by the stairs held petri dishes like shallow moons. Most sat empty like dead ponds, and the few with residue had long lost their spark.

At the end of the opposite hall, gym machines stood like iron animals at rest. In the corners, dusty reports hid like old fossils. No surprise—this was a lab in disguise.

“Do you experiment every single day? My head throbs just looking at this.” Night Frost rubbed his brow, like thunder building behind his eyes.

Since graduation, reports made his skull ache like a drum in fog. But study was a road he still had to walk.

“You don’t get it. Experiment is my whole sky.” Eye Orb’s voice hit like flint on steel. “The Magic Maidens shunned cyborgs and pure tech weapons, so they shut the gates on me.”

“Aklatia offered me better terms than anyone, a ‘reward’ wrapped like silk over a blade. So I joined.”

He marched them up to the second floor, where the air felt less narrow and many rooms lay empty, like shells on a quiet shore.

At the far left, the last door held Eye Orb’s spare-time nest, a small island of sleep. That was their destination.

The room was plain as rice and tea. Push the wooden door, and a double bed greeted them, wide as a white raft.

Beside it sat a dusty desktop, a tired animal under cobweb snow. On the desk stood a photo frame, but it held only silence, like a window to fog.

Eye Orb stared at the frame, thoughts circling like crows. His gaze slid to the nightstand, where secrets like to root.

He dug under the bed and found a Key cold as a fish. Under their eyes, he unlocked the drawer, the way a diver lifts a lid on the deep.

“Inside, there’s a cipher box. One of Aklatia’s most important things,” he said, voice low as a cellar.

“But it’s empty,” Night Frost said, pointing at the hollow space, bare as a dry well. Only spare parts glinted like pebbles.

“How can it be empty? My memory’s not that rotten!” Eye Orb froze, eyes stuck to the vacant wood like a moth to glass.

“What was in it?” Night Frost asked, emotion first, words after, like ice cracking.

“Aklatia’s forward experimental plan. Your project plan. And backups from our gene-mod programs.” His tone dropped like a stone. “Someone got here first.”

“No… only a handful in Aklatia knew this place. That means, inside Aklatia… there was a traitor.”

Aklatia was a research sect; experiments were its heart-fire. If those embers leaked, the temple turned to ash.

“Think back. That employee who mis-swiped their card—were they even from Aklatia?”

Eye Orb tasted conspiracy like iron in water. The plot had been simmering for years like a covered cauldron.

Aklatia had already been dragged into a whirlpool. Its doom felt written like frost-script on glass.

The experiments moved steady as tide, until the bracelet finished like a polished star. Then Aklatia was erased.

Someone used Aklatia’s hand to reach their own summit. That bracelet was the rung they needed.

The threads cleared, and a shape took form like a shadow stepping out of mist.

Aklatia’s boss had been a decent man, a lantern in a long night. In his last hour, he entrusted Aklatia to Eye Orb.

Back at the beginning, the young Doctor sat facing him, across a desk like a river. The boss in a black top hat slid over a simple contract, plain as daylight.

“I know your pain, and I know your genius,” he said, voice like warm tea with a bite. “Your goal is steep as a cliff.”

“You’ve got no funds, no backing. Believe me. This is where you fit best.”

The Doctor didn’t hesitate. He lifted a ballpoint like a sword and signed his name on white paper like fresh snow.

What bled from the tip wasn’t ink. It was Blood, dark and bright, a red seal instead of a stamp.

Later, the boss stood before a metal gate, a wall like a winter sea. He raised his hand. Flesh twisted and swelled like roots, then hardened into a metal shield.

The magic light cannon slammed in like a falling sun. The shield held, but time frayed like old rope.

“It’s yours now. For Aklatia. For… yourself. Run. I believe you’ll live,” he said, calm as a monk at dawn.

“This isn’t needed! I’m just your employee. You can live if you abandon me!” the Doctor shouted, heart pounding like a snare.

He didn’t understand why a Cantata Three should stand and take a deathblow. He could have slipped away like smoke and rebuilt in time.

“I told you—you’re talent,” the boss said, voice thinning like fading wind. “Employee? No. You’re hope.”

The cannon’s power rose like a tide. The shield shattered like ice. In a blink, that steady, broad figure was swallowed by light.

Blood and bone sprayed backward like red rain, a shard grazing the Doctor’s cheek like a brand.

The Doctor dropped the pen. He lunged to the bench and smashed the glass dome with one punch, glass ringing like winter bells.

He knew the bracelet was the lab’s brightest seed, the hope of a new spring. Viscous fluid soaked his clothes like swamp water, but he didn’t stop.

He flipped a hatch like lifting a manhole to the underworld, and went down without looking back.

“Hey, hey? You froze up, eyeball?” Qianchun’s voice poked at the moment like a twig at embers.

Eye Orb glanced at Night Frost. Qianchun was poking the white of his eye with her long forefinger, a cat teasing a lamp.

“No. I’m thinking who slipped into my room,” he said, words slow as molasses. “And who knew exactly where I kept the secret.”

“They weren’t after anything else. Only Aklatia’s core. The cabinet is untouched, and the Key shows no scratch.”

“Maybe it’s magic?” Qianchun bent over, fingers fussing with a plush by the bed, like a kitten kneading a cushion. “Magic shifts shapes. There’s probably a spell for that.”

“That was from an arcade run, during Aklatia’s team-building,” Eye Orb said, a faint smile like dust in sunlight. “Clawed it out of a crane. I don’t even like it.”

“If you do, take it.”

Qianchun blushed, peach-soft, and tucked the plush away like a stolen moon.

“No one in Aklatia used that kind of magic,” Eye Orb said, breath growing thin. “If there’s a traitor, this place isn’t safe. We need to—”

The floor wobbled under Night Frost, like something forcing up from the earth. Outside, a bright Mana barrier bloomed, a glass dome of light. It sealed them in like bugs in amber.

Rotor whoops and sirens wailed closer, like wolves and gulls circling a cliff.

“What’s that? It’s suffocating,” Night Frost said, chest tight as if wrapped in wet cloth. “The Mana in the air turned sticky. It’s hard to guide.”

“A lockdown,” Eye Orb answered, memory clicking like beads. “Magic Maiden scent, no question.”

“They already knew we were coming. They left this place intact to net me. Quite the budget.”

“There’s a secret door here. We’ll leave through that.”

Night Frost felt the hourglass draining. He scooped a bewildered Qianchun, as if lifting a deer from bracken.

He twisted the bracelet and pulled Mana from the Magic Stone, a river drawn through a silver ring.

In a breath, they reached the hidden door in the floor. It was sealed by heavy Mana, like iron poured into a seam.

Night Frost’s attacks hit and slid off like rain on slate. Nothing budged.

“Damn it. Any other secret doors?” he asked, the words like sparks.

Eye Orb’s look was a winter answer: there was only this one.

The rotors went quiet, then boots thudded around the villa like a drum circle. They were surrounded; the circle was tight as a noose.

Night Frost sensed no crushing force among them, no mountain weight. Likely no Cantata Two. Most smelled like the city’s army, starch and gun oil.

“Aklatia. Codename Doctor. We know you’re inside,” a voice boomed through a speaker, flat as steel. “You’re surrounded. I repeat, you’re surrounded.”

“Cease resistance. Leniency on the table.”

“Leniency?” Eye Orb laughed without warmth, a knife on glass. “They’ll pull secrets from me, then I vanish like smoke.”

“Someone entrusted me with all of Aklatia. I won’t fail him. For Aklatia!”

His will stood like a pine in snow. Night Frost almost felt moved—almost.

Not the time to admire a villain’s backbone. Breaking out mattered more than poetry.

“This is our window. We punch through the front,” Night Frost said, voice tightening like a bowstring. “I’ll take the frontal fire.”

“Qianchun, you can’t eat bullets. Just warp the air around me.”

“Eye Orb, find anything in the lab that can give us teeth.”

They split like a trident. Night Frost and Qianchun smashed the front door wide, wood exploding like dry bark.

Muzzles lifted, and Crimson fire spat from the barrels, a row of dragons exhaling.

Night Frost pinched flame like snuffing a candle. A wall of fire rose from the floor, and the air around him warped like heat above sand.

Bullets bent skyward, as if nudged by a giant hand. None touched Qianchun or Night Frost.

Flames rolled outward like a tide, heat pressing soldiers back like a hot wind. Bullets kept spitting, but the rhythm didn’t change.

Bored, Night Frost flicked the wall aside, and the fire fell like red rain. Soldiers scattered like birds under a stone.

He surged forward and dropped them one by one, clean as cutting reed with a sickle.

A few clever ones called reinforcements before they kissed the ground. Before Night Frost and Qianchun could leave, fresh troops ringed them, tight as thorns.

At the same time, Night Frost caught a thread of pressure, thin but sharp—a Cantata Two in the mix.

With most soldiers dragged outside, only a few climbed up from the basement like tired ants. Eye Orb slipped past them like a shadow through reeds.

He reached the room wrapped in Obsidian Stone, a black shell around a heart. From the safe, he took out a Magic Stone of Cantata Two, cold as a winter star.

…