The earth shuddered under a sky bruised purple, and wherever those compound eyes swept, a pressure like grinding millstones crushed everything flat.

The air thickened like wet clay, growing heavier by the heartbeat. As the Chapter Three monster showed more of its vast torso in the sky, that pressure spread to Cantata Two. First Symphony faltered first, stuck in place like ordinary folk caught in a storm.

“Twelfth District, requesting reinforcements…”

“Rifts opened over Districts Nine, Eleven, and Twelve, like tears in the clouds, but only Twelfth birthed a Chapter Three super-monster… are the heavens set on burying us?”

The Warden of the Twelfth District looked ashen, like a lantern guttering in wind. She’d just put down a chimera; she couldn’t muster Mana again so soon. Unsealing didn’t burn Mana anyway. It ate something else inside a Magic Maiden—an invisible reservoir, like the spring under the soil.

It grew back, yes, but as slow as frost at dawn. You used Unsealing once a day at most. You stayed under your inner cap. If you tore that gate open without restraint…

You lost everything, like a candle burned past its wick.

She cut the communication spell, the glow dimming like a snuffed star, and rushed to replenish her Mana. She meant to Unseal again to keep that Chapter Three from descending.

Truth? Her gut was hollow, cold as rainwater in a basin. She didn’t know if she could stop it. By its energy ripples, that monster could beat her Unsealed—at least in this state, with her body like cracked porcelain.

Moon Owl bit down hard, silver-bright teeth flashing, eyes locked on the sky growing ever more leaden. She tore the bandages from her ribs, vaulted off the bed, and ripped a seam in space inside the Order Keeper branch. The skin she’d pressed together reopened like wet paper.

The pressure had reached the Obsidian Stone’s threshold; a breath more, and Jiuqiong University under the rift would be crushed in an instant, like an ant under a heel.

Her grandmother and Xiao Li should be in a safe room, and Moon Owl, as a mentor, had a duty to shepherd these students out like fireflies from smoke.

Inside the rift she opened, the world mirrored Jiuqiong University, a reflection on black water. She stepped without hesitation. As her body sank fully into the seam, a white light darted into her chest like a swift.

“Be careful. This light will shield you.”

The Warden’s gift. It would blunt most of the pressure bleeding from the Chapter Three above, a veil over a gale.

“Thank you.”

Moon Owl slid into the mirrored seam. A few breaths later, she stepped out inside Jiuqiong University like surfacing from a lake.

Normally, once the Obsidian Stone barrier was up, you could go out but not back in. But Moon Owl had seeded the campus with spatial anchors like iron nails in a map. The Obsidian Stone smothered most anchors, yet a lucky handful still answered her call.

By riding those anchors, she spent less Mana to reach precise spots, like leaping from one stepping-stone to the next without slipping.

She found her grandmother and Xiao Li in a safe room and told the students inside: the safe room wasn’t safe. The Obsidian Stone was near its limit, its shell hairline-cracked. She’d move everyone to the Twelfth District branch. It sat on the border, where the Monsters thinned like rain at the edge of a storm.

Xun Xun, Ren Changxiao, and Wang Qipeng traded grim looks, then nodded, their faces stiff as masks. They hurried to Moon Owl’s side and reported Lingchen Yao missing, like a lantern lost in fog.

“Mentor, I think he can still be saved.”

“I hear you. Move with me first. I’ll sweep this place after and track where he went. Tch. Students like that are a headache…”

Moon Owl followed rules like a path of stone. She hated those who kicked them aside—facing disaster, still playing clever and running blind. That kind, you could line up for the firing squad a thousand times and not feel wrong.

Lingchen Yao, mid-Mana recovery: Achoo!

“Who’s talking about me?”

With the Obsidian Stone barrier shaving off most of the pressure, and the Warden’s gift bracing her chest like a palm on a drum, Moon Owl ferried half the students in short order, in and out like a swallow through reeds.

At this pace, give it a dozen minutes, and she’d have them all out, or so she dared to hope. She gripped a Magic Stone, cold as hail in her palm. She tossed a student through the seam and snapped back through, like a yo-yo on a string. But the instant she broke the surface, the barrier’s light-veil over Jiuqiong University bloomed with cracks, ugly as lightning on glass.

The barrier had hit its limit.

Time thinned to string. Hundreds still waited. Her Mana could be topped off like a kettle, but her body needed rest like parched earth needs rain. The torn flesh nagged at her like thorns. She was like the barrier—riddled with holes, close to breaking.

“I already failed once. I won’t betray the Warden’s trust again… this time, I’ll save as many as I can.”

She grabbed a student by the collar with one hand and put one foot into the seam. The rifts she hewed could only be held and crossed by those with space magic. Anyone else stepped wrong and fell into the void, like a stone down a well.

So she had to carry weight every trip, cram as many as she dared, trade blood for speed.

Overhead, the leviathan writhed, its long millipede legs like blades, dropping straight for the barrier over Jiuqiong University.

Claw met light, and the barrier peeled like sun-dried paper, a touch turning it to dust. Obsidian Stone pillars around the campus split with spiderweb cracks and toppled like black trees.

“Stay here. It’s safe! Don’t leave the seam!”

The students not yet evacuated broke like a flock of startled birds. Moon Owl couldn’t hesitate. She raised her voice like a whip, snapped it across the panic, told them to hold their ground. She'd ferry them all, as long as she still had breath.

As a mentor, her word still carried weight like a bell. The chaos quieted, a lake settling after a tossed stone. Some eyes swam with fear and despair, but when they looked at Moon Owl, a light stirred there—hope, faint as dawn. They were the many.

Yet a few, the few, recoiled into anger. They were afraid. They were bitter. They cursed Moon Owl. They didn’t believe. They vowed to leave this cursed place by their own power, to spit on orders like a dog off the leash.

“Damn it, let us go… this is murder! You’ve got no right to keep us! Leaving is our freedom!”

A handful joined hands and shoved through the crowd toward the gate. They made it a few steps before the Chapter Three’s pressure hit, a hammer from the sky. They turned to pulp—red and white splashed like paint, bodies unrecognizable.

Moon Owl glanced at the white orb hovering over her chest, a small moon in a storm. The Warden’s gift held off the worst of it. That’s the only reason these students could still stand under that crushing sky.

She’d warned them, again and again. But a small number always let warnings go in one ear and out the other. Her grandmother had taught her since she was young—no rules, no square. That’s the force that keeps Order, like a frame holds a house.

With those few as warning stakes, no one else even thought of leaving Moon Owl to hunt for another way.

“But they’re not wrong,” she thought, a thorn in her throat. “Maybe they see it. Against this thing, all I can do is run. Just like last time…”

Not now, Moon Owl. Not the time for winter thoughts.

She scraped her mind clean like a blade and kept diving through the seam, wounds screaming, breath hot as iron. Blood turned her black-and-white Magic Armor into a red-black pelt, and with her drained, pale face, she looked almost unearthly.

The Chapter Three monster didn’t move again. But Moon Owl knew this was the quiet before the storm, when sea and sky hold their breath.

Monsters spilled in from outside because the Obsidian Stone pillars around Jiuqiong University had shattered, like a dam broken. It made the evacuation heavier, each trip a swim against a tide. A few students were dragged off, vanishing like stones in deep water; dozens more were hurt. Those dragged away were likely gone.

Moon Owl could only bow her head a heartbeat, a silent prayer in a hurricane.

She had already given everything she could.

Then luck cut the clouds. Lujin Lushi arrived in time. They carried their own wounds like red seals, but against First Symphony Monsters they were a breeze through grass.

Lujin Lushi—one black, one white—moved like twin swans through the insect swarm, grace carved sharp. Their torn flesh didn’t read as ragged; it fitted the painting’s crimson strokes.

Black and white wings fell soft as snow, then, with a gust, turned into barbed arrows. They slipped into hard carapace, drilled through dense, soft meat, and split the bugs clean in two.

The Rosefire Pistol bloomed with fire. Crimson roses breathed mist from the muzzle. The flowerbursts they birthed fell like a sudden storm and scythed the weaker swarm flat.

Shadows rose in a saw-toothed wall. Under a dim sky with no sun, only that dull violet glow, this was Lu Shi’s stage. Daggers she cast roamed the shade like eels, and the frail among the insects got plucked in a few breaths.

Lu Shi sank into shadow and rose again above a First Symphony’s crown. The Magic Stone set above her dagger tugged the darkness around, sheathing the blade in night.

The clean bite of metal into flesh got swallowed by the dark. Shadow threaded into the wound and climbed toward the creature’s heart.

The spread was slow as ink, but for mindless First Symphony bugs it was fatal, a chill that never stopped.

Together, they cleaned the field. It was smooth, too smooth, and that ease tasted wrong, like sweetness before rot.

“These bugs are weak,” Lu Jin said, eyes leaf-sharp. “First Symphony at best. We’re right under a space rift. There should be more Cantata Two, not less.”

Moon Owl had stood at the seam so many times she’d lost count. Most students were out now, only a few dozen scattered like pebbles. She was soaked in blood. Patches of skin had collapsed like wet plaster. She didn’t stop.

“A futile salvation,” Lu Shi murmured, voice like a shadow on snow. “But I don’t dislike it.”

“People outside judge too harshly,” Lu Jin said, the words a sigh of wind. “Still, leave that. I’ve got a bad feeling…”

“Me too…”

They scanned the field. They’d culled most Monsters. Nothing nearby could threaten them. So why did unease curl in their gut like smoke?

Both of them looked up, as if a string had been plucked. Fear climbed their eyes like frost.