The mature woman—Blade—wore bruised moons beneath her eyes and drove the army like a lone drummer beating a ragged warband. With a handful of satellite phones and two fickle computers wheezing like old kettles, she tried to carry a city on one back, and the weight bit like iron.

By Wartime Ordinance, Article Thirty-Two, the Order Keeper branch could seize command of local troops, like a steel seal pressed to paper.

Days ago, a Chimera hit the Order Keeper branch, and Monsters toppled signal towers like reeds. Mobilization dragged like boots in mud. Columns on the road were mauled by Monsters, bodies falling like rain. The branch lost contact with its sub-stations, lines snapping like strings.

Luckily, when the branch was built, they stashed a few satellite phones like winter grain. Borrowing the Sixth District’s satellite, they could barely whisper to the army and a few sub-posts, lanterns flickering in wind.

But once the Abyssal Rift widened, Blade could no longer reach up or down the chain, like a bridge swallowed by fog. So the reins of the army all knotted in Blade’s hands.

“A-site firing position destroyed. Thirty-seven gravely wounded, one hundred twelve dead. B-site…” The report crackled like frost on glass.

The border was a storm-lashed coast. Since Chapter Three showed itself, the Monsters along the frontier went rabid like wolves, swarming the Twelfth District boundary. Heavy guns were thunder without lightning, unable to stun the tide.

Eleven years ago, the pitch-dark Calamity Dragon fell upon the Twelfth District like night at noon. Its shadow carved a scar that never healed.

After that, the city lay paralyzed for over a year, a beast knocked senseless. Border Monsters occupied slices of land, gnawing at the map’s edge. Aside from residential blocks and the commercial heart, the few remaining plots were split between the Order Keeper and the army like a rationed loaf.

The Order Keeper hadn’t bullied the army with law or land-grabs, yet land was scarce, and the army’s growth withered like a tree in poor soil.

The Twelfth District wasn’t a wasteland, but it wasn’t thriving; coffers were shallow bowls. Guarding the frontier burned money like dry straw. Training one Cantata Two Magic Maiden cost less than raising a regiment, so the higher-ups pared the budget again and again, a blade shaving bone.

“Stabilize the situation first!”

Blade had wanted to swing the guns up and smack that Chapter Three in the sky with a couple shells. But the army itself was a cracked dam. With Monsters pouring toward the Twelfth District like floodwater, the border could break in a breath.

She had to beg Headquarters.

Blade cut the military satellite line like snipping a wire. To hold the border, to keep the Twelfth District from sinking into a city of Monsters, she needed Headquarters to send Cantata Two Magic Maidens, or let missiles plow the earth and slow the surge.

She dialed. Only silence breathed back, like a dead sea.

No answer!

Did something happen to Headquarters?!

No. Headquarters housed several Chapter Threes, and even that legend slept beneath its floors like a coiled dragon. Headquarters shouldn’t fail. If something jammed in the chain…

Then only…

Blade switched numbers. The army line still connected, a gutter trickle after the main pipe broke. After issuing a few terse orders, she called Headquarters again. Still nothing but a blank, a snowfield of noise.

No doubt: someone was blocking the call.

The Sixth District branch held the satellite like a hand on a throat.

A mole.

He’d strangled the link between satellite and Headquarters, wanting the Twelfth District to drown. Memory rose like smoke: eleven years ago, during the Calamity Dragon, several Cantata Two Magic Maidens died strangely. Some weren’t slain by Monsters, but by people—by Magic Maidens—by their own.

Someone wants the Twelfth District erased.

Now that person, or an accomplice, roosted in the Sixth District, maybe perched in its high office like a vulture. He’d left internal lines untouched on purpose, to toy with the Order Keeper branch and every soul in the Twelfth District, a cat with a trapped bird.

He’d succeeded.

Blade sagged into a chair as if cut at the knees. Her thoughts tangled like a bird’s nest—pull one twig, ten more snagged.

The front had shattered, no doubt. Monsters poured into the Twelfth District like black surf. Add a Chapter Three overhead, and a Headquarters held down elsewhere…

The Twelfth District became an island, ringed by a sea of Monsters that lapped and bit. Rain hammered like nails. Wind howled through bones. Screams shredded the air, and severed limbs littered streets like driftwood.

In the womb of the stormclouds, that giant body stretched, and a tsunami reared toward shore.

A colossal insect hung inverted from the sky like a blade suspended point-down. Slender tendrils kissed the ground. Its twin legs, sharp as knives, sliced high-rises like tofu. With one motion, it reset the skyline between downtown and suburbs, a cruel hand scraping a sandcastle.

“Do you see it? Outside is a maw. That bug is a Chapter Three, and a numberless mass of Monsters runs with it…” The voice trembled like a plucked string.

“Now look at our strength. We had six Chapter Threes helping. Now we have six Cantata Twos and one Chapter Three. What do you use to fight it?” Zhao Qingsnow, in white, gripped Dawnlight’s arm. Violet light seeped through the window and poured into the dim, empty room like floodwater.

“I’m going. You don’t understand me.” Dawnlight lowered her head and stepped forward, a stalk bending in wind yet refusing to break. In her clear golden eyes, anxiety, unease, fury, and blame swirled like stormclouds—yet the gold stayed clear. In her heart, one star stayed fixed.

That star wouldn’t be moved, not even by the aunt who raised her, the closest person in her small world.

“Your parents died to Monsters.” The words fell like stones.

“Once, your parents joined an Order Keeper survey team and went down into the Abyss. At first, everything went smooth as glass, until we met a beast tide…” Zhao Qingsnow’s voice faltered like a candle. “I tried to dissuade them, but they said, for humanity’s work, exploring the Abyss was necessary.”

She paused. A mist filmed the corners of her eyes; red rimmed her gaze like frostbitten petals.

“Your mother and I were close, so she entrusted you to me. I didn’t expect the news that came back to be a dirge… The surging Monsters tore everything apart—your parents, and all that was yours.”

“I have no children. I took you as my own.” Her tone softened like worn cloth. “You showed a gift no less than your mother’s. I meant to place you with the Mutual Aid Society, but you were stubborn as an ox, just like her, and still joined the Order Keeper.”

“I fear the tragedy will repeat. I applied to transfer to the Twelfth District, not wanting you in danger. I’m afraid you’ll step into the Abyss like your mother. The Order Keeper isn’t a sweet pastry; what waits is loneliness—and death.”

Dawnlight bowed her head and slowly shook it, a bell saying no.

“I’ve long known my parents died in the Abyss. So I must go—even if it kills me.”

“Why?!” Zhao Qingsnow trembled, anger and grief warring like fire and water. Her grip on Dawnlight’s hand went limp. Her body gave way, and with a dull thud she knelt on the wooden floor.

“I didn’t join the Order Keeper for world peace, nor for a fat paycheck, nor to defy you. My Blood runs for the Twelfth District. My blade swings for my family. My steps are only to… follow my mother’s tracks. You don’t understand me, and you don’t understand my mother.” Dawnlight stepped forward and slipped her arm free, a bird sliding a snare.

Zhao Qingsnow’s hand dropped, a bare branch. In her ice-blue eyes, doubt and worry fluttered like trapped moths. In those ice-blue pools, the reflected golden gaze only grew firmer, an unshakable ember.

“I don’t deny what you’ve done for me. But your wings are too wide; they block my road.”

In Zhao Qingsnow’s sight, Dawnlight’s figure overlapped with an old friend’s silhouette, two shadows walking in single file. Back then, when that friend and her husband went to the Abyss, they were just as resolute, arrows already loosed.

Zhao Qingsnow realized she’d never truly understood her friend, nor her child. Now, something clicked like a lock. They were different from her; they had convictions and ideals like mountain spines. Zhao Qingsnow did not.

“You and your mother are cast from the same mold…”

“Thank you…” Dawnlight pushed the door. Endless violet flooded the fragile wood like a tide, so like the ceaseless Monsters, and in Zhao Qingsnow’s eyes it swallowed two fragile golden backs, one ahead of the other, lanterns vanishing in rain.

Skyscrapers crashed down with a roar, and smoke rolled like surf. From the Rift’s center, a gale rose and poured into the space-tear the Moon Owl had ripped open, a river falling into a sinkhole. The surrounding school buildings shattered under pressure, and shards of every size thudded into the ground like hail.

Tangled with Monsters, Lu Jin and Lu Shi were flung up by the wind like leaves. Black and white, the two barely steadied themselves midair. Lu Jin yanked a rope-gun from her waist; the metal head bit into a plummeting slab like a harpoon.

She caught Lu Shi’s wrist. The rope-gun retracted. They landed on the accelerating stone, riding it like a sinking raft. Lu Shi seized the surrounding shadows; a pitch-black shield rose before them like a night tide.

“Sister, there are still students!” Lu Shi narrowed her eyes. Through layers of smoke, she spotted two or three students curled in a corner like frightened rabbits.

“I’ll go.” Lu Jin raised the Rosefire Pistol and tapped shots at the wing-beating swarm. The insects threaded the falling rubble like needles, scything over the pair’s heads.

Mana gathered at the muzzle like a glowing seed and blasted the stone directly above the cornered students into gravel. Shards rained down like cold sleet.

Lu Shi clenched her dagger and thrust out her arm. “Hand!” Her shout cracked like a whip.

But before the word died, a fragment torn up by the gale speared Lu Shi’s forearm like a nail. The storm then surged outward from the Rift’s core, and the stones it had lifted became the greatest obstacle to Lu Jin and Lu Shi’s rescue, their own shots turned back on them.

Inside the storm, pebbles hit with bullet force, and boulders fell like anvils. For Lu Jin and Lu Shi, both far from peak, every misstep meant being swallowed by the wind, life or death tossed like dice.

Lu Shi had to roll toward the outer edge to dodge the spreading gale. She wove vast Mana into shadows, raising them to block the wind and the threats riding in it, while inching toward those students, a swimmer fighting a current.

The Moon Owl stepped out of the rift. Mana leaked from her wounds like smoke, then sheathed her blood-streaked feet. She drove her legs and sprinted toward the cluster of students not far away, a comet skimming low.

At the same time, the storm was an arm’s length away, its breath cold as steel.