“These past days the Twelfth District saw less rain and more clear skies, heat shimmering like a kiln. High of 36°C, so carry an umbrella and drink water to fend off heatstroke... Today the Twelfth District stays peaceful, like a lake at noon. That’s today’s forecast for the Twelfth District... thanks for watching.”

The noon sun beat down like a brass gong, harsh and ringing. On the big screen in Jiuqiong University’s cafeteria, the forecast scrolled like a mirage. Ren Changxiao and Lingchen Yao bumped into each other at the entrance, two hungry souls smelling steam like homing birds.

“Hey, Yao, what’s that crowd over there?” The question fluttered like a sparrow.

Curiosity simmered like a pot on the boil, and the two pushed into the shade beneath the trees, a human reef. Ren Changxiao cradled a roll of bandages like a white snake and led the way, and Lingchen Yao slipped through behind him like a shadow. In this blaze, even lifting a finger felt like squeezing the last drop from a dry gourd.

They broke through the thicket of bodies and saw the scene at the center, bright as porcelain. A girl in a pure white dress sat there, white from hair to skin, like fresh snow untouched by footsteps.

A summer breeze toyed with the hem of her dress like a cat with silk. A red ribbon at her throat trembled like a small flame. Her eyes were silver, threaded with ruby light, and they closed the way dusk folds the day.

Her face held no ripple, like a still pond. Seated in the wind, she looked like a porcelain doll in a museum case, a work you’d only dare admire from afar for fear a touch would crack the glaze.

The girl was Illusory Glass.

After her contracted spirit ambushed and killed her, her scattered mind drifted into black like a leaf on a midnight stream. From the darkness, a silver glow snagged her like a hook of moonlight, and an airy voice rang in her skull like bells.

“Do you believe in time?”

“When you move the hands of the clock, everything returns to before. Everything begins again...”

She reached out, fingers like reeds to a drifting star. The dark peeled back like old paint, and a silver-white hall opened like dawn. At its heart rose an ancient mechanical clocktower, iron and age twisting like vines.

Illusory Glass glanced at herself, panic fluttering like moths. Silver light seeped from her, inside out, a snowfall devouring edges. The pale body within the glow blurred like frost on glass, but one thing was clear—there wasn’t a single wound.

Her gaze lifted to the clocktower, where rust gnawed the hands like lichen. The numbers were ghosts, half-faded, and only a few white lights hovered like fireflies at a single notch.

Hour, minute, and second were pinned together by a giant screw like a nail in the sky, yet something was missing from its heart, a hollow like a pupil without light.

There were no directions, no voice to guide her, only instinct like a tide pulling at the moon. With a thought, the corroded hands spun counterclockwise, like leaves riding a backflow, and came to rest upon those few white lights.

The hands turned, and day and night flipped like pages. Stars went out and flared again like breathing embers. When she woke, she lay once more on her birthday night, the air sweet as cake. A hardcover fairy-tale book on her pillow shed its white glow like dandelion seeds.

She looked at her palm, steady as a winter pond. No doubt—she had returned. Soon, a seam would rip open here like torn silk, and a silver-haired, red-eyed daughter of the Blood Clan would descend again.

Disaster would gather across the land called the Twelfth District like thunderheads rolling over fields.

She had tried to reverse the tide alone, and the wave drowned her anyway. She had tried to climb to the top of the Order Keeper, and unseen bars closed like ice. She had tried to found a group, and the lack of skill was a cracked keel. In the end, she returned to that silver hall again.

So it went, again and again, like seasons grinding through the same twelve constellations.

Confusion flooded her eyes like fog, and despair hid deep like a stone under water. She didn’t know what to do to halt the coming storm, to stop Moon Owl’s death.

She opened her eyes once more and pressed the mist down like a lid. Her gaze turned innocent toward the distance like spring sky, but by chance it brushed Lingchen Yao, and a spark of disgust flashed like a thorn.

“Is she a foreigner? She’s so cute... like an elf stepped out of a painting.” A girl near Lingchen Yao whispered, starlight glittering in her amber eyes like gold dust. She wanted to hug this small snow-white child, but the girl’s aura said keep out like frost fencing a garden.

“That’s clearly albinism! Do you know the cause of albinism... it’s due to tyrosinase deficiency or reduced function, which affects melanin synthesis in the skin and its append—”

“Sorry, this bro’s from the med school next door... he’s got a retake coming. I’ll drag him back, okay~” A friend hauled the thick-haired lecturer away like a hooked fish, toward the cafeteria’s warm fog.

Lingchen Yao shrugged, a leaf shaking off dew. College makes everyone a little mad. He fixed his gaze on Illusory Glass, steady as a nail.

She’d just looked at him with a disgust he knew, a cold north wind he’d felt before. In high school, some classmates learned he was an orphan and wore that look like masks of thin ice.

But Illusory Glass’s look was different, colder to the bone, more like hatred, a blade kept in snow.

He couldn’t be wrong; instinct rings like iron. He didn’t know why a younger Illusory Glass would carry that feeling toward him. He swore this was the first time he’d ever seen her.

The look lasted only an instant, as brief as a blink of lightning. Her eyes smoothed flat again, calm as a lake. On the wooden bench behind her, she left a barely visible silver mark, a moon-scratch. Then she curved her lips and gave the crowd a small bow, like a petal falling.

Only Illusory Glass could sense that mark, a hidden star under bark. Next time she returned to the silver hall, she could set the hands to that cut of time.

She could leave at most twelve marks, a zodiac around her life. When all three hands pointed to the same mark, she’d be pulled back to that moment, and every mark after it would wash away like chalk in rain.

For example, if she returned to the instant of the bench’s mark, every later mark would be a dead seed, never sprouting.

So the choice of return had to be careful, twice and thrice, like stepping on thin ice. There was only one true chance, and there was a price in blood or time. Thus, most times, she chose to start from the very beginning. It was the safest harbor in a storm.

Seeing she was about to leave, the crowd opened a path for this little angel like reeds parting for a swan. She tilted a small parasol and hurried toward the gate, light as a swallow. At the same time, a black bat-winged, silver-haired, red-eyed Blood Clan girl drifted from Illusory Glass’s pocket like a moth from silk.

After several returns, Illusory Glass knew the Blood Clan she’d contracted had crooked roots, like ivy reaching for a crack. The Abyss behind her wanted to tear an Abyssal Rift with Illusory Glass’s power, so her kin could set foot on this earth like a floodgate opened.

The young girl walked the street under sunlight like quicksilver. The Blood Clan girl leaned on Illusory Glass’s shoulder, hiding under the parasol’s shade like a bat under an eave, eyes narrowed as she drank the world with surprise and delight.

But Illusory Glass’s mind wasn’t on the Blood Clan; her thoughts were a closed fan. The Blood Clan’s name was Caris Disis Nofiler, a bloom with thorns.

In the last return, she had struck first, like frost before dawn. Before Caris descended, she asked Moon Owl to prepare a blade dusted with silver powder, moonlight ground fine. With Moon Owl’s strength, she killed the unguarded Caris clean as a bell.

After Caris died, white moonlight flowed through the window like milk and pooled in Illusory Glass’s palm, hardening into a silver-white Magic Stone. On it glowed a Magic Spell she’d never known, a script belonged only to time and Illusory Glass.

Even with that Magic Spell, Moon Owl still died... The power she gained rang hollow like a cracked bell; she couldn’t save Moon Owl and only stirred more trouble like silt in a river.

This return, Illusory Glass chose to spare Caris, a knife left in its sheath. Without Caris, the future wouldn’t run long; the Blood Clan surely had a role in the war ahead, a cog that must turn.

Besides, Caris hid something, a pearl in murk. Why choose Illusory Glass? Why had her warmth toward Illusory Glass been so true, with no trace of false sheen?

“That guy earlier has a strange scent,” Caris murmured, voice like velvet. “Smells like the Abyss. Want me to check?”

Illusory Glass flicked a glance at Caris on her shoulder, cool as a moonbeam. Emotion first—rejection prickled like nettles. Then thought—she needed to send Caris away and slip to the hills at the Twelfth District’s edge, a spine of green. There she would break through Cantata Two and strike a bargain with Yuan Dai, a pact hammered like iron.

But she wouldn’t let Caris near Lingchen Yao. In the loops before, everyone’s fate felt set like tiles, yet Lingchen Yao’s presence sometimes let Yuan Dai and other Cantata Two Magic Maidens live, a stray wind bending fire.

She’d tried to block others’ misfortunes with her own hands, and fate found new doors like water. Inevitable. But Lingchen Yao was different, a knot in the net.

With a Magic Stone in her grip and Blood Clan strength in her veins, she still couldn’t kill Lingchen Yao. He always found a way to live, like a fish slipping the net. He could tug one thread and make the weave shift, yet fate would still forge him into the Calamity Dragon, and Order would cut him down like a thunderbolt.

In the second return, she met Lingchen Yao and learned his secret, a coal under ash. She told Moon Owl, and through Moon Owl, other Cantata Two gathered to hound him, a net above water. They still failed to hold him.

He watched Chen Xiaoyin die, and rage took him like a storm. He accepted the dragon’s power, scales in his shadow. He stood near the battlefield, close as breath. In fury, he fought insect-type Monsters and cut them down like sickles through husks, and with them he felled the badly wounded Yuan Dai.

Moon Owl had half her body dissolved by the Monster’s saliva, a cruel acid rain, and then died under bombardment like a gull in shrapnel. That was when Moon Owl came closest to living, a candle guttering but unextinguished—until it was.

From that moment, Illusory Glass understood like ice cracking at spring—only overwhelming power can pry at fate. They’re called Myth because they can lever destiny like a crowbar under the world.

She lacked that power, a sparrow pecking at stone. Illusory Glass at Cantata Two couldn’t move a vast Cantata Three Monster, a mountain in storm. The fragile would be swallowed by endless shellfire like foam in surf.

Yet inside Lingchen Yao slept a Myth, a dragon’s shadow coiled like smoke. Myth’s power let him slip parts of destiny like a serpent shedding skin. It could bring calamity, or kindle hope like a lighthouse through fog.

She didn’t like him; dislike rose like bile. His existence tangled her arrangements like wind in silk. Last time, Moon Owl—who should’ve lived—died by his hand, a string cut mid-song. In grief, Illusory Glass ended herself and stepped back into the loop like a diver into dark water.

This time, she meant to move first against Lingchen Yao, a knife in the sleeve. Before anything locked into place, she wouldn’t let another ticking bomb—Caris—get close to him, two fuses kept apart like oil and flame.