The second layer of the formation shattered into silvery motes, studding the night’s velvet, replacing the star-river the Abyssal Rift had swallowed whole. Even with the hovering Chapter Three slain by the Magic Maiden, the Rift kept widening, a wound that refused to scab.

The formation Night Frost’s crew bled to hold finally broke before dawn, smashed to gravel by a charging tide of Monsters. She’d foreseen the end; she hadn’t thought it would come this fast.

Good thing Night Frost had stacked the corpses outside like a low seawall; the reek became a barrier, barely slowing the army’s surge.

To protect the orphanage, Moon Owl rose when she should’ve been flat in bed. Her wounds were deep; two hours’ rest left her strength a guttering candle, equal to Night Frost’s worn edge.

If she used the Unseal, she might behead a Cantata Two in a blink—but only once, with a price unknown. When survival’s the coin, even ruin feels cheap.

“That’s a First Symphony!”

Moon Owl’s gaze pinned the center of the tide. Four First Symphony Monsters ringed something, shepherding it toward the orphanage like pallbearers marching through ash.

“The middle one’s probably a Cantata Two, right?”

Eye Orb spotted the oddity too. Anything guarded by four First Symphonies wasn’t weak; it was a thorn hidden in wool.

After an hour of unbroken fighting, Qianchun’s group—Qiu Sheng, Hao Wenqian, Zhang Jialu, and Xia Qingqing—had Mana scraping bottom. Exhaustion turned grips to water, while the Monsters only swelled like floodwater under a red moon.

“Their movement’s got purpose… cut off the head, the snake uncoils. If I’m right, the tide’s dancing to whatever sits in the middle.”

The Cantata Two could only be handled by Moon Owl and Night Frost. Moon Owl couldn’t brawl up close with her wounds—but she held a one-shot trump. So she couldn’t be risked.

Night Frost agreed with Eye Orb. If they wanted to live through this, they had to kill the hidden conductor.

“I’ll go.”

She stepped off moss-slick stone and landed on the orphanage steps, steady as a blade on whetstone. Her dusky-gold eyes narrowed on the thing guarded by the four First Symphonies.

“Something’s off.”

Whatever sat between them didn’t move like flesh. It looked like a plush toy borrowed from nowhere, a dead smile under a dead sky.

“Even if it’s fake, those four First Symphonies are real trouble.”

Night Frost gripped the knife she’d lifted from Moon Owl. Her right hand raised the Arcane Firearm and braced over her left. She didn’t hesitate; she squeezed the trigger.

Invisible Mana streamed through her palm into the translucent chamber, blooming into a beautiful crimson.

Crimson liquid Mana struck the ignition, hurled a special round down the barrel, and the shot flew toward the four First Symphonies.

The round punched through the thing they guarded. Fire blossomed outward from the four Monsters, like a rose of flame unfolding in a graveyard.

“Doesn’t matter how many times I see it. That power’s gorgeous. The recoil, too.”

The kick launched her into the air, and from that brief height she saw the whole beast tide—an endless file of Monsters pouring from beyond the border into the outskirts like ants from a cracked nest.

“It really was fake.”

Her bespoke round blasted the four First Symphonies apart, leaving a charred pit. In its center lay a burning doll-like carcass, a dead thing cradling fire.

Her dread had been right. The center was dead bait. A trap laid by Monsters.

The four First Symphonies weren’t badly hurt; they were still thorns. Night Frost landed before them, and in a blink they scattered. Two vanished into the tide, two lunged at the orphanage, claws like hooked wind.

She lifted a foot to sprint back—then a knife-sliver of Abyssal Aura flicked past her skin and vanished, cold as a snake’s tongue.

“Move! It’s fast!”

Eye Orb’s warning snapped like a twig. Night Frost dropped low and rolled right. The hidden Monster missed the kill, but left a bloody line across her lower belly, red threading night.

If she was right, this Cantata Two was the one she’d met in the alley.

The black shape paused, then blurred again, a smear of shadow in a drawn curtain. Under this shroud, she couldn’t catch its face, only the hunger of speed.

It moved like a ghost and struck like lightning. With her eyes and Eye Orb’s pinging sense, she only just dodged its claws.

New cuts bloomed across her skin, dozens of red scratches like falling maple leaves. None fatal. She raised a hand to cast flame—and a nearby beast slammed in, shattering the moment.

The Cantata Two wasn’t stupid. It had a hunter’s mind. It saw she couldn’t cast the kill and kept grinding its edge, playing to speed and shade.

Night Frost’s body could take punishment. It didn’t matter. In the heart of the tide, the ground itself betrayed her. Every move brushed a Monster’s shoulder. Strength had nowhere to land.

Get out. Now.

Decision clicked. She wouldn’t dance with it here. Fire surged under her soles. She drew her arcane handgun and sighted on a rampaging Monster nearby.

Shots thudded in the dark, a drumbeat under thunder. Against these quick, supple bodies, at this range, the bullets were whispers.

They did their work anyway. Smoke and blood fog blossomed, a cloying veil. She drove her legs, fire underfoot, and burst from the shroud like a spark on wind.

A black shadow ghosted after her heels.

The smoke and stink didn’t hold it long. It came on like a thrown blade. Night Frost raised her pistol and fired into empty air, aiming at nothing—and at its habit.

The Monster had learned. It’d seen her round’s bite. It jinked, let the bullet pass, then arrowed for her again.

Good. She wanted that.

In the heartbeat it crouched to spring, she saw it. She rode the gun’s recoil and vaulted to the junction of a pole and its wires, perching where the night hummed with old electricity.

It was all black, cloaked in night, cruelly fast. Even in open ground, she doubted she’d best it in a straight race.

Its claws were razors; its eyes glowed an inky green that crawled along the nerves. It looked like a fox. Its plush tail worked like a squirrel’s rudder, padding along the wire toward her, step by sure step.

Balancing on the wire, Night Frost chose a patch of open sky. She doused the fire at her soles, saving Mana like a miser. Then she caught a flame in her palm and hurled it at the fox.

As expected, a flame like that would never tag a thing this fast.

But open ground wasn’t the tide. Here, even with its agility, she could read a thread of its path—enough to dodge, and enough to strike back.

She stamped hard. The earth cracked. Crimson flame geysered up. Walls of fire rose around her in a ring, several meters high, her own cage of heat.

The walls circled tight. For a breath, she couldn’t move. The gap overhead would be the fox’s road.

Right on cue, the fox didn’t ram heat with fur. It lapped the ring, picked its angle, then chose the open top like a hawk stooping through clouds.

“For a second I thought it had a brain. Guess not.”

It had a bit of brain, just not enough.

A black streak knifed through the gap. Three claw-marks opened on her pale arm, hot and wet. It tried to slip away. She smiled through the sting. Just where she wanted it.

“Came in? Don’t leave.”

The calm flames on the ring twisted into a storm, spiraling tight. The “gap” above sealed shut, a lid on a cauldron. Black Flame welled from deep within her and bled into the walls, dyeing crimson with abyssal ink.

Crimson took a shade of night. The heat turned hungry, then cold at the core, like winter fire.

Black Flame clings. Touch it, and it owns you. Either fight Night Frost in this shrinking cage of woven fire, or break out and let Black Flame eat you, inch by inch.

Sensing the wrongness, the fox abandoned speed. A Cantata Two doesn’t end at quick. Claws shot longer, fangs edged sharper, and black fur surged, wrapping its body like living armor.

Even without speed, a canine Cantata Two wasn’t an easy meal.

Night Frost fired the Arcane Firearm a fourth time. In tight quarters, she couldn’t miss. The round smashed into the shifting fur. The blast blew a storm of cinders and smoke.

She anchored herself with Mana underfoot—then a sudden black mass slammed her midsection and hurled her back. She curled, clutching her lower belly, eyes on the thinning smoke.

A fox stepped out, sheathed in slick, writhing fur. Fox by shape, wolf by size—about as big as a juvenile Dreadwolf.

Its fur rippled, filling the pits the blast had chewed. Night Frost watched raw flesh knit and felt a chill. Bad.

She’d thought sealing its speed would blunt its fangs. Wrong. Its close-quarters bite was sharp enough to draw blood from stone.

“Guess I’ll use my finisher.”

She holstered the pistol, eyes never leaving the fox. Step by step, she gave ground. A shot cracked as she moved, and in the same breath she rolled through the ring of fire.

“I’m bailing—”

Outside the wall, she panted, sweat cold as dew. No rest. Not now. She lifted her right hand. The ring of fire compressed under her will, becoming a sphere. Black replaced crimson. The orb hung in the air, a tiny black sun.

“Grant flame to dragon, grant flame to my hand. Tear the fetters off life. Let all things burn… Inferno, burn it down.”

Fire at her soles linked to the orb. Black Flame coalesced into spears that would never go out. The ground beneath the sun turned into a bottomless Abyss.

Her splayed fingers curled shut. One by one, Spears drove through the black sun, pinning the fox inside its heart. When the thirteenth Spear sank, all the fire rushed inward, and then—

The blast rattled the earth. Concrete peeled like bark. Black fire roared in the new crater, a furnace in a wound.

Night Frost peered into the pit and found no fox. She knew the weight of her own skill; she knew it shouldn’t kill that thing.

But the fox was gone.

“Careful!”

Eye Orb smacked the back of her head, a shock of pain. Reflex took over. She crossed her forearms. Claws raked her, carving deep, bone-showing gashes along her arms.

Without that warning, those claws would’ve unzipped her heart.

She readied a counter—then the Monster vanished again, not a hair, not a whisper left behind.

“Gone? It’s that fast?”

Flame pooled in her palm. Cold sweat slid down her brow. Before, she’d at least read a black streak and guess a line. Now the fox left nothing, not even a shadow.

One Magic Stone spell spent, and a fight like a storm—her Mana was running dry. Far off, Monsters kept flooding the orphanage. Qianchun’s ground shrank like ice in spring. They wouldn’t hold long.

“What are you doing? It’s right in front of you!”

The Eye Orb blared at full volume at Night Frost, the warning circling in the clamor like a hawk, never piercing her ears.

The fox monster’s crimson eyes burned like coals, pinning Night Frost’s dark-gold gaze, its focus lost and drifting like silt.

“You humans gifted me this power… it fits your kind like a blade to bone, doesn’t it?”

It bared its teeth, dragging a broken body step by step toward Night Frost, each stagger a grind of gravel.

Its mangled claw drove into her chest; the words that spilled out were human, a rasp like rust on steel.

“I finally claimed the Dragon’s power. A dozen winters of swallowed fury, at last ripened into mine.”

Inky drops of blood turned to Black Flame; along the fox monster’s claw, the fire ran and lit her whole body.

The Eye Orb opened wide in shock. This fox monster could speak in Cantata Two—and it knew Night Frost’s core secret, the Dragon’s Heart that lets her become a Magic Maiden.