Endless darkness wrapped Night Frost’s broken body, like being hurled into an ice lake where ink-cold water dragged and spun her by a ruthless undertow.

Panic first, then numbness—she tried to flee, but strength was a myth; even lifting a finger felt like a joke told to a corpse.

Her vigor and life guttered like a dying lamp, and at last, her vision went pitch-black.

Memory rushed in like a tide before her eyes closed—she had killed the black fox, spent her last spark to run to the orphanage and aid Moon Owl.

At the gate, her body froze like a rusted clock face that finally refused to turn.

In this seafloor dark, there was no sound, only her bared heart thudding slow and strong, a drum in a tomb.

It wasn’t hers; even with the lamp oil gone, that stolen heart kept beating.

The heart felt her frailty; black Magic Spell sigils seeped into her skin like soot-ink, propping up her shattered mind and body—so a stray breeze wouldn’t snuff her out.

With that black script bracing her, Night Frost found the shore of thought and opened her eyes to a blood-red sky, while beneath her roiled a floor of endless shadow.

She tried to lift herself, but failed; she lay and stared at a silhouette drifting across the scarlet heavens.

Black and red began to braid together—the blood sky and the coal-dark ground weaving tight.

Black threaded through red; red flooded over black; sky and earth traded masks till she couldn’t tell which was above, which was below.

At last, red was swallowed whole, and from the depths a dim glow cast itself—a gate bound in rusted chains, its lintel carved with a dragon’s head.

It looked as if it had waited here for years, untouched; Night Frost swallowed, and the door’s skin trembled, like it rejoiced at her arrival—or like it called her to open it.

But she had no strength to push; moving a finger was a mountain.

“Do you crave power?”

The black firmament tore open with a seam, and a pair of enormous dark-gold eyes pressed down, a storm of pressure that crushed breath.

Truth bare as steel: with a single thought, the owner could kill Night Frost at her prime.

“Your friends are in danger.”

A blinding screen flared like a blade of light. Night Frost squinted and saw.

Chen Xiaoyin clutched a shield; blood streaked her limbs, and the spill dyed her pale-blue Magic Armor crimson.

Hao Wenqian knelt, drained, her body peppered with small bleeding punctures.

Qiu Sheng and Qianchun braced themselves like wobbling pillars before Moon Owl.

Zhang Jialu hid behind them, cradling the fainted Xia Qingqing like a wilting flower.

Across from them stood a Magic Maiden in deep-blue attire, raindrop pupils set in azure eyes, a matching sigil carved beneath.

Beside her stood a gray-haired girl in a suit, a smile bent on her lips, but her eyes were a glass lake without human warmth.

The deep-blue maiden raised her palm, and all water in the air flocked to her side like summoned troops.

She poured Mana into hundreds of suspended droplets, drew them long, straight, and keen, each bead sharpened into an arrow.

Chen Xiaoyin lifted her light-shield with sagging arms; she’d only just stepped into Cantata Two, and her Mana and handling lagged behind her foe.

From the bell’s first toll, the rhythm of battle had been locked in the enemy’s hands.

She wanted to close in, but the Magic Maiden offered no window, not even a crack in the rain.

Her Mana scraped the bottom and her body was a map of wounds; she knew only a last-hit window could save the people behind her.

If one strike landed, she could fell the deep-blue Magic Maiden—so long as the suit-clad girl didn’t intervene.

Chen Xiaoyin tightened the light-shield on her wrist; she was the kind who acted as soon as the heart decided.

She lunged into a storm of liquid spears, a gunsmoke gale made of rain.

She gathered all her Mana into her arm and cried the Magic Spell sealed in her Magic Stone—

“O holy shield-bearer, untouched by all things.

Let the art of the sacred shield guard my flesh, eternal and undying.

Then be my strength, shield the others, and keep one corner of the world safe.

τείχος της για πάντα!”

Her Mana condensed into the hardest shield, plating her forearm; no edge of rain could cut it, no force could pierce it.

She roared forward, spent her last reserves, and slammed the pale-blue shield into the girl’s face; the deep-blue maiden flew, exactly as Chen Xiaoyin had planned.

Rain began as a whisper, then ink clouds stacked and broke, and the downpour came in sheets.

It wasn’t the girl’s power—today had always been set for abnormal rain; summer’s weather plays dice with storms.

Heaven made a joke of her—offering one slim thread of life, then yanking her into the Abyss without a rope.

The deep-blue maiden staggered up, mouth split, laughter spilling like broken glass.

She’d thought Chen Xiaoyin would turn the tide; she was weak at close quarters, would lose to peers in a clinch.

But the gods wanted Chen Xiaoyin’s life—this deluge meant she’d never get close.

Using the moisture, the girl vaulted skyward; in the rain she looked like a sovereign descending, the water around her a loyal army of blades.

“Didn’t expect you to be this troublesome. But only troublesome. Remember my name. You’ll die by Yu Xin’s hand!”

The light-screen ended there.

The dark-gold eyes stared hard at Night Frost lying on the black like a dropped petal; her fists clenched, veins rose, and she ground her molars near to cracking—but she had no way to stop it.

“You’re the Black Dragon, aren’t you? You want my body. You’ll give me power, right?”

The words scraped from her throat.

Since knowing her heart was a dragon’s heart, she’d guessed the owner of those eyes.

Illusory Glass had said Night Frost would sign a pact with the dragon, and then she’d no longer be Night Frost—she’d be the revived Black Dragon—only to be killed by an unknown Cantata Three.

Borrowing the Black Dragon’s power would only resurrect it within her.

To face two Cantata Two, you needed Cantata Two strength—maybe even Cantata Three.

“I won’t accept your power.”

A pure surge of Mana rose inside her from an unseen spring, holding up her fragile mind and ruined flesh.

In her pocket, the magic crystal taken from the wooden carving turned to pure white dust.

“I’ll become not-me if I take it. I’ll make them pay, with my own hands. I’ll witness it with my own eyes.”

Night Frost dragged heavy steps along the road of light; she reached toward it, and the chains on the door trembled like answered prayer.

She was a cup already full—give her a trigger and the water would spill.

But her wounds were too grave; her spirit weak, her body tired, and the path turned to thin ice underfoot.

The Black Dragon said nothing, stared, and weighed its move.

Now, with Night Frost’s spirit thin and her breakthrough to Cantata Two underway—what better time to erase her mind and claim her body?

It longed to wake at once and carry wrath and disaster’s flames to the Magic Maidens who had almost killed it.

Night Frost’s heart squeezed and contracted hard, spitting pitch-black Blood; buried sigils of black Magic Spell rose through her skin.

Along her forearms, ankles, and cheeks, hard jet scales sprouted like midnight armor.

The heart’s huge life-force began repairing her body, even as it bent her toward the Black Dragon’s features.

Her ruined Magic Armor renewed itself; the triangular hairclip vanished, replaced by curved black horns banded with fine scales.

White thigh-highs and boots turned to hard scale-mail laid over bare skin.

Ash-white hair drank the Spell like ink and went black, its strands sharpening till they felt able to cut anything.

Her dark-gold eyes deepened; black script swirled at their centers, silver light rimmed the contour, wicked and god-touched.

The scales grew with intent, fitting her frame precisely; then fused into a sturdy dragon-scale dress that could sheath her whole body.

Night Frost, striving for the door, felt the pain bite deep; her spirit tore like cloth, and she had to halt.

The dark-gold eyes drifted down and blocked her path, like a wall of sky.

“Give me thy body! When my revenge is done, I shall fulfill thy wish!”

She wanted to spit back, “Easy promise,” but her spirit was paper-thin; the pressure on her mind was a mountain, and the words wouldn’t rise.

She cursed it silently, hard as a clenched jaw.

The Eye Orb had warned her—each time she suited up, her nature and flesh would tilt toward the Black Dragon.

She’d braced for it.

But this… wasn’t it too fast?

She couldn’t fall here.

“I have to do it myself…”

She stomped forward and set her foot at the end of the light-road, firm as a nail.

But her soul had hit its edge; as her heel came down, her body fractured, splitting inch by inch like cracked porcelain.

The black-gold eyes watched her scattering, holding both regret and delight.

Once Night Frost’s soul was ash, it could rightfully take the body and rain fury on the Magic Maidens.

What awaited her was the lantern-reel of memory, then a world of black beyond the reel, then the gnaw of remorse.

They say a hero learns the truth of life and death from that spinning lantern—sees what’s worth keeping, knows their lack, and gains power fit to carry the vow.

Maybe Night Frost had grown careless on power’s wine—but she’d done all she could.

Her lone regret was not saving them with her own hands.

She was still too weak.

“Keep your word. Save them.”

Her soul rose into the void like smoke; her body fell forever into the Abyss like a stone.

Life and death split clean, the door as the cleaver-line; and at last, her awareness scattered to the far corners.

With Night Frost’s consciousness gone, the Black Dragon became the new master of the flesh.

A sliver of awareness squeezed from the heart—a weight the body could bear—slid into place.

“Night Frost” pushed herself up from the floor, breathing a chill that bit like winter.

With sharp claws, she traced the smooth scale-armor that hugged “her” skin.

Everything felt fine—only the figure was a touch lacking.

She drew the sigils back beneath her skin and, once “her” body was whole, let alluring dark-gold eyes fall on the dying Chen Xiaoyin and the others—then on the two unknown Magic Maidens.

Black Flame bloomed on her red-and-black dress; she plucked two burning blossoms and walked forward, step by steady step.

A crushing Abyssal Aura rolled out and bore down on the Magic Maidens like a falling sea.

They had been Order Keepers for years, yet had never seen such dense Abyssal Aura; with their Mana alone, they couldn’t match her.

Then she could only be Cantata Three.

“She’s Cantata Three—wasn’t she dying?”

To the deep-blue girl’s question, the suit-clad girl could offer nothing; she didn’t know what she was looking at either.

Advancing from Cantata Two to Cantata Three, a deep, sonorous Abyssal Aura coils around her body again, like dark tides circling a moonlit cliff.

“She comes from the Abyss!”

Weariness floods first; the azure-clad girl clenches her sword.

Her duel with Chen Xiaoyin drained her mana; now Night Frost is revived, and fear whispers she’s outmatched.

She and the suit-clad girl lock eyes; twin nods spark, then in quiet accord they wheel and sprint for the city center.

In a storm like this, retreat feels like the only road left.

But Night Frost won’t let them slip away; that ice-bitter fixation burned on as her mind thinned toward silence.

Black Flame bars their path; her spear strikes like thunder that arrives before sound, and it drives into the azure-clad girl’s body.

The girl has no time to react; Night Frost moves too fast for naked eyes or magic to catch, a cold blur that erases distance.