The air reeked of roasting meat, a greasy halo over broken stone, as the girl tried to smother the Black Flame with liquid Mana like rain on a coal bed, yet mortal water couldn’t drown this hellborn fire.

The Black Flame gnawed her skin like acid ants; blood fell and flashed to steam; needle-fine pain shredded her nerves, and she whimpered, death-fear filmed in her eyes like winter frost.

The Spear lodged in her belly pulsed; threads of night-black fire tunneled inward like eels, burning organs and Mana alike, a fire that fed on power and vowed to burn as long as Mana existed.

The girl in a suit still didn’t strike; she stood aside like a cat on a windowsill, ignoring the other girl’s plea, studying Night Frost—once a breath from death, now lively as a storm-woken hawk.

The world’s wide and weird, and Mana takes a thousand forms like river currents, but magic that snatches a dying soul back in an instant—she’d never seen that sunrise.

If they fought, she’d lose to Night Frost in a straight clash, yet a message had already chimed like a bell: the pure-silver Order was descending, and Night Frost’s kind would be swept away like leaves.

The blue-clad girl likely couldn’t be saved; agent or not, a thread of daily familiarity meant little—failure made her scrap iron rusting in rain.

She was a Recorder; she didn’t mourn scrap, because raising another only cost time, and time to her was an endless tide.

The suited girl flicked a glance across the battlefield, raised both hands, and stepped back; smoke curled from her soles like fog from marshes, and when the haze thinned, the orphanage yard held no trace of her shadow.

“Night Frost” yanked the Spear from the girl’s gut; barbs drew intestine like wet rope, and crimson blood spilled in a river that wouldn’t stop.

Her feral gaze swept the yard like a hunting hawk’s, all hatred for Magic Maidens, and if not for fear of provoking the not-yet-faded will of Night Frost, she’d have snapped those girls’ limbs like dry twigs.

Why did the suited girl retreat? The thought flickered, and then far sky turned silver-white like frost on glass; from a pure-silver world stepped a silver-haired girl, her pressure blanketing the Twelfth District with a scent all too familiar.

An old friend—

“Night Frost” knew her: one of the Magic Maidens who’d hounded her, dressed in a loose, pure-white tee, reeking of disinfectant like a hospital corridor, holiness masking a stench that made Night Frost’s teeth grind.

Her eyes were winter wells without a ripple; she lifted a sickly, thin arm like a dead branch, and the Mana over the Twelfth District folded into her palm, condensing into a giant, pure-silver lance.

That lance leveled at the orphanage like a thunderbolt’s tip; no doubt it could grind everything inside to silvery powder.

Maybe it was rage, or Night Frost’s lingering obsession like a hook in the heart; the Abyssal Aura in the air birthed wings of night that roofed the sky.

Night Frost’s aura climbed like a rising tide, past the gates of the First Symphony and Cantata Two, into Chapter Three—the weakest rung on that ladder.

Caution and hatred burned in her eyes like twin coals; she fixed on the silver lance, a viper poised to strike straight through her ribs.

“Grant flame to the dragon, grant fire to my hand, tear the shackles of life, burn all things, let the cut be fatal! Inferno, burn here! … Καύση στη φυλακή!”

Her red‑black high-waisted gown unfurled like ink in water; blood-hue spilled down her train, black heels swallowed brown boots, and loose black sleeves drowned the clean white cuffs.

Since the girl wouldn’t move, Night Frost would swat her from the sky like a crow from a wire.

Cold chains reached from the Black Flame like iron serpents, hauling up a gallows from the Abyssal Rift, the root power of a Magic Maiden, a new Unsealing woven from her Source and the Myth.

Night Frost’s black hair tips blushed a shade of dark red like maple leaves in frost; blood etched itself into her dark-gold pupils, amber baptized in blood, wicked and beautiful as night orchids.

She grew nearly twenty centimeters, silhouette angling toward draconic lines like a storm carving cliffs, yet still human in face and form, waist-length black hair flying, skin pale as moonlit glass.

“Unsealing… her power, huh? Not bad.” The thought rang dry as a snapped bowstring.

A spear wrapped in Black Flame met the silver-white lance, and the shockwave crushed ruins around them to dust in a perfect circle, like a stone thrown in a still pond.

The silver lance quivered like a tuning fork; the black spear webbed with hairline cracks too fine to see, fractures ticking like ice in spring, while Black Flame alone still clung to the silver lance and burned.

Night Frost shook her head like a wolf shaking rain; revenge wouldn’t land today; she turned to go, when the white figure’s dead eyes opened, and a moon-cold voice rippled around her.

“You can’t leave…”

Mana gathered at the lance’s tip; silver ripples spread like razor waves, slicing Night Frost’s flesh and mind, and her memory corkscrewed back to eleven years ago, not far to her heart’s clock.

Weaker than before, she was still Chapter Three on the lower rungs of the Myth; if the girl could threaten her now, she’d climbed a cliff of strength.

But it still wasn’t enough to chain Night Frost—yet.

The Holy Lance fell with a mountain’s weight; Night Frost raised her palm, and from within she cast the Black Dragon’s phantom, wings dark as eclipses folding forward, scales hard as a storm-forged shield.

The lance drove her into the ground like a nail; a rumble rose from the earth like a buried drum, and all the Black Flame fused into a spear not lesser than the silver lance, screaming up from the Twelfth District’s sunken floor.

The girl lifted both hands; Order froze into Mana, Mana into a hard shield like packed ice, and from its heart extended chains identical in size and girth, each one curling around Night Frost’s black spear like steel ivy.

But the Black Flame wouldn’t let a full-force strike be muzzled by wires; it burned the silver chains black and snapped them like hair.

The Black Flame kissed the shield first, burning its foundation Mana to ash, and Mana-hands on both sides, sheathed in Black Flame like gauntlets, clapped shut to catch the flaming lance steady.

Boom—

The lance shattered like a bursting star; Black fire swallowed Night Frost and the silver-haired girl, and they fell as twin fireballs to opposite ends of the Twelfth District, meteors cleaving the dark.

Night Frost drew the Black Flame back into her like breath, steadied herself in the air like a hawk finding a thermal.

The deep-red gown sloughed black scales like a snake shedding skin, revealing the original red‑black dress; the sky-broad wings faded as Mana and Abyssal Aura ebbed like tide.

Borrowing the Black Flame within, she kept the crash from breaking her like a dropped jar.

To meet her executioner the moment she woke—what luck like a blade’s edge; with her current strength it’d be mutual ruin, and her revenge wasn’t finished, so she couldn’t let a Magic Maiden end it here.

Using an explosion’s smoke and push to run was a trick she’d learned from Night Frost herself, like a thief’s favorite alley; useful, she had to admit.

“Night Frost” felt rough as gravel; her old foe wouldn’t be better, because Black Flame was bitter tea enough to choke.

She needed a quiet corner to mend, and then—

She took a step and froze like ice struck by a bell; the unremarkable necklace at her throat flickered pale green, the Key that sealed vast Mana pressed to its side like a second heartbeat.

The sealed Mana found an outlet like floodwater, rushing into the fragile necklace, and from the pale green glow, ghostly hands reached out, dove into the black seed, and hauled back Night Frost’s scattered, fading spirit shards.

Those shards stuck together under that foreign spirit-force like wet paper, and Night Frost stood again before the Black Dragon’s dark-gold eyes, looking up at the towering shadow like a pilgrim before a mountain.

“So small, and you try to wipe my mind?” The Black Dragon’s voice rolled like distant thunder.

But that shard of its spirit and power was wounded by Order like a scar across a star, and this was Night Frost’s best time to strike back.

“I don’t know why I’m suddenly alive, but first, please give my body back.” Her resolve rang like a blade kissed by frost.

She felt the Black Dragon’s weakness—the near-transparent dark-gold eyes, the flickering body like a candle in wind, the wilted breath—yet she herself was frayed, promising a hard fight like climbing a cliff in rain.

In the windless mindscape, her black‑red gown lifted in a cold stir like reeds in midnight water; she mirrored the Black Dragon, shaping a black spear in both hands, tip aimed at those dark-gold eyes like a drawn arrow.

The spear drove for the eyes; Black Flame welled there like oil, and the spear stirred it aside, but a scaled foreclaw slid from the dark and pinched the shaft like a trap.

The Black Dragon roared like a cracking sky, and the spear snapped in two; Night Frost didn’t flinch, bent her knees, and slammed the ground like a hammer blow.

The dragon’s tail swept without pause like a scythe, striking her midair; she flew and hit ten meters off like a thrown doll.

Clutching her chest, she rose, her once-solid outline scattering like ash, then re-forming under the necklace’s spirit-force and the Key’s vast Mana like frost reknitting on glass.

For now, the Black Dragon couldn’t finish Night Frost with the necklace bracing her, and Night Frost couldn’t erase this dragon shard either; stalemate hung like a held breath.

She scanned the space, and her eyes lit like sparks; she formed a new spear, whispered the spell etched on the Magic Stone like a prayer, took a horse stance, leaned forward, and Black Flame boiled around her like storm surf.

The Black Dragon bristled; scales lifted a fraction like shutters, runes floated from them to a hexagram’s shape, and within, Black Flame condensed into a black sun.

Spear met sun, and the spirit world howled like a typhoon; Night Frost rode the storm and leapt, her paper-thin spirit carried like a leaf on wind.

The spear, lashed in black chains, was hurled from midair and nailed the glossy door at the end of the light‑road like an anchor, chain winding on chain.

Night Frost hauled hard, rode the gale along the road of light to the deepest door, and slapped her palm to the rusty face like sealing a pact.

Scarlet flame surged from the slightly open door, flecked with dark gold like embers, and wrapped her round like a cocoon.

She felt the heat like noon sun and raised her guard, but wrapped within, she knew no pain, only warmth like a hearth.

She understood: this was her flame; unlike the Black Dragon’s foul, undying Black Flame, this blaze was bright and clear, drawn from the best of her heart like spring water.

In that instant, the spirit necklace shattered like sugar glass; the pale green glow faded like dew, but she no longer needed its crutch.

“You said I love riding blasts to run… but it’s not all running!” Her smile was a spark in wind.

She gripped the slowly vanishing chain; the Crimson Gold Flame danced at her hair tips like fireflies, obeying her will as neatly as a hand.

Golden fire burned the black space like dawn eating night; a golden spear met Black Flame again, bright Crimson Gold and midnight interweaving, heat punching holes through the dark sky, and holy white light rained down, feeding her parched spirit and Mana like gentle rain.

Within the CrimsonGoldFlame, those dark-gold eyes closed like sunset; the Black Dragon’s shape thinned to glass, dimmed and faded, and when all Black Flame was gone, the black space cracked like ice and broke.

Its last unwilling roar rolled in Night Frost’s ears like surf; she wanted to lie in the quiet white afterspace, but what she carried wouldn’t let her stop, like a vow carved in bone.

On a strange street, Night Frost opened her eyes; the white lamp above flickered like a tired star, and the road lay silent as a frozen lake—because with Monsters invading, walkers would be the eerie ones.

She climbed from the pit her body had gouged like a crater, bright CrimsonGold eyes sweeping the lanes, and when she felt no Monsters nor humans, she let a long breath go like steam in winter.

She didn’t refuse to head back; her condition simply wouldn’t allow the next move, like a bow without a string.

The Mana left in her could carry her a little way, but just crawling from the pit tore pain through her like hooks; organs ruptured, bones cracked, bruises blooming like storm clouds.

Dread hooked into her gut; if she shed the transformation, Night Frost might slump like melted wax, a puddle where a girl had been.

She unhooked the broken necklace at her throat; the Key on her chest kept a firefly glow, while the Magic Stone in her pocket had crumbled to dust.

Without those three lifelines, she'd be a cold name on the wind—or worse, that dragon unleashed, laying waste like a storm over fields.

Fingers white with fear, Night Frost gripped the Key still warm against her throat; her parents were gone, yet their keepsake burned on and saved her twice.

"I'm sorry, child. I don't mean you harm. That Key at your chest—I need it. Please, lend it to me."

An old hand settled on her shoulder like falling snow; Night Frost summoned flame to strike back, but a chop to the neck dropped a curtain of dark.

She never even saw the face behind her.