Energy reserves down seventy percent. Forty-four percent of epidermal tissue destroyed. Skeletal system fractured. Thirty-third repair in progress. Thirty-third Mana extraction for repair failed...
A girl in pure white lay still in a green, boiling tank, the white medium beneath her like frost under a spring pond.
Black Flame gnawed at half her pink skin, burning it into charcoal, like ink bleeding across silk.
Half her delicate face showed no emotion, a winter mask untouched by pain, as if the burning belonged to another body far away.
She was the Cantata Three Magic Maiden who had appeared from nowhere and aimed straight at Night Frost, now a porcelain doll sinking in a seething bath, awaiting death like dusk.
Outside the tank, a flock of white coats swarmed the black blossom of fire, pouring low-temperature culture fluid into a tank steaming like a kettle.
Energy reserves down ninety percent. Magic Layer nearing collapse. New Magic Layer under construction... Construction failed. Bodily tissues beginning to disintegrate.
Deep worry creased the Old Woman’s brow, lines like dry riverbeds in drought, for this was their most perfect specimen, a flawless jade cut from a million stones.
She would not let such perfection turn into a heap of cold offal on its very first field test.
Black Flame had once appeared in the Twelfth District, years ago, its master calling himself the Calamity Dragon, a storm naming itself.
Six Cantata Three besieged him like a circling pack of thunderheads and killed him, yet his heart and Magic Stone were stolen mid-transport by unseen hands.
That was the last record of Black Flame, a char of ink on the archives’ final page.
The Black Dragon’s corpse lay in the underground vault of the Order Keeper headquarters, where the Seekers opened it with silver scalpels like crescent moons.
The Calamity Dragon’s entire body was a treasure, pushing the edge of what humans believed life could be, a mountain of secrets under snow.
Infused with Abyssal Aura, its scales hardened to Obsidian Stone, and tests found one constituent of Obsidian Stone in the scales themselves, like earth hidden in armor.
Thus its scales deflected most low-power spells, a rain on a tiled roof, sliding off without a trace.
Beneath those scales, uncounted pores conducted Mana and Abyssal Aura, and Black Flame could flood from them and cloak the body like nightfall.
The throat held the most pores in a breath sac, a bellows that stored Black Flame and spat it out by pressure, a forge behind fangs.
But the Seekers never found an organ that made Black Flame. In common fire dragons, a membrane near the heart, separate yet fed by it, brews their fire.
That membrane uses Mana and Abyssal Aura to kindle flame, yet the Black Dragon lacked it, so the Seekers guessed it was more primordial, heart and membrane still undivided like dawn and day.
The Old Woman’s frown tightened, a knotted pine in winter; to her, the report was dead words on cold paper.
She needed what Black Flame was made of, how it burned, how to quench it, a recipe and an extinguisher, not myths and bones.
Black Flame had shown itself only once, and the Seekers hadn’t studied it before it went out on its own, like a storm spent at sea.
“Went out on its own...” The phrase lingered on her tongue like smoke.
She climbed the lab stairs, steps tapping like sleet, a white-clad aide shadowing her heel to heel.
The girl had hovered here for a few seconds when she flew back; scorched scraps of cloth and skin clung to steel like fallen leaves to stone.
Burn marks scarred the floor, a black tide stopped short, and yet the flame hadn’t spread outward, though by rights even metal should’ve blistered.
Fire is still fire. It needs fuel, an oxidizer, and a spark, a tripod holding the same single blaze.
Feed all three without end, and in theory, the fire would burn forever, a sun that never sets.
The Twelfth District had once been a field of Black Flame, yet in the end it died, like embers spent for lack of breath.
Clothes turned to ash and the Black Flame went out, so it needed fuel, plain as rain—but why didn’t the flame on the girl go out?
What, exactly, was it eating, like a beast at night?
A spark leapt in her mind, quick and bright as flint.
She ordered the aide to pinch a bit of Black Flame, and the flame shivered like a startled moth, then weakened at once.
“As expected. Drain the tank of Mana and Abyssal Aura. Make her drop the Magic Layer and any Mana resistance. If I’m right, it’ll die on its own.”
The aide froze, fear crawling up her spine like cold water, for without the Magic Layer the Black Flame would wrap the girl like a shroud.
At that heat, she’d become ash in minutes, a paper effigy under a temple torch.
“Move. Or are you tired of this post and itching for a new one?”
The aide jolted like a struck bird, rushed to the console, and yanked down the lever that kept the culture fluid pouring like a river.
Seconds later, the flame punched through the tank, a black plume clawing the air, alarms howling as sprinklers rained cold tap water like winter drizzle.
Exposed to open air, the Black Flame waned, a wolf losing its scent, just as the Old Woman had guessed.
Its first choice of fuel wasn’t cloth or common tinder, but Mana and Abyssal Aura, rare winds that stoke strange fires.
The air held little Mana or Abyssal Aura, so the flame guttered in the open, flared weakly, and vanished like a last sigh.
But a Magic Maiden is different. Their Mana lingers on the skin like a constant veil, forming a shield called the Magic Layer.
Once that veil kisses Black Flame, it ignites fiercely, tinder meeting lightning, for Mana and Abyssal Aura catch easier than cloth.
So, if the girl pulls back her Magic Layer, cuts her internal Mana circuits for now, and the lab is drained of Mana and Abyssal Aura—
Then Black Flame loses both fuel and breath, and like a lamp without oil, it must go dark.
Weakened but stubborn, the Black Flame still chewed her skin, red on black, until at last, under the Old Woman’s stare, it died.
Techs swapped in a new tank, trimmed away burned tissue like black bark, and lowered the girl back into the pale, bubbling bath.
“Confirm Mana circuits. Inject cellular regenerant. Initiate Mana supply.”
Behind the glass walls, countless girls who shared her face slept like dolls, tubes speared into their chests like roots into soil.
From them, pure white Mana flowed like milk rivers, gathered and poured into the girl’s heart, a cold tide filling a hollow shore.
As their Mana drained, those lives withered like cut flowers; pallid skin turned rough, then thinned to skin and bone, a harvest of husks.
The Old Woman set her palm to the tank, watching char turn to tender pink, skin sprouting fast like new petals after rain.
That rapid regrowth was a gift from Aklatia, a stolen spring, and thanks to it, this work approached perfection.
She savored that perfection like incense, never seeing the girl’s brow flutter, a leaf in a breeze, then go still.
Her newborn, fragile consciousness sank again, a small candle pinched out between fingers.
“You useless lot who spoil more than you make,” a voice cracked like a whip. “We used every trick. Four squads. Near carpet search. No Key, no Gate?”
Onstage, a woman in gauzy silk burned with anger like a lantern behind sheer paper, facing seven ash-faced underlings who didn’t dare breathe.
She bit back the urge to slap six of them into paste, then lowered her hand, a storm leashed for now.
“How did Yuxin die.”
The girl in a suit bowed her head, respect flickering in her eyes like a dim votive, then an unseen Mana snatched her up midair.
She kicked and writhed like a hooked fish, helpless to the invisible line.
“She—cough—went to the orphanage,” she rasped. “She saw the Key, and a Cantata Two traitor hiding there, so she struck.”
“She should’ve won, but a sudden Black Flame killed her, like night falling with a blade.”
The suit girl was tossed aside, a rag in the wind, while the silk-clad woman pressed her brow and let out a thin breath.
She turned to the maid at her side, a lithe figure in a navy qipao, round fan in hand, eyes rippling with soft light like a dusk lake.
“There’s news on the Key. It appeared in the Twelfth District, on some old codger,” she said, voice cool as jade. “I don’t trust those blind fools. But you...”
“It will be done. The Key is ours,” the qipao woman said, bowing like a reed, then rose and slipped away like a shadow.
The silk-clad woman faced the seven again, gaze a blade. The suit girl clutched her throat and knelt, a fallen reed in shallow water.
“You have a new task. Fail, and don’t come back. Especially you. You’re no longer the scribe.”
The suit girl’s pupils tightened, fear like ice, but a lord’s word is law, and she forced her voice steady.
“Thank you for your grace.”
