Every time Night Frost slept, she seemed to be dragged back to a far-off dream, like an undertow pulling her into cold green depths. This time, the drag lasted too long.

Her consciousness kept sinking, and blankness rose to meet her, like white fog swallowing lantern light.

Her memories had a torn-out gap, pages ripped clean from a book. She couldn’t recall her birth, her home, as if someone had erased her.

Even so, her thoughts kept dropping. When she tried to flee, layered dreams wrapped her like silk cocoons, one gauze veil over another.

She didn’t know how long passed outside, whether Monsters still prowled like wolves, whether Chen Xiaoyin was safe beneath any sky.

For days she sat on a wooden chair woven of dreams, studying a stage she herself had painted with smoke.

Dorm friends in warm light, flower pots breathing beside her, faces passing like clouds. Break this layer, and another waited, rippling without end.

Until silver-white hands lifted her by the ribs, and the dreams opened like a bud in slow motion, petal by petal to the sun.

When the last layer unfurled, the girl in the flower beat the wings on her back, climbing upstream through the dream like a salmon against current.

Behind her, the dream gathered into the shape of a Black Dragon, a sweet dream curdled to nightmare, trying to drag her into the Abyss.

But it was still a dream. It was her dream.

Black Dragon against Black Dragon meant a stalemate; if Night Frost seized that blink of a moment, she could—

Drip. Drip.

Flat on a pure-white isolation pod, Night Frost snapped open her red-gold eyes, like embers catching wind.

She tried to rise; knives sang in bone, and her limbs turned to wet cotton, heavy as rain-soaked quilts.

The room held its breath, sealed from the world, except for the drip marking time like a metronome in an empty hall.

She couldn’t speak, but she could blink; like a baby tasting syllables, she scanned the room for anchors in the current.

Her Mana circuits felt intact; she scraped together Mana to lift her head a little, like a leaf raised by a shy breeze.

Through the window, a gray sky pressed down and ruins lay like a dead city of thorns; white coats moved outside like ghosts in gauze.

The sun hid behind ash; hours were mist with no edges. Days had passed since the war ended; her hair hung longer like a shadowline.

It was still the Twelfth District. The wall bore “Building Materials for the Twelfth District,” a paper talisman pinned to a wound. A makeshift hospital, no more.

She glimpsed saline and a blood bag at her side; magic healing ran fast like spring water, but the Twelfth District was a sea of mouths. Magic Maidens weren’t wells for all.

Fruit and flowers perched on the cabinet like polite birds. Under one basket lay a page thick with handwriting—Qianchun’s hand, unmistakable as a familiar scent.

Qianchun was fine. A stone in her chest rolled down the mountain and into clear water.

Before she fainted, she’d heard the Old Woman’s voice, thin as winter wind. The Old Woman had taken the Key her parents left.

Without the Key’s Mana, her Magic Armor fell away like frost at noon, no trace but chill.

She’d known she was in pieces. Disarming a Magic Armor meant bones like shattered pottery. Given this, breathing counted as fortune—life held by the Calamity Dragon’s heart.

They must’ve probed her top to toe. The Magic Maidens of the Twelfth District surely knew the secret under her ribs. Her heart wasn’t like others.

Since they let her live, she had some use. For now, no knife hovered at her throat, only time.

Awake, she could brace bone with Mana and move. But her Mana was a puddle in a cracked bowl; Magic Armor wouldn’t last; escape was a kite without wind.

So, save Mana. Cross the river by feeling for stones, one cold step at a time.

The hours were dull as stale tea. With a phone, she could fish up minutes; here, no phone, no TV, just walls that didn’t answer.

The Twelfth District was rubble; expecting gadgets was a joke told to rain. Besides, she counted as a public-order offender; a ward at all was charity.

If the Eye Orb were here, she’d bicker with it and feel less alone, like sparrows chattering on a line. The Monster tide split them; who knew where it rolled. May it be safe.

Time crawled like a snail until dusk bled in along the window seam. Night Frost drew a long breath, as if swallowing a tide.

Mana swelled and stitched the shattered bones of one arm, ants rebuilding a nest grain by grain.

She lifted her arm. Barely usable, like a branch after storm. Better not.

She reached for Qianchun’s letter, raised it to her eyes. In that blink, something uncanny flickered like heat above stone.

The paper froze midair, as if time had been dosed with Illusory Glass and nailed to space.

Amber from a cloud-broken sun washed her red-gold eyes, now wide with doubt and disbelief, like a stag hearing thunder.

She lowered the letter and drew back her hand; a small, pale hand floated into view like a petal adrift.

Were her hands ever this white?

Realization pricked like black ice. She shoved her hand under the quilt, pain be damned—this was life and death under a knife.

Nothing?

Nothing!

She had to be dreaming. Or her Magic Armor still wrapped her like a second skin. Otherwise, how could she not find the proud brother she bragged about?

Yes. That had to be it. A raft to clutch in a flood.

Cold sweat beaded down her back like dew on stone. But she knew the sky from water.

She was out of the dream. And her Magic Armor couldn’t run days or months on her miserable Mana. Impossible. No chance. Not in this season.

Her chest rose and fell, a bird in a snare. This pain dwarfed every broken bone, a critical hit to the soul.

She was Prometheus on a cliff, ten thousand arrows pinning her to a bleeding sunset.

Jesus and God! Namo Amitabha, Bodhi! The Three Pure Ones!

In this woven world none of them existed, and she didn’t know why her mouth scattered their names like seeds.

She didn’t understand. Must be the author’s fault, a pen flicking stones at glass.

“My god!”

The cry cracked through pain and scraped past her cords like rust. Rage and unwillingness surged and shook loose a mouthful of foul blood.

Relief followed like rain after drought, thin but real.

Her—her proud brother—seemed, probably, actually, really gone, like a lamp snuffed by wind.

Night Frost was twenty. A new college student. No girlfriend.

Her brother had never known the warmth of home, and then left him for good, like a ship slipping past the harbor light.

“Uu… uu…”

She closed her eyes and wiped the shine at her lashes with the back of her hand; skin met tear like cool glass.

In that instant she paused. Did this count as a woman wiping her tears?

Her racket must’ve carried like a stone in a pond. The long-empty room took in its first visitor since she woke: a nurse.

The girl looked spooked, eyes like startled birds, and who knew what the Order Keepers had poured into her ears.

Truth was, she knew nothing. She’d been about to push the door when a hoarse scream cut the air, and her feet rooted like reeds.

“Sorry to bother you.”

It was her first time in this ward. The nurse assigned here had been moved next door, a chess piece slid midgame.

The Twelfth District bled staff; no one could keep watch on Night Frost around the clock, no lamp that never burned down.

Seeing no sign of waking, Blade had loosened Night Frost’s restraints, a hand easing off the hilt.

The young nurse rolled a cart to the cabinet. Two pouches of liquid diet sat on it like dull moon jellies.

They’d kept Night Frost alive for days. Now that she was awake, a few more days and she could eat sunlight again.

The nurse hung the liquid feed, swapped an almost-spent saline bag, and clumsily clipped on another, the plastic whispering like reeds.

Night Frost fixed her jaw with Mana and braced her vocal cords. A voice finally rasped out, gravelly and hard as sand.

“How is it outside?”

The nurse flinched and glanced at the window, where ruins lay like broken waves under an iron sky.

She’d been buried under rubble and lived by luck; a nursing student, she’d joined the Mutual Aid Society, a small lamp in a storm.

“They’ve cleared a zone and are throwing up houses fast, like tents before rain. The hills still give some grain. The warehouses hold food.”

“We won’t go hungry yet. Living’s rough, though—like sleeping on stones.”

She dabbed ointment on Night Frost again. It hardly helped—save for a thread of cool when the summer wind slid by like a river snake.

“Let me ask—do you know Chen Xiaoyin? The one in the Mutual Aid Society.”

As a Magic Maiden of Cantata Two, Chen Xiaoyin would be at the front like a banner.

The nurse thought a moment, brows like small wings.

“I don’t know a Chen Xiaoyin in the Mutual Aid Society.”

“But I’ve heard of an Order Keeper, Chen Xiaoyin. If she’s a Magic Maiden who casts a Mana shield, that’s her.”

She tidied her kit, stood quiet for a beat, then went on, voice like a rumor passing hedges.

“They say she’s been looking for someone. She searched all of Jiuqiong University and couldn’t find him. Don’t know if it’s true.”

It was true.

Chen Xiaoyin was looking for Lingchen Yao. Only Qianchun knew his name, a secret folded like paper.

Now, for reasons unknown, Lingchen Yao had become Night Frost, a chrysalis with no calendar. He wouldn’t change back soon.

How could Chen find him, when face and gender had both changed, like constellations after a storm?

Qianchun had written all this, had told Chen. But Chen didn’t believe; her heart was a locked door.

Night Frost sank into silence, a stone in deep water.

The nurse pushed the cart out and eased the door shut, a feather against wood. She hurried to reception and dialed Blade’s satellite phone.

“Miss Blade, the one you mentioned—she’s awake.”

Blade picked up. She hadn’t expected Night Frost to wake now. She pivoted the plan mid-stride, like a hawk banking.

Night Frost’s sudden waking was a risk. Let the wounds chain her a while. Then nothing would slip its leash.

At night, Night Frost tossed and turned, sleep a silver fish that wouldn’t bite the hook.

She stared at the ceiling, blank as winter sky. There was something she had to tell Chen Xiaoyin, clear as a bell in frost.