Night Frost and Dawnlight finished their prep, breath white as frost, and faced the odd rift Moon Owl had sealed like a slit in the night. They traded a look like flint and steel, then stepped into the new-rule tear like wading into moonlit water.
The Twelfth District’s Order Keeper meant business, and their gear came like winter tribute loaded on a sled. Each got a space box as black as a pocket night, stuffed with supplies like rations before a storm, including single-use vials that held Holy Light to burn the undead like dawn on grave mist.
Those things were rare as spring rain in drought, and the skill-vials were one-and-done like brittle ice. Blade said making them was no easier than the space box buckled at Night Frost’s waist like a locked gate.
A phone lay in the box like a lifeline thread to the sunlit world. They didn’t know if a satphone could cut through this pocket sky, but taking it felt like carrying a lantern through fog.
Near most Abyss borders a satphone still reaches like a bird call across a gorge, but this Abyssal Rift felt different as a dream with teeth. They had to go in to know, like tasting snow to learn its bite.
Moon Owl pressed spatial marks on both of them like feathered sigils on skin, a silent promise that she’d swoop in if they fell like stones. They were top blades of the Twelfth District, and no one dared waste a blade in a storm.
Moon Owl would hold the rift outside like hands prying a door, so they could bolt the instant the wind turned. Retreat hung ready like a rope on a cliff.
The passage ran long as a winter river, and Dawnlight forged a chain of Holy Light like dawn silk to bind their waists together. The tether gleamed between them like a pale ribbon in wind.
Night Frost took point like a spearhead, and Dawnlight followed like a steady drumbeat. She’d met Dawnlight a few times and knew her close combat was paper-thin as frost, a pure Magic Maiden who sang from the back line like a bell, unlike Night Frost, who only buffed herself and charged like a thick-skinned battering ram.
Cold met them not like snow-cold but like cellar-cold, a yin chill gnawing the bones like a wolf. It threatened to freeze Mana like water in a night pond.
Night Frost fiddled with the satphone, the operator’s voice thin as a spider thread still answering. Each step deeper frayed the signal like cloth in wind, and the cold grew sharp as needles.
Dawnlight’s Holy Light and Night Frost’s flame burned like twin lanterns in a cave, pushing the cold back like tide against a rock. It soothed their breath and told Night Frost the path felt right as a well-worn track.
“You’re—!” A shout rose ahead like a lark’s call. They focused and saw youths in mismatched school uniforms like wildflowers in one vase.
Night Frost could match the faces to files like cards in a deck, and she knew most were agents and Magic Maiden class students and teachers who vanished like leaves in a gust. Dawnlight dialed HQ like striking a gong, while Night Frost calmed them like a steady shore in surf.
They had the students follow their teachers back like a flock turning for home. Night Frost clicked through headcount against the list in her space box like beads on a string.
“A few are missing. Senior Su isn’t here…” Her voice fell like ash, and she shook her head like leaves letting go.
“I’ll escort them back. You keep going and see if you can find the rest.” Dawnlight’s plan cut clean as a knife, and Night Frost nodded like a hammer on a nail.
It was the fastest way, and she hadn’t felt danger like a thorn in her heel. Even if the other side hid a Chapter Three, it wouldn’t take her easily like grass in a gale.
Dawnlight turned back like a swallow wheeling, and Night Frost kept forward like a river under ice. The road of Abyssal Aura narrowed like a throat, but at the dim end a sliver of light showed like a needle eye.
Cold wind breathed from that slit like a grave exhaling. Midway, Dawnlight rejoined them like wind circling back to a door.
She held a Magic Tool in her hand like a charm coiled with breeze. Wind-element Mana wrapped it like a ribbon, pushing speed so she could flip back in a blink like a leaf on a gust.
“Moon Owl tossed the students and teachers to the testing center like sticks into a basket,” she said, voice cool as shade. “If the Abyss left no stain, they’ll walk out like dawn, and if they never wake, we can only ‘deeply regret’ like a bell tolling once.”
They met no one else, only that thin light ahead like a wick in fog. To both, it looked like the exit sure as a road under sun, and they quickened their steps like deer choosing a gap.
“This is the only passage, so the rest can only be inside,” Night Frost said, words neat as stacked tiles. The corridor pinched narrow as a scabbard slit.
Night Frost could slide through like a blade, but Dawnlight… Night Frost glanced at Dawnlight’s generous chest and then the seam like measuring a jar’s mouth, and she grimaced like a cat at rain.
Breaking the space tunnel was a hard no, and Night Frost shot the idea down like swatting a spark. If monsters spilled out like ants from a nest, what then?
On closer look, the corridor breathed like a throat, expanding and contracting like a tide. If so, Dawnlight could force it with pain like pushing through brambles.
Dawnlight said nothing, eyes on the breathing passage like a scholar on a puzzle. Night Frost offered to scout ahead like a fox into briars, while Dawnlight found a way in and Night Frost waited like a torch at a mouth.
She typed “about to enter” on the satphone like a chalk mark and took a step like a drop into night. Fire wrapped her body like a cloak, and a new black, high-waist Gothic dress rimmed in gilt cinched her waist like a ring.
Hair white as moonlight fell like a quiet waterfall. She narrowed her red-gold eyes like a cat sizing a mouse hole and snapped open Hawk’s Eye like a falcon in sunlight.
Inside was pitch-black as a sealed well, and the light came from the walls like cold lichen. It felt like a pitcher plant sugaring its lips to lure flies, and the space itself glowed to beckon life like a will-o’-the-wisp.
She tossed a lightstick into the rift like casting a line, and the scene came clear as a lantern-lit stage. A small room stood opposite, fully furnished like a show set, with doors and windows shut and curtains drawn like eyelids.
Only wind hissed at the mouth like a reed, and inside was quiet as snow. No rustle of living, no human heat like coals.
If the students and teachers had been swallowed like minnows, they would’ve cried when the light came like a bell, but silence pressed in like cotton, as if sound itself was drained like water from a bowl. Night Frost didn’t rush in, because the space stank of strange like flowers in winter.
Either the room was fake like painted fruit, or the transfer leapt elsewhere like a door behind a mirror. “Hah… nothing inside moves, so we’ll probably have to go in…” Her breath came pale as fog.
Senior Su was likely inside, taken by the rift like a coin by a gutter, but they knew nothing and might risk it for a few like gamblers with cold hands. Dawnlight moved before Night Frost could, slipping in on a breath like timing a wave.
She’d wedged halfway like a cork, but she forced through on an expansion like a dancer squeezing a gate. Night Frost yanked the chain like a bell pull, dragged out a coil of rope from the box like a snake, tied one end to a massive rock she somehow produced like a conjurer, and the other to her waist like a belt.
She bit down and dove in like a diver through a hole in ice. “What are you doing!” They landed solid on wood planks like a drumbeat.
Night Frost kept her voice low, anger and worry braided like smoke, but Dawnlight cut her off like a knife through silk. “Blade said you won’t feel allegiance to the Order Keeper like a banner, and when danger nears you’ll think of your own like a hearth.”
“You’ll hesitate and weigh too much like stones on a scale, so that’s when I just drag you in like pulling a net,” she said calmly. Blade’s name doused Night Frost’s fire like a ladle of snow, because he read her too clean.
That was her strength and her flaw like edge and nick. “Don’t you have people to protect?” Night Frost shot back, words sharp as sleet.
“I’m living my creed, and ours aren’t the same,” Dawnlight began, voice smooth as lacquer. Night Frost cut her short like a gust.
“Wait, look behind.” Dawnlight turned, and the rift sealed like an eyelid closing.
The pull was strong as undertow, and Night Frost had to cut the rope like a fisherman saving his hand. The entrance vanished like breath on glass.
Night Frost touched the air like testing a window, and nothing answered like a silent lake. They understood at once they were trapped like moths in a bell jar.
“You should’ve thought further,” Night Frost said, voice flat as slate. Dawnlight didn’t answer, only glanced at her like a quick bird.
She rose and shut the words on her tongue like folding a fan. Now wasn’t the time to fight, but to look like hunters reading snow.
Night Frost knew it too, and she swept the room like a lantern across barn walls. It matched what she’d seen, just an ordinary room with curtains like night sails.
She didn’t flip the switch, and instead they lit fire and Holy Light like twin moons to wash the walls. Dawnlight’s gold-edged Gothic dress trailed like a comet tail, and her golden staff clicked on the floor like ice on stone.
They searched and found nothing special, only tidy furnishings like soldiers in rows and a film of dust like old frost. No sign of recent living, no bread-crumb warmth like a fading ember.
They chose to draw the curtains like lifting a veil. Night Frost inhaled and pulled, and dim sky poured in like watered ink.
Strange light filled the room, because the sun hung large like a coin yet gave no warmth like a painted fire. The air even bit cold as iron.
As Night Frost weighed that, Dawnlight nudged her shoulder like a sparrow peck. Her pale-gold eyes widened with fear like moonlight on ice.
“Look, there, the center…” Night Frost tore her gaze from the dim sun like freeing cloth from a thorn and stared where Dawnlight pointed like an arrow.
She saw the Twelfth District’s central landmark, long destroyed in the war, standing intact like a ghost—the statue of six Magic Maidens who slew the Black Dragon like lightning felling a tree. Night Frost couldn’t believe it, and she swept Hawk’s Eye wide like a hawk skimming fields.
Buildings, streets, shops, a mall, and farther, Jiuqiong University lay familiar as old routes and wrong as a mirror world. Wasn’t this the Twelfth District, like a city under glass?
But the real one lay ruined like bones. She could doubt her eyes like a dream, but both of them couldn’t be wrong like two mirrors lying.
Dawnlight shared the disbelief like a taste of ash, because she’d crossed many an Abyssal rift and never met a copy city like a printed moon. They met each other’s eyes and decided together, wordless as rain, to go downstairs and see like stepping into a second dawn.
