“Once you’re ready, we split here.”

Night Frost said it to Dawnlight and Illusory Glass, moon-cool voice steady as she pressed signal flares into their palms like embers in snow. Dawnlight took one look at the road and left, swift as light scattering mist. Night Frost moved to call Illusory Glass back, but Illusory Glass’s breath brushed first, soft as glass against rain.

“In the outskirts.”

Since Illusory Glass spoke that truth, Night Frost’s hope unfurled like frost on a window. Yet she wouldn’t head for the outskirts first; the border zone still needed a walk through shadow. Illusory Glass obeyed Night Frost’s plan and went ahead toward the Abyssal Rift, steps like a ghost drifting through reeds. Now that the opening site was known, the rest was to find a way to face the Fallen One, and buy time like sand held in a clenched fist.

Night Frost learned from Illusory Glass that they had found the Rift, but paid for it in blood like winter berries crushed under boot. Students fell nine out of ten; the Fallen One was wounded, yet in the Abyss’s blessing grew stronger, like roots drinking black rain. Most Magic Maidens, slain by her, were remade into undead, hollow moon-shells given motion, including Dawnlight.

Illusory Glass hid everywhere, a glass koi under reeds, but as time bled on, defeat became the tide. She weighed her fate like a leaf in storm and reset the loop.

The cost bound her tongue, so Illusory Glass said little, but Night Frost pulled threads from her words like silver out of ore. First: the Fallen One was bolstered by the Abyss, and under Abyssal Aura she could barely edge past Night Frost as she was now, like a wolf with winter behind it. Second: the Fallen One could force the slain into undead, and those undead passed through a power-laden transition, like clay hardening in fire.

Night Frost stood where she had stood in the last loop, high ground like a blade on the border, looking down upon the line like frost looking down on fields. This time she wouldn’t run the whole border; she would bait the Fallen One out like a hunter luring a tiger with meat tied to a stake.

Different aim, different plan; frost and fire trade places when the moon changes face. Only a riot that rolled like thunder would make the Abyss turn its gaze to Night Frost. To draw that one out, she had to look spent, strength drained like tide leaving rocks bare. Then the Fallen One would come, wrapped in arrogant calm, like a viper sliding down a branch.

Night Frost raised her Arcane Firearms, mana gathering like rain into a cartridge. A bullet spun from the chamber, and a ribbon of flame bored through an undead officer’s shoulder, crimson-gold like sunset through bamboo. Heads snapped up in unison, a forest of skulls turning toward the lone figure on the roof.

The undead erupted in weird howls, wind tearing over bone, deafening as cliffs breaking. Night Frost stood unmoved, still as frost before dawn, her Arcane Firearms lifting and lowering, mana-fed bullets stitching light through shadow, again and again like a drum.

As in the last loop, that Mechanical Arm mimicking Arcane Firearms gave Night Frost a spark, a glimpse of the birth of the human Abyss and its intent, like seeing a mirror ripple with a hidden face. She pinched a shard of hunted Magic Stone, and as mana poured from gun to muzzle, she recovered mana bit by bit like embers inhaling air. Her face paled, snow pressed thin; she deliberately compressed her blood vessels with mana, staging exhaustion like a swan letting its wings drop.

Soon the undead ringed her tight, a noose of bones and nails, but she had taken to a rooftop, and these brainless ones couldn’t climb in time. They shot clumsy bullets condensed from Abyssal Aura, dark hail slapping at brick.

The Crimson Gold Flame around her thinned, a fragile lamp in wind. The fire flickered, unstable as a candle under breath. The wall of flame failed to hold; Night Frost had to sway and slip to dodge each shot, like a willow avoiding hail. It showed in every breath—Night Frost was about to burn out.

She sank down, powerless as a tired swallow, and drank the vial’s medicine, a bitter dawn, crouching behind cover to restore mana like water trickling back into a well.

Finally, emerald crawled up the roof ridge, climbing like ivy after rain. With it came thick Abyssal Aura, the green turning warped and eerie, yet stubborn as ironwood. Night Frost felt it in her toes—no need to look. The Fallen One had arrived, like night closing a door.

The Fallen One’s eyes held anger and mockery, twin snakes coiled in amber. From that face, Night Frost knew she had come early and watched long, like a hunter perched in a pine. With meager cleverness, the Fallen One had shaped a tactic of clams and herons contesting, fisherman profiting—let undead gnaw Night Frost down, then claim the head like a hawk plucking a hare.

“Your luck doesn’t look great.”

The Fallen One watched Night Frost’s swaying stance, her paper-pale face, her eyes haze-soft, matching a Magic Maiden at the edge, drained and dim. She reached a simple conclusion—Night Frost was spent, like a lamp at last oil. That was exactly what Night Frost needed the sky to hear.

The Fallen One walked up without guard, steps lazy as vines. Mockery thinned; a sliver of brutality flashed, and her voice carried a feigned pity like honey laced with ash. “How pitiful. Why not join us?”

A deep green vine, sharp as a sword, swept lightly toward Night Frost’s neck, a grass blade wanting a harvest. If she cut Night Frost’s head clean, everything would be hers; undead, recruitment—dust and laughter. She licked her lips, tasting a sweet fragrance from Night Frost, a lure like fruit in summer that called her closer.

She couldn’t wait.

At that instant, Night Frost’s dim eyes flared with a bright thread, dawn breaking under ice. Her palm snapped up, and Crimson Gold Flame exploded from her core, clinging to her hand like a phoenix glove.

Night Frost surged up, a frost hawk jerked into flight. The Fallen One was too lost in her fantasy to react. The flame-coated palm locked the wrist wielding the vine, iron under silk. Night Frost pulled a Spear from the fire, a brand of light, and drove it into the Fallen One’s belly, the Crimson Gold Flame riding the Spear into her like molten gold streaming through roots, burning the Abyssal Aura that wove her body.

But the Fallen One wasn’t so easily felled. Seeing Night Frost strike, she missed the first heartbeat, yet when the Spear slid into her belly, she conjured a swath of lawn, a green sea bucking like a beast. Several razor leaves sliced through Night Frost’s woven fire, grazing her shoulder like cold knives.

Night Frost’s reaction was quick; a heartbeat late and her heart would’ve been skewered, an autumn apple split by steel. That motion cost her; the flame she was pumping into the Fallen One dimmed by two marks, evening sun behind cloud. The Fallen One seized it, tore the flaming Spear from her belly, and sprang back ten steps in a blink, light feet like a lizard over stone.

“Vile human! Such deceit.”

She chanted in a tongue like black rain, and the Magic Stone at her waist spat a raven beam, a pillar of night. The ground shuddered, rolling as if an Earth Dragon turned in sleep, scales grinding under soil. The clustered undead scattered, fleeing like ants from boiling water, their howls rising, but those cries did nothing—words drowned under storm.

Black vegetation poured across half the field, ink flooding paper. The sky etched with onyx sigils, cold seeped into the air like winter in a well, condensing around Night Frost like hoarfrost on bone.

Night Frost knew this trick couldn’t be blocked head-on; knowledge slid cold behind her ribs like snow. She scanned the scene with calm eyes, her gaze a blade, and without hesitation released all stored mana. Crimson Gold Flame roared out, pushing back the cold like sunrise over frost, and reduced the plants near her to ash, gray rain around scarred brick.

Mockery left the Fallen One’s eyes; she raised a hand and drove the vegetation to grow wild, green surging like a tidal forest. In a blink, broad leaves braided a sky-tall vine, a column that lunged at Night Frost like a serpent.

Night Frost didn’t pause; as the vine snapped down, she lifted her right foot and kicked hard, riding the vine’s force to spring into the air like a swallow off a bamboo pole. Her left hand reached into the fire and pulled a fresh Spear, then hurled it at the vine’s root, a comet thrown at a tree’s heart.

The Fallen One had read Night Frost’s path like ink across water; she scattered the vine without a thought, breaking it into a storm of sharp leaves that locked onto Night Frost at her apex, a body held for a breath at sky’s lip.

The Spear blasted at the root and bloomed in flame, but the plants that made that vine had messy roots, weeds knotted under Abyssal Aura. The blast only nipped the outer wrap, scorching a ring of tainted grass like a halo.

Those leaves came in hard, a green hail. Night Frost twisted in air with gathered flame, a comet adjusting its tail, but the plant phantoms hardened into real blades. Under the Fallen One’s hand they sealed Night Frost’s forward path, bars of bamboo dropping in front of a lone bird.

“What a nightmare.”

Night Frost had tasted the Fallen One’s strength, iron in her mouth. Keep fighting like this and she would be the one to die, a candle guttering in wind. Just as Illusory Glass said—and just as Night Frost feared—this foe had grown far beyond before. Alone, Night Frost could no longer dance around her; one slip and the world would tilt, and she would drop.

It had only been three black nights.

Vegetation tangled Night Frost mid-air, green ropes tightening like snakes. Those leaf blades offered no breath; they dove at her small head like surgeons with knives, eager to split a skull and read thoughts in bone.

“Exhale…”

Night Frost pushed stale air out, quiet as a winter sigh. She wrapped herself in Crimson Gold Flame, a cloak of dawn, and tore free of the plant phantom’s grip. But she had no strength and no desire to dodge the knives before her; she crossed her arms before her chest, and took them head-on like a cliff taking waves.

Fire bent the Abyss-wrapped leaf blades, softening them like steel red-hot. Yet they still bit with fierce force, and Abyssal Aura skated past Night Frost’s arm, carving deep gouges down to bone like winter plows.

“Grant flame… let Inferno burn!”

Night Frost hadn’t taken advantage of the Fallen One, but her goal was met. She had gauged that strength, measured the rhythm. She burned the vegetation around her to ash, then ran the charred path back toward the commercial district, her steps like cinders drifting in wind.

The Fallen One had eaten Night Frost’s near-killing strike and lost an arm, anger blazing in her gaze like a green fire that wouldn’t dim. Yet her power was still a mountain—hard to climb, hard to break.

“You’re stalling for time!”

Green light rose in the sky like aurora over swamps. Night Frost smiled, frost-thin, and slipped into a side alley. She staunched the blood along her arm with mana, closing wounds like ice knitting over a stream.

“Whew. That one… shaken off for now.”

She scattered the powder from her Magic Stone shards onto the ground, sand to mark a path, then clapped once and headed for the signal flare’s trail, swift as a fox through reeds.

Illusory Glass and Dawnlight were sending students and teachers into the Abyssal Rift; only two batches remained, like beads yet to pass the thread. Dawnlight had meant to fire a green flare, but Illusory Glass raised a hand, halting her like a bell stopped mid-ring.

Illusory Glass had gathered the students first, pulling them together like glass beads on string. She hadn’t let them or the teachers seek the Rift alone; instead, she and Dawnlight searched within the outskirts’ circle, combing shadows like combs through hair.

When they found the Abyssal Rift, they sent the teachers and students through, then would fire the green flare to bring Night Frost to the site, a blade summoned by light.

The three of them were Cantata Two, a triad like strings tuned to one song. Everything here was made of Abyssal Aura, a world woven of fog and claws. With the crowd gone, they could cut loose, fists and flame unbound like storms on a sea with no boats.

Yes. They planned to end the Fallen One in her cradle, snuff the spark before it became wildfire. If she kept growing, she’d become another great disaster for the Twelfth District, a black star no wall could hold.