Night Frost returned to school and sat through a few days of classes. News drifted in like wind over reeds: the Twelfth District branch had settled the border.

Lu Jin and Lu Shi took their time and crushed an insect-type Monster of Cantata Two. Appraisal said it was a stray invader from above the Twelfth District, a remnant thorn never plucked.

This border crew moonlighted rich as oil. They raided two groups and could hand a gun to every staffer. Even with Night Frost skimming like a fox.

Another border group never clashed with the branch. Their leader read the weather and bowed, unwilling to trail the ashes of the first two.

They tried to root here because the Twelfth District lay wounded by disaster, breath thin. The Order Keepers looked away, so they could nest for long. Exile outside was a sandstorm that flayed skin.

But a starved camel still dwarfs a horse. The Twelfth District Order Keepers hadn’t lost much bite. Within a month, the branch uprooted the other two groups like weeds.

Their leader was only a Cantata Two cyborg. He had never faced several same-tier Magic Maidens. The border beyond was the drift they were born to return to.

Days without missions felt idle and clear, like winter sun. Night Frost went to argue with Blade daily, heart hot first, words swinging after.

She’d faced several Cantata Two. If her lure-and-leave had failed, at Lu Jin and Lu Shi’s pace, she would’ve been ash. Before they arrived.

Result looked smooth as ice, but she didn’t want a second skating over thinness.

Blade’s answers stabbed quiet. The plan was Night Frost’s, the execution was Night Frost’s. Blade had only agreed; at worst, the helicopter flew late like a sluggish hawk.

Night Frost’s demands met shut doors. Blade likely wouldn’t reward her. Maybe she already smelled the supplies Night Frost pocketed like a cat.

Night Frost let it go, drifting like mist.

In the ground prison, Night Frost visited the young man. Behind iron ribs, his eyes were closed like sealed doors. Outside the bars, Moon Owl set down files like feathers and turned to leave, just as they crossed paths.

The branch hadn’t planned to cage him, since his hands held no Blood. Night Frost preferred a few days of locks, steel in her voice. Under her insistence, he earned a seven-day prison tour. Today was the second-to-last tick before release.

The Twelfth District was rebuilding, bones of streets bare. Supplies ran thin; it was hard to feed this pen of strays. Blade chose to harness them to raise new walls.

Under Night Frost’s bargain mentor’s lamp-lit grind, new restraints for cyborgs took shape like iron vines.

Night Frost wanted to ask why not just unbolt their modified parts. Scrap the fuss and melt them down for other uses, like turning blades into bridges.

Moon Owl answered.

Moon Owl said the Order Keepers had to keep daylight-clean hands. Both border groups had threads tied to other districts. Those districts already knew about the captures.

If they stripped limbs and the other side came to claim people, seeing prisoners missing arms and legs... They’d trumpet Twelfth District cruelty from rooftops and stand on a borrowed moral peak.

They could spin it—say explosions in battle took limbs—and use half-truth to dam gossip. Moon Owl and Blade didn’t want that river snaking back to drown them.

Moon Owl added, if time passes and nobody comes to claim these border members, then removing parts isn’t a problem. Not much can be salvaged anyway. For Magic Maidens and the Twelfth District’s research team, these mods offer little study. At best they get melted into new buildings like rebar.

Useless to them, useful to Night Frost. She could sell them, so she asked Moon Owl in private for a share. If disassembly began, pass her a cut. Moon Owl agreed with a breeze.

It showed Moon Owl was easier to speak with, soft as night feathers. Blade was a crooked path; even a yes felt shaved down. Typical small-mindedness.

Do you know how to use this?

Moon Owl left in a gust of work. Night Frost brought out the silver cube from her sleeve and set it before the young man. She shook it twice, letting it glint like a fish.

She’d known he was feigning sleep; the young man opened his eyes, lids lifting like shutters.

“Do I have to answer? I heard you pushed to lock an innocent man, and now you want intel?”

He snorted like a struck horse.

Night Frost stepped to the desk and flipped his file, pages like dry leaves.

He was ordinary, rootless.

He studied a few years, strode out proud, then a local Magic Maiden tossed him to the border.

He’d just begun to gauge border strength and was blind to faction storms.

Still, three months out there set a flint in his bones.

Some districts’ Magic Maidens held a New School idea: purge the useless to keep the district high and clean, like gardeners cutting weak branches.

Given his vindictive streak and sharp habits, he’d carve her seven-day lock into his ledger and repay it later.

Night Frost would cut him first, before his hand rose; but not yet.

She wanted the silver cube’s use; for now, he was no threat, even a chess piece she could slide.

“I know you hate me,” she said, voice cool as shade. “But I see talent. I can fund you and get you safely out of the Twelfth District.”

He looked at her with a flicker of mockery and fog, then the shape cleared.

It was a trade—his life and supplies for the cube’s secret; refuse, and he’d be a candle pinched.

He tried to roar a storm.

“Aren’t you afraid the Twelfth District and others will hit back?”

He hurled outside thunder to crack her frame.

It works on the weak; they hesitate and hunt different words.

Other branch members might yield; Night Frost wouldn’t.

She was the leader of Aklatia, in quiet collaboration with the officials; the Twelfth District was a temporary ally, and most others were wolves.

“Try another line,” she said, voice like frost. “Otherwise you die here. My patience is thin.” “One life, supplies, and a chance to work with Aklatia for one intel. Deal?”

Night Frost drew her Arcane Firearm; the Crimson Gold Flame compressed into Mana and fed the charge slot.

She squinted, and invisible killing intent rippled like cold water, carrying a scent of Blood.

“I know this thing reacts to Mana,” he stammered. “It warps space. Give me time. I can study its secret… I’m giving you a chance.”

His body plunged into an ice cellar. His hands trembled, muscles jittered, hair stood like bristles. Terror locked him in a vise.

Night Frost wasn’t playing; one wrong word and he’d be dead under that dark barrel, like a moth under a boot.

He believed she’d shoot; and with time, she’d likely pry the cube open herself.

He had no choice, even if Aklatia was a name he didn’t know.

Night Frost drew out a sheet, let the chill fade, holstered the gun, and passed paper and pen through the bars like a quiet treaty.

He skimmed the contract; it leaned toward him like a tilted scale.

Hard to read her calculus—maybe a muscle-strong fool?

He signed; Night Frost glanced and signed; the paper bloomed flame on its own and fell into ash like snow.

“Now talk,” she said with a smile that hid knives. “You know how a contract binds.”

“Press a Magic Stone against its surface,” he said, breath steadying like a pond. “When it vibrates, it opens a portal big enough for a hand. Inside, you can store things.”

He lifted his cuffs, asking for release with a shrug; Night Frost ignored him, eyes listening like a cat.

“I found it hunting Monsters outside,” he went on. “I put it with a Magic Stone and it opened. Inside was empty. Stored things don’t drop.”

He thought again and laid out details, grain by grain.

“Point the open mouth at the item. The space will pull it in. That’s all I know.”

Night Frost extended her hand; hot flame licked the cuffs and snapped them like brittle twigs.

His hands tasted freedom.

“I’ll test it,” she said. “If it fails, I’ll weld your cuffs back together like iron lovers.”

She didn’t go far.

She palmed a Magic Stone fragment, pressed it to the silver cube, and waited. Soon the cube shivered, and a slit opened, three to four fingers wide, like a pale gill.

Peering in, she saw stones lying quiet inside, shapes odd as bones; likely the young man’s earlier tests.

“Space is stable. It can store,” she murmured, mind crisp as frost.

Following his description, she aimed the mouth at a junk pile. Rusty metal tore free from screws and got dragged into the space like a river swallowing leaves.

Brittle steel twisted under the suction and flattened, creaking like winter trees. The draw was brute and blind.

At last, the Mana pulled from the fragment ran dry; the mouth closed slow, a petal folding.

Night Frost felt a prickle of shock.

Her tests showed a rule against habit: the farther from the cube, the stronger the suction. Close up, it was almost none, like a quiet eye.

Five meters was its rim of force; at that edge, the pull could twist rebar.

An ordinary would last seconds there; Night Frost steadied herself with a Magic Layer and locked her frame with Mana.

This thing barely touched a prepared Cantata Two. It was useless against Cantata Three. Sprung mid-fight, it could be a neat killer, though start-up took a heartbeat.

She tossed more stones inside; after ten-odd minutes, the space refused another grain.

It seemed to feel stuffed with hard oddities, and spat every stone back out, not leaving one, like a stomach purging.

Night Frost eyed the small hill of rocks, mind counting. By volume, the space held about four cubic meters—a fine craft compared to a one-cubic, clumsy, heavy Spatial Box.

She tucked the silver cube into an empty pouch; later she’d send it to her bargain mentor for tests.

If it carried no hidden thorns, she could ditch that messy, ill-tempered Spatial Box.