"This body’s adapting nicely, like wet silk slipping over bone."

“Yun Ling” shook a body lacquered in Blood. Every bone had splintered, yet she stood on raw Mana alone. Her rising aura climbed like a storm tide, telling Moon Owl she wasn’t Yun Ling at all.

Moon Owl rifled through every Magic Maiden’s Chapter Three she knew. Names flared like fireflies and died; none fit. One thread remained: this intruder was tied to the Seeker.

If she stalled and the thief fully synced with Yun Ling’s flesh, the power gap would drown her. Urgency spiked like ice in the veins. Moon Owl shot forward, a Moon Owl-made arrow, too fast to track, leaving ghostly afterimages across the air.

Her fist swung, packed with space Mana. Each punch made the air web and crack, like ice across a dark pond. “Yun Ling” didn’t flinch. Hardened palms, forged from condensed Mana, met her head-on, like iron cliffs taking waves.

The instant fist brushed palm, Moon Owl triggered the space on her knuckles. The rift yawned like a black mouth. It bit through those near-invisible giant hands and sliced them to ribbons.

This clash put Moon Owl slightly ahead. With space Mana, she outmuscled a typical Chapter Three, and the intruder hadn’t yet settled into Yun Ling’s shell. Power leaked like sand.

Yet danger rang like a bell. Even unsynced, the foe poured out massive Mana and smothered her strike with density alone. If adaptation completed, the fallout would be ruin.

Moon Owl’s Mana turned. From thin as water to river-in-flood, it surged. The void around her twisted, like heat-haze over black stone.

“Yun Ling” felt the space around her tremble, a spiderweb shiver that still sent a cold hand down her heart.

Like a sleeping beast stirred by a whistle in the dark, that power felt too terrible to ignore. “Yun Ling” straightened, wary as a stag hearing a bowstring.

Space and time—twin crowns beside Time itself. Even at rest, space Mana could flare into force rivaling her true body. Greed flickered like a spark. If only she could seize space Mana. Not today. A rarer prey called: Time, that single-threaded river.

Moon Owl’s burst matched her true body’s normal might, but “Yun Ling” saw the seams. This state wouldn’t last. An unsealing breathes on a clock. For Cantata Three, time limits bite; miss them and you pay.

She squeezed the last dregs of spirit from Yun Ling’s frame. Invisible tendrils spilled like night rain, thick and viscous, sliding past the trembling, twisted space. She aimed to jar Moon Owl’s mind and make her choke on backlash.

Moon Owl’s spirit wasn’t duckweed adrift. It was a mountain pine sunk deep into stone. She couldn’t match Yun Ling in pure mental arts, but she eclipsed the ragged, forced-up mind that only scraped into Cantata Three.

Those tendrils might snare the weak-willed. Against Moon Owl’s seamless spirit, they found no cracks, no soil, no purchase.

Seeing it fail, “Yun Ling” let go of the mental assault. Mana burst from her like sparks from a forge. It gathered into needle-sharp arrows—hundreds—hanging behind her like a silver storm.

They couldn’t truly wound Moon Owl. Anything with shape would be swallowed by space, exiled to the void, and thinned to nothing.

But “Yun Ling” didn’t loose them. They hung in her wake, quiet as snow. She guided a few to hover beside Illusory Glass’s body.

She crooked a finger. Mana arrows poised to erupt through Illusory Glass’s chest. In that heartbeat, Moon Owl split a rift like a paper-thin night Blade and whisked Illusory Glass aside.

“Yun Ling” laughed, wild and bright, like a fox under moonlight. Even the strongest Chapter Three couldn’t cut loose from kin. Illusory Glass was a blade turned against Moon Owl’s own ribs.

Her lips curled bloodthirsty. Her gaze drank the delicate face, the shut lashes of Illusory Glass. She poured Mana again into the hovering barbs.

Hundreds of arrows screamed out. The open space rifts around Illusory Glass gulped them like black seas. Then, in that same instant, a dozen silver-lit arrows slipped from behind “Yun Ling” and flashed toward Moon Owl.

Twelve magic eyes opened along “Yun Ling’s” neck, pupils like cold coins. They dragged along a waning tide of spirit and crashed down like a landslide toward Moon Owl, whose attention lay heavy on Illusory Glass.

Moon Owl had planned for treachery; this one reeked of it like old smoke. She took one step back. A space rift opened behind “Yun Ling.” Spirit arrows thudded into the wall of the Twelfth District. The spirit tide broke on empty air.

Two black Mana daggers bloomed in Moon Owl’s hands. Blade tips aimed at “Yun Ling’s” brow. Killing intent spread like winter frost from steel.

“Yun Ling” felt death’s breath on her skin. Her pupils cinched tight. The chill edge brushed her cheek like night wind.

But she’d prepared a deeper hook. When she’d sighted with Mana arrows, she drove most of her spirit into Illusory Glass’s body. With those tendrils, she snatched the strings and seized control.

As Moon Owl’s strike was about to take her head, Illusory Glass, under “Yun Ling’s” grip, opened her mouth with puppet-stillness. “Yun Ling’s” spirit pried a hairline crack in the great cocoon of mind inside, and she learned the Magic Spell Illusory Glass had used a week ago.

“The broken clock-hands bring their cycles… let all things rewind to the origin of time; let us yearn for the single future, sing the silver river, and greet the end of time… τέλος χρόνου!”

Everything in the world seemed caught by the river of Time. The spell fell like snow. Even Moon Owl, a Chapter Three, staggered under its weight. Mana bled backward; her body stiffened, locked like clay.

“Yun Ling” froze too—but she had cut a sliver of herself into Illusory Glass’s flesh. That shard moved freely within the stopped river, though it couldn’t pry open the spirit cocoon.

Through Illusory Glass’s eyes, she watched a near-frozen hourglass. The stasis smothered the whole street like frost. Things stood as sculpture. In some corners time fast-forwarded; in others it flowed upstream.

Adults shrank to youth. Children shot ahead, skipping the babble of first words. Nearby wiring aged before the eye; forbidden sparks winked in the air. The Mana Blade before her tangled in crossed currents and guttered out, like a candle in wind.

In mere seconds, Illusory Glass’s Mana hit rock bottom.

“But my true body is close. This borrowed shell’s used up.”

Illusory Glass’s body was frail, a skiff in a gale—nine parts unwieldy to one part usable. A hundred meters on, Moon Owl’s delayed strike finally landed.

Even without her Mana daggers, the gale of her fist slammed into Yun Ling’s shell. In that instant, every mind-thread in the shell slipped into Illusory Glass. Yun Ling’s spent body went limp, took the punch, and crumpled.

Under the crush of vast Mana, that shell burst. Blood spattered the ground like red rain.

Time’s Mana still tugged at Moon Owl’s limbs. She glanced at the knife that had found her waist, ghost-quiet. She understood: the woman had worn Illusory Glass like a mask, used some unknown method to cast Illusory Glass’s Magic Spell, and, on her way out, left a parting stab.

It wasn’t fatal. Mana would knit it fast. Illusory Glass couldn’t stay in stopped time long. The thief wouldn’t get far.

Moon Owl pulled a strip of black space from her side. Radiance washed her cloak like dawn on ink. She hadn’t wanted to unseal again. She’d paid the price once. Today, a second toll loomed.

One thought, and the whole Twelfth District lay beneath her gaze, a map in candlelight. Illusory Glass’s trail shone. So did a cloaked figure at the district’s edge, smiling at Moon Owl like a crescent blade.

That woman’s strength ran deeper than Moon Owl’s. Even unsealed, it was fifty-fifty at best.

Moon Owl had never heard of such a piece on the Seeker’s board. Among Order Keepers, among all Magic Maidens, this level was a rare star.

Unsealing runs on a burning fuse. Moon Owl had to reclaim Illusory Glass before the flame ate through.

“Illusory Glass?”

Night Frost, out browsing, caught the edge of wrongness on Illusory Glass’s face. She was running hard, a time-glow rippling over her skin. Space around her warped, sealing like ice.

Moon Owl dropped beside Illusory Glass and lifted her one-armed, clean as a hawk taking a hare.

Night Frost shifted sideways, trying to hide in her own shadow. In front of Moon Owl, it felt like running bare under noon sun.

Moon Owl had already seen her.

“Take the kid. A wisp of spirit’s hijacked her body. I checked—her mind’s still there. There’s an enemy outside. Watch her for me.”

Night Frost and Illusory Glass seemed close. Night Frost carried a contract and decent bite. Leaving Illusory Glass with her was a clean choice.

As long as Illusory Glass wasn’t in that woman’s grip, Moon Owl could turn both hands to the fight.

If she’d strike the Twelfth District under open sky, her strength was a hungry beast.

Moon Owl’s unsealed aura had already brushed against hers, two storms crossing. Moon Owl had the edge by a leaf. But that woman could unseal too. Moon Owl had to cut her down before that flower opened.

Wind tore through the streets. Trees ripped up by the roots. Gravel rose like a flock of birds. Moon Owl’s black cloak flared. The sky dimmed. Night came early on raven wings.

Yet the sun still hung pale at the rim. The moon was gone. Space detonated, like the day the Abyss chewed the sky. A black rift opened, a wound across heaven. Moon Owl caught it in her palm and hardened it into solid Mana.

She gripped the rift, then flicked her right hand. The cloaked woman was inlaid within space like an insect in amber. The blade hewn from the firmament turned dagger-straight and drove for the hostile figure’s heart…