Illusory Glass was trapped inside her own mindscape, a winter-locked lake formed when the psyche met a killing edge and froze into self‑preservation.

Her snow-white lashes pressed together like frost-kissed reeds, trembling to the tide of breath, a quiet butterfly asleep on porcelain dusk.

Her fine cheeks were paper-pale, drained of Blood, her spirit-shell near transparent, yet life pulsed within like a sapling braving storm and cold, refusing to bow.

A massive cocoon of will wrapped her, a silken chrysalis that blocked outside minds like a mountain, yet it also chained her, sinking her deeper into dream.

A street floated in dream-mist, clean as a blade; hawkers lined both sides like riverbanks; her sister and Moon Owl walked with her, small talk drifting like smoke.

From the Order Keeper line, to the Magic Maiden class, to lessons in magic, to daily work, to favorite things, to outfits she loved—their words rippled like rain.

Moon Owl clearly didn’t love such chatter, a cat in the rain, but her arm was hooked by the sister; she didn’t refuse, echoing now and then like a nodding breeze.

Sometimes they patted Little Illusory’s head, palms warm as sunlight on water, and that gentleness pulled her down like soft mud, a sweetness she could drown in.

Everything felt so real, like dew on a leaf; she chose to believe this was the world, not a mirage thrown by heat and hunger.

She sensed she’d forgotten something vital, like a missing bell note in a temple wind.

“Xiao Li, what are you thinking, want that one?” Moon Owl pointed at a distant mall, a glass lake of light; the sister and Moon Owl meant to stroll it.

Illusory Glass nodded, heart bright as candy; she craved the mall’s candy shop, a honeyed place she couldn’t stop thinking about since last time.

“Always thinking of sweets. Your teeth will rot clean through,” her sister teased, fingers pinching her nose like a playful bird, black hair falling like a night waterfall.

Illusory Glass looked up, her gaze climbing that dark cascade; the face stayed blurred like misted glass, yet she knew her sister was beauty and balm.

Moon Owl joked from the side, a breeze with claws. “If you want it, your sister will buy it. She never says no to you.”

The sister nudged Moon Owl’s shoulder like a pebble skipping water; Moon Owl shut up fast, a knife sheathed; the sister crouched, lifted Little Illusory, and they entered the mall.

“All right, enough teasing. Let’s go,” the sister said, voice warm as lantern light.

“So many things,” Illusory Glass murmured, eyes wide as lakes.

“Mm. Take what you like, Xiao Li. Don’t spare your sister,” Moon Owl coaxed, a fox with a grin, while the sister’s looming presence made Illusory Glass take only a tiny handful.

Under Moon Owl’s stubborn push, they barely filled half a small bottle, a firefly jar in miniature, enough for only a few days of sweetness.

She tucked the little jar into the pouch at her waist, hiding it with care like a buried pearl; if someone stole it, how could her heart bear it?

A strange sound rose around them, a low crack like ice splitting; Illusory Glass jolted and turned, eyes snapping to the mall’s main doors.

A fracture opened there like a cut in glass, and dreamlike spirit-smoke poured out, a river of fog snaking through light.

The crack webbed wider like shattered panes, layers breaking until an opening showed, a small mouth into an endless dark like the throat of night.

The mall plunged into chaos, a hive struck; shops slammed their doors like shields, people fled like a fleeing tide, foam-white with fear.

Those too near were swallowed by the black mist that prowled the fissure’s lip, a night tide that ate footprints and names.

Her sister and Moon Owl held their ground, two stones in current; a veil of spirit fog drifted close, and armor slid over them like falling moonlight.

Moon Owl gripped a black dagger, midnight forged; the sister’s long braid flicked like a whip, pulsing with Blood-red light, thin lightning braided in hair.

They stood before the crack, and the crowd steadied like wind behind a wall; someone cried out, a bell-note in panic, “The Magic Maidens are here!”

Moon Owl drove them away with a sharp command, a lash of voice; with people here, they were chained birds, unable to spread their full wings.

When the last of them had cleared out, Illusory Glass included by their count, Moon Owl and the sister surged forward like twin blades.

But Illusory Glass hadn’t left; she hid at the candy shop’s corner, a shadow under sweetness, faint Mana breathing from her skin like heat from a coal.

She didn’t know how she did it, yet something in her said she could fight, like a mirror remembering steel; she was like them.

She stared at the crack; horror prowled just beyond, wolves behind a thin door; her gut whispered that if the Key slipped out, doom would bloom forever.

Their attacks found no purchase; they kept pushing back the black tendrils like sweeping tar from a shore, yet the tendrils never seemed to bruise.

Illusory Glass knew her sister and Moon Owl weren’t this weak; memory pricked like hail; Moon Owl should be stronger, a hawk above knives.

A shard flashed in her head, Moon Owl falling on a battlefield, a petal cut by wind.

She seized that fragment; her glass-clear eyes shadowed like stormed water, and through a crack in the cocoon she reached for what she’d buried deepest.

Moon Owl had died. Illusory Glass became a Magic Maiden, took hold of Time like a river in her hands, and tried again and again to save Moon Owl.

She failed each time, the river slipping through fingers; yet this time had seemed to work, a dawn that finally broke.

Memory flooded in like a monsoon; she saw Yun Ling, saw that mental tendril like a black vine, and the lattice fell into place.

A Seeker had struck her mind; she had sealed herself here like a turtle in winter mud, surviving by stillness.

She couldn’t remember any of this until the cocoon was slit by another, a probing tendril that copied away part of her memories—the part that held her Magic Spell.

It’s said those strong in mind can puppet bodies, spider-silk through bone; some say Mana has “organs,” and spells are their breath, the body’s secret fumes.

Yun Ling could be using her Magic Spell to kill in the Twelfth District, then wield Illusory Glass’s body like a knife to threaten Moon Owl.

Time is terrifying; even the strongest strike of Cantata Three can be frozen a heartbeat by Illusory Glass, a blink that breaks blades.

Moon Owl had only just stepped into Cantata Three; half a second, a full second, maybe more, would be a chasm under her feet.

Yun Ling seemed unwilling to hold only the body; she wanted the spirit too, or else how could she crack the cocoon and claw for this mindscape?

Here, in Illusory Glass’s mind, the sister with a blurred face and a not-so-strong Moon Owl were fighting like candles against wind.

They were pieces of Illusory Glass’s spirit, shapes she most longed to see; they wore those faces and held back the invader, but the enemy was endless as rain.

They would lose.

Illusory Glass’s lashes fluttered, a moth stirring; the glassy eyes slit open, and the crack in the cocoon widened like dawn, then shattered with a dry ring.

Inside her skull, the waking Illusory Glass tore free of the black-robed woman’s soul-bonds, raw and fierce, and hurled her spirit-body like a ram against the other.

Spirit and magic are bound by hidden threads; the Seekers have chased that secret for generations, a chase through fog that leads to cliffs.

Many Magic Maidens tried to pierce the mind’s mystery and failed, flowers pressed flat by stone.

The Twelfth District is unlike the rest; they prize inner heart and emotion like a shrine, and that links to spirit and to a Maiden’s thresholds.

They say the firmer the spirit, the better the body fits the next realm, a blade seated snug in its sheath after a breakthrough.

Yet none, in the Twelfth or beyond, have found a clean way to temper spirit; a few Mystics stitched general Magic Spells from the mind’s road, but they’re rare and thorny.

Only spirit-touched Maidens can see their own “awareness”; Illusory Glass was in a rare, fragile state, seeing herself like a reflection on dark water.

She hadn’t learned mind Magic Spells, so she could only use this primitive art, battering the intruder like a stag butting a tree, trying to drive her out.

But the black-robed woman’s purest will was dense as ironwood; even after throwing away most of her spirit, she still held the core of Cantata Three.

To Illusory Glass, that core was bedrock; her spirit wasn’t weak, honed by several loops of time, but she could barely make the enemy shift.

She felt her spirit being plundered, strands pulled like silk from a loom; with each clash, her awareness and memories thinned, a candle eaten by its own light.

Yet she tore pieces from the foe as well, biting into shadow; they locked in stalemate, two tides grinding the same shore.

Her eyelids flickered; she felt an outer light seep in, warm as dawn; in her sight, her own spirit-body blurred, mist peeling off a river stone.

She knew, like a bell struck in bone: once she woke, she would no longer see her own awareness, a mirror that wouldn’t reflect.

After that, if the enemy struck full force, her consciousness would snap like old wood; and if the invader learned and wielded Time through her, the outcome was unthinkable.

Light touched her lids; she lay on a hospital bed, white as salt flats; stabbing pain and dizziness churned her skull like a tossed sea.

Her awareness ebbed like a tide; the retreat exposed fresh sand, and foreign feet stepped there, leaving prints in her.

Through blur she saw Moon Owl, Night Frost, Caris—three silhouettes like stars over waves.

“Get away from me!” Her voice cracked like ice, fear first, then steel.

Mana gathered in her left palm and shaped a dagger, a night thorn; a roar burst in her head, the black-robed woman glimpsing the Anchor’s secret.

Her blade-hand flipped backhand like a swallow; what remained was a dim Anchor, set by Yun Ling, a dead star nailed in place.

Despair surged up her heart like cold flood. “Kill… me!”

Moon Owl looked to Night Frost; Night Frost moved like a drawn bow, but Caris leapt, a streak of dusk.

“She’s the same as me, in the end,” Caris said, a quiet bell before storm.

The next heartbeat, Caris loosed a piercing shriek, a glass-needle scream that stunned Night Frost, a white blank across her eyes.

“You can’t. If you die, I die! Isn’t living good, Illu—”

The cry snapped off; Caris burst into Blood mist like a red flower blown apart, and she was gone.