Everyone in the car kept stealing glances at the Old Woman and Night Frost, their eyes like hooked fish under a restless tide. No one knew what they whispered about, only that sparks kept catching. The Old Woman looked ready to rip the car apart and bolt like a hawk beating a cage.

She was past seventy, an old pine weathered by storms. In the last decade, the Magic Maidens had been sorted into three banners: Order Keeper, Seeker, and Mutual Aid Society, neat rows cut like fields under a governor’s plow.

At first, the Old Woman had no quarrel with the split. She’d served as a Magic Maiden for fifty, sixty years, a river running long. The roles felt fitting, three currents braided to guide power and distribute grain.

If you wanted the front lines, you joined the Order Keepers, steel drawn under thunderclouds. If you prized knowledge, steeped in lore and wit, you joined the Seekers, a lamp in the night. If you loved children and good deeds, you joined the Mutual Aid Society, a warm hearth in winter.

But what began smooth as silk soured like damp grain over time. The air thickened, and old banners started to fray.

Under that tidy sorting, the Magic Maidens split into two great camps, like mountains facing across a valley. Each camp bred new schools and stubborn branches, and now the New School Order Keepers were hunting the Old Woman, wolves on a scent, trying to seize Night Frost’s Key.

Among the New School Seekers, Yun Ling’s lot had even slit the Twelfth District branch to the bone. To hoard time for Illusory Glass, they’d stained the floor with most of the branch’s lives, cold as sleet.

When asked about Night Frost’s nominal mentor—the old fellow the Old Woman mentioned—Night Frost hesitated, a ripple under ice. She said the man had only fainted. His body wasn’t failing, yet his days were thinning like smoke.

The Old Woman finally understood why that stubborn elder left without a word. He was chasing a longer flame. He’d found a way, but it was a ladle of water on a house fire.

She’d never told him she was a Magic Maiden. Yet living side by side, he must have felt the slow, undying Mana coiling in her like a hidden spring.

He refused to burden her. He wanted to stretch his own candle, even if the night pressed close. If he failed to prolong his life, he would pass the secrets of Formation to a student with the right bones, a seed chosen for good soil.

The Old Woman believed it. Night Frost felt a thorn under the nail, a hidden truth. Otherwise, why hadn’t he gone to the Old Woman, and instead thrown his free hours into a basement like grain into a dark pit?

But the Old Woman’s face had softened, her eyes wet like dew clinging to wrinkled leaves. Pushing now felt rude, a blade against a soft fruit, so Night Frost veered the talk aside.

Love tales could wait like moths at a lantern. The Old Woman said her own master and Night Frost’s father were friends across generations, a bridge between winters. Though her master sometimes felt unreliable as a drifting cloud, he answered Night Frost’s questions cleanly. He was a good teacher, a steady oar in chop.

He treated Night Frost kindly too, aside from that odd little hobby of his, a knot in an otherwise smooth rope.

Night Frost’s nominal mentor was steeped in Formation. To carve a Formation, you needed stillness like a frozen lake. For Night Frost’s father to befriend him across age, he must have been a man who shunned quarrels, a willow by the water.

After sifting all this like rice through fingers, Night Frost chose to listen about the Key. She wanted to know what it tied together, what river of power it bridged, for so many factions to fight over it and reach for her parents with bloody hands.

Seeing her resolve set like iron, the Old Woman stopped holding back.

“More than ten years ago,” she said, voice like pages turning, “an ancient tomb surfaced in District One. Reports said a Key was unearthed there, and it flared with Mana like noon sun on snow. It exceeded the combined Mana of Chapter Three.”

“Everyone went mad, a flock scattering under thunder. It meant the old lands once held power beyond Chapter Three. They swarmed to study that Key, hungry as crows. But with the tech then, no one could trace its source, or why a Key alone could cradle so much Mana.”

She spoke like a living chronicle, ink still wet. Then she leaned on her own guesses, a lantern held low.

“Your father, accomplished in Formation, studied it for a while. He found traces of Arrays on the Key, hair-thin lines like frost on glass. Then he used certain methods and crafted another Key.”

“This one could resonate with that one, two strings on one zither. Likely the technique was similar, so the Key recognized it as kin. He added Formations that made it glow during resonance, and Formations that tugged like fishing lines. So a fake Key was born, able to locate other Keys.”

“But the true Key was too deep. Your father spent years and still couldn’t grasp its heart. He applied to leave District One, and moved to other districts, wind at his back.”

“I don’t know the middle steps, only that he ended up in the Twelfth District. He visited me then and chatted happily with my old man, warm as tea.”

“I saw the Key tucked in his coat and felt the faint, flickering Mana of an Array on it, like breath on glass. So I decided to follow.”

The Old Woman paused and looked out at the green woods streaming past the window, a river of leaves.

“Your father was brilliant in Formation but only a mortal man, a grain among stones. His danger sense wasn’t keen. I followed him to an underground lab beneath the Twelfth District, roots and rock overhead. There I saw…”

“Children running inside like swallows, and a passage that led deeper, a throat into the earth. Beside that passage, in a vacuum bioreactor, floated a rust‑scarred Key. But sadly, it didn’t match the keyhole before the tunnel, not tooth to tooth.”

“I only dared a distant glance, a deer peeking from brush, and felt a pressure swell from within. It was so dreadful it seemed ready to pull my soul out like a thread.”

Night Frost watched her, and a long‑buried memory surged up like a red tide. If that deeper layer existed, if it was the darkness beneath the Abyss of Man, then what the Old Woman saw must have been that pancreas, fresh and crimson as a cut rose.

“You saw what there,” Night Frost asked, voice like a lightning crack, “a… pancreas?”

The word struck, and the Old Woman’s memory flared like a lantern in a gust. She had only seen flesh, a lump of meat, but now that Night Frost named it, it did look like a pancreas.

Goosebumps climbed their skin like ants, and cold shot up their spines, a spear of ice. If a single pancreas held such pressure, what kind of storm was its owner?

That black deep space might be a prison, a cold well, caging this organ. And if there was more than one Key, then the Key’s function…

“Because I grew tense, the lab’s net caught my breath,” she said, steadying herself like a hand on a rail. “I didn’t run. Your father was just a researcher, a reed in the marsh. I only wanted a clear answer.”

“He told me that to know, I had to sign a contract. A third party would watch, an unseen eye, and it couldn’t be broken.”

“I agreed. Back then, I had to know, like thirst under a hot sun.”

The vehicle cut through shadowed trees, a knife through felt. Thick clouds ran everywhere before the wind, but the moon wouldn’t show its face. The Twelfth District had fallen far behind. The car rolled onto a barren plain, a gray sea without end. It was Night Frost’s first cross‑district journey in memory, a bridge between winters.

They talked the whole way, words like beads on a string, never stopping.

“I won’t belabor the contract,” the Old Woman said, breath even as rain. “What I’m doing now is its demand. If you want, I can tell you the terms. Telling you is also one of them.”

Night Frost felt she could guess, a weight in her chest like a stone. She shook her head. She wouldn’t listen. Seeing that, the Old Woman let it die, a candle pinched out. The wording was only a few lines anyway.

“He said he bought this Key from a Magic Maiden in District Twenty One. The price was too cheap, like gold sold as tin. Trouble would follow. But as a scientist, he had to chase truth, a moth to a flame.”

“In District One, he found an Array Pattern on the Key. He happened to be fluent in Formation, and he deduced how an Array could store compressed high‑grade Magic Stones, a sea in a jar.”

“After that, he made it real. He forged this Key that seeks Keys. In District Twenty One, using it, he found another Key. It was almost the twin of the District One Key, but the ancient script in its Array Pattern wasn’t quite the same, stars in a different order.”

“He got the Key. He labored day by day, like a millstone turning, and finally drew some results. With the results came disaster, a storm at the door. He fled with wife and child to the safer Twelfth District. Back then, the Twelfth was the Old School’s banner, a fort on a hill.”

“They welcomed talent and set him up a lab. The district is small, so many facilities lie underground, like roots. That lab, as if fated, sat atop unknown Array Patterns, a web under stone.”

“Your father’s passion caught fire, a blaze in dry grass. He studied the Patterns and found they matched those on the District Twenty One Key. Following the Patterns, he expanded the lab and learned the Keys were meant to unlock a ‘lock’ woven of Array Patterns, a knot of lines.”

“Your father had no Mana, no lantern to see below. The tech then couldn’t pierce that deep either. But the fear that seeped out told him this thing must never rise, or it would be a calamity, a flood breaking the dam.”

“So he meant to seal the Key forever, bury it like a seed that must never sprout. But by then, the Twelfth District’s disaster was creeping in like fog.”

Night Frost answered at once, heart tightening like a fist. Guided by her dreams, the tangled threads aligned, beads on a string.

“The Black Dragon?”

The Old Woman nodded, shadow under her lashes. As Night Frost said, the Black Dragon descended from nowhere, a night storm without warning.

“Your parents sent you away with the fake Key,” she said, voice low as dusk, “and took another real Key to vanish with the Black Dragon. It was all too sudden, like a door slammed by wind.”

The Old Woman didn’t know where they went. Night Frost did. She had seen two silhouettes swallowed by a beam, moths taken by flame.

Maybe the Key affair was a setup from the first spark, a net cast early. They used her father’s talent, his thirst for knowing. The moment he reached the answer, the path was fixed, a cart on rails. A quiet life fell away like leaves in autumn.

Night Frost lowered her eyes, lashes like wet reeds. The Old Woman’s words were a beacon in fog, yet they gave her only helplessness, a shore she couldn’t reach. She hadn’t thought her parents’ story ran so deep, a river under stone.

Order Keeper, Seeker, and the Magic Maiden government—threads from all of them wove through the knot, a web across the sky.

She was a single ant on a trunk. How could she shake the tree?