Night Frost’s reply rang clean, like frost on glass. District Twenty One did have a vast artificial lake, a sheet of blue silk ringed by pines. Wealthy families came for its calm shore, leaving memories like lanterns drifting on water.

Her words were fine on the surface, but Kaneko felt a prickle under the skin, like ants before rain. She hopped off her stool in one smooth spring, a cat startled by wind.

Night Frost’s disguise wore like a perfect mask, but masks crack at the seam of duty. In this role she was Kaneko’s sister; a sister senses the wrong note and can’t sit like stone.

“Sis, what’s wrong?”

Night Frost stiffened, a cold ripple under warm light. She caught Kaneko’s meaning, yet leaping out now was like stepping into a hailstorm. If the pink‑eyed girl turned her hand on Kaneko, Night Frost had ways against control; Kaneko had none.

A perfect pose hides a soft joint. If the girl with pink eyes finished with Night Frost and then plucked at Kaneko, every stitch Night Frost had sewn would unravel like wet silk.

The girl with pink eyes narrowed her gaze, lashes like blades half‑drawn. For a heartbeat her stare slid off Night Frost. Night Frost felt the Spirit Threads in her mind thin, and her spirit body hacked at them like a lone woodsman, showing fierce struggle against a tangle of silver vines.

She’d meant to test Kaneko, but Night Frost’s “ordinary” resistance flared too bright, like a rabbit kicking dust at a wolf. She shelved testing Kaneko—the kid was so small, how could she lie? She tossed Kaneko a few harmless questions, pebbles in a stream.

Kaneko’s answers wavered from Night Frost’s like two fireflies out of sync, yet the glow matched the path. Maybe the girl’s senses had slipped. They looked ordinary enough. Perhaps Night Frost’s face sat too neat inside the girl’s type, a moth’s flutter toward a candle.

The pink‑eyed girl lifted her mental grip. Night Frost’s eyes cleared like dawn after fog. The girl smiled and let her voice float like paper cranes.

“Enjoy your meal. Welcome to District Twenty One.”

Night Frost let out a breath, a knotted cord easing through fingers. She watched the pink glow drift away like sunset over a street.

Then the girl whirled like a hawk and flicked her wrist. A hard gust spun toward Night Frost, a blade of wind wrapped in dust. The Old Woman and Zhao Qingsnow widened their eyes, thunderheads in their faces—she dared strike without knowing.

As their hands rose, Night Frost had Kaneko flash them a hold‑back sign, a palm like a quiet moon. She promised she’d handle it—and did nothing.

Night Frost simply turned, offering her back to the squall. The force crashed into her limb by limb like winter surf, her bones singing a thin lament under strain. Sand and grit whipped up by the gust carved her pale back, little knives opening flesh to the gleam of bone.

The strike wasn’t strong. A few small tricks and her Magic Layer could have caught it, a net on the wind. Night Frost instead peeled her Magic Layer away, pressed her Mana down like embers under ash, and wore the skin of a true ordinary.

For a true ordinary, a full First Symphony gust could brush life from the reed. An “ordinary” Night Frost walking away spotless would be strange. So she set all shields aside and took the hit honest, like rain on stone.

She was sure this was the girl’s last probe. Striking at street folk broke the Order Keeper treaty in spirit. They could march to the Order Keeper branch, drain the girl’s pay, drop her rank, clip her wings.

Of course, the branch held the final scales. Even with a win, compensation might be smoke, not gold.

Night Frost sagged onto the grill table, iron hot under her cheek. Blood seeped like red threads through her dress. She held a dragon’s heart; this was only pain, not doom. If she loosed her life force, the wound would knit like ivy climbing brick.

The pink‑eyed girl stepped behind her, a shadow soft as silk. From a small waist box she drew a vial, a dew‑bright cure. She sprinkled it across Night Frost’s back; split flesh scabbed slowly, scales of dusk closing. Its bite outmatched Twelfth District coagulants by more than a street’s length.

Next, she slid a bank card onto the table by Night Frost’s arm, a black fish on white porcelain. Her dewy cheek brushed Night Frost’s wan face, breath and voice pouring into her ear like warm tea. Her pink eyes glimmered, and Spirit Threads flowed into Night Frost’s mind again, vines coaxing consent for a private settlement.

“You’re so cute. A pity you’re just ordinary. The password’s six ones~”

Night Frost shivered, a reed in a sudden breeze. She didn’t hate girls, and her taste ran straight as an arrow, yet this one was definitely a girl‑chaser. For the first time in her life, Night Frost got tangled by a girl‑chaser’s ribbon.

She opened her mouth, white as chalk and empty of sound. The pink‑eyed girl’s lips tilted, bells ringing in her laugh, and she drifted away like a petal on a current.

Night Frost felt the street go still—no Mana trace, no other Magic Maidens. She glanced at the Old Woman and Zhao Qingsnow and raised an OK, a circle of fingers like a full moon.

Only then did the tight cords in their chests loosen, the bowstrings slackening.

That was a cliff’s edge. One wrong step would have sparked a street war. Their District Twenty One mission would shatter before it began, and the city’s Magic Maidens would hunt them like hawks over a bare field.

They didn’t know what trick Night Frost used to slip the mental leash. The Twelfth District’s work on the mind was little more than shallow ripples.

Night Frost didn’t hide. She spoke of her flame’s nature, the Crimson Gold Flame that eats threads like fire devours cobwebs. She kept part of the Black Dragon buried, but her tale closed clean. Zhao Qingsnow found the shape plausible, a bridge that held.

She pocketed the card. The night hurt, but it paid. If one solid hit earned a high‑limit card, Night Frost would take a few more on the chin for coin.

Not from that girl‑chaser, though. Go back there and her name would stain, a white cloth dipped in ink.

The Black Dragon’s heart mended her back, knitting flesh like moss over stone, but a tremor in the deep tugged at her throat. A sweet copper rose; she swallowed the Blood and urged everyone to move, like birds leaving before a storm.

She felt something slip into her soul’s well, a shadow diving past the rim. If she guessed right, the Black Dragon sent a smear of spirit and soul into her mind.

She had to hurry back, catch it while the ink was still wet, carve that shard out. If she hesitated, her mind would become a battlefield again, thunder inside a skull.

They moved fast, feet like quick water. They shepherded Night Frost and Kaneko to the gate of the rented complex. The landlady opened the door, warm as a lamp. Her husband hadn’t returned.

Night Frost had cleaned her clothes, washing Blood down to faint winter stains. The wound sat nearly closed. The landlady wouldn’t imagine an Order Keeper strike under a porch light.

Zhao Qingsnow and the Old Woman offered three light sentences. Night Frost had been eating skewers, street smoke and spice, then went suddenly pale. They’d passed by and brought her home like neighbors in rain.

With the escort done, Night Frost, braced by Kaneko and the landlady, slipped back into her room. The landlady asked if she needed help; Night Frost shook her head, a willow in wind. She had medicine and could handle it.

She rattled the prepared bottle. Inside was only coagulant chips, dry leaves against a flood, useless for what churned now.

“If anything happens, tell me! One shout and I’ll hear.”

Night Frost nodded, a quiet candle’s bow. The landlady could do little in this kind of storm.

Kaneko knew Night Frost’s plan. She turned the lock with a click, drew the curtains like dusk closing the sky. In that hush, Crimson Gold Flame rose on Night Frost’s skin, a thin mantle of dawn. Under her pupils, her twin crimson‑gold eyes surfaced, twin suns in shadow.

Night Frost met her spirit body again. Second crossings come easier; she dove like a swallow to the soul’s deep well.

The quiet crack in her soul had been torn wide by two massive claws, a rent in silk. Dark‑gold eyes burned beyond the fissure, lanterns in a black cave.

Those cold, pressure‑laden dark‑gold eyes fixed on tiny Night Frost, a mountain staring at a sparrow.

“You can’t come in.”

She stood at the crack’s edge. Her words fell, and a gale screamed through, like standing on a typhoon shore with no wall, ready to be plucked by the storm.

“Small as you are, what can you bar?” The Black Dragon’s voice rolled like stone. “Last time you seized the body was an accident. Grown or not, you’re still weak in my sight. A breath of my true self, a single Black Flame, would erase you.”

Night Frost felt the storm rake her soul, her spirit body pitching like a boat in chop. The Black Dragon’s spirit outmassed her, vast and cold. But the crack bound it. It could only slide a fragment through, and this shard, at her present strength, she could break.

“It’s your true body’s power,” she said, voice steady as iron. “And you’ve only one heart left. I climb while you stand. You’ve grown weaker, chained to a single piece. With only a heart, how do you fight me? Besides, I hold your heart now.”

She paused, no fear in her gaze, and stepped forward. Resolve lit her eyes like flint sparks.

“If I destroy this heart, your last vessel for soul will vanish too.”

“But you’ll die as well!”

The Black Dragon roared, a canyon shaking. That tiny ration dared threaten it. Yet it had to bend; their lives braided like two vines, shared sap in one stem.

“I’m human,” Night Frost said, calm as snow. “A hundred years is my horizon. I killed a dragon—something that lives ten thousand. Trade a hundred for thousands? Sounds like a bargain to me.”

“Your hatred isn’t settled. You don’t know the ending. How can you accept death?”

Night Frost smiled, a thin relief like dawn through mist.

“Do you know why humans are human?”

“Why?”

The Black Dragon pushed its head forward, puzzlement stirring in its gaze like leaves in a creek.

“Because when a person dies, his will gets carried on. He has companions; you have only one. Now I have companions. My will will be inherited. After I go, my spirit under the sky will see the result.”