The girl's emerald slit pupils shimmered with expectancy, like dew trembling on bamboo at dawn. She looked as if she already knew Xun Xun’s answer, just waiting for the words to fall like rain.
"I’m willing… if freedom’s the harvest."
The moment Xun Xun spoke, the girl turned toward the woman in the white coat, a thin frost of hostility settling in her gaze like winter on bare branches. From her tone, they had known each other long ago; the woman was her elder sister, a shadow cut from the same moon.
"My dear sister, long time no see. Who knows how many seasons have passed?"
The woman in the white coat hadn’t expected a dying Xun Xun to erupt like a volcano breaking its crust. The special vessel meant to suppress Mana and Abyssal Aura cracked like river ice, waking the test subject within and releasing the most dangerous one like a tiger slipping its cage.
"Yes… it’s been a long time." Her voice was steady, but her breath came cold, like fog rolling off the sea before a storm.
Facing a crisis, she braced like a lone pine in gale. She ordered the doctors and researchers behind her to flee through the corridor like startled swallows. She was about to warn all modified humans and Magic Maidens in the Divine Cult Modification Center when the girl wrapped in blood-colored stone moved, like a landslide finding motion.
The blood-red tracery along the rock flared alive, like embers threading through charcoal. Her fists turned dense and sure, akin to Xun Xun’s arms etched with Array Patterns. Yet this was no Array Pattern; it was the running path of a creature’s Abyssal Aura, a river of force and a blade in the dark.
Seeing this, the woman in the white coat pressed her right palm to a plain little hilt at her waist, like a hunter remembering a hidden knife. Her left hand clenched, and a deep-blue arm slid from under the coat, Array Patterns stained sapphire by drawn Mana, like night pouring over wet stone.
That deep-blue arm carried a cutting frost, a north wind that sliced like glass. But the blood-red fist pushed close like noon sun on snow, and the heat drove the chill away, forcing her back two steps like waves rolling a swimmer to shore.
She drew her right hand up. The humble hilt burst with silver light, like moonfire caught in steel. Mana wove at the front, stretching into a blade; that silver hardened sure at the tip, becoming a slender silver light-sword, a river of frost bound into shape.
The light-sword danced in her grip, nimble as swaying reed, humming in the air with a resonant weng. It cleaved for the girl’s face like lightning splitting a dark cloud.
The girl had lingered too long in a glass dome, like a moth trapped behind crystal. She wasn’t fully used to a body cut free, and her response lagged like winter sap. She lifted rock-wrapped hands and took the strike head‑on, a cliff meeting surf.
Rock is a stubborn bone. Even when the light-sword brushed it, only a patch charred like roasted bark. As long as the scarlet lines weren’t all destroyed, she wouldn’t lose her fighting strength. That strength came from what sat embedded on her chest, exposed like a scar the world couldn’t ignore, a thing the woman in the white coat called a heart—
They called it the Lava Heart. The name sounded like a heart, but it wasn’t. It was a Magic Stone from a lava beast, a strange rootlike mass instead of the usual translucent gem, like tangled roots gripping buried fire.
Each root tip clung to a crystal lump, and each lump was a Magic Stone, small in Mana but many as stars clustered behind cloud. It was a forest of embers strung into a living knot.
The girl had been born inside the lab, like a seed sprouting beneath lamp-light. She was a living person, not a batch-grown sample; her parents were staff, warm faces turned cold by white walls.
She had an elder sister ten years older, gifted in research, her mind like a clear spring. The Order Keeper’s test found Mana coursing in her veins, and Mana meant she could be a Magic Maiden. The market was crowded like a festival street, yet her future looked boundless as a sky after rain.
The younger sister was different. Research didn’t spark her; her body was lively, spring in her stride. One day, the elder sister brought the little one to the lab to test for Mana, leading her in like a kite tugged by a string.
No one knew what the elder sister saw. In her eyes bloomed hope, jealousy, sorrow, and desire, four seasons sharing one mirror. It was a tide of feeling curling under a calm face.
She plotted an experiment that could rewrite the human order, carving rivers in a continent. If it worked, Monsters would be harvested as human strength, like harnessed thunder under a temple bell.
For years she sought a test subject and failed, her net pulling up only driftwood. Today she found a match. Her sister’s frequency nearly matched the Lava Heart, like two chimes answering across a valley. It meant that, as a Magic Maiden, the girl would awaken lava or flame, a talent burning like dawn on volcanic stone. She was perfect for the Lava Heart.
When her little sister came of age, the plan finally stepped into sunlight. That day, she hired a squad of modified humans, metal and flesh braided like vines, and carried her nearly defenseless sister onto the surgical table like laying a lamb on red lacquer.
She herself cut off her sister’s four limbs, clean as a butcher’s winter work; she flayed skin like parchment from wood. She set the Lava Heart in the center of that chest, an ember roosting where breath used to settle, and watched it burn the touching flesh like summer sun on wax, then braid with the girl’s invisible threads of Mana like fire marrying wind.
The heat barred her from approaching, a furnace that ate distance. So she ordered those who could endure high temperature to slot special metal feed tubes into the girl, iron reeds into a molten river. Then they threw the girl into a special vessel, like sealing a volcano under glass, isolating the erupting Abyssal Aura and surging Mana.
The Lava Heart burned without rest, a brazier that never went dark. It joined with the girl’s Mana, and slowly the Mana adapted, crawling from the surface of the Lava Heart like vines climbing a scarlet stone.
Blood-colored lines spread along her flesh, veins of fire threading through clay. Skin grew anew over the scarlet paths, hard yet still human to the eye, like lacquer under stone dust. But where limbs had been severed, what grew back was rock, hard as cliff and grained like cooled lava.
Five years flew by like migrating geese. Her limbs grew back, but she almost bid the word “human” farewell, like a name fading in a temple ledger. Besides a brain that believed it was human and some inner flesh that remained, she had drifted far from humanity, a boat that had crossed a fogged strait.
Her sister’s experiment succeeded. The girl fully housed the Lava Heart, and she received its feedback, a tide turning the shore. The human body stopped growing, then began to evolve toward the lava beast, bone and fire courting under smoky skies.
She was no longer human, but a creature between lava beast and human, a threshold soul. “Human-shaped lava beast” fit her like a mask carved to a face.
She set a rock-paved palm on the Lava Heart in her chest, feeling the burn even now, pain tearing her like paper in fierce wind, enough to snuff breath and drop her into blackout. It was a furnace hidden under silk.
Hatred rose in her like storm surf. She loathed her elder sister, who had used her own blood to forge a half-human Monster, banishing her from sunlight and binding her to shadowed halls.
She was only sixteen, spring buds just opening. Because of her sister, she lost those petals, becoming the “weapon” her sister named, a blade hammered with family tears.
The Lava Heart answered her anger, a bell struck at midnight; it burned hotter, a blaze lifting its head. Blood-red lines climbed her arms like climbing fire, a volcano breaking old rock and shouldering open sealed stone.
Lava slid along her forearms like a red river. The woman in the white coat swung her light-sword, silver rain slicing the air, but the girl caught it barehanded, stuffed it into the scarlet lines, and the molten torrent swallowed it like dusk devouring snow.
In magic, the girl outstripped her sister by mountains. The elder was now in her thirties, lost in obsession with experiment and power, neglecting Mana practice like a field left fallow. Her strength had withered like grass under frost.
The woman had replaced her arm with a Mechanical Arm, choosing steel over spirit. She had nearly abandoned the path of the Magic Maiden; instead of sweating uphill on a road with no visible promotions, she preferred windfalls like fruit dropped by storms.
A deep-blue fist smashed into the girl’s cheek, a comet striking a cliff. Thick rock layers shed most of the force like scales shedding rain. The blow shattered a patch of cheek‑stone, crumbs skittering like grit, but left only minor scrapes, a fox crossing brambles without bleeding.
"What else do you want to say?" The girl’s rocky hand clamped the woman’s throat like a vise, lifting her slowly like a crane raising a bell. Her eyes were cold, a winter lake under high cloud; she had no sympathy for the kin before her.
"…" The woman in the white coat shut her eyes, lids like shutters before a storm. She had nothing to say. When she chose this road, she accepted thousand cuts or a lifetime in iron bars, falling leaves in a locked garden. She hadn’t expected to die by her sister’s hand, a knife forged from the home hearth.
She admitted it: back then, her heart wasn’t hard enough, a blade left half-tempered. She should have bound the girl’s thought with restraints, a net over a hawk. Her failure ripened into bitter fruit.
Why hadn’t she done it? She could have implanted a chip in that delicate brain, could have set an electric collar to cage her steps like thunder leashed. The thought hovered like a ghost over candlelight.
In the end, she softened. When she cut her sister’s limbs, regret and excitement fought in her head, two tides shoving at one shore.
Excitement, because her experiment had taken its first step, so smooth it felt fated, like a river finding its own route. Regret, because after their parents died, that sister was her only family, and if she turned her into cold machinery, the world would be a winter with no tea.
She didn’t bind her sister’s mind. But her actions planted seeds of hate and ruin, beans that grew into thorn vines, and those vines led her to death’s gate.
The girl closed her eyes, a brief night over blazing noon, then twisted lightly. The woman’s neck snapped like dry branch. Lava wrapped and dissolved her body, fire licking silk into ash, and the girl drew the remainder into herself like embers swallowed by a kiln.
"It’s over. I reclaimed freedom." Her voice settled like dust after rain.
She calmed. The blood-red lines along her arms closed like shutters. The rock sheathed over her skin withdrew, returning to the body like stone sinking under river. Black lines remained, spreading from the cluster of Magic Stones embedded in her chest, roots crawling through bark.
She picked up a white coat and draped it over herself, a rough cloak for battered skin. Then she turned to Xun Xun, kneeling and barely breathing, a reed bent by wind, and she reached out her rough, rock-grained hand.
"Come. We’re free."
Xun Xun didn’t respond, his mind fogged like marsh in dawn. So the girl lifted him, cradling him against her smaller frame, warmth seeping through like tea through porcelain, though the rock pressed like gravel under cloth.
"Do you have someone you know? Or a place that can help? I’m not good with roads. I’ve slept too long."
Home was impossible; wolves already watched him from the thicket. Where could he go? He had only returned to District Twenty One not long ago and had been caged at home like a bird behind bamboo.
He dug through memory like fingers through sand. Recently, a Magic Maiden had helped him. She had given him her address, written like a lantern in fog.
Maybe, there, they could find help, like a temple fire kept alive against winter night.
