“Weren’t you going to think it over?”

A chill of disbelief ran through Night Frost, like dawn light striking thin ice. Xun Xun had already let a drop of Blood fall onto the contract, as if one sentence from her had burned away all his earlier doubt.

She almost said it—no need for Blood, a special pen would’ve worked—but his finger had already touched down, like a seal pressed into warm wax.

“He’s my brother. It’s only been two months, but he’s saved me more times than I can count.”

Xun Xun’s voice carried the ache of winter wind through bare branches. He remembered those two months after he’d “run” from home, sheltered by the brothers. Night Frost had helped too, though the scenes in his mind were fogged like rain-streaked glass.

“Once he taught me a combo and saved our team fight. This time his sister saved me. Another time, under an invasion from Cantata Three, he jammed something under the dorm to hold the building up. He saved us. That was the last time I laughed out loud.”

Memory unfurled for him like smoke under an Abyssal Rift. The four of them sat shoulder to shoulder in the dorm, the sky cracked above, talking futures and pasts as if warming hands over a shared flame.

“My last memory is dim, like a lantern in mist. But I think… we were there, the four of us, trusting, talking. Until he left.”

Shame stung Night Frost, a nettle under the skin. Xun Xun held those shards like jade, while she could barely place them. The contract paper dissolved into the room like ash on a breeze. Xun Xun borrowed a few bills from her, then left with Jiujiu.

His back looked straighter, his shoulders broader, like a sapling deciding to be a tree. Night Frost couldn’t help the soft sigh; the dorm’s resident layabout had found his path. It made her feel like a proud old dad, warming his hands by a brazier.

Xun Xun had brought vital intel, but like any coin it had two faces. His joining would help them—and weigh on them.

After briefing Night Frost, Zhao Qingsnow set out to support the Old Woman who was being hunted. Night Frost and Kaneko planned to circle the park Xun Xun had mentioned, like hawks testing a wind.

There were clues there about the Seeker. Maybe the road through the Modification Center would lead them straight to the Seeker’s headquarters.

But first, a disguise. If Xun Xun’s Mechanical Arm could record, then aside from Jiujiu, their faces were likely known by District Twenty One’s upper floors.

Zhao Qingsnow had prepared for this. On the table lay masks and a makeup kit, small as a bento and just as neat. She’d once fooled Abyss-born humans with makeup alone, a mirage painted with brushes and breath.

She’d been down in the Abyss and taught those who’d never seen human tech a solid lesson.

Per Zhao’s notes, this was a simple kit. Just follow the video she’d sent and paint, stroke by stroke, like tracing constellations. After all, a pretty girl should learn her own war paint.

Kaneko wouldn’t be going out for a few days. The two of them drew too much attention; anyone who’d seen them together could see through Night Frost’s mask.

After hammering the point home to Kaneko—do not go out—Night Frost slipped out at first light’s gray edge, leaving Kaneko asleep under quiet blankets.

Down in the Modification Center’s underground lab, the mechanical augmentation zone lay drowned, a sunken city of metal. The staff had long since evacuated. Only two guard corpses drifted like wilted lilies in dark water. Every door leading out was locked tight, the melted one a single jagged mouth. Not a drop was allowed to escape.

Inside, reports still waited like unread letters. Data that hadn’t reached the mainframe drowned under the flood, and more than that.

High-priced prosthetics sat like relics in a temple of silt. Near-perfect experimental bodies—dear as gold—lay ruined by one battle, one deluge, all erased as if by a tidal sleeve.

The weight of water ground everything down like millstones. Even the custom glass vats webbed with cracks. With a series of dull thuds, the vats collapsed under pressure, bursting like overripe fruit.

Some fragile specimens couldn’t bear the lakebed’s hand of stone. Some couldn’t breathe water. The instant the glass split, several died under crushing pressure and the sea-cold suffocation.

But where there are fish that drown, there are eels that thrive. When the glass over one core shattered, pitch-black sludge surged from a suspended heart, coiling through the lab like night ink. In a breath, it claimed half the room.

Then it stilled, a storm holding its breath, as if waiting for a bell to toll.

Strange fish drifted by now and then, their shapes crooked as broken branches. Some burrowed into the muck to rest. They became its food, one silent bite at a time.

It devoured the mutants. Their added or severed genes folded into the mud like rain into soil. Over time the sludge sprouted fish scales, grew human arms, bloomed unknown eyes. Oddities that could haunt a child’s dream surfaced on its skin.

It began to move. Under a membrane-thin film, its eyes scanned the room like moons under cloud. It slid to a water-logged computer. Water-swollen paper, thick as soaked bark, clung to the desk in warped piles.

Bold characters glared from the top: Mud King Incubation Project — Phase One.

“Mu… d… King.”

The sludge stacked itself into the shape of a man. It opened a mouth wide enough to swallow a basketball. Sound squeezed out of its throat like stones grinding.

The word fell. After a breath of silence, the Mud King exploded outward with a thunderous roar. Sludge uncountable surged, a black tide eager for more than one small lab.

To patch the glass fractures and drain the flooded sector—to drag the drowned hive back to life—the Modification Center had invested coin and machines. A diving camera happened to witness everything, its eye cold as a winter star.

The staff stared tight-eyed at the feed, pulses skittering like minnows. They weren’t hermits; they watched the news. They knew a Mud King specimen had broken out of the neighboring park.

That specimen was a slice taken long ago from the Mud King’s own flesh, gifted to them for research. The recent one had escaped when an experiment went sideways.

In mere minutes that Mud King smothered the park’s lake like ink over parchment and forced a Cantata Two into a bitter fight. District Twenty One’s Order Keepers had to deploy en masse to put it down and halt the disaster’s spread.

And that was just an early specimen. They’d added new things to the current one, tinkering with storm clouds. No one knew if those additions would threaten the heavy hitters coming to deal with it.

They had no one who could fight underwater. So they sent machines to plug the broken shaft and elevator mouth, ring-fenced the lake, pumped the sector dry, and stationed troops nearby. The plan was simple: when it surfaced, erase it, like wiping ink before it stains.

Masked and none the wiser, Night Frost reached the park at dusk’s last ember. The gate and ticket booth both hung the same sign: “Closed for lake maintenance.” The letters looked like frost nailed to wood.

She scanned the area—no cameras—then wandered up, peeking in like a country kid at a city window. The booth held a lounge chair and two pillows. Nothing else but dust and the smell of damp paper.

On the pillar, a white notice in black strokes:

“Closed one month for lake maintenance… contact xxxx for details.”

She didn’t buy it. Lake maintenance, sure. More like the lab got drenched and they had to pump and rebuild. A month would do it, with time left for a coffee and a nap.

If you think darker—this is a lab. Who knows what fluids leaked like rot into roots, what things crawled out of cracked vats. Maybe the extra time was for bagging nightmares.

It was just a guess, she told herself, like casting shells and reading tides. No way she’d nail it that clean. Right?

She left. Not really. She picked a safe corner, slipped past the barrier, and followed a nameless path to the artificial lake.

District Twenty One’s largest man-made lake stretched out like a sheet of steel under a gray sky. Night Frost pulled up her hooded cloak, tightened her mask, and crawled into the shrubs, watching the segmented waterline in a hunter’s hush.

More boats than before. Workers hauling materials with the rhythm of drumbeats. Two or three Cantata Twos stood like spears in the crowd. Many augmented fighters watched the banks, metal glinting like fish-scale under light.

You don’t need that much top-end muscle for mere pumping. The hair at her nape prickled like grass in wind. Her guess hardened—something had crawled out of that lab. Something thorny.

She remembered the forest park and the monster draped in sludge, a thing that stank of Mud King. District Twenty One’s Order Keepers had burned a mountain of money and sweat to bring it down.

This lake, this park—no real link. Still, the scene rhymed, like thunder answering thunder across valleys.

There couldn’t be a second mud beast. She did not want to fight something that vile again. The thought crawled like a cold centipede down her spine.

The workers moved with ruthless grace, hammers falling like rain. In a blur they drove a chain of pilings into the earth. They piled soil on both sides, tamped the wall, and started the first drawdown.

Night Frost almost dozed, lulled by the steady churn. If nothing happened, the author would pad this chapter with water, she thought dryly, eyes on the line, waiting for a slip to ride in on. Even if she couldn’t slip inside, she could map their strength.

As if the smug heavens heard her gripe, the smooth pumping broke like a reed. From the elevator shaft, a massive sludge tentacle uncoiled, slick and black as oil, and lashed upward.

Night Frost snapped on night vision; green fire washed the world. She saw the tentacle’s structure, and her face fell like a curtain.

Had she jinxed it? Say a storm, summon a storm. This thing wasn’t in her weight class. No wonder they’d brought so much steel to the shore.