The masked man didn’t answer Ms Feng at once; silence hung between them like damp fog.

With a dream collapsing like glass, fretful heat and needle-fine rage climbed from his heart. He turned aside like a weather vane in a gust, drew a long breath like cold river water, and steadied. He smiled as he replied, a lake-smooth face over stormy depths.

“She’s yours to handle, Ms Feng,” he said, the words flat as a dead leaf.

The mental Formation on the stone slab couldn’t be faulty; it hummed like a hidden hive. It dragged anyone who looked at it into the deep sea of their spirit. Night Frost mirrored the fish-headed manager, like two moons in one pond. She had to be caught by it, so why had she answered with a blank winter?

Could Night Frost truly not know the Key existed, like a bird nesting over buried gold?

He saw two slim chances, like twin reeds in a flood. First, Night Frost might be immune to mental control; yet she’d slipped into the state like falling snow, not a hint of resistance. Second, the Old Woman never told them about the Key and hid it like a seed in dark soil; that one felt far more likely, which meant Night Frost probably knew nothing.

So had he bagged the wrong fish and cast away the right one into deeper waters?

If he were ruthless, he could use Night Frost as bait, a bleeding lure on night tide, and force the Old Woman to surface. He only had to leak a whisper and let it drift to her ear like smoke.

Set aside the Old Woman’s own peril; the moment the Modification Center released that whisper, the Twelfth District’s hate would gather like thunderheads. Even starved, a camel still outweighs a horse; they might choose a dying pull and drag an organization into the abyss like a drowning man clutching a leg.

They had that kind of weight, like an iron anchor in a storm.

Besides, the Modification Center had no authority; it was a floating raft, not a flagship. Night Frost and her lot were technically illegal entrants, yet the Center wasn’t official. It had no right to cage or judge Magic Maidens from other regions, like a net thrown across another man’s river.

If the news spread, Magic Maidens from the Twelfth and District Twenty One would both turn their eyes like owls at dusk. The Divine Cult Modification Center would get shoved to the peak of the wind, a leaf in a gale, and the Maiden would be forced into the hands of the local Order Keeper like a seized package.

That’d be a perfect case of fetching water with a wicker basket—every drop leaking away like sand through fingers.

He could also refuse to hand her over and deny Night Frost’s existence like a shadow at noon. But what use? She knew nothing about the so-called Key, so all his bustle would be smoke over cold ashes.

Now Ms Feng from Rouge Rabbit wanted to buy Night Frost as an experimental subject; the price was light as a feather, yet it would pad the loss like straw in a jar. He could cut losses, toss this hot potato into another pot, and send Rouge Rabbit a favor like a warm lantern on a dark road.

Feeling his choice ring true like a struck bell, he opened the Obsidian Stone gate wide. He pushed Night Frost before Ms Feng like a prisoner led by torchlight, pointed her way like a guidepost, and left with his people like shadows pulling back at dawn.

Night Frost’s Magic Armor unraveled into drifting particles, a pale crimson-gold spray like bonfire sparks climbing the night. Ms Feng had clothes ready like folded clouds; she slipped a loose set over Night Frost’s shoulders, fabric settling like mist.

The armor vanished like frost kissed by sun. A delicate, black-haired girl sagged into Ms Feng’s arms like a cut lily. Blood seeped from her arm like a slow spring, and it dyed half the loose garment red as poppy petals.

Ms Feng started, surprise flashing like lightning under silk. The unarmored girl didn’t match the figure in her memory like a portrait smudged by rain. Yet the face and small habits felt the same, like echoes in a familiar corridor. Perhaps this was a twist beyond the script, a shoot from a hidden root.

Healing came first, like dousing a fire before counting the losses.

Thick white tentacles coiled around Night Frost’s arm and thigh wounds like pale vines. They secreted anesthetic fluid like cool dew, and the pain thinned like fog at sunrise.

From within those white limbs, slender legs split the soft flesh like blades budding from petals. They braced at the wounds like tidy surgeons. Each pair moved in tandem, sharp foot-blades parting skin like silk, and they fished the bullets out with ease like pearls from mud.

Night Frost drifted in half-sleep like a leaf on black water, wary out of habit like a cat at night. Yet in Ms Feng’s arms, her guard loosened like a bow unstrung. She felt Ms Feng working the bullets free like thorns from a paw.

It hurt some, a hot wire through meat, yet Ms Feng’s steady heartbeat ticked in her ear like a metronome, and a thread of warmth spread like tea in winter.

Bullets came out one by one, iron seeds plucked from red earth, and blood pooled on the floor like a dark mirror. Ms Feng’s chest tightened, a hand around a bruised peach; ever since Night Frost stepped onto this thorny road, she came back in tatters like a kite cut loose.

Ms Feng ached; the heavy load was hers to bear like a yoke, and Night Frost’s birth had been an accident like lightning finding a lone tree.

She finished the extractions, wrapped the wounds with bandages like clean gauze clouds, and then gave a shot like a silver thorn. It wasn’t anesthesia but a healing agent, distilled from high-vitality creatures like sap from ancient pines. It had been tested safe and pushed into mass production like bread from a steady oven.

Ms Feng carried Night Frost out of the fourteenth floor like a mother bird flying low, and stepped into the express elevator to the first. The car shot upward through the shaft like an arrow in a hollow bamboo. Night Frost’s narrowed eyes opened slowly like winter buds.

Even with local anesthetic, pain gnawed her bones like cold rats. She forced a whisper, thin as a mosquito over summer reeds. “Are you… Eye Orb?”

Ms Feng’s arms trembled a hair, a ripple over a still pond. She hadn’t heard that name in a month or two, and nostalgia rose like old incense.

She gave a wordless yes and opened her left eye like a shutter lifting. A blue glow burned there like a shard of glacier, stark against the colorless other eye like night beside day.

Night Frost let out a long breath, a foggy stream leaving a tight chest, and her whole body softened like snow under sun. She still didn’t fully trust Eye Orb, like a fox around a trap, yet months of life and death had soldered a bond like iron welded in fire.

“How’ve you been,” she asked, voice fluttering like a paper kite.

“Not bad,” Ms Feng said, tone calm as rain on tiles. “Running experiments, plotting Aklatia’s revival like gardeners sketching spring. That little princess’s illness is a hard knot; a heart swap won’t cut it, like sharpening a blade on wet clay.”

Night Frost heard the ease in her tone like a warm breeze and looked her over again like a collector checking jade. “I always thought you were a man. A beauty sat right by me?”

She poked Ms Feng’s skin; it felt real as warm stone in sun. Thank goodness there was no rubbery give, or it would’ve dragged up a black market memory like a snake from a jar.

“What’s that about? I am a man,” Ms Feng said, smile light as a cat’s tail. “This was a business meet, so I picked a face that ups the odds like a loaded die. The Divine Cult boss is male; big curves and long legs, plus a soft look, tug his protector’s string like a harp.”

At “looks soft,” Ms Feng paused, the word snagging like silk on a thorn. Night Frost remembered the tentacle slap that drove her into the ground like a nail; soft wasn’t the word, not even by moonlight.

The elevator climbed fast and hit the top in half a minute, neat as a hawk’s stoop. The exit opened behind a public restroom’s service window, which looked absurd as a palace gate on a chicken coop.

Outside stood several plainclothes types like crows on a fence. They seemed to be Ms Feng’s people; respect sat on them like pressed uniforms, and they asked nothing about the girl in her arms like monks with sealed lips.

So Ms Feng’s footing in Rouge Rabbit was high, like a flag on a tall mast.

Night Frost was loaded into a car that smelled of leather and rain. She told Ms Feng she had things to do, words tumbling like stones down a slope. Zhao Qingsnow’s cover was blown, and District Twenty One was hunting like wolves; Kaneko was still at the rental like a candle in a draft.

She was in a hurry because she’d hidden the real Key on Zhao Qingsnow like a talisman on a child. Before Night Frost came to “infiltrate” the Modification Center, the Old Woman had known this like a midwife counting beats.

Funny, in a bitter way; Night Frost had come here to snake into the Seeker’s halls and find a way to wake Illusory Glass, like seeking dawn through fog. She never even reached the Seeker; she flipped a tile and got grabbed by the Center, like a fish leaping into a pot. It almost cost her life; if not for Ms Feng, she’d be a chained bird in a cellar.

Maybe her luck wasn’t all thorns; once you hit the bottom of the well, the only way left is up like a float rising.

She could only wish Illusory Glass could hold on a little longer, like a candle pinched from wind. For now, they probably couldn’t even get through the Seeker’s front door, a house with eyes, let alone the inner hall.

Yet doubt pricked her like a burr. The route felt cramped and skewed, like a cart wheel stuck in a rut. The nav pointed to District Two, not anywhere else; every mile took her farther from District Twenty One like a boat drifting from shore.

“Eye— Ms Feng, let me out,” she blurted, words tripping like beads off a broken string. “I haven’t—”

Ms Feng kept her face still and stared out the window like frost on glass. She didn’t answer, and unease rose in Night Frost like cold water in a well.

Click.

A bracelet etched with fine Array Pattern snapped around Night Frost’s wrist like a steel serpent, clamped by two tentacles that slipped out like white eels. Her Mana took a thousand-pound stone to the chest and slowed like syrup in snow. She could barely feel it, a river frozen to silence.

She knew that bracelet like the taste of winter. Her bargain-bin master had carved it; Blade had once worn it on her wrist like a shackle of mercy. It suppressed Mana; after they sealed their pact, Blade gave her the bracelet and a Key like heirlooms. Night Frost had stored both in her Spatial Box like seeds in a jar.

Ms Feng held an open Spatial Box in her hand like a cracked oyster.

“Your password was easy,” she said, voice mild as tea. “I got it in three tries, right at the edge of self-destruct, like threading a needle. Lingchen Yao—your director’s birthday, right?”

That director was the head of Yunyang Orphanage, a lamp in Night Frost’s long night.

“I figured you wouldn’t set your own birthday, like a fox avoiding its track. I tried Qianchun and Chen Xiaoyin. In the end, the one you honor most is the one who raised you, like a root watering the tree.”

“I found this bracelet in your box. The weight it gives off is heavy as lead; it’s built to suppress. I’d been wondering how to get you out of District Twenty One quietly, like a boat slipping down a back canal.”

Ms Feng looked at Night Frost; Night Frost stared back, disbelief filling her eyes like stormwater.

“Why?” she asked, the word a blade of ice.

Ms Feng tossed the Key into a vial of green liquid like a stone into a pond. It began to dissolve, a leaf eaten by acid rain.

“Say something!” Night Frost cried, voice ringing like a struck bell in a hollow hall.

No answer came, only Ms Feng’s tentacles writhing like pale snakes. They wrapped Night Frost from ankle to crown like a cocoon, and covered her last scrap of sight like a falling veil. The numbness of anesthesia rolled in again like a cool tide.

She reached for the light on the lake like a drowning hand, but the gleam drifted away like a firefly.

She burned to return to District Twenty One like an arrow straining the string, yet she had no way to deal with Ms Feng, a wall of stone.

Her consciousness sank fast like a pebble into a deep well. Ms Feng’s final words rang in her ear like a bell fading over snow.

“Sorry. Get some sleep.”

The blue eye hardened like tempered steel, and silence returned like a winter field, save for the engine’s rumble, a low thunder in a steel shell.