Ten minutes ago, a scarlet ribbon sliced open Night Frost’s cage, like a blade through silk. Hemmed in by Chu Qing, she fell toward the lowest tier of the underground city, a swallow dropped by a storm.

She steadied herself midair like a leaf caught in a downdraft, pain ringing through bone. Below, the warrens shuddered, walls buckling under Crimson and Chu Qing’s clash. She chose a street mouth, a vein in stone, and moved to leave.

She turned a corner and met a girl with her face—mirror-cold, mirror-clear. Both clenched flame like caged birds. Both said, “Is it you?” in the same breath.

They knew they were cut from one mold. Each insisted she was the real one, the other a reflection on river glass. Pride flared first; reason came later.

Letting the other run to aid anyone else was impossible. The underground city only leaned toward collapse. Here and now, they would stall each other, like two anchors dug into sand.

In the same heartbeat, Night Frost drew her Crimson Gold Lance. “Night Frost” raised her spear and charged. Habit matched habit, shadow matched shadow. Whatever Night Frost could do, the other could echo.

Only one difference: “Night Frost” was stronger. She could carve more Array Patterns, more sigils etched like vines on bone. Night Frost wouldn’t burn all at once; full force would cost her body. Under the Black-gold Spear’s fierce storm, she fell behind, a boat in a gale.

But Night Frost’s Crimson Gold Flame burned the spirit, a bane to wraiths and wandering souls. “Night Frost” was impurity, a knot of negatives. That flame could scour her. That was Night Frost’s opening, a blade of dawn against fog.

The other’s defense was tight, like scales locked shut. Not a lick of flame grazed her. Night Frost couldn’t slip in. She retreated, step by step, against the tide.

“A fake is a fake. You only know how to take a beating,” “Night Frost” jeered, voice like cold iron. “Be a good thief and return what’s mine. Let me return to myself. Maybe I’ll spare you. Charity from me to a bandit.”

She slammed a fist into a load-bearing pillar. Stone groaned; a deep knuckle mark sank in like a meteor crater. Night Frost tipped her head and rolled toward the street edge, a cat through shutters. “Night Frost” didn’t give her space. She hurled her spear, a black comet.

Black Flame swelled on the spear tip, thick as pitch. From the black shaft unfurled broad raven wings. A Black Dragon’s shape shivered into view; a gold dragon nosed out, only to be pressed down and drowned by shadow.

The Black Dragon roared, a furnace-breath, and arrowed for Night Frost. It tracked her like a hawk with a hunter’s mind. After so many fights, obstacles here were stripped away. She couldn’t dodge the storm. So she would break it.

Array Patterns climbed her palm like frost on glass. With those amplifying sigils, she called the Magic Spell bound to the Magic Stone at her wrist. The flame hovering behind her spine tightened, then birthed several spears, like lotus buds hardening into steel.

“Night Frost” understood the shape of the move. She buried part of her Black Flame under the ground, seeding the earth. She copied Night Frost’s root spears, bark and heat braided together. She had no Magic Stone; she could only mimic the form, an ink wash of the true stroke.

Scales crawled over her skin like river fish. She knew this would be hard to take. The last note fell like a bell. Night Frost threw her spear. Fire rolled under the earth like magma, but Black Flame pressed it down, smothering half the tide.

The Black Dragon’s phantom was pierced, body like smoke torn by a needle. The first spear, warded with a sure-hit oath, struck “Night Frost” in the lower belly, clean and merciless. Only the first landed.

The underground fire was chained. No follow-up spears rose to nail “Night Frost” in place. The spears in the air hadn’t fallen yet; “Night Frost” rolled early, a shadow between embers.

It was enough. Crimson Gold Flame on the embedded spear scattered under Night Frost’s grip, glowing seeds drifting upward. The flame spiraled high, then dove into “Night Frost’s” mind like carp into a moonlit lake.

Spirit-fire tore “Night Frost’s” spirit, a paper screen ripped by wind. But that one spark only brought pain. Her belly wound sealed fast, blood knitting like threads. Her mind stamped out Night Frost’s ember, heel on coal.

She spread her fingers; her body swelled by a fist-width in a blink, muscles budding like thunder. Her legs exploded forward, the burst a spring flood. She slammed Night Frost into the wall, bricks coughing dust. Five sharp claws speared for Night Frost’s heart, but a rising fire wall and a spear formed in an instant blocked the dragon talons, sparks like fireflies.

That burst of power… a mountain’s push, a river’s surge.

Night Frost grit her teeth. Her Crimson Gold Spear webbed with cracks, a vase ready to shatter. Black Flame swept in, a night tide laced with golden filaments like spider silk.

The spear wouldn’t hold long. “Night Frost’s” dragon claws hung inches away, moon-close. She’d used one Magic Spell—little drain, but two more and her mana would gutter out.

The shape of that golden flame… why did “Night Frost” wield Black Flame too? The pattern clicked like beads. If the golden flame was a borrowed hand, a way to steer Black Flame that wasn’t hers—

Blood. Chu Qing had drawn her blood and poured it into “Night Frost,” using her flame to control rootless Black Flame, a puppet on crimson strings.

Night Frost was driven into the wall, exit paths sealed like doors in a storm. To break free, she needed another road. The Black Flame before her was the slit in the curtain.

Crimson flames seeped from her pores, wisps drifting toward the Black Flame like moths courting coals. Fire met fire; they struck like antlers. Night Frost chanted the syllables of her Magic Spell, voice a drum over wind.

“Night Frost” tensed. She thought Night Frost meant to use the spell to break free. She couldn’t think of any other threat that would force her back.

Crimson Gold Spear split cleanly under “Night Frost’s” claws, halves falling like chopped bamboo. She planned to finish Night Frost before the last word left her tongue. It was a thing she could do.

Her claws stalled again. A forearm inked with Array Patterns clamped “Night Frost’s” wrist, grip like iron vines. Sharp talons barely pierced Night Frost’s belly, skin nicked, blood a bead.

“Night Frost” tried to yank free. This was Night Frost’s chance—she wouldn’t let it slip from fingertips like sand.

Her chant didn’t stop. Crimson Gold Flame spread outward like dawn through mist. Black Flame fought back, a tide against a tide. Inside, the golden flame failed first; it was smelted through, severed by Night Frost’s Crimson Gold Flame.

Unsteered, Black Flame fell like ash. That suited Night Frost. Black Flame burned friend and foe alike, but the Crimson Gold Flame now had a moment to wrap both in a ring of fire.

“Damn it!”

Spirit-pain pricked “Night Frost” like needles. She blanked for a heartbeat, palm to brow, scales retreating under skin like fish diving. Night Frost drew another spear from the flame, a final blade. This would be the last strike.

Her Magic Spell reached its final cadence. One line more, and she’d lance the heart.

“Wait… do you want to know your past?”

“Night Frost” smothered the spirit-fire in her head by force, kneeling like a felled wolf. Her dark-gold eyes went wide. Black blood slid from them like ink tears. Her mouth split into a wide, unsettling grin, a crack in porcelain.

Above, Crimson fought like thunder. The last support pillar in the underground city finally failed. Cracks spread, then stone gave way. Rubble rained like gray hail. With pressure from both sides, Night Frost stopped her chant, the word choking at her teeth.

“My spirit’s a spent candle,” “Night Frost” rasped, voice a wind through tombs. “Before I die, I have to tell you these things. You’ve won, but what comes next won’t go easy.”

“Lingchen Yao!!”

She screamed at Night Frost’s back as she turned to go, cry like a blade.

Night Frost flinched. Unease flooded her like cold water. She only wanted to run. Whatever came next, she didn’t want it, didn’t dare want it.

“Your memory holds stray shards, scattered past a blank wall,” the girl hissed, words like frost on glass. “A hazy past, a reflection behind a layer of glass. You already guessed…”

“Lingchen Yao, you aren’t a living person.”

“Not exactly… Lingchen Yao, you’re already dead.”

Night Frost trembled. She looked at her hands, touched her chest. Her heart still beat, a drum under ribs. She stood breathing, warm. Alive.

“I… already died?”

“On the day the Black Dragon descended, you burned in the Black Dragon’s flame,” the girl said, voice like ash raining. “That black fire devoured everything. Your life stopped in that instant.”

Her memory pulled back like curtains in wind. In the depths where she’d built a pure white bastion, the wall began to crack, then crumble.

“Fake,” the girl whispered, hatred like thorns. “You occupy a body that isn’t yours.”

“Your parents built you a new body, using magic and tech, before your soul scattered like smoke. They planted your soul into an artificial shell.”

She opened her mouth and coughed up Blood—the Black Dragon’s Blood, locked inside her gut. It turned to Black Flame and gnawed at her flesh, night-fire eating lacquer.

“No one expected a will to be born inside that shell,” she said, voice shaking. “And still they stuffed your soul into it.”

“My soul, my spirit, fell asleep under your intrusion. I should’ve faded in long waiting and slow merging. But hatred and jealousy kept me. I became your other face.”

Her features twisted, pain in body and pain in heart, like wire tightened under skin.

“The Calamity Dragon dug me out from your spirit’s depths,” she spat. “It used this Abyss to peel me away from you. I am you, and not you.”

“You’re the outsider,” her voice burned, “the one who seized everything of mine.”

“This isn’t your body. It was mine.”

Night Frost lowered her head and listened to the speech, heavy with anger and grievance, like thunder rolling. Stonefalls echoed around her like drums.

In her mind, the white wall collapsed. What she refused to face stood naked before her eyes.

A huge glass tank, cold as winter. Inside floated a small, androgynous homunculus. Two blurred figures on either side slid a white shell into the body, a husk becoming heart.

The form in nutrient fluid shifted like a clay doll under rain. It slowed. It settled. It revealed the face Night Frost least wanted to see.

A picture in the welfare home album. A child standing by the headmistress granny. Lingchen Yao’s young face.

Just as “Night Frost” said.

She might truly be…

A thief.