She’d once been a mother. Then the Monsters came, tearing through her life like a black tide. Her cherished daughter was seven—still naive, still blinking at the world—and died holding that innocence.

Grief sat like stone in her chest; her husband died shielding her retreat. The rubble crushed Monsters, and with them, her family—one collapsing weight. She was only a researcher, not a Magic Maiden who could soar or vanish. She envied them, and she knew envy wouldn’t save anyone.

Heaven hadn’t given her boundless strength—only finite wit. So she used that limited wit and a half of a Magic Stone someone had entrusted to her.

Inside that broken half slept Mana beyond most humans, beyond most Magic Maidens. Even a half stood at the apex of Chapter Three.

Modern science has probed Magic Stones for nearly a century. No one knows how they work, or how they cast down their “oracles.” We can parse their makeup, yet their operating principle stays opaque.

Mix minerals from this world and the Abyss, feed in Mana, and a Magic Stone forms. Follow the recipe, and you can craft a Magic Stone “embryo.”

Most labs stopped there. She didn’t. Her half-stone bled vast, steady Mana, a constant glow. Set the embryos beside that radiating core, bake them under heat and pressure. They’d cling to its nature, inheriting what it was.

Using that method, they yielded nearly thirty thousand Magic Stone shards in five years. Those shards became the spine of her experiments.

The source was a Magic Maiden who called herself Order. She stood one breath short of a higher realm in human history. Her power was nothing to take lightly.

Yet she died in a deep, silent underground, leaving only this half. The cut was clean, a single stroke that split it; the other half vanished.

By logic, Order was strong. So why die in a place that looked harmless and tested harmless? No resistance when danger came, no scars of battle on the ground...

Guessing at its past meant nothing. What mattered was that this half circled the world and landed in her palm. Her job was to use it to forge a new Order, to birth life of Chapter Three.

Before her stood the girl closest to the goal. But the experiment went awry. Her Mana conduits flickered, turned brittle, like frost-bitten wires.

Burns seamed her face; metal shards nested beneath the skin. Her silver-white hair had been burned to nothing. No inch of her body was whole. Her silver eyes carried a dim shadow, like ash on snow.

“Sorry.”

The old woman lifted her palm, wanting to soothe the girl. But the girl was bound like a mummy, nowhere to touch. So the hanging hand fell, slow as a leaf.

She heard the girl call her “mother.” She hadn’t heard that word in six, seven years—maybe longer.

Since her family’s death, she’d stayed here, anchoring this project as its lead. She kept making artificial people, batch after batch. She destroyed the first with her own hands. Then the second for failing tests, the third...

They were her labors of love, pieces of her. But the experiment was hidden and vital. No subject would walk out alive; destruction was their appointed end.

Her heart balked; this girl was slated for destruction too. That soft “mother” tugged her back to a daughter gone. She already hated breaking her own work. Facing this singular girl, she couldn’t lift the blade.

Loneliness had been her only companion for years. This girl plucked a quiet string in her. Rash or not, she wanted to be her mother. Flaws be damned, fate be damned—she’d shield her with everything left.

“My daughter... from now on, your name will be—”

“Kaneko!”

Kaneko jolted awake, heart thudding like a drum. She checked herself—no burn marks. Her bones and limbs ached faintly, but nothing felt broken.

Her brown eyes swept the room. Darkness pressed close; no windows, no light. The air carried a strange tang, metallic and damp. She lay on a ground mat. The concrete nearby was decently clean, like someone had scrubbed it.

Her mind clawed backward, hungry for answers. She remembered Seekers closing in, step by step. She remembered a house collapsing into dust. Then nothing—blank white. She woke here.

It felt like a basement, Kaneko told herself.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

Purple Lightning swaggered into the doorless basement. She tugged a rope by the wall. An overhead incandescent bulb flicked on, weak and yellow. She stopped by a rough table and set down a bowl of thin porridge.

Kaneko didn’t move. She just studied Purple Lightning, every line of her posture. Her memory held no name, but the silhouette felt familiar.

On the highway, even before the ramp, she’d seen a similar figure. This had to be District Twenty One’s Order Keeper, if she was guessing right.

Instinct tightened her muscles; she slid into a fighting stance. Pain tore across her chest, sharp as a ripped seam. She had no idea what her body had been through.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, stepping closer to Kaneko. “If not for me, you’d be in the Seekers’ claws by now. Didn’t think you were this tough. With a Cantata Two body, you burst with Chapter Three presence and surge. That Magic Cannon almost swallowed me whole.”

Doubt fogged Kaneko’s mind; she pressed a hand to her head. She could use Mana, sure, but not like that. Purple Lightning tapped her phone twice and slid a few photos to Kaneko.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what happened?”

The images showed flattened blocks of buildings, roofs like broken shells. The earth looked peeled up in sheets, leaving a colossal crater.

Did she do that?

Kaneko had no memory of it at all.

“I don’t remember...”

She shook her head, fear prickling again. All she remembered was terror, then blankness. If that was her, could a flawed girl like her really do that?

“Anyway, rest here. Your lunch’s on the table; I’ll swing by again tonight. Do not step out that door. Not unless you want the Seekers to bag you for dissection.”

That was the end of Purple Lightning’s warning. She wasn’t a saint. Kaneko was the enemy; they’d killed her sister. Between them, it was kill or be killed. Saying even that was more mercy than most.

“Why tell me any of this?”

Purple Lightning stopped before the threshold and glanced back at Kaneko. “I’m just trying to keep the balance between both sides. You’re over-spec. If the Seekers get you, it’s nothing but bad for the Order Keepers.”

Then Purple Lightning slipped away, leaving Kaneko alone in the room.

She stared at her hands. The dream’s echo pulled her memory back, to months before she left that lab.

Back then, she lived in a basement carved out by the old woman. She never stepped outside. The old woman treated her like a real daughter—food, clothing, everything provided.

Kaneko lived easy, worry-free. Aside from not being allowed outside, she was happy. She adored this mother, older, weary, and kind.

But bright seasons are brief; after joy comes the long sorrow. If you can’t cross that river, what right do you have to happiness?

When did the change begin? Joy got sanded down grain by grain. The old woman’s mind and body wore thin; age settled heavier on her.

Was it the day the old woman burst into Kaneko’s room, breathless and urgent? She stuffed Magic Tools and Magic Stones into Kaneko’s hands. She told her to leave the lab and run east—that was the only way to live.

Or earlier still, when her color was poor yet she finished the bedtime story? Between lines, she kept muttering about a transfer plan.

Or earlier, when hesitation clouded her face? She gritted her teeth and gently touched Kaneko’s head.

Either way, from the moment she claimed Kaneko as her daughter, fate tilted. She broke protocol by sparing a near-success—Kaneko herself.

It could cause a “data leak”—Sixth District top-secret files. They covered bodily reconstruction, the making of Magic Maidens, the secrets of Magic Stones. The enemy could never know.

That night, the old woman led her before three Wands, standing like pillars. She wiped away the false memories—like the lie that she was Kaneko’s mother...

Then Kaneko understood. The woman before her wasn’t her mother. She herself was one of countless manufactured clones, a better-performing variant.

Sadness pricked at her, but gratitude ran deeper. Without the old woman, she might not be alive. So she still held her as mother—because love speaks louder than blood.

Then the old woman opened the door. She told Kaneko to keep moving east, don’t stop, don’t be afraid. Just keep walking forward, and live. Everything on her person would shield her.

She couldn’t bear to watch Kaneko’s back disappear down the hall. Kaneko didn’t look back once.

“Goodbye, my daughter...”

“Goodbye, my mother...”

Kaneko’s voice was small, a moth-wing whisper. She didn’t know if it reached the ears it was meant for.