Cerqin crawled out of bed and spotted Aileaf holding a small vial, eyes bright like stars and glass glinting like morning dew.

Her heart hesitated before her mouth moved. “Mm, let’s try it tonight…”

She wanted the tonic to work, but other tasks felt like stones that had to be set first in a running stream.

Stay in bed too long and you turn to rust. Keep still, and you become a stump.

“Alright,” Aileaf sighed, a thin mist of regret in her gaze. The trials could wait. Ideas for improving the formula were still fog on the hill.

“What are you doing next?”

“Uh… I bought a batch of materials at the Trade Plaza two days ago. I want to poke at arcanotech. Want to come?”

Aileaf was an alchemist, but a researcher’s roads always cross. She could offer ideas or handle materials, threads weaving to one cloth.

With Aileaf’s master-level hands, the work would be wind in the sails. If she had time, Cerqin wouldn’t say no to a free expert.

“Mm, sure. But I’m heading to see that princess first.”

“I’ll come with you then.”

Cerqin’s interest was a kite tugged by wind. That foresight ability mattered. White Thought was close to reaching Fourth Rank. A compass in fog would help everywhere.

With the Demon Race stirring, the Holy Maiden would likely fold them into her escort team.

Northfort’s wind still cut like knives. Staying felt too dangerous.

White Thought and the scarred woman, White Feather, were held by the Holy Maiden’s escort. By ties alone, they could walk in, but Aileaf wasn’t fully of the Sanctuary.

So they should knock on Spring Tide’s door, rain-soft but proper.

Spring Tide had left her room last night and met Sanctuary’s higher-ups in Northfort. They had to notify other powers. When they saw her, busyness crawled like a line of ants.

They offered a brief greeting and got consent. Under Spring Tide’s wistful look, they slipped out like fish through a loose net.

One escort captain, Baili, was on a mission. At the Sanctuary knight garrison, Cerqin found Qianli drilling the troops, steel clanging like rain on stone.

“Cerqin, Miss Aileaf? What brings you?”

“Here to see the scarred woman and that princess. Got questions.”

Cerqin glanced at Aileaf hiding behind her, a sparrow tucked behind a willow branch.

“Aw, I thought you came to play with me.”

“You don’t have a task today?”

Cerqin rolled her eyes, a cloud drifting off the sun.

“Of course I do. Proper rest is part of work. I was busy with handovers last night. Paperwork with the Law Enforcement Hall is a snowdrift.”

Qianli set down her standard longsword like a silver reed, left the knights to drill, and walked with them.

“I’m jealous you can rest the moment you return.”

“Who told you that? I was tossed around all night…”

“Mm…”

Cerqin was speechless to tears. Qianli blinked, cut her gaze to Aileaf behind, then curled her lips like grass in wind.

“Tough life. But serves you right. You already have the Holy Maiden…”

“I…”

Cerqin couldn’t find a retort. She wanted to brag about leaning on several thick trees at once. But one of those trees stood behind her. Say it, and she’d get smacked tonight.

“So, why are you seeing those two?”

“Mm… To ask about prophecy.”

“Prophecy, huh. Last night during handover in Northfort, the Holy Maiden came. She asked questions, left grave-faced, and told us to keep an eye on them.”

“Right. I heard their identities will be sealed, then they’ll be sent back to Eastern Sea City.”

“Uh… Isn’t that classified?”

Cerqin’s face went flat.

“You aren’t outsiders…”

“...”

Loose lips spill grain to the mice. What if spies lurked in the garrison?

This Sanctuary post housed not only the Holy Maiden’s escort knights, but many Northfort Sanctuary units, banners like a forest.

Seeing the worry, Qianli flicked her pale-blue hair, a ripple of water.

“Relax. The knight corps is loyal across the Sanctuary. It’s rarely infiltrated.”

“In fact, Baili said the Holy Maiden plans to temporarily add those two to her patrol.”

“So it’s like that? But the patrol lacks high-rank adepts. Security…”

“Mm… As long as they loop away from Northfort toward the Imperial Capital, the Demon Race will be hamstrung. High-tier demons can’t slip quietly into the Empire.”

Aileaf’s voice was soft, laying out demon traits like patterns on silk.

High-ranking demons can’t mask their aura like others. Only stealthy, not-so-strong demons can infiltrate.

Even those demons who slipped into Northfort were exposed fast. It’s not that they didn’t try. The stronger the demon, the harder to bottle that raging mana. A few days of restraint is already expert, a volcano under snow.

They likely used secret arts that wrapped their blades in cloth, lowering their strength. Otherwise the damage would be worse.

“In that case, why not send them straight to Eastern Sea City?”

“Unless you dispatch high-rank ability users, they’d draw hawks. Scheming factions watch like predators.”

The Holy Maiden’s convoy lacks high-rank escorts, but she’s too singular. Attacking it is striking the gong to declare war on the Sanctuary.

Unless someone’s brain is broken, even the Ultimate Evil wouldn’t go fully hostile with the Sanctuary. Wolves avoid the tiger’s mountain.

They reached the underground below the garrison, the earth’s stone belly built to hold special targets.

It wasn’t as big as the Law Enforcement Hall’s, but the cavern had room, a hollow drum.

Qianli said it could hold over a hundred, cells like honeycombs.

Its role differed from the Law Enforcement Hall. That hall keeps convicted criminals, a net already tightened.

Here they held fresh spies from other powers, or cultists caught by the knight corps, fish still flopping, not yet sentenced.

So there’s less punishment and more interrogation. Knots tighten, not blades fall.

As they stepped in, a chorus rose and fell. Unlike the Law Enforcement Hall’s sighs, here screams dominated, crows over a barren field.

Qianli flashed her credentials. Lantern-light slid deeper into the throat of the cave.

Though interrogation ruled, many knights came to amuse themselves. Shadows gathered at a door where they halted.

The cell doors were half transparent, frozen water showing what lay within. Qianli pointed, a twig-like finger.

“Inside is that scarred woman, White Feather. She’d have been left in Northfort; trading with the Demon Race is a major crime. You can imagine the end. But yesterday, White Thought, Her Highness the Holy Maiden, struck some deals, so she’ll likely take her along.”

Cerqin watched White Feather, dazed like a leaf in a storm, toyed with by four or five knights. She scratched her head, lost for words.

Being roughed up by a pack of Fifth Rank knights was millstones grinding grain, no better than the Law Enforcement Hall.

Days like this would be her winter.

“They won’t break her, right?”

“Relax. If prisoners broke that easily, the Sanctuary would swap them out every storm.”

“True… At that intensity, never mind mind and spirit. The body wouldn’t stand it.”

Cerqin nodded. The Law Enforcement Hall’s name is thunder, but its hands are iron gloves, not hammers.

Maybe even if they broke her, they could mend the pot with gold.

“By the way, if we crack improvements on the instruments, we could hand them to the Law Enforcement Hall…”

“Huh?”

“Mm, it’s nothing… Where’s White Thought held?”

Cerqin muttered and reeled in her drifting thoughts, a kite string pulled back.

“Mm, right here.”

Qianli pointed at the next cell. Unlike the scarred woman’s, no knights visited White Thought, a quiet pond beside a waterfall.

White Thought, her long black hair like ink, sat quietly at the bed’s edge. She stared into air, lost in a lantern-less night, not noticing them enter.

As they neared, she came back to herself, dew shaken from a leaf, and looked at them in confusion.

Aileaf didn’t waste words. She sized the girl up, then cut straight to the knot.

“Have you used your Baiju ability to foresee the future before?”

“Mm, her ability is literally foresight. Of course she has…”

Cerqin’s mouth twitched like a plucked string. Aileaf realized she hadn’t been clear.

“Mm… I mean a longer stretch of future.”

“My ability can’t reach far yet. At my current Third Rank, the limit is about two months.”

White Thought answered without hesitation. Aileaf was still as a hawk for two seconds, then spoke.

“I’ve heard of Baiju. When it first awakened, you should’ve seen something, right?”

“…”

“You are?”

“As you can see, I’m Littlefolk.”

“What do you want to know?”

White Thought frowned and stared at Aileaf, who stood yet was smaller than her seated self, a sparrow before a seed.

“When it awakened, I did see a few fragments. I don’t know when they’ll happen.”

“I want to know if the future you saw mentions the Four Pole Stars.”

Expectation and solemnity flickered across Aileaf’s face. Qianli and Cerqin held their tongues, wind holding its breath.

Hearing the term, White Thought froze, a stone sinking in a well. She sank into thought, then murmured, unsure.

“Lucky… Four Pole Stars… origin… There is… there is… there is… there is…”

“Hey, hey! What’s wrong with you?”