“Just ‘hmm’?”

The wind on the south wall of Shattered City was a fistful of knives. We had to shout, and every word felt shaved of its subtle taste.

Hedi wasn’t even sure Selina had said “hmm.” A pressed mouth, a small nod, a word as brief as a dew drop—one, maybe two syllables.

“I keep feeling sorry for the people in Shattered City.”

“It’s not actually your fault,” Hedi said. The comfort fell like a dull pebble; it didn’t ripple anything.

Selina went quiet for a moment. The wind backed off, like a curtain falling still.

“Even if I’m sorry, I want to find my sister more.”

“Why?”

“She’s always been gentle. If she suddenly left me, there has to be a reason.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find her.”

Hedi lifted her eyes to the black gnats spinning in the sky. Her mood was like standing in an aquarium, counting fish, never sure when the counting ends.

“It’s not too late.” Her tone was soft but pale, a voice lowered from a deep well. “It’s only been a year and a half.”

“Did she leave a reason at all?”

“Not even a letter.”

Hedi glanced sideways at Selina. Fine lines sat by her eyes. Less like age, more like something born there. Her pale neck and the smooth backs of her hands, more than those tiny marks, made her age show.

We age from the corners first, like grime that won’t scrub off, spreading until it touches everything.

“What changes if you find her?” Hedi rubbed her eyelids. A bad night had left sleep like sand in her eyes. “If she opened the Dark Realm without permission, she’ll be hanged.”

“Searching is just a thought. You understand that, Professor.”

“If you mean family ties—I don’t have them.”

Selina cleared her throat and said sorry.

Hedi shook her head, not jealous, not trying to plug the topic. Just stating a stone-flat fact.

She had family in the previous life, yet she couldn’t picture them stepping into the Dark Realm. Two worlds, two skies.

Carrying old memories into a new body meant she wouldn’t drown in gloom for lacking family.

Those twenty-three years weren’t wasted. The worldview built there fed the self living here, like roots drinking deep under new soil.

“Since I can remember, I was in a convent,” Hedi puffed her cheeks, then let the breath go like mist. “I grew up under a god’s supposed care.”

“So you’re devout?”

“Not really. I probably should be.”

“If not for a divine nudge, the nuns wouldn’t have found you.”

“If you put it that way, I owe the gods a favor.”

“Don’t say it like that. Debts want paying.”

Hedi nodded without committing. Under the Priest and the nuns’ daily drip of doctrine, she had almost become the Sacred Cathedral’s Holy Maiden—repaying divine rescue with a consecrated life.

But with curiosity and restless energy, with Dark Magic tugging at her hands, being a Holy Maiden would have been self-inflicted torment.

Maybe it was a long-delayed streak of rebellion. She liked pushing against the Priest, and so learned the witch’s Dark Magic. She cut herself off from the Holy Maiden’s path. Who knew what the goddess who let her reincarnate would think?

Sorry in advance, Goddess.

Her heart surged like a storm-tossed sea, yet her face stayed smooth as a pond. A slight curve touched her lips as she watched the far-off view.

A guard came at the worst time. “You two here for sightseeing?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been watching you for a while. What are you talking about?”

“The Dark Realm. What else?” Hedi rolled her eyes, the gesture sharp as a flicked blade.

“For example?”

“The Dark Realm forms when mana concentrates too much and triggers corrosive transmutation. In that process, mana reacts with matter.

Mana isn’t material, but under certain conditions, it interacts with matter. It shifts a thing’s state or nature.

You can use mana to deform, move, create, or destroy. But when it grows too dense, the Dark Realm appears like a bruise on reality.

High concentrations warp the surrounding space. Reality’s attributes tilt and slip.

You get changes in time, space, gravity—basic parameters twisting or failing...”

Hedi rattled off terms like a hard rain on stone, then lifted her brows. “Make sense?”

“No.”

“Good. All you need to know is we’re working.”

“When will you close it?”

“Who said it can be closed?”

“Investigators come here not to close the Dark Realm?”

Hedi looked at the guard, then at Selina, her eyes speaking without sound: You didn’t tell him our job is survey?

“We’re trying,” Selina said. “But a Dark Realm isn’t something you shut with a switch.”

The guard’s mouth hung, as if too much language had jammed his throat. After a while, he squeezed out four stiff words. “Do it faster.”

Watching his back retreat, Hedi felt last night rise like a rash. Add his digging questions now, and heat pricked under her skin. It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand a guard’s duty to Shattered City. His manner toward people was just sandpaper.

“You have a way to close it?” Hedi tipped her head far back, seeing Selina upside down as if through lakewater.

“I’m here only to investigate my sister.”

“Then why—”

“Because you’re on my side.”

“Don’t try to fool me. Feels good, right?”

“Not really.”

Selina bent and patted her black skirt. A pure white shirt sat above it. The stark black and white held together like ink and rice paper.

She paced. The pleated black swung light among the broken stones by the wall. The white slid quiet in Shattered City’s shadow, setting off the shimmer in her eyes.

“Not really what?” Hedi stepped closer. “Don’t leave a sentence half-built.”

Selina looked at her. Her gaze didn’t twitch left or right, didn’t drill through, didn’t freeze or burn. No feeling settled in it. Maybe she looked at Shattered City behind Hedi. In the passageway, there were only the two of them. In the end, she was looking at Hedi.

“Is there something on my face?”

“I’m thinking why you came here.”

“Personal interest. Do I have to be like you, following someone’s footprints?”

“You’re a Professor at the nobles’ academy. Not afraid they’ll find out?”

“I’ve wanted to resign for a long time.”

“No wonder you don’t care.”

“I do care. Resigning and getting forced out aren’t the same animal.”

Hedi felt the talk would run on like a river in flood. She headed toward the near edge of the Dark Realm.

The sky looked washed and over-washed, its blue rinsed away. The Dark Realm stained it with a dim indigo-green. As they neared, the world showed a soft warp. The curls at Hedi’s temple lifted and fell, seaweed in a tidewind.

She sensed the wind’s hands pushing her spine forward.

From the Depth came sound. Breathing. Weeping. Roars. Low voices that meant nothing human.

Hedi stopped dead and caught Selina’s collar, yanking her hard back.

Selina hit the ground with a thud. White birds burst from the branches like torn paper.

“What happened?”

“Do you have a death wish?!”

Only then did she realize she was a single step from the Dark Realm. Without Hedi, she would’ve slipped in like a stone.

“I just wanted a closer look.”

“Why do you sound so drained?” Hedi’s words were dry as flint. Something was wrong. Black haze floated around Selina’s eyes, like sleepless nights painted on skin.

“Hey! You didn’t learn resistance to the Dark Realm?”

Hedi grabbed Selina’s arm and dragged her away from the dark oval.

The Dark Realm flared a brutal pull. No matter how she strained, Selina’s body kept sliding toward it.

Keep this up, and it’ll rip her right off me.

Hedi clenched her jaw. She couldn’t beat a Dark Realm in raw strength. But if she let go— After a breath-long calculation, she released one of Selina’s arms to free a hand.

Sss. Sss. Sss.

Her soles scraped the ground with a harsher hiss.

The Dark Realm loomed closer, eating the space. Her breath tied in a knot. She shut her eyes and drew mana in, pooling it at her fused index and middle fingers. They glowed, a weak lamp swelling into a white-hot orb.

“Get lost!”

Her shout dropped, and the orb snapped into a bolt.

Lightning struck the Dark Realm. The boom was a hammer on the ears. The wall and the air shivered.

The guard ran from afar. He saw Hedi sitting, breath shredded, and Selina unconscious beside her. He asked, blank as a fogged window.

“N–not… for now, it’s fine.”

Hedi wiped sweat off her brow. She meant to say more, but the residents of Shattered City began to wail. The sound speared the sky; it stabbed her eardrums like needles.

“So, you—uh—cough—” The guard’s face wrinkled as he forced order into words. “You angered the Dark Realm?”

“What are you talking about? Even without resistance, it shouldn’t turn out like this.” Hedi pinched her jaw and muttered. The screaming sanded her nerves raw. “Tch. What’s with these people?!”

“I, uh, d–don’t know.”

Hedi forced herself to think. “What do you mean by ‘angered’?”

“Suddenly. Just—”

“Alright, alright. You look exhausted.” Hedi pushed herself up against the wall and stared at the spinning, oval mouth of the Dark Realm. “It’s just an anomaly from too much mana. There’s no ‘anger’ here.”

“Yeah. No way it’s… alive.”