The corridor was ink-black, a slab of darkness you couldn’t find anywhere else. Because of the cockroaches, the air felt colder, like a cellar slick with fear. Even the light spell tore the veil like a thin seam, only barely lighting their own steps.

A stiffness pricked Hedi’s chest like frost; she tightened her grip on Selina’s hand, clinging to that warmth like a thread in winter.

Their mismatched footsteps drummed in sequence, each beat bouncing off the walls like stones on a drum. Between the beats came thin breath, the whisper of cloth, and a hush of wind like a distant tide.

“Is this the way we came?”

“What feels off?” Selina glanced back into a mouth of night and saw no room at all. “We’ve already gone far.”

“When you carried me and swerved into that room, was it this far?”

“I don’t know. The room was set into the wall. One little turn and you were inside.”

“So the door was open. That matches how we escaped into the corridor.”

“Then we should’ve gone for the hollow wall after all?”

Hedi halted, a cold doubt settling like dust. She looked forward, then back. The corridor ran straight as an arrow, too perfect. Both walls were riddled with crack-like pits and coated in moss slick as mud. The moss glowed an almost unreal green, like jade under soot. In a world without light, how did it keep that color?

“We might,” Hedi said, tasting the thought like iron on her tongue, “not be in the same corridor as before.”

“Are we?”

“I’m not sure the walls had this stuff before. But the wind... I felt wind when I watched the Investigator. If there’s wind now, we’re near the Investigator.”

Selina nodded, dull and wary, and waited for more.

“Remember I altered the corridor with magic?”

“I remember.”

“While you carried me, I pressed both walls inward, like a vice. If this were the same corridor, we’d hit that conjured wall before we felt any wind. But there’s nothing here.”

“When the Dark Realm finishes building, you can’t change it.”

“Natural or man-made?” Hedi’s voice skimmed the surface, light as a leaf on water. “Those rules you heard—do they bind nature only, or everything?”

“I... I’m just a trainee Investigator!”

“Hmph—knew it.”

“It’s definitely man-made!” Selina blurted, stubborn as a spark. “If you can reshape a wall with magic, that proves a person can change it.”

“Then there really is a third party inside the Dark Realm.”

“Who?”

“A forced-open Dark Realm can only be closed from within. Cross the Investigators off. That leaves your sister.”

“Why would my sister do that?”

“How would I know? I’m not a Professor of behavioral psychology.”

“You said someone controlled the cockroaches earlier. Did my sister make those Investigators—”

Hedi squeezed Selina’s hand harder, a firm knot of warmth that shut her up and soothed her in the same breath. “Don’t jump to ghosts.”

“If we exclude the Investigators, only my sister’s left.”

“Others could’ve entered the Dark Realm too. The guard said more guards tried to shut it.”

“They all tried to close it. Only my sister’s motive stays dark.”

Hedi said nothing. She lifted her arm and touched Selina’s forehead, smooth as silk. Her fingers slid to the brow bone, tracing the ridge like reading a map in the dark. She drew slow circles over Selina’s eyes, then bent her forefinger and scraped gently down the straight bridge of her nose.

“Professor...”

“No use?”

Selina shook her head. “I feel a little better.”

“I’m bad at comfort. I was just copying you.”

“But I massaged the head.”

“Sorry I’m short.”

“No, no. I’m happy you tried.”

Hedi tucked her hand back into her pocket, the gesture neat as a folded note. Words like that usually came with a turn.

“But I still can’t name a third party besides your sister.”

“Do you trust your sister?”

“I don’t know.” Selina’s gaze dipped like a curtain. “The sister in my memory is gentle and warm, an ideal—beautiful and tender.”

“Then you should trust her.”

“But the real one was vain, quick-tempered, and selfish to a fault.”

Silence wrapped Hedi like a shawl.

“She was my only family. After I lost her, I buried the parts that hurt me, like bones under snow, and kept only a spotless, forever-pretty image. Looking back, I never accepted her leaving. I chased the sister who lived only in honeyed memory, living that way day after day.”

“On the wall that day, when I told you, ‘I’m sorry for the people of Shattered City, but I want my sister more,’ I was saying it to myself. It was a shield you clutch after a loss. She forced the Dark Realm open. Tens of thousands were infected. That’s a far cry from the saint I kept in my mind.”

“But I still chased the gentle sister and filtered out what I saw, like fog over a mirror. Only now do I feel it for real—the sister with that nature never existed, and never will.”

Selina smiled with a bitter curve, like biting into green fruit. “I have the power to decide how I’ll remember another person... I have... the same selfish flaw as my sister.”

“That’s not it.” Hedi shook her head, the motion slight as a leaf. “The fact you can reflect proves you and she aren’t the same.”

“I’m just bowing to a truth I can’t dodge.”

“That choice—to decide how to remember someone—isn’t yours alone. Everyone’s built that way. When family die or leave, we keep the bright side and cast off the shadow. That’s human.”

Hedi thought, her thumb roaming the pocket watch in her coat like a rosary. “People need a way to carry pain and grief, and still walk forward. By softening memories of the dead, they keep a thread of feeling, and draw comfort from it.”

“Do you have someone you softened, Professor?”

“Not quite family—let’s say there wasn’t that thicker-than-water bond.”

“I thought it was just me. So you do it too.”

“You nineteen-year-old brat, you think you’re special? Out of the Empire’s millions, we’re ordinary.”

Selina gave a shy smile and hugged Hedi, arms like a blanket in the cold. “It sounds bad, but I’m glad I entered the Dark Realm with you.”

“You’ve been the one comforting me. It’s nice to switch, once in a while.”

“A mature big sister, right?”

“That’s enough. You trying to choke me?”

“Let me hold you a little longer.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Hedi wriggled free and took Selina’s hand again, leading her deeper, like a lantern pulling a traveler onward.

The darkness around them felt solid, a padded wall of night pressing in. Only the light spell trembled above them like a wavering moth, barely carving a few feet of pale path.

A cool wind rushed their faces with a musty reek, like a cellar unsealed.

Moss smeared the walls in a sickly green, like scar-latticed skin on a long-ill patient.