“‘Ensure you’ve left the Dark Realm’—so the subtext is I’m still trapped in it?!”

Hedi reeled as if thunder ripped a clear sky.

Her brows pinched inward, a tiny river rune forming. She scanned the buildings, hunting for painted lies in real stone. The cold wind brushed her face; the air in her lungs said escape was real.

“This is the living world,” Evelyn said, calm as still water. “You did leave the Dark Realm.”

“If that’s true, I don’t get what you meant.”

“Wanted to see your reaction... just teasing. Dark Realm Erosion damages the brain over time. I need to make sure you weren’t touched.”

“We went through hell and made it back alive. In your eyes, that’s a joke?”

“Every new Investigator who comes out reacts about the same.”

“Seasoned Investigator—no, Vice Dean.”

“Easy, Hedi.”

“Don’t cozy up. I just crawled out of the Dark Realm, and my nerves are raw.”

Evelyn’s eyes narrowed like a door shutting, yet showed no ripple. Her tone stayed level, like a bell held in hand. “Professor Hedi Melvina, if my joke offended you, allow me to apologize. By full check, I mean confirming your brains weren’t eroded by the Dark Realm. Nothing else.”

“Professor~” Selina leaned onto Hedi’s shoulder, her breath at Hedi’s ear like velvet curtains drawn to let dawn chase the room’s gloom.

Hedi turned, chin tucked, studying Selina’s face. That gentle call, in air tight as drawn bows, eased her frayed mood.

“I know.” She set her palm under Selina’s jaw, a steadying touch. “Now’s not the time to fight.”

“The Vice Dean mad is super scary!”

Hedi laughed and rubbed tired eyes, like kneading sand from the shore of sleep.

Sunset slid over the tombstone-still blocks without a sound.

She combed her messy hair with quick fingers. Everywhere she looked, rot and collapse pooled like shadowed water, and she felt herself part of it, a silhouette printed on the wall.

“When do we start?”

“Now, Melvina,” Evelyn came closer, footsteps a quiet drum. “But not here. The Dark Realm senses magic.”

Hedi pulled out her pocket watch to check the hour.

She flipped the lid. The crystal over the dial was cracked, the clockwork laid bare. Fine gears, springs, and tiny shafts should turn in ritual order, yet the hour hand froze at 15:30.

“Magic?”

“The Dark Realm can feel the mana when ordinary magic’s cast. It drinks that mana to hold its shape.”

Hedi thumbed the crown, listening to gear-scrape, spring-snap, metal chatter—a rough orchestra—as she replayed how the Dark Realm kept closing in.

So the first spell I cast, it already planned to pull me under.

“Where to?”

“The outpost,” Evelyn said, turning to direct the driver, her words like flags snapping. “You stay and keep shrinking the Dark Realm. I should’ve had you carry tools.”

The driver nodded and ran down the steps toward the parked car, legs like pistons in gray light.

Hedi watched the driver, then watched Evelyn climbing, breath growing deep and slow like tide. She tried to press down the ache, then murmured, lonely as wind in an empty hall, “Heh, ten-year-old watch. It had to break sooner or later.”

She let a long breath spill, feigning lightness, and stepped toward the outpost in the Shattered City.

Selina followed, voice warm as spring drizzle. “Were you trying to fix it?”

“Likely dropped and cracked. Could be deliberate.”

“Deliberate?”

“How to put it? Deliberate feels too pointed. Call it an emotional turn. We were high leaving the Dark Realm, then it tells you you celebrated too soon.” Hedi trimmed her phrasing like pruning thin twigs. “Hard to call it sad. It’s an old watch.”

Selina placed her hand on Hedi’s face, as if stitching the Professor inside the Dark Realm to the Professor outside, and the true self rose like ink through water:

If the watch had broken inside, the Professor would’ve sunk again, like when a puzzle won’t yield and she writhes on the floor in frustration. But now, outside the Dark Realm, the mana-born anxiety has thinned to nothing. In its place is a carefully reined calm, no ripples on her face.

Complex, yet cleanly divided, like light and shadow at noon.

Selina breathed, “Still, I feel you fumbling yet fighting to decode inside the Dark Realm felt more real.”

“Don’t tell me,” Hedi looked at her sidelong, like moon through blinds, “you’re profiling me.”

“Because you’re easy to read, Professor. Or maybe what we survived gave me space to know you.”

Hedi recalled Selina’s idea, tying comfort-seeking to age. She smiled, late to catch the thread. “Right. Like when I asked if the Dark Realm affects residents’ moods. I should’ve guessed you’d read psychology.”

“Before opening up to you, I was trapped between fake sister and real sister, so I hunted for answers in books.”

“So, field application? But don’t pry at others’ minds at will.” Hedi’s voice carried gentle steel. “A knife-clean verdict doesn’t sit easy.”

“Mm... I understand.”

They walked on toward the outpost, corpses of mutated residents lying like withered reeds along the road.

Selina thought of the guard and called to Evelyn ahead, her voice a pebble tossed into still water. “Vice Dean, did you see the guard?”

“The one who shot himself?”

“No way. I planned to go back to the institute and get him out.”

“He couldn’t leave. The guard’s back—”

Hedi started coughing hard, a storm in her chest, cutting the talk.

“His back?” Selina pressed, a hawk on the wind.

Evelyn seemed to catch something and tossed the answer to Hedi like a ball. “Melvina should know. Ask her.”

“What about his back?”

“I told you, right? His wounds were bad, especially the back.” Hedi pursed her lips, words weighing like stones. “He probably chose suicide so he wouldn’t drag us down.”

“That betrays our promise!”

“I told you inside the Dark Realm—”

“You said his wounds were severe, maybe fatal. But he chose suicide. Isn’t that strange?”

“What’s strange?”

“You said a guard like him would block Shattered City residents from going out. No way he’d let them, then shoot himself.”

“The outpost’s ahead,” Evelyn cut in again, voice a blade of wind. “I need to use magic to run a full scan on you.”

Hedi nodded, then soothed Selina with a palm’s warmth. “Don’t overthink it. Everyone has their way to live.”

Even so, suicide has reasons.

Everything has reasons.

Like choosing dinner in front of market lockers—this or that—small waves that stir the heart. Ending your life, the waves are storms.

Because of the tentacles on his back, he shot himself?

Hedi sank into a motive that looks simple but knots complex, like roots under stone. She knew nothing of the guard, so she only projected herself into his sight and analyzed.

A complete dead-end analysis, a path into fog.

“Where’s the guard’s body?”

Evelyn turned, her words steady as stacked bricks. “Buried properly. Those who fought monsters to the last shouldn’t rot in the street, their flesh picked by scavengers.”

“Well said.”

The guard’s acts and temper were shaped by childhood and the soil around him. Full empathy is a mirage on hot sand.

Suicide is a question with no answer.

Selina studied Hedi’s tightened cheeks. She’d seen that face inside the Dark Realm, the same as when Hedi pondered the notch on the axe—

But Hedi won’t guess the truth. This question has an answer, and it will lay bare the Peace Empire’s shadowed side.

Like a curtain slowly drawing back.