Hedi dropped the thought and folded three steps into two, slipping into the guard outpost like a gust through a narrow gate.

I wasn’t his confidant; his urge to die or to serve, his mind at that cliff edge—those answers were a thicket of thorns to a stranger like me.

“Afraid of pain, Melvina?”

“I’m fine.”

Evelyn had Hedi spread her hand, her voice cool as a scalpel. “I need a little blood.”

“Wait, needles make me woozy.”

“Relax. I’ll just steer the blood inside you with magic.”

“What?”

A prickle like cold needles crawled through her, and then she felt it: blood surging like a spring flood, each heartbeat a bellows pumping hard.

Her index finger turned searing hot, skin flushing an unnatural, fever-bright red like a coal under ashes.

The vessels swelled at once, like water valves bulging to the brink; every capillary writhed like trapped threads.

Then a sharp pain bloomed at the fingertip, a thorn bursting from a rosebud.

She watched the pad of her finger push upward, a swollen blister lifting, then split with a thin, bright seam.

Beads of blood seeped from the crack, one drop then two, red pearls floating in still air.

“Alright. I don’t need much. You can do healing magic, right?”

“You should’ve warned me first!”

“I did say I’d use magic for the exam.”

“Is this a full-body exam?”

“Blood mirrors most of the body, like a lake reflecting mountains.”

Hedi put her finger to her lips, licked the spill of iron, then let healing magic stitch the skin; her dislike climbed another rung, a cold step on a long stair.

“Your turn, Selina.”

“O-okay!”

Hedi watched Evelyn take Selina’s blood the same way—magic that seized another’s body like puppet-strings—Dark Magic from old books, yet smooth as a surgeon’s knife.

“What did you find? Don’t tell me you haven’t even started.”

“You guessed it. I need to take your blood and Selina’s back to the institute.”

Evelyn finished and sent Selina to the car, her tone like a command flag snapping, to fetch the test tubes from the trunk.

Selina nodded and went, quick as a sparrow.

The room held only Hedi and Evelyn now, quiet as a closed shrine.

“Test tubes? Sounds like they weren’t meant for us.”

“Sharp eye.” Evelyn turned and met Hedi’s gaze, her look flat as polished glass. “I planned to collect blood from the mutated residents, but making sure you aren’t under Dark Realm Erosion matters more than sampling the infected.”

“How long for results?”

“Once I have them, you’ll hear first.”

“What a textbook official answer.”

“Can’t help it. If I promise a time and something jams, the axe falls on me.”

“Mm… collecting the residents’ blood—what do you want to do?”

“Gauge how deep the mutation runs. Maybe there’s still a rope to pull them back.”

“I think that rope’s already snapped.”

Evelyn half-closed her eyes again, her thinking habit like shutters narrowing in sunlight. “Until the coffin’s nailed, everything stays possible.”

“I half-get it now—why you let the Dark Realm fester so long.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You’re secretly studying Shattered City’s residents. The king signs off on that?”

“He knows full well.”

“Abandoning a city never balances the scale.”

“No weighing and balancing—only turning harm into use.” Evelyn paused, then spoke like a judge delivering a line. “The disaster in Shattered City can’t be undone, but if we learn something of worth from it, those residents won’t have died for nothing.”

“Is that your thought, or the king’s?”

“Is there a problem?”

“A researcher pushing for it out of curiosity, versus a king decreeing it as inevitable—two very different beasts.”

“My personal suggestion.”

“If you learn nothing useful, you’ll meet the blade, yet one life against a city never evens out.”

“We already have a lead.” Evelyn’s voice was level water. “After you came out.”

“What do you mean?”

“The monsters in the Dark Realm didn’t block your way out—best proof there is.”

“Don’t assume we never met them.”

“You didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t have left the Dark Realm alive.”

“That your Investigator’s gut talking?”

“How do you think I became vice dean—by shooting the breeze?”

I felt a flick of heat from her, though her face stayed calm as stone. “Fine. Say we didn’t meet them. So what?”

“A brain cracked by the Dark Realm, yet human nature still clings like moss.”

“You can see it in the people of Shattered City. From start to finish, they only wanted out.”

“A warped body isn’t the same as a broken mind; monsters in the Dark Realm are blood-hungry beasts, and beasts don’t let you roam their turf.”

“Using just that is rash.”

Evelyn nodded, then asked soft as a knife. “Do you know who opened Shattered City’s Dark Realm?”

“Selina’s sister.”

“And who are the monsters inside it?”

“So blood ties made it spare us?”

“That’s the only reason that fits. This never happened before.”

Hedi stared at the outpost ceiling, its blankness like winter sky. “Even if your deduction holds, then what?”

“Then a brand-new magic steps into the world, cut clean from the three great magics.”

“Can that even be called magic?”

“Hard to believe? It needs no mana, no will, no storm of feeling. Only monsters in the Dark Realm can cast it, and this monster kept its humanity—”

“I still don’t buy it spared us on purpose. Those cockroaches rolled in like a tide, and every wave wanted us drowned.”

“Cockroaches?”

“Ah, I never told you. Inside, it’s packed with roaches, thick as rain.”

“Doesn’t that prove my deduction?”

I went quiet, thought snagging like a sleeve on a nail. Every time we met roaches, there was a ready ‘safe house’: a path through grassland, a room in a corridor, a hollow wall behind a skin of stone.

Slip into the hollow wall, the surface sealed like water turning still, and the wall blocked the roaches again.

Just like the stone door in the passage, tight as joined scales.

No. Not right.

It only wanted to herd us where it wished, like dogs circling sheep; if so, the “action triggers roaches” idea breaks, because it didn’t need our moves to steer the swarm.

Were we watched the whole time, a lantern eye on our necks, with roaches loosed at every perfect beat to nudge me into wrong turns?

If so, then smashing the wall drew roaches; the roaches slammed the door; the best play was to vanish into the hollow wall.

Kicking at the passage was the same—drive us back to the room, then into that hidden hollow wall with its secret vein.

But I didn’t oblige. I went for the door at the passage’s far end; a single door stood between us and the monster, yet it did nothing, waiting like a hunter at dusk for Selina’s crystal to pull us out.

No—still missing a thread. We need to go back in—

Smack!

Hedi slapped her own cheek hard, like snapping a fever, and cut the thoughts short.

“Why did you suddenly—”

“It’s nothing.”

“Then let’s return to our topic.”

“That topic makes me itch to crack a code. Let’s drop it.”

“In truth, I want that.” Evelyn’s tone turned solemn, like a bell struck once. “Will you help me study Shattered City’s Dark Realm?”

“Nope. Don’t want to. No interest.”

“This is the birth of a new magic. It might cure those mutated residents who wail in pain!”

“What’s that got to do with me?”