Hedi lifted her umbrella high and walked with Selina onto a slow, snow-blanketed slope.

As the ground rose, spruces thinned out, traded for low shrubs crawling like sleeping beasts. Streetlamps stood between them, casting a pale orange like banked coals.

Villas gave way to staggered terraces, layers marching clean to the vanishing point.

Chimneys exhaled thin white like breath on glass.

A sky the color of watered dye draped everything like a damp cloak.

“Good call on the umbrella!”

“I’m never wrong.”

Hedi said it with a bragging lilt, then tucked Selina’s frost-red hand into her own pocket, like sheltering a bird.

A few locals drifted down the street, unbothered by snow-mist seeping into their lungs like cold tea.

Houses, shops, inns, galleries, and restaurants lined both sides, shutters leaking warm buttery light like lantern honey. The street speakers poured slow classical music, a river of strings.

Close by, the sea heaved and fell, waves thudding the pier like a steady drum.

“We’re almost there. Are you tired?”

Hedi shook her head.

The narrow slope was long and steep, a white blade tilted against the wind.

Each step bit a print, then the wind licked it away in a breath.

The Dark Realm Research Institute stood at the end of the winding road.

Red brick and intricate iron latticework hit the eye first, then a chimney shouldering up like a dark mast.

Evelyn had a cigarette at her lip and her gaze on the sky, as if adrift in a memory without shore, not greeting arrivals.

“Deputy Director!”

Evelyn turned her head a fraction. Her eyes cut like a scalpel to Hedi’s face. “Tilberma. Isn’t it beautiful?” She tipped a nod to Selina’s greeting.

“The snow’s too heavy. You can’t see a thing.”

“Spoken like an outsider. People here love snow.”

Hedi bristled, a cat with its tail up. “Oh? You don’t look like you’re enjoying it.”

“What counts as enjoying snow?”

“No idea. I don’t like it.”

“Because snow isn’t why you came.”

“When I came, it wasn’t snowing. And no one ‘enjoys snow’ while walking. It’s like refusing an umbrella in rain and letting it soak you.”

“I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

“So you’re not enjoying the snow.”

“Snow and rain aren’t the same.”

“But both soak you.”

“You can’t conclude I’m not enjoying it from that.”

“Your hands are in your pockets. You’re underdressed—my guess. You’re thinking, using cold like needles on your brain.” Hedi slid the topic back. “If admiring nature costs you your health, better not to look.”

Evelyn pinched the cigarette dead with two fingers, like snuffing a firefly. “Actually, smoking isn’t allowed in the institute,” she said, each word placed.

“Then quit. It’s bad for my body. No idea how much you puffed between sentences.”

“Secondhand smoke is a chronic harm. You won’t see it at first. When you do, you’re already far gone.”

“Even chronic harm makes you cough sometimes.” Hedi’s face went taut. The subtext hit: Dark Realm Erosion, right?

“Small talk ends here, Melvina.”

“I was thinking the same.”

Hedi followed Evelyn in. The doors slid apart. Pressurized steam hissed, a white snake uncoiling.

The hall’s ceiling rose tall and wide, a stone sky.

All four walls—almost wall to wall—were draped with giant imperial maps, every point pinned, even the far, dust-blown corners not forgotten.

The floor was a patchwork of dark granite slabs, seams stitched with gleaming metal like rivers of mercury.

Solid heels clicked in the empty corridor, like a pickaxe biting rock.

Shadows lay sharp on the stone, inked mirrors.

“What were you talking about?” Selina whispered. “Snow, smoke, getting sick…”

“Didn’t get it?”

Selina nodded.

“The surface meaning. That’s all.”

“But it felt tense. Like, next second, you’d be pulling hair!”

Hedi let the image play.

At the snowy doors of the Dark Realm Research Institute, Evelyn closed in. Her wrist flipped. Fingers, quick as snakes, shot for Hedi’s bun. Hedi snapped up a guard, one hand on her hair, the other catching the wrist. They locked in the white hiss.

If it really went there, I’d probably get pinned and worked over. No training to speak of, and Evelyn’s taller by nature.

“Who would you help?” Hedi asked. “Picture me small, pitiful, helpless, pressed into the snow.”

“I wouldn’t help either. I’d stop you two.”

“The scene spirals. You must help one.”

“Do I have to?”

“Otherwise we’ll brawl without end, both down, both bleeding out.”

“Then… then I’d help you.”

Hedi nodded, satisfied.

Still, comparing a snow fight to that old trap—me and your mom both falling in the river—felt off. Stratford and I weigh very differently in Selina’s heart. No need to agonize.

“Right. Help me yank her hair!”

“I won’t pull the Deputy Director’s hair.”

Hedi laughed again at that, and the road-weariness and the needlepoint standoff at the door melted into a brighter ease.

“You’re thinking again, aren’t you?”

“I think all the time.”

Evelyn stopped suddenly, maybe catching the whispers. She pointed at Selina. “You stop here.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re the only one here. And I’m pointing at you.”

“Got it…”

“Keep walking, Melvina.”

Hedi went a few steps, then looked back at Selina planted there and smiled with a warmth you want to keep. A smile like finding a childhood toy in a long-sleeping drawer.

Selina caught it and smiled back.

They went on in silence for a stretch. Evelyn said, “Ahead is internal confidential. A junior Investigator can’t enter. You probably guessed that from the papers I gave you.”

“Human experiments?”

“Monster experiments.”

Hedi turned her head, taking in the corners. “How come I don’t see any Investigators?”

“They’re in another section. From the first hall, turn left and you’ll find them. We turned right, remember?”

“I thought monsters would be kept in a basement.”

“We considered it, but it feels like secret torture,” Evelyn said, weighing each word. “That goes against why the institute contains them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Obedient monsters and disobedient monsters. Does that make sense?”

Hedi kept silent. Tch. Still torture.

“What do you want me to see?”

Evelyn stopped at a narrow iron door at the end of the hall and keyed in a long code. “Monsters’ Dark Realm Magic. As a Professor of magic studies, you’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?”

“That’s not why I came.”

“It’s a necessary step to get what you want.”

“Oh, now I’m thrilled. Dark Realm Magic!”

Evelyn said nothing, fingers tapping the code like rain.