The world inside the Dark Realm shifted, like a stage swapping sets between breaths.

Hedi went briefly blind; panic surged first, then a dream opened—her vision washed to white, then bled back in soft color.

The grassland stopped obeying physics. It lifted like thin smoke from a dying hearth, streamlining upward to the rim of the sky. Aloft, it congealed, becoming thick, heaving stormclouds; in a heartbeat, those layered mountains melted into fine rain, falling from ten thousand feet to return to the earth.

“We need to work together, Melvina.”

Hedi turned her gaze to Evelyn.

Pain cut first. Evelyn clutched her bandaged right arm; her face went plaster-pale, like the dust on an old wall. Her brows should have curved like crescent moons; now pain dragged them inward, twisted, unsymmetrical, pulling toward each other into a hard, inverted V.

“You don’t look well.”

“Old injury…” Evelyn’s voice thinned. The sky was iron-dark; she felt she stood on air and nothing. “Olivia’s attacks can’t be blocked.”

“I don’t want to work with you. You’re planning something.”

“Right. I’m going to drag Olivia out. But first, I intend to stay alive.”

“You’re still that calm,” Hedi said, a touch of regret. “Aside from that one slap, I’ve never seen you truly angry.”

“You don’t get to be Vice Dean by having a temper.”

“What about the other Investigators?”

“While they throw their lives away, I’ll head for the Dark Realm’s core. Olivia will be there.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Drop it. You can only rely on me. Standard magic won’t work here.”

Hedi let the threat settle, then answered, flat. “True…”

“I can use Dark Magic too, but it burns my own emotions.”

“Your emotions?”

“You’d let me resonate with yours?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

Evelyn buckled to one knee; each deep, rushed breath rattled like a bell in her body. “We’re short on time.” She closed her eyes, as if reading the storm inching closer. “Twenty Investigators came in. It looks like a lot. It’s actually a box of glassware.”

“When will you start seeing them as people?”

“Mind your emotions.”

Silence first. Hedi combed her tangled hair with quiet fingers, studied the fraying situation, and weighed Dark Magic: Stratford hadn’t used others’ emotional resonance to bolster power. Was she afraid her true intent would show? Or had she planned from the start to burn her own feelings?

To resonate with Stratford would put me under her thumb.

Lucky for me, she only knows I’m good at standard magic. She thinks I know nothing else. But I’ve lasted in the Dark Realm this long with no auxiliary crystal; my mental strength is already exposed.

Stratford can likely infer I wield Sacred Magic.

At the crucial moment, I’ll use Dark Magic.

“That direction,” Hedi lifted her wrist and pointed at a dull corner of the grassland, “there should be a door.”

“A door that leads underground,” Evelyn said.

“You know it?”

“I’ve been here once.”

“So it was you who opened the Dark Realm?”

“Don’t guess by gut. I can’t come in after the Dark Realm gets forced open?”

“You talked with Olivia. You two discussed experiments on mental force.”

Evelyn went quiet, then answered with a voice that felt like it drifted down a telephone line. “I’ve discussed mental force with a lot of people.”

“You didn’t deny it.”

“Why should I? And don’t you think the timing’s off? If I really opened the Dark Realm, not a single Investigator or guard stationed here would report it?”

True enough.

When Hedi first came to town, the guard told her plainly: the person who opened the Dark Realm was a woman. Considering Stratford’s status as Vice Dean, if it were her, everyone would notice. A guard wouldn’t keep quiet; that logic doesn’t hold.

A forgetfulness draught?

No. If they drank one, the guards couldn’t still remember it was a woman.

“Stop chewing on it,” Evelyn said, staggering toward a door that stood in the grass like a lone slate. “Save your strength for escaping.”

“Right. I was forced into this mess anyway. Missing information is only natural.”

“You still want to play detective?”

“Smart people will risk everything to crack a code,” Hedi murmured to herself. “But I’m not that kind of smart.”

The grassland changed in a blink.

Green at her ankles browned, then withered, and the world became a boundless steppe of pale dust. Every direction was yellow-white land without end.

Everything lay under a wan, austere sky. Rainclouds dragged along the horizon like bruises, giving the place a haunted chill. No water moved here. No life stirred. Only the flicker of mirage and the breath of rising mist.

After about half an hour, a dim figure slid into the edge of sight, lean like a man showing off strength. Hedi closed in. It was a stone door—its face bristled with dense thorns.

“Nothing crashed into us,” Hedi muttered. “Motion didn’t trigger the cockroaches. The door was here regardless.”

“The cockroaches are all under Olivia’s control,” Evelyn said. “She doesn’t care about us. Twenty consumables are marching at the core.”

“What’s their goal?”

“The Dormant Core.” Evelyn pushed magic; external force shook the stone. The door gave. “We need to move faster and reach the core before those consumables all die.”

“Say it after me: Investigator.”

Evelyn didn’t answer. She stepped through first.

Hedi followed, a quiet bruise in her chest.

The passage was still black as a bottomless well.

Tap.

Tap tap.

Then a quick staccato of tap-tap-tap echoed through the hollow corridor.

Hedi listened, alert. Soon, moss clinging to the walls lit with a strange green glow. The glow moved like it was alive, running along cracks in the stone, like fireflies in night, trailing tiny threads of light.

“This will give us light,” Evelyn said, stopping her tapping. “Stay sharp. The cockroaches can swarm at any time.”

“So that’s your trick.”

“You didn’t have this when you came in?”

“No.”

“Walking blind—bold.”

Hedi kept her silence. She and Selina had fled into the passage once, guided only by the glow of Sacred Magic. She hadn’t expected the moss to light the way.

She noted the vibrant green in this buried world and felt a flicker of wonder, but let it pass.

“Go straight down the passage,” Evelyn said. “That’s the Dark Realm’s core. There’s another door there.”

“I know.”

“You came out that way. It’s the only exit.”

Hedi let out a slow breath. “If we meet Olivia, are you going to fight her?”

“We’ll see when we get there.”

“You planning to ditch me—the one who can’t use magic?”

“I’m wondering—” Evelyn stopped, turned her face to Hedi, “under what pressure you’ll use Sacred Magic.”

“So you did guess.”

“Test results said so. Your mental force was drained too far in the Dark Realm. You nearly died.”

Hedi slipped both hands into her pockets.

“Given where we are,” Evelyn went on, “you’re not wearing an auxiliary crystal, yet you’re stable—”

“Sacred Magic overuses mental force,” Hedi said, thoughtful. “That’s deadly here.”

“But I need your Sacred Magic to help me subdue Olivia.”

“And then kick me aside when I’m weak?”

Evelyn shook her head, expression flat. “It’s the only way both of us walk out.”