Gurgle.

Dark Magic flowed like water, ink-dark and cold.

It trickled from Hedi’s fingertips, like night spilling from a spring. In a corridor lit by green phosphor, the black gleam cut like frost. The seams of her nails became tiny sluice gates, threading out silk-fine currents, a dark stream unraveling.

“Can it do that?” Evelyn blurted, shock pricking like ice. “I’ve never seen it.”

Her words fell, and the passage answered with a thunderclap. Stone walls cracked in webbed lines, a spider’s lattice exploding across rock. In a heartbeat, bedrock powdered like old bone, drowned beneath water bursting in shards.

Fear clenched Evelyn’s chest; she froze, eyes locked on the onrushing flood, a hawk facing the tide.

What surged now wasn’t a brook’s whisper or a creek’s murmur, but a core-deep torrent, as ruinous as mountains falling and seas heaving. Pressure pressed on her like a millstone; she shivered. Sweat beaded her palm like dew. Her fingers curled tight as hooked claws. The world seemed to still like winter air, while the flood—black as an abyss—kept its grim pace, swallowing light and breath, a night-tide that made terror bloom.

Rage, pain, resolve, the ache to know—they flared inside her like storm-fire. Evelyn lifted her arm and forged those feelings into a flight of arrowheads, then loosed them like rain lashed by gale.

The arrows struck like lightning, their shriek a knife through silk, and they punched into the water curtain. Impact boomed; the corridor quivered like a drum under hail.

“Looks huge, but actually—” Evelyn smiled, a moon-slim curve. “You don’t use Dark Magic much, do you?”

“You didn’t chant.”

“Because someone doesn’t deserve it.”

Hedi’s face stayed mirror-still; calm rippled like a quiet lake. By rights, that line should rile me, a coal kicked bright. She moved slow, like a newborn learning its limbs—curling fingers, clumsy but reaching.

Evelyn lifted her chin; mockery gleamed in her eyes like a thin blade. “Magic is a fine braid of energies. Your Dark Magic weave is tangled. You’re wasting emotion like water spilled on sand.”

“I was just wondering—after all that racket—where the cockroaches were.”

“So what if there are?”

“Roaches always show up far off. If Olivia truly counts me Selina’s friend, then those roaches should—” Hedi raised a hand, pointing at Evelyn. “—burst from your side.”

Evelyn turned to look behind. Only cool darkness pooled there, the night a still pond. She laughed softly—and a blow slammed her back like a hammer, cutting the laugh short and pitching her forward a step, a reed in sudden wind.

“Idiot,” Hedi said, hands tucked in pockets, voice flat as slate. “Even if Olivia sees me as Selina’s friend, she won’t help. She uses roaches to herd me, like dogs pushing sheep.”

“You could’ve killed me…”

“First, I’m a law-abiding, model citizen; sunlight on clean glass. Second, a quick death wouldn’t vent my anger; it’s steam with no whistle.”

“No more chances, Melvina.”

Hedi adjusted her stance with wary care, trimming her silhouette like a reed narrowing to survive a storm, shrinking the target her body offered.

She drew a deep breath, cooling lava into blade. Then she stoked her emotions again and hurled a fresh attack at Evelyn, a wave meeting a wave.

Two magics crashed and canceled, rain meeting dust. Their clash rippled into nothing, invisible rings fading like breath on glass.

Confusion needled Hedi, a thorn hidden in wool. Stratford’s skill with Dark Magic outstripped hers, yet real harm never landed; it was a sword that kept missing flesh.

“What are you afraid of?”

Evelyn shook her head, casual as a drifting cloud, a leaf shrugging off dew.

“I see.” Hedi narrowed her eyes and stroked her chin, slow as grinding stone. “You’re afraid of hitting the Dark Realm’s core.”

“Smart. If that thing breaks, the built world collapses like a house of cards in a gust.”

“Then it’s an endless fight, a winter that won’t thaw. We wait to see who drains their magic first.”

“Huh… you prime emotion with magic, then vent Dark Magic through emotion.” Evelyn snapped her fingers; a spinning black orb coalesced, a planet of ink mimicked in palm. “You’ve been fighting me like that all along. No wonder it’s chaos.”

“I’d rather be simple than become a creature without feelings, a hollow statue.”

“That’s your downfall.” Evelyn declared it like a judge dropping a gavel. She stretched her index finger and wrote in the air, strokes like wind in grass, each cut and lift paired with a low, rhythmic chant beating like a drum. Deep mist welled from her core, a night fog spilling from a ravine. “Some things are gained only by letting go, leaves freed from the branch.”

“Don’t force your survival code onto me—your winter isn’t my season.”

“Remembering it before you die isn’t the worst; it’s a final lantern.”

Hedi opened the door behind her with a click like a pebble in a stream. “Want to go down together?”

“Heh-heh, don’t make me laugh.” Evelyn drove the mist forward, a tide inching toward shore, and she eased closer to Hedi. “This magic isn’t the usual kind. It’s—”

“It’s just turning the formed into the formless, striking along the non-physical. It only hurts living things, a shadow biting blood.”

Hedi flicked her hand and cast a gale like a blade through butter, aiming to scatter the mist, a wind peeling fog off a lake. The fog didn’t scatter; it held like stone, an unseen wall that braced and denied the storm’s bite.

“Any other tricks?” Evelyn’s smile lifted, smug as a cat in sun. “I can wait till you run out.”

“As I thought, there’s a gorge between us in how we wield Dark Magic, a canyon cut by years.”

“Even if you can use three kinds of magic, you can’t master them all; three roads don’t make one summit!”

Hedi didn’t argue; she opened her palm, and the mist caught flame like thin paper meeting a match. The haze turned vivid in the fire, gaining body like clay hardening. Burning fog spread along invisible paths, threads crossing and twining till a complex spiderweb took shape, night lace hung in air. As the blaze grew, black ash fell from the emptiness, dripping like splashed ink, soft rain from a soot-black cloud.

“I recall someone said Sacred Magic consumes mental power. In here, that’s fatal—yet it did nothing. That’s bad piled on worse, a blizzard over frost.”

“Indeed, no effect.”

Evelyn angled her face, wearing a lazy, proud smile like moon over calm water. “Outside, I’m not certain I’d beat you. But…” She paused, a hush that promised a reveal, a door cracked on light. “In the Dark Realm, it’s different.”

“Stratford.”

“I won’t let you beg.”

“Didn’t you praise my acting?”

Evelyn went silent for a heartbeat, a shadow passing a window, then said, “Stalling won’t help. Even if those consumables arrive here, I’ll still kill you; the scythe won’t miss the wheat.”

“Ever since you learned I’m a half-blood, your emotions have spiked like a storm tide.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you still move now?” Hedi’s hands stayed in her pockets; her face was blank as stone, a mask without waves.