Life in the ward was flat as cooled tea, a day with no ripples on the water.

The air carried the sting of disinfectant, sharp as winter wind over bleached tiles.

Footsteps swelled and faded along the corridor, a tide drawing near then ebbing away.

From the next room came a string of sighs, beads clicking one by one on a prayer cord.

Liliana lay on the bed and listened, her calm stretched like silk over thorns.

The latest test spoke in cold ink: the dark lesion pooling in her left chest had worsened. The doctor said even ribs blurred from view. Ordinary people never see their own ribs; to Liliana, not only bones but everything was a pale, misted gray, a world drifting like fog on a river.

Hiss—

Someone outside drew a light breath; air slid along tongue and teeth into a near-inaudible hiss. Then they exhaled hard, a gust at the end of a long tunnel, thoughts carried on carbon dioxide dissolving like dust into the quiet.

“Good morning. You’re not still asleep?”

The visitor stepped in. He softened his voice, yet fatigue hung from it like damp cloth. Others might miss it; Liliana never did. When someone wrestles with matters or meets heavy turns, their thinking folds into their tone, a secret dye seeping through their words.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Liliana said, her mood steady as a stone in a stream.

“Mm… I’d like to discuss a few things…”

“The Institute?”

“That’s right.”

Liliana weighed the pattern of his steps, a drumbeat under rain. “I meant to keep you at the Institute. If you’ve come to me here, it must be serious.”

“Stratford is dead. Estimated a week ago.”

“Where?”

“From the Investigators’ last recorded sighting,” the man sat by her bed, “she likely met misfortune in the Dark Realm of Shattered City.”

“That was only a C-grade Dark Realm…”

“It’s now A-grade.”

“That is serious.”

“Since you were hospitalized, the Deputy Director has handled affairs. Her death threw the Institute into disorder, a flock scattered by sudden thunder.”

Liliana lifted the covers. With the visitor’s help she settled into the wheelchair, her breath gathering like a small flame. “Process my discharge.”

“You’re still healing. Tell me, and I’ll carry it like a courier.”

“No need. Go start the discharge.”

Only a week after Stratford’s death, the Institute came apart like frayed rope.

Voices braided and tangled, a skein pulled too hard.

Even the laboratory’s heavy soundproof doors couldn’t keep out the agitation inside. Muffled thunder leaked through the seams, clay-jug voices booming in the hall.

In the corridor, Investigators gathered in knots. Brows drew tight like tied knots. Many held tangled feelings toward the Deputy Director—annoyance twined with the truth that she remained a spine for the team.

The office block was louder still. Phones chimed like sparrows in flight; the clack of a difference engine’s keys ran like rain on a tin roof. Metal clinked and liquids shook in their flasks, a weighty rain cloud pressing low over everyone’s heads.

Then, silence fell in patches, one meadow after another whitening under frost.

Debate in the labs thinned first, threads loosening until speech dissolved into air. Tension behind the soundproof doors drained like air from a bell jar, leaving stillness ringing like glass.

In the corridor, the Investigators cut their talk short. A collective hush rose like mist. They straightened their stances and bowed, formal and upright, to Liliana in the wheelchair.

As she rolled on, the office block fell quiet in her wake. Phone bells ceased like birds alighting. Keys fell silent, their rhythm vanishing into cotton. The fine clinks of metal and the soft slosh of liquids faded step by step, until the final echo slipped into a room without sound.

Except the conference hall—

“Daniele. Daniele!” A man shook papers like a flag in wind. “Someone bring Daniele. I need to discuss the Dark Realm!”

Another man kept repeating, “Calm down,” trying to smooth the waters. His voice dropped like a pebble into deep sea—ripples rang and died, unable to steady the rising wave.

“We’ve argued for a week. If you want a wake for Stratford, you’re late!” A third voice joined, rough as a saw. “Daniele went to the hospital to fetch the Director. She’ll be back soon!”

“I didn’t expect—” At the doorway, Liliana’s voice cut clean as a blade through silk. “In just one week, you’ve unraveled this far.”

Eyes turned as one to the frail woman in the wheelchair. After a beat of hush, words burst like a broken dam. They poured out the full chain of problems Stratford’s passing had triggered, each person tumbling their worries, as if only by laying them before this center could they touch the true knot.

Liliana raised a hand for quiet, her palm steady as a fan in summer heat. “Start with the largest problem.”

“Shattered City’s Dark Realm!” The man shook his papers again, white wings flashing. “The Deputy Director’s fate proves it’s not a simple A-grade! It might be S—”

Another man cut in at once, sharp as a snapped string. “We haven’t raised any Dark Realm to S-grade for a long time. If one jumps from C at the start all the way to S, what does that mean? It shows we’ve lost effective oversight of that region. It’s an admission of failure in management.”

“You want to hide it? How? Stratford signed a research pact with the king on her own, to study magic inside the Dark Realm!”

“This kind of—”

He slammed the file onto the table, paper thudding like a drum. “I only found out when I inventoried Stratford’s research logs.”

“That woman was out of her mind!”

“That’s her way. She thinks she can carry the mountain alone!”

“Looks like the Deputy Director left us a pile of rotten rope,” Liliana said with a thin smile, cool breeze over hot coals. “Upgrade it to S-grade.”

“Are you serious?”

Liliana nodded, a small bell’s chime. “And we need a wide lockdown on Shattered City. Suspend trains to that station as well. We can’t deny Stratford’s strength. A Dark Realm that could end her deserves respect.”

“In that case, the nobles will jab our spines again!”

“Let them. It’ll give your back a straighter line; that’s a good thing.” Liliana tilted her head slightly and spoke to Daniele, who held the wheelchair’s handles like reins. “Please convert the files into Braille, and send them to my room together with Stratford’s research records from the last two years.”

Daniele hesitated, worry dimming like cloud-shadow. “Won’t that be too much?”

“I’ve lain in the hospital too long. I need a tangle of work to relight the fire.”

“I’ll deliver them later. I’ll bring a few Investigators to help sort.”

“Everyone,” Liliana said, adjusting her posture, though the world before her remained a foggy gray with figures like brushstrokes. “We must do all we can to keep the Dark Realm from threatening innocent lives. And we must restore the control that should be in our hands.”

“It’s not like we caused it,” someone murmured, the words a worm under a leaf.

Liliana dipped her chin with a half-smile and let Daniele wheel her from the hall.

Creak. Creak.

The wheelchair’s tires pressed the floor, a slow grind like millstones under grain.