Hedi lifted her other hand and pried Selina’s mouth open with care, like easing a clamped shell with a fingertip so light it wouldn’t bruise a petal.

Selina wore a blank, adorable look, yet she bit down hard on Hedi’s index finger. Her canines locked like saw teeth in oak—once they set, they held. It didn’t crack bone or break skin, but it made escape feel like dragging a hook through stubborn wood grain.

Even so, the bite wasn’t pure brute force. It sometimes softened, teasing Hedi to pull away. Then, in the next beat, she tuned the pressure like a precision punch press—teeth as hammer, knuckle as anvil—never letting Hedi slip free.

Hedi rode the tiny shivers inside her fingertip. Selina’s tongue slid under the pad like a wet, lively little fish. Hedi tried to draw her arm back, to rescue the finger from that cage of teeth. Selina’s answer flicked like a lizard’s severed tail, impossible resilience, matching Hedi strength for strength.

“So ugly,” Hedi sighed, giving up with a wry face. “What girl likes biting fingers?”

Selina kept the finger in her mouth; lips and tongue bound together, her words fogged and thick.

“I’ll bite.”

“Ugly as sin.”

“You hit me first!”

“I’ll hit,” Hedi said, and she tapped Selina’s cheek again. At once, she felt the bite force change, like a spring tightening under cloth. “Keep biting and it’ll snap.”

The Holy Maiden watched the strange tangle and smiled, serene as someone standing on a windy ridge, looking out across blue distance.

“What’s funny?” Hedi cast her a sideways glance. “My finger’s already… gone numb…”

“Human comedy.”

“Easy to say when you’re outside it.”

“Thank you,” the Holy Maiden said, measuring her words like laying stones in a stream. “Your little clash eased my anxiety and helped me lineup some threads.”

“Adult women bite at, what, twenty-two to forty-five pounds?” Hedi joked, tossing the number like a pebble.

The Holy Maiden ignored it and reasoned, voice steady as lamplight. “Near dawn, this lady drank high-end wine. Most likely not alone, but invited to drink with someone. Yet the Burning Tavern was dim as embers. No one noticed the shadow who shared her cup.”

She paused, then continued, weighty and calm. “Weak light isn’t a good excuse. Human vision adapts, like eyes learning moonlight. Given time, we can still catch outlines, still see the drift of a body in gloom.”

“Great analysis. You could be a detective.”

“I only collected what the police said,” the Holy Maiden replied, hands behind her back, a smile that hooked the heart like a silk thread. “I want your take.”

Hedi dropped the thought of pulling her finger free—anyway, it didn’t hurt much. “In a tavern with a little light left, people can still catch the presence of someone at the next table. At least, they’d sense someone interacting with the missing woman. Unless it steps outside normal visual physiology—deliberately blurring onlookers’ sight, making the drinker slip like fog through a crowd of eyes.”

“Magic?”

“Magic can’t do true invisibility. It scrambles the visual nerves, carves blind zones. Simple terms: I can make you not see me. But this little one, biting my finger, still locks me easy, like a compass on north.”

“Because she’s biting your finger.”

Hedi raised Selina’s face gently and looked at the finger inside her mouth. She spoke like using a classroom prop. “Treat this finger as other people’s gaze. Then you’ll get it. Magic’s invisibility only slips into certain people’s blind spots. Others are like this clamped finger—no matter what, they still see.”

“Understood, but—” the Holy Maiden hadn’t expected Hedi to use Selina as a teaching tool. “Doesn’t it hurt? She’s been biting forever.”

“I used to bite her,” Hedi said, half sigh, half laugh. “Ouch. She learned it.”

“Feels like you spoil her.”

“What else? You want her to stage a three-act tantrum in the Sacred Cathedral—crying, raging, and threatening a noose?”

The Holy Maiden shook her head, face shifting with the imagined scene, her tone lifted in playful exaggeration. “Let’s not bring trouble here.”

“Or leave you the mess to clean.”

“We return, and trouble blooms at once.”

Hedi went quiet, silence settling like dusk in a courtyard.

To tame the flyaway at her temple, she’d fixed a small fish-shaped silver pin. Her clothes were simple: a white undershirt and a curve-hugging black habit, no ornaments. Yet on Hedi, they carried a quiet elegance, like ink finding repose on white paper.

By rights, her short height should make any outfit read as cute. But when Hedi folded into silence, a different air peeled her from everyday charm, and a scholar’s reserve flowed in—like a small bridge over a stream, changing the accord between her and the cloth without a sound.

“Who told you to write me?” Hedi turned the point toward the Holy Maiden.

“It was my fault.”

“And you won’t mention being a week late…”

“I didn’t want to fight you.”

“Then you shouldn’t bring it up.”

The Holy Maiden looked down at the empty patch by her feet. “I once thought you were heartless over this. But after we talked, being a week late and still choosing to come back proves you care about this place.”

“Really?”

“You just can’t digest the knot tied by Dark Magic and the rules of the Sacred Cathedral.”

“What can I say? I’m a sinner.”

“Even if you run yourself down, you’re not heartless. We judge deeds, not hearts.”

“Choosing to come back is because I know my own heartlessness.”

Hedi said it, then smiled at herself, brittle as frost on glass.

I’ve wrecked others, deeply—deeper than I can feel—like a crack creeping under black water.

I should learn my lesson.

Yet what I truly grasp is one bare fact: at the core, I’m the villain.

I’ve never planned harm, but motives are mist; outcomes are stone.

In the right weather, I turn selfish and cruel, a blade hidden in velvet.

Even if the Sacred Cathedral forbids Dark Magic. Even if I drop Selina without a word.

For choices whose fallout I can foresee, I find polished reasons and walk on, step by step into fog.

Studying Dark Magic is passion for discovery.

The academy calls; I must go back.

The ones who warned me—I would hurt them, irreparably and decisively, like cutting a tether and watching a boat drift toward cold current.

I’m that person. Before, and now.

New world, new sky, and I fall into old tracks like wheels in ruts.

I can’t become someone new. Wherever I stand, new rooms feel like old streets; I repeat the same mistakes, carve the same wounds, then drown in guilt that stings like salt on raw skin.

Thinking so, my heart dimmed. I spoke, the words dropping like a stone into still water. “There’s a heartlessness born in me.”