Inside the brick-walled drying shed at the rear of the castle courtyard, the oppressive, desert-like heat felt like a bizarre oasis carved out of the frozen white hell that Border Town had become.
Standing in the center of the stone-flagged room, seventeen-year-old Anna let out a long, slow breath through her parted lips. At her silent mental command, the thick, intensely concentrated ribbon of orange-red fire that had been flowing steadily from her outstretched palms for the past two hours obeyed instantly—retracting inch by inch through the dry air until the last spark vanished cleanly into her calloused fingertips.
Directly in front of her on the heavy iron roasting tables, another five-hundred-pound batch of hydraulic cement clinker and a secondary tray of corned black powder cakes had been completely dehydrated and refined to perfection.
The work was physically grueling, requiring hours of unblinking concentration to keep the ambient temperature inside the brick chamber locked at an exact, uniform degree so the moisture evaporated without igniting the sulfur. Yet to Anna, the exhaustion aching in her shoulders was a small price to pay. Every sack of gray powder she baked and every tray of ammunition she dried was another brick standing between Prince Roland's dream and the ravenous monsters howling in the snow outside.
Raising the back of her linen sleeve, Anna wiped a smudge of black coal soot from her cheek and walked over to the small wooden workbench in the corner.
Resting on the planks beside an extinguished oil lamp were two thick, leather-bound notebooks that Prince Roland had personally written out and lent to her three days ago. Filled from margin to margin with Cheng Yan's neat charcoal diagrams and equations, the first volume detailed the physical laws of Thermal Expansion and Gas Pressure, while the second covered the foundational principles of Materials Chemistry and Atomic Bonds.
Under normal circumstances, those pages were Anna's greatest treasure—concepts so vast and fascinating that she would stay awake reading them by candlelight until her eyes burned.
Tonight, however, as she picked up the two heavy notebooks and hugged them against her chest, not even the Prince's atomic diagrams could keep her thoughts in check.
Her mind was stubbornly, relentlessly fixated on one unsolved equation: Count Arthur.
Wrapping her thick wool winter cloak around her shoulders, Anna unlatched the shed door, hurried across the snow-covered courtyard, and stepped inside the quiet, torch-lit warmth of the main castle keep. As her boots echoed softly down the stone corridor leading toward the western residential wing, her brow knitted together in an expression of deep, analytical perplexity.
The puzzle had begun two nights ago, right after the first light snowfall had dusted the town.
Around two o'clock in the morning, after spending three straight hours hunched over her desk memorizing Roland's notes on carbon-steel alloys, Anna's eyes had been stinging from the tallow smoke. Hoping to wake up her tired brain before finishing the last chapter, she had walked over to her bedroom window and pushed the wooden shutters open an inch to breathe in the crisp, freezing night air.
As she had stood there looking up at the clear, star-filled sky above the eastern wing, a dark silhouette had suddenly cut straight across the silver glow of the moon.
It hadn't been a night owl, and it certainly hadn't been a winged demonic beast.
It had been the unmistakable figure of a tall man wearing a knee-length dark wool overcoat, gliding horizontally through the empty air five meters above the slanted tile roofs with terrifying, frictionless stability. He hadn't flapped his arms, he hadn't used a rope, and he hadn't made a single sound as the midnight wind billowed his cloak behind him.
In the single second before the figure cleared the outer rampart and sped toward the Concealing Forest, the pale moonlight had caught the sharp, composed profile of his face.
Anna had recognized Arthur immediately.
Acting on pure survival instinct learned from years of hiding in the slums, she had pulled her head back into the shadow of her curtains without making a sound—yet her scientific mind had been spinning at a frantic speed ever since.
How is that physically possible? Anna asked herself for the hundredth time as she climbed the low stone steps toward the ground-floor gallery, her blue eyes fixed on the flagstones in front of her boots. In all of Graycastle—and across the entire continent—only women awaken a Magic Core and suffer the Demonic Bite. That is a fundamental biological rule that even Miss Nightingale confirmed. Could Sir Arthur be a male witch? Or does the winter miasma in the distant Kingdom of Dawn mutate men instead of women?
The more she cross-referenced the data she had observed over the past month, the less sense the two foreign advisors made.
First, there was Commander William. Earlier that very morning, during the midday meal in the dining hall, Nightingale had quietly materialized beside Roland's chair to confirm the wild rumors circulating among the militia: William had jumped off a twelve-foot concrete wall alone and pulverized the skulls of two wolf-sized demonic foxes with nothing but an iron shield and his bare right fist. Even according to Roland's lessons on muscle leverage and bone density, no mortal human skeleton could generate that kind of kinetic force without shattering.
And then there was Arthur.
Not only could the quiet, dark-eyed strategist fly across the rooftops at two in the morning like a ghost, but Anna had also noticed something deeply peculiar up at the North Slope Mine earlier that afternoon. Right after Arthur had saved the veteran miner Titus from the scalding steam vent and suspended the careless operator Nils, Roland had sent Anna up the mountain to help weld a curved, downward-angled iron baffle over the exhaust pipe so such an accident could never happen again.
When Anna had arrived at the engine house, however, she had found the two-hundred-pound cast-iron exhaust tube already unbolted, bent thirty degrees downward into the frozen drainage ditch, and re-seated into its brackets—even though all the miners had been inside the soup huts and Arthur had been standing alone beside the boiler with spotless gloves.
So completely immersed was Anna in her mental calculations that she failed to pay attention to the sharp, ninety-degree blind corner where the western hallway met the main staircase.
Rounding the stone pillar with her chin tucked down against her chest and her arms full of heavy leather-bound notebooks, she took one brisk step forward—
Thud!
Her forehead and left shoulder collided squarely with something tall, warm, and solid as an oak pillar walking down from the stairs.
The unexpected impact threw the lightweight seventeen-year-old completely off balance. Letting out a small, startled gasp, Anna felt the smooth leather covers of Roland's notebooks slip right out of her soot-stained fingers as her boot heel caught on the uneven flagstone and her back tipped sharply toward the hard stone floor.
Instinctively, she braced her elbows for the painful crack of her spine hitting the rock.
The impact never came.
Three inches before her shoulder blades could strike the freezing flagstones, the empty air behind her back suddenly condensed into a broad, invisible cushion that felt remarkably like a hammock woven from warm velvet.
Her backward fall stopped smoothly in midair, with zero whiplash to her neck. For half a heartbeat, Anna hung suspended at a forty-five-degree angle above the floor before that unseen, phantom cradle gently tilted her upright and set the soles of her boots back down onto the stones without a sound.
Even more tellingly, the two heavy chemistry notebooks hadn't hit the floor either.
Two feet in front of her chest, suspended in the dim orange light of the wall torches, both thick volumes hung completely motionless in empty space—hovering at waist height as if resting on an invisible glass shelf, with not a single parchment page wrinkled.
Anna's heart gave a fast, hard thump against her ribs.
Reaching out with both hands, she plucked the floating notebooks out of the air and hugged them tightly against her wool dress, raising her head to look straight up into the dark, composed eyes of the man she had just collided with.
It was Arthur.
Having just finished his evening logistics review in Roland's third-floor study, the twenty-four-year-old strategist was on his way back toward the eastern wing.
For a fraction of a second, Arthur had reacted on pure reflex—his newly upgraded Level 10 Telekinesis automatically catching the falling girl and her books before his conscious mind had even registered rounding the corner.
Yet this casual, effortless display of invisible force—accompanied by zero ambient glow from a witch's Magic Core—was the final piece of empirical proof Anna needed.
Unlike the frightened serfs of Border Town or the scheming nobles of King's City, Anna didn't know how to beat around the bush, and she didn't waste time on polite, roundabout games. She trusted Prince Roland with her life, and since Roland trusted Arthur as his right hand, she went straight to the heart of the matter.
— "Sir Arthur," — Anna said, straightening her small shoulders as her crystal-clear blue eyes locked onto his face, shining with an intense, unblinking scientific curiosity. — "How were you flying above the castle roofs two nights ago?"
Arthur, who had already opened his mouth to offer a polite apology for bumping into her and wish her a good night, paused mid-breath.
For two seconds, the torch-lit corridor was completely silent.
Arthur didn't look panicked, nor did his cold, analytical mask slip into hostility at having his secret nocturnal flight exposed. On the contrary, as he looked down at the soot-smudged teenage girl staring back at him without a trace of fear, one of his dark eyebrows rose slightly, and a genuine, appreciative smile curved across his lips.
Out of everyone in Graycastle, he had always respected Anna's razor-sharp, pragmatic mind the most.
— "You have remarkably sharp night vision, Miss Anna. Here I thought the entire castle was fast asleep when I went out for some fresh air," — Arthur replied smoothly, his baritone voice calm and relaxed as he leaned one shoulder casually against the stone wall of the corridor. — "And I must say, I greatly appreciate your directness. Nine out of ten people in this kingdom would have either run to a priest screaming about demons, or spent three weeks concocting wild conspiracy theories behind my back."
— "His Highness taught me that everything in this world operates according to natural laws, not superstitions," — Anna answered firmly, taking half a step closer as she hugged the chemistry notebooks. — "When I watched you from my window, and again just now when you caught me before I hit the floor, I paid close attention to the air around you. Whenever Miss Nightingale, Nana, or I use our abilities, our Magic Cores emit a distinct radiation signature that another witch can feel at close range. You don't have that signature, Sir Arthur. You haven't suffered the Demonic Bite, and you are a man. Yet you just suspended two heavy books in midair without touching them. How?"
Arthur glanced casually down both ends of the stone hallway.
He didn't actually need to use his eyes; with his Magic Power: 10 [Telekinesis] passively extending an invisible sensory net a hundred paces in every direction through the castle walls, he could feel every heartbeat and air current on the ground floor. Carter's night guards were fifty yards away by the front portcullis, and Nightingale's familiar spatial distortion was currently two floors up, resting in her room near Roland's tower.
They were completely alone.
More importantly, Arthur knew that after Prince Roland himself, the seventeen-year-old girl standing in front of him was the single most indispensable pillar of the industrial civilization they were building. Without Anna's evolving fire and her ability to grasp modern physics, their blueprints were just ink on dead sheepskin.
— "To answer your question, Anna, I don't have a witch's Magic Core because my power doesn't originate from winter miasma," — Arthur said, lowering his voice to a quiet, conversational murmur as he turned his head toward the iron wall sconce three feet beside them.
Without lifting a finger from the pockets of his dark-gray wool tunic, Arthur narrowed his eyes slightly and projected a microscopic lattice of telekinetic pressure directly around the burning tallow torch.
Instantly, the flickering orange-yellow flame froze solid.
It didn't go out, and it didn't dim. Despite the cold draft blowing down the stairwell, the tongues of fire simply stopped dancing—hanging locked in a static, jagged crown like a sculpture carved out of glowing amber glass, while the rising ribbon of black smoke above it halted in midair.
Anna's blue eyes widened slightly, her breath catching in pure intellectual fascination as she leaned in to study the immobilized flame. As a fire witch who understood heat as the rapid vibration and collision of air molecules, watching someone clamp down on the air surrounding a fire so tightly that the flame's macroscopic shape couldn't even flicker sent a thrill straight down her spine.
— "What you are looking at does not come from an organ in my chest; it comes directly from my cerebral cortex—from pure mathematical will," — Arthur explained softly, watching the reflection of the frozen fire in her blue eyes. — "In the land where William and I come from, this capability has a specific name: Telekinesis. It is the direct manipulation of matter, kinetic vectors, and atmospheric pressure through thought alone."
— "Te-le-ki-ne-sis..." — Anna repeated the foreign syllables slowly, testing the weight and shape of the word on her tongue as if adding a new element to her chemistry notebook.
Looking up from the frozen torch to Arthur's calm face, her sharp mind immediately connected the dots across the entire board.
— "Does that mean you and Commander William possess a completely different system of abilities from the witches of Graycastle?" — Anna asked quietly. — "And is that connected to why the two of you already know the exact formulas and machines His Highness is trying to build before he even finishes drawing them?"
— "Prince Roland already knows the full truth of our origins, Anna, and after the conversation we had in his study yesterday, I see no reason to hide the mechanics from our chief engineer," — Arthur said, his tone taking on a quiet, respectful gravity that treated the seventeen-year-old girl not as a medieval subject, but as an equal colleague.
Stepping half a pace away from the wall, Arthur met her gaze evenly.
— "Before arriving in Border Town, William and I came from the exact same distant world that forged His Highness's mind," — Arthur revealed calmly. — "When we crossed over into this reality, we were granted a unique... adaptation tool to help us survive in a world governed by magic. Instead of awakening a witch's Magic Core, our bodies were linked to a progressive framework. William chose to invest his share into pushing his physical parameters—his muscle density, speed, and bone endurance—far beyond mortal limits. I chose to invest mine into expanding my mental capacity and this telekinetic field."
Arthur offered her a small, warm smile that rarely reached his eyes when dealing with anyone else in the castle.
— "More than physical power, however, William and I brought with us a detailed record of how the history of this continent was supposed to unfold—including the struggles of Prince Roland, and your own story, Anna," — Arthur added gently. — "Do you remember that afternoon a month ago on the gallows in the town square, when you looked down into the mud and saw the two of us standing in the front row in strange clothes?"
Anna nodded slowly, the memory of that terrifying gray afternoon still etched into her mind. — "I remember. Everyone else in the square was screaming for the executioner to pull the lever, while the two of you were just watching the platform in silence."
— "We weren't watching the spectacle; we were counting down the seconds," — Arthur said quietly. — "We came to that square with a single objective: if Prince Roland had arrived three seconds too late, or if the executioner had pulled that iron lever before the guards stepped in, William and I were going to tear that wooden platform down ourselves and pull you out of there alive."
For a long moment, Anna didn't say a word.
She simply stared up at the black-haired strategist, feeling a sudden, profound wave of warmth spread through her chest.
Two weeks ago in the dining hall, she had already realized that Roland, Arthur, and William were cut from the same mysterious cloth—three men who spoke of atoms, kinetic energy, and steam engines as if reading from the same invisible book. Learning that Arthur and William had come from Roland's home world, and that they had been ready to fight an entire town square for her life before she even knew their names, didn't frighten her in the slightest.
On the contrary, it made the cold, hostile world outside the castle walls feel infinitely smaller—and made her feel safer than she had ever felt since the day her fire first awakened.
With a tiny mental snap, Arthur released the pressure around the wall sconce, allowing the orange torch flame to resume its lively, crackling dance in the draft.
— "Wait a second," — Anna blinked, her analytical curiosity resurfacing immediately as she processed everything he had just told her. — "You said you and Commander William received the same adaptation framework. If your magic is Telekinesis, and Commander William used his share to enhance his physical body... doesn't that mean he also possesses a specific magical ability underneath his strength? What is Commander William's true magic?"
Arthur let out a quiet, genuine chuckle, shaking his head in admiration.
— "As expected of our lead researcher—you didn't miss a single clause in that explanation," — Arthur smiled. — "Yes, William awakened a distinct spatial capability alongside his physical stats. However, out of respect for my partner, I can't give away his trump card without his permission. Ask him yourself tomorrow in the yard; knowing Will, he'll probably be thrilled to show off for you as long as Nightingale isn't looking."
— "And your Telekinesis," — Anna continued, a small, knowing smile tugging at the corners of her soot-smudged lips as she hugged Roland's notebooks tighter, — "is an external force that allows you to manipulate heavy mass and gravity around yourself. Which explains how a two-hundred-pound cast-iron exhaust pipe up at the North Slope steam engine magically bent itself into a downward safety curve this afternoon before I even arrived with my welding flame."
Arthur laughed aloud—a warm, unguarded sound that echoed softly off the stone walls.
— "Here I try my absolute best to maintain the facade of a frail, non-combatant scholar, and I get caught red-handed twice in three days by the same girl," — Arthur said, giving her a slight, respectful nod of his head. — "I'll have to be much more careful around Border Town's chief engineer in the future."
His expression softened as he noticed the dark shadows of fatigue beneath her bright blue eyes and the cement dust clinging to the hem of her skirt.
— "You've been locked inside that roasting shed since sunrise, Anna. Go to your room and get some rest," — Arthur advised gently. — "The first scouting packs already hit the eastern wall this morning, which means the main wave of the Months of the Demons is only hours away. His Highness is going to need your high-temperature flame for the artillery castings more than ever in the coming weeks. And remember what we discussed: make sure you completely empty your Magic Power reserve every single evening before you sleep so your body continues to adapt before your eighteenth birthday."
— "I will, Sir Arthur. I drain the last drop into heating the courtyard bricks every night before bed," — Anna promised, taking a step past him toward the western hallway before pausing and glancing back over her shoulder with a faint, amused glint in her blue eyes. — "Just... be careful when you go out for your 'fresh air' above the rooftops at midnight. Miss Nightingale patrols the upper walls every night now to watch for Longsong spies. If she sees a dark shadow floating outside the windows in the blizzard, she might throw a silver dagger at you out of pure reflex before she realizes it's you."
At the mention of the lethal blonde assassin, a restrained, enigmatic smile touched Arthur's lips.
Instead of stepping back to let her pass, however, the black-haired strategist took one slow, deliberate step forward—closing the distance between them in the dimly lit corridor.
Bending down slightly so that his face was level with hers, Arthur leaned in until his lips were just a couple of inches from Anna's small, soot-dusted ear.
In a voice dropped so low and quiet that not even the stone echoes of the corridor—nor any unseen listener in the castle—could capture a single vibration of the air, Arthur whispered two short sentences directly into her ear.
Anna's breath hitched.
Never having had a young man outside of Prince Roland step so close into her personal space, her blue eyes widened in surprise, and her heart gave a sudden, frantic flutter against her ribs as a distinct, rosy flush of shyness rushed up her neck and colored her pale cheeks.
Yet the teenage embarrassment lasted for less than two heartbeats.
As the actual scientific and strategic meaning of the quiet words Arthur had just whispered registered inside her brilliant mind, the blush faded, replaced by an expression of intense, focused gravity.
Pulling back half a foot, Arthur met her gaze in silence.
Understanding the weight of the secret project he had just entrusted exclusively to her, Anna held his dark eyes for three full seconds and gave a single, slow, silent nod of agreement—sealing the pact between them without uttering a word aloud—before turning on her heel and walking quickly down the quiet corridor toward her room.
Standing alone at the corner of the stairwell with his hands clasped neatly behind his back once more, Arthur watched the young witch's figure disappear around the bend, his dark eyes reflecting the dancing light of the wall torch.
— "Throw a dagger at me out of reflex, hm?" — Arthur murmured softly to the empty stone hall, a cold, supremely confident smile curving across his lips as he felt the vast, hundred-pace sphere of Magic Power: 10 humming effortlessly around his body. — "Honestly... I would almost like to see Miss Nightingale try. At this stage of the game, even stepping out of her Mist World wouldn't get a blade past my barrier."
Turning toward the stairs, the Shadow Architect of Border Town adjusted his collar and walked calmly up toward his quarters to await the storm.