Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The air set like poured concrete, heavy enough to choke. A drop slid down my cherry-white hair and hit the tile—plink—one soft sound that cracked through the silence like thunder.

Wei Wu’s line—“Sounds kinda familiar”—drove an ice-cold needle straight into my scrambled brain.

Familiar? What did he mean? He’d recognised my voice? Impossible. I was using a sugar-sweet girl’s voice, the kind that could rot a hive of bees. Yun Xi’s real voice was a gravel-pack-a-day rasp. No overlap.

Shame at being exposed collided with the terror that my secret was blown. I clutched the towel that was barely hanging on by will-power, sucked in a breath, and got ready to roar in that syrupy register: “Familiar my a—”

The last syllable never left my tongue.

A razor-sharp chill slammed up my bare spine.

Not normal cold—more like my soul had tripped an alarm at something unspeakably foul. Every hair stood. My muscles locked.

I stared past Wei Wu, who was frozen in the doorway, at the floor-to-ceiling window of the master bedroom.

Outside, the neon galaxy of the city had been swallowed by tar-thick darkness that pulsed and twisted as if invisible hands were kneading filthy clay.

The dark bulged.

Shadow-claws, edges metallic, scraped across the bullet-proof glass. Then a head—no eyes, only a mouth split to where ears should’ve been—forced itself through. The jaws worked silently, venting a stench of rust and rotting meat.

Shadowmare... The word detonated in my skull.

Time snapped.

“DOWN—!!”

Wei Wu’s roar tore the air. He lunged faster than human, every trace of confusion scoured away by murderous focus. He was going to tackle me clear.

Too late.

BANG—CRACK—!!

The reinforced glass exploded like thin ice. Shards flew like lethal hail, carrying freezing wind and that reek. The monster’s bulk cannoned straight for us.

Death opened its mouth.

A burn flared on the inside of my left wrist—lava-hot, volcano-deep.

ZZZZ—CLANG—!!

Silver-blue light erupted from my wrist, a star going super-nova inside the bathroom. The glare drove the darkness back for a heartbeat. At its centre floated a bracelet—Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss—filigree lines looping like cosmic veins, a miniature river of time shimmering inside.

The charging Shadowmare lurched mid-air, soundlessly screaming.

“Master, master—!!!”

A child’s voice, bright as fireworks, ricocheted inside my head. A palm-sized Eastern dragon made of indigo flame shot out, orbiting my wrist.

“Master, I finally found you! I slept so long I forgot my own name. Your light woke me—so warm! I missed you even though we just met—Master!”

I stood there, brain buffering.

“Mew～”

A languid, syrupy mew cut in. A cat of cherry-white light stepped from the river of time, fur like stacked sakura petals, eyes amethyst. It yawned.

“Pipe down, lizard,” it drawled, giving the dragon a bored glance. “You’ll scare the kid.”

“Master is mine,” the cat continued, voice honey-coated possession. “I’ve guarded his soul epochs longer than you, lazy dragon.”

“Rubbish! I reacted first!” The dragon spiralled, tail flicking sparks. “You were napping!”

“Mew～ Brute force versus quiet finesse. Honestly, all you did was advertise our location.”

“You—!”

“ENOUGH!!!” My own shriek—equal parts terror and overload—shattered their spat.

Both spirits stiffened, staring up at me.

I didn’t have time for a mascot fight. The Shadowmare had recovered. Sensing a newly-awakened relic and a helpless owner, it ballooned larger, jaws unhinging into a black hole of fangs. It dived again, faster, stinking wind preceding it.

“Master, danger!” Indigo light blazed around the dragon.

“Tch, troublesome,” the cat hissed, pupils slitting.

Heat flooded my veins—instinct, not thought.

Attack. Rip. Survive.

“Eternal Dream—!” I screamed inside my bones.

ZZZZ—CLANG—!!!

The reply that rang out was the exultant shriek of a divine weapon.

Around my wrist, the silver-blue bracelet that held the River of Time dissolved in an instant. Countless intricate, hollow patterns wriggled like living things, streaming, recombining, stretching outward. A torrent of silver-blue light burst free as though a galaxy had burst its dam.

The glare faded.

A double-headed spear was clamped in my fists.

The shaft—fully three meters of flowing Time Stardust—felt perfectly balanced, as if it had been forged for my hands alone. Graceful, forceful lines ran its length, etched with patterns that looked like the blueprint of the universe. Each tip was a knot of time-fragments endlessly blooming and collapsing, sharp enough to slice space itself, cold enough to freeze anything it touched. Where each blade met the shaft, a gem was set: on the left, a spinning indigo star-core—Xing Dian’s dwelling; on the right, a pale-pink crescent of solidified moonlight—Yue Fei’s home.

With both weapons in my grip, a boundless sensation flooded me—an intuition that I could steer the entire river of time—together with an icy killing intent that slammed down like a lid on my earlier terror.

Let the social-death show begin.

The instant I tightened both hands, the wretched towel slid an inch thanks to my raised arms. The pressure across my chest vanished; I nearly died on the spot. Reflex jammed my left elbow against the top edge of the towel while my right arm, busy with the spear, could only help by yanking my ribs in and thrusting my breasts up—picture a street performer about to crush a slab of stone... except the slab forgot to show up. Worse, tremors from the strain kept rippling through me; the towel hung by a thread. Save me—I did not sign up to fight monsters in the nude.

“Master, left side’s mine!” Xing Dian’s thrilled voice shot from the indigo core. Flames of starlight raced along the left spear, wrapping it in a corona of ripping power. The dancing light reflected what I thought was a fierce face—really a towel-panicked girl contorted in horror.

“Meow. I’ll deign to clear the riffraff on the right.” Yue Fei’s lazy drawl drifted from the pink moon-gem. Pale cherry light spilled down the shaft, turning the time-fragments at its tip into cold, lethal crescents. I could swear the purple crystal eye inside the gem flicked toward my ridiculous towel-clamp and glinted in amusement.

Shadowmare’s maw was already at my nose, its stench a solid thing. The foul wind even fluttered the towel’s hem.

“DIE—!!”

Survival crushed embarrassment. In a voice sweet enough to sing hymns, I roared Yun Xi’s rage and terror. An invisible force tugged my arms into motion.

SHRRRIP!!

The left spear—indigo starlight—ripped through the night like a meteor, plunged straight down Shadowmare’s gullet and detonated. Countless micro-stars burst inside the beast, convulsing it in agony.

The motion cost me another half-inch of towel. Cool air brushed my sternum; my scalp prickled. I stabbed, clamped, stabbed again, looking like a tourist failing chopsticks for the first time.

At the same instant—

WHUMM!

The right spear—pale moon-chill—whipped around at a vicious angle, slashing the limb Shadowmare had braced on the window. Time-fragments honed to an icy edge severed the joint clean.

SPLURT!

Black, oil-thick gore sprayed from mouth and stump. Several drops splattered my bare forearm—cold, slimy, stomach-flipping.

SHRIIIEK!!

A soul-level howl. The colossal body recoiled, unraveling. Where Xing Dian had pierced and Yue Fei had sliced, the edges ignited like burning paper, crumbling to ash. The remainder whipped back into the darkness outside, writhed twice, and vanished, leaving only stinking puddles, glittering glass shards, and restless shadows.

Silence.

Dead silence—except for my ragged gasps and the last glimmers of silver, indigo, and cherry light drifting off the blades like dying fireflies. The towel—thank every god—hadn’t fallen, though it clung by sheer willpower alone.

I stood, both barrels of Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss angled at the floor, heart hammering, arms shaking from overwork and towel-defence. Sweat-plastered strands of cherry-white hair stuck to forehead, cheeks, even the corner of my mouth; I had to blow them away. My wide, crystal-blue eyes still flickered with after-shock, but beneath the chill of newfound power a lava of social death bubbled—because Older Brother had watched the entire spectacle: me, draped in a failing towel, flailing like a panicked seal.

Slowly—icy, mortified—I lifted my gaze past the monster’s filth to the doorway.

Wei Wu remained half-kneeling in his dive-save pose. Glass had sliced his forearm; blood beaded, but he didn’t notice.

His stare was a searchlight locked on me—on the twin alien spears, on my heaving, barely covered chest (I could feel it!), on my sweat-drenched hair, on my panic-tinted blue eyes, finally on my parted, panting lips.

His Adam’s apple bobbed once, slow and painful. The mix of shock, disbelief, and crumbling worldview settled into something stranger—wonder, maybe.

Time hung for two heartbeats.

At last his lips parted.

“Brother...”

His gaze flicked again to the weapons—now shrinking back into the silver-blue bracelet—and returned to my face, as if solving the universe’s toughest equation.

“...that spear-work...”

He hunted for a word, gave up, and delivered the verdict in a dazed, gravelly whisper:

“...was freaking...”

He inhaled, almost tasting the faint, lotus-after-rain scent the new-body gift had left on my skin.

“...awesome.”