A pale light pulsed, steady and relentless. Kafka remained standing before the door. Her legs trembled—not from the knees, but from deep within her thighs, a tremor that spoke of a body reaching its absolute limit while only her spirit held firm. Chaos Flame—the innate ability to interfere with mental energy that Kafka had possessed since birth—now operated far beyond its normal parameters. The power that typically required eye contact to influence a target's psyche was now grasping at the very runaway oscillations of the Eternal Freeze Core beyond this door. Seven hundred years of accumulated energy continued to swell without control. It felt like holding back a storm with both hands. Like pressing against an invisible tempest with bare palms. Nosebleed dripped past her chin. The edge of her vision wavered again. She saw the night of Naburis Spaceport. A blackout district. The smell of metal and oil. A child version of herself standing in a pitch-dark alley. That voice echoed—*Stars belong to no one. Stars are free*—the voice of the person who had given her those words resonated in her mind without form or boundary. The next moment, that scene dissolved. An image of silver hair swaying came. The moment she first met Silverwolf. Had it been raining? She couldn't remember. Her eyes were silver on the left and purple on the right—but the name of that place wouldn't come. Where was it? Where and under what circumstances had they first spoken? The edges of her memories were beginning to dissolve. *(Fading away.)* She understood what this meant. The backlash of her ability had begun consuming her spirit itself as fuel. If she stopped, her interference with the oscillations would cease. The Eternal Freeze Core's runaway would resume. One million two hundred thousand people in the underground city would freeze. So she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't close her eyes. That was all there was to it. Her body tilted to the right. A warm palm pressed against her back. Klint. Purple short hair, burning red eyes, a metal piercing in his right ear—a sixteen-year-old boy silently supported her shoulder and back. His hand trembled slightly. A tremor he wasn't even aware of, Kafka thought. This boy was now supporting the very person he had been pursuing. Between that fact and the reality that he couldn't let go, Kafka knew exactly what expression that serious face must be wearing. Silverwolf moved forward. Kafka's left hand rose. *Don't come*—a silent command. The girl's feet stopped. Those odd eyes watched Kafka quietly. Something wordless wavered in their depths. Kafka noticed that expression but turned her gaze forward again. She couldn't let her attention drift from the oscillations. The floor's vibration intensified. The pale light pulsed more violently. *(It won't hold much longer.)* That was when it happened. A swift footstep—*zash*. Silverwolf was running toward the control terminal at the edge of the facility. "[cold]Stay calm. Think clearly," Her voice was small, like a whisper to herself. Whether she was speaking to herself or to Kafka, or somehow both, it was impossible to tell. The moment Silverwolf's fingers touched the terminal, her movements transformed into something otherworldly. A genius-level hacking ability—the core member of the Stigma Organization's electronic warfare and data manipulation division moved her fingers across a system that had slept for seven hundred years. She extracted data from storage media. Decrypted codes. Bypassed firewalls. She did it all nearly simultaneously. In Silverwolf's mind was the inscription carved into the deepest part of the abandoned mine. *—Those who open this gate oppose the will of the stars.* When Silverwolf first saw those characters, she hadn't thought of them as a warning. The syntax was too distorted for a warning. The intended recipient was "those who oppose the will of the stars." It was less a word of exclusion and more a word of dialogue. A possible input code for the control system. That hypothesis, which she had developed into certainty during two days spent in drainage pipes while evading the Guardians of the Stars, now guided her fingers. She entered the code. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. A dull sound echoed from within the facility's walls. The sound of machinery awakening. A single *gong*. Then a continuous grinding of gears meshing—*gagagaga*. It spread outward. From beneath the floor, from the ceiling, from beyond the walls. The safety mechanism installed seven hundred years ago, never activated since, now stirred to life in this moment. The Eternal Freeze Core's light changed. The rhythm of its pulsing pale glow began to slow, its intervals gradually widening. The violent vibration settled by degrees. The floor's tremor weakened. The electrical tension in the air thinned away. The runaway oscillation was converging. Kafka felt it. The storm she had been holding back in her spirit grew smaller, bit by bit. Her opponent was weakening. Before her supporting arms could fail—Kafka closed her eyes. The interference of Chaos Flame ceased. Her knees buckled. There was no time for Klint to catch her. Kafka's body surrendered to gravity and collapsed silently onto the floor. The cold touch of stone against her cheek. The red of nosebleed slowly staining the stone. Silverwolf left the terminal and ran to her. She lifted Kafka in both arms. A small frame of one hundred sixty centimeters bore the weight of a twenty-eight-year-old woman. The white-silver ponytail swayed. Klint couldn't move. There had been no time to stop it—that fact existed. But beyond that, he had noticed something else: the air of the facility had changed. The Eternal Freeze Core was stable. It emitted a gentle, low light, its pulsation calm. The runaway had converged. And—Kafka hadn't destroyed the star core. She had chosen not to destroy it. Klint's red eyes watched Kafka, still sitting on the floor. The woman slowly rising to her feet, supported by Silverwolf. Blood seeped through her black short hair. Her deep brown eyes gazed at something distant. "[serious]...So you didn't come here to destroy the star," The words spilled from his mouth. Not thought through, but somehow naturally becoming voice. Kafka lifted her face. Their eyes met. After a brief pause, she answered in a voice barely audible—yet with words perfectly clear: "[cold]Destruction isn't the only freedom. The ability to choose—that's what freedom is," Klint stood with his mouth open, silent. He searched for words of rebuttal. Found none. The declaration he had made while walking through that underground waterway—"Your freedom is nothing but destruction"—had lost all meaning in this moment. The choice Kafka had shown was neither destruction nor protection—it was restraint. She had stopped the runaway without destroying the star core. She had preserved one million two hundred thousand lives while erasing her own memories, holding firm. The framework Klint had believed in—"Star Core Hunter equals destroyer"—was crumbling in this place. He had nothing to say. Standing there in silence became his answer. ──── Footsteps approached. Heavy, measured, unwavering footsteps. One figure leading, two guards following. Drawing near to the facility's deepest reaches. Bronya Koczek entered. Her deep crimson semi-long hair was gathered at her back, and the formal attire of a Guardian of the Stars bore the emblem of Jarilo-VI sewn into the shoulders. Cold golden eyes swept across the facility once. The terminal screen. The faint trace of blood on the floor. The Eternal Freeze Core emitting its stable light. Only after confirming everything did her gaze fall upon Kafka. The Guardian checked the readings on her own terminal. Oscillation convergence. Stable energy output. Activation logs of the safety mechanism for the first time in seven hundred years. Then she spoke, briefly: "[serious]The promise is fulfilled. Departure is permitted," Her eyes remained on Kafka. She hated her. A star core hunter had infiltrated her star, ransacked the facility, disturbed the residents. That fact remained unchanged. From the perspective of the Star Core Protection Treaty, Kafka was a criminal of the highest priority. Bronya understood all of this. At the same time, her eyes directly confronted the fact that this woman had not destroyed the star core. The star she had sought to protect had been saved by the person she despised. Bronya did not voice that contradiction. Neither gratitude nor acknowledgment left her lips. She repeated only the permission to depart. "[serious]Departure is permitted," With only those words, she turned away. She left the facility with her guards. Her departing back carried everything she had left unsaid. Klint watched that back disappear. He couldn't see from the front what expression his respected mentor wore in this situation. He still couldn't make sense of how things had come to this. ──── As preparations for departure began, Silverwolf scanned the facility's deepest section with her terminal's camera. Thoroughly. The seams in the walls, cracks in the floor, gaps in the machinery—a seven-hundred-year-old structure might still hold secrets. Her terminal detected something. A slight foreign object in the seams of the wall's stone. Camouflaged to match the stone's color and shape, but it registered on the scan. Silverwolf traced the edge of the stone with her fingertip and withdrew it. An old recording device. Small enough to fit in a palm. Its surface was scarred, bearing the marks of long exposure to the harsh cold of Jarilo-VI's frozen atmosphere. Manufacturing specifications from approximately eighty years ago—Silverwolf determined this at a glance. And she saw the initials carved into the device's surface. V.K. Silverwolf's movements froze for just an instant. "[cold]...Sister," She handed the device to Kafka. Kafka received it. She felt the cold weight of metal in her palm. She saw the initials. Vespa Croix—the founder of the Stigma Organization. Approximately eighty years ago, the person who had established the Stigma Organization under the banner of "humanity's liberation from fate-control by star cores." A figure whose ideology Kafka had inherited as the foundation of her own beliefs since childhood. That person had come to Jarilo-VI. Why. What had she recorded. The recording device was encrypted with sophisticated ciphers, making decryption impossible on the spot. Silverwolf attempted it and quickly understood. "We'll need to return to Nomadic to decode this," she said quietly. Kafka said nothing. She held the device in her hand and gripped it. ──── Through the escape route, the two departed Jarilo-VI. The lower crevasse passage—the unofficial route from Belobog's deepest level to the surface ruins of Cryoshell—they crossed it, traversed the surface ruins, and headed toward the connection point for the Stigma Organization's mobile station, Nomadic. Four kilometers in total length, three collapse points. For Kafka in her current state, the journey would have been impossible without Silverwolf's shoulder to lean on. The white-silver ponytail caught the dim light of the passage. Clothes soiled with mud and machine oil, cheeks covered in scrapes. After two days spent in drainage pipes, the girl walked on, bearing Kafka's weight on her shoulder without faltering. Kafka looked at her profile once. She must have been exhausted. Dirty, wounded. Perhaps she hadn't slept. Yet her footsteps held no hesitation, and her quiet smile never wavered. Those eyes—silver on the left, purple on the right—gazed straight ahead. Kafka slowly opened her mouth. "[gentle]Thank you, Silverwolf," Not "sister," but her name. Silverwolf's footsteps stopped for just one step. She looked up at Kafka's face. Confirming her expression. There was a smile on Kafka's lips—a smile different from before. Not a smile of composu