Ace hit the dungeon stairs like a falling star.

  Pink lightning snapped across the stone railings. Her hammer dragged sparks from the steps as she descended, each impact a promise. The air down here was colder—old, damp, and wrong in the way sealed places always were.

  Behind her, the mess hall noise died.

  Above her, the palace pretended nothing was happening.

  Below—

  A giggle echoed.

  Light. Mocking. Familiar.

  Ace’s eyes thinned.

  “Hina,” she said, voice flat.

  The giggle came again—closer this time, like it had moved without walking.

  Sir Reginal’s footsteps hit the top landing. He didn’t follow her down. Not yet. Not fast.

  He was obeying Seraphine’s order.

  Observe.

  Do not restrain unless absolutely necessary.

  Ace didn’t care.

  She rounded the last bend and stepped into the dungeon corridor.

  Iron-barred doors lined both sides. Old runes slept in the mortar. Lanterns burned low, their flames bending as if something had breathed on them.

  And at the far end—

  Hina stood in the center of the hall.

  Not skipping.

  Not twirling.

  Just waiting.

  Her small frame looked wrong down here—too neat, too deliberate. Her uneven horns caught the lantern light: one thick with faint pink sheen, the other jade-green like a bruise.

  Her grin was thin.

  Not playful.

  Hungry.

  Ace’s electricity crawled up her forearms.

  “Hina,” Ace said again, slower. “Move.”

  Hina tilted her head.

  “You came,” she whispered.

  Ace’s hammer lifted.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Ace said, like she was stating the weather.

  Hina’s grin widened.

  “Good,” she breathed. “That means you’re finally honest.”

  The lantern flames dipped.

  A circle flared under Hina’s feet—crimson, thorn-script, half-formed.

  Ace moved first.

  She always did.

  Ace vanished.

  Not teleportation.

  Speed.

  A pink crack through the air.

  Her hammer swung in a clean arc meant to take Hina’s head off her shoulders.

  Hina’s body flickered.

  Her jester dress deepened to blacker-than-black. Pink streaks sharpened into neon lightning veins. Green lines crawled through the fabric like living vines. Her midriff flashed bare as the outfit shifted—like the magic couldn’t decide whether to clothe her or display her.

  Her horns glowed.

  Her grin broke wide.

  And Hina slipped sideways—

  Not dodging like a person.

  Dodging like a trick.

  Ace’s hammer smashed into the stone wall instead.

  The impact detonated.

  Pink electricity exploded out of the head of the hammer, spiderwebbing across the corridor. The wall cracked. Dust burst. Iron bars rattled like teeth.

  Hina giggled right beside Ace’s ear.

  Ace didn’t turn.

  She backhanded with the hammer handle—fast, brutal.

  It connected.

  Wood and metal slammed into Hina’s face with a wet crunch.

  Blood sprayed.

  Hina’s head snapped sideways.

  For a heartbeat, her grin vanished.

  Then she laughed harder.

  “YES,” Hina hissed, voice dropping into something that didn’t sound like a child. “Like that.”

  Crimson circles erupted down the corridor—one after another—like stepping stones being stamped into existence.

  Thorn-vines burst from the floor.

  Not reaching.

  Striking.

  A spear of vine shot for Ace’s throat.

  Ace swung her hammer up and caught it mid-air.

  The vine wrapped the hammer head instantly, thorns biting into the metal like they wanted to drink it.

  Ace’s electricity surged.

  Pink lightning poured into the vine.

  The plant screamed without a mouth—blackening, smoking, turning to ash that rained down like dead snow.

  Ace yanked the hammer free and lunged.

  This time she didn’t aim for Hina’s head.

  She aimed for her chest.

  A kill shot.

  Hina’s eyes widened—not fear.

  Excitement.

  She clapped once.

  The sound was small.

  The effect was not.

  The corridor warped.

  For half a second, the dungeon didn’t know where its walls were.

  Ace’s hammer passed through empty air.

  Hina wasn’t there.

  She was behind Ace.

  A hand—small, cuffed, spiked—drove forward like a dagger.

  Not a slap.

  Not a shove.

  A thrust meant to pierce.

  Ace twisted at the last instant.

  Hina’s fingers sank into Ace’s side—through cloth, into flesh.

  Ace grunted.

  Blood ran warm down her hip.

  Hina leaned in, breath sweet as poison.

  “You bleed pretty,” she whispered.

  Ace’s eyes went blank.

  Then she slammed her forehead into Hina’s face.

  Bone cracked.

  Hina staggered back, laughing through blood.

  Ace didn’t give her space.

  She swung low—hammer to knee.

  Hina tried to slip again.

  Ace anticipated it.

  She drove electricity into the floor mid-swing.

  Pink lightning laced the stone like a net.

  The runes in the mortar flared awake under the shock.

  For the first time, the dungeon noticed the fight.

  The air stiffened.

  Hina’s slip stuttered.

  Ace’s hammer hit.

  Hina’s leg snapped sideways with a sound like wet wood.

  Hina screamed.

  Not in pain.

  In delight.

  Her body convulsed—then reformed.

  The broken leg straightened like it had never been broken.

  The trickster magic rewrote her shape with a shuddering flicker.

  Ace’s jaw tightened.

  “Stop healing,” Ace snarled.

  Hina’s eyes glittered.

  “Make me,” she said.

  Ace raised the hammer with both hands.

  Pink electricity crawled up the handle, over her arms, across her horns, building into a storm that made the lanterns sputter.

  Hina’s circles multiplied.

  Thorn-vines filled the corridor like a forest growing in seconds.

  The dungeon became a throat.

  And both of them were trying to be the teeth.

  Ace brought the hammer down.

  The strike was not a hit.

  It was a verdict.

  The floor exploded.

  Stone shattered.

  A crater opened beneath Hina’s feet.

  Hina dropped—fast—into the broken earth.

  Ace jumped after her without hesitation.

  They landed in a lower chamber—older than the rest.

  No cells.

  No doors.

  Just stone and darkness and a single rune circle carved into the floor like someone had tried to build a cage for a god.

  Hina rose first.

  Her trickster form stabilized down here.

  Her outfit stayed wrong—neon pink lightning veins, green vine-lines, black so deep it ate the lantern light. Her horns glowed like warning lights. Her grin was split by blood.

  Ace rose with her hammer already swinging.

  Hina didn’t dodge this time.

  She met it.

  Thorn-vines wrapped her arms like gauntlets.

  She caught the hammer head barehanded.

  Thorns bit into metal.

  Pink lightning bit into vine.

  For a second they were locked—face to face.

  Hina’s eyes shone wet.

  “You left me,” she whispered, voice shaking.

  Ace’s eyes didn’t soften.

  “I should’ve killed you sooner,” Ace replied.

  Hina’s smile trembled.

  Then hardened into something vicious.

  “Then do it,” she hissed.

  She yanked.

  Not on the hammer.

  On Ace’s body.

  The crimson circle under them flared.

  The rune cage woke up.

  The air snapped tight like a leash.

  Ace felt it—something trying to bind her movement, trying to decide she belonged to the floor.

  Ace roared.

  Pink lightning erupted out of her wings in a blast that scorched the chamber walls.

  The binding rune cracked.

  Hina’s eyes widened.

  Ace ripped the hammer free and drove it forward like a spear.

  Straight into Hina’s stomach.

  Metal punched through flesh.

  Blood poured.

  Hina gasped—finally, a real sound.

  Ace didn’t stop.

  She shoved harder, pinning Hina to the rune circle.

  Electricity surged down the hammer.

  Pink lightning flooded Hina’s body from the inside.

  Hina convulsed.

  Her trickster magic flickered violently—trying to rewrite the wound, trying to slip away, trying to pretend death was optional.

  Ace leaned close, face inches from Hina’s.

  “Die,” Ace whispered.

  Hina’s mouth opened.

  Blood ran down her chin.

  And she smiled.

  Because even impaled, even shaking, even burning—

  She was still playing.

  Her hand lifted—slow—toward Ace’s face.

  Not to strike.

  To touch.

  Ace’s eyes narrowed.

  Hina’s fingertips brushed Ace’s cheek.

  And the world lurched.

  Not illusion.

  Not a vision.

  A swap.

  A trick so cruel it felt like a law.

  Ace’s body went weightless for a heartbeat.

  Her grip loosened.

  Her hammer—still inside Hina—shifted.

  Ace realized too late what Hina had done.

  Hina wasn’t trying to heal.

  She was trying to make Ace kill herself.

  The rune circle flared again.

  The chamber chose a winner.

  Above them, footsteps thundered down the stairs—Sir Reginal finally breaking his “observe” order because the air itself had started screaming.

  His voice echoed from the shaft.

  “PRINCESS—!”

  Ace’s electricity surged in panic.

  Hina’s grin widened, eyes bright with tears and blood and triumph.

  “Say it,” Hina whispered, shaking. “Say you loved me.”

  Ace’s hands trembled on the hammer.

  The blade of the moment hovered.

  Kill.

  Or be killed.

  And the dungeon held its breath—waiting to see which sister Ace would bury.

  The rune circle kept flaring like a heartbeat.

  Ace and Hina tore at each other in the pit—hammer against thorn-script, pink lightning against trickster slips that kept trying to rewrite distance.

  Ace landed a strike that should’ve caved a ribcage in.

  Hina answered by letting it happen—then moving the damage somewhere else, like her body was a joke the universe agreed to.

  Blood painted the rune grooves.

  Stone cracked.

  The air smelled like iron and burned sap.

  Ace’s breathing went ragged. Not from fear.

  From fury.

  Hina’s grin stayed split and wet.

  “Harder,” she whispered, like she wanted the hammer to finish the sentence her mouth couldn’t.

  Ace raised the hammer again—two hands, shoulders locked, electricity crawling up her arms in thick, angry veins—

  A line of light cut between them.

  Not lightning.

  A blade.

  Sir Reginal dropped into the chamber like a guillotine falling.

  His boots hit stone.

  His posture was perfect.

  His face was not.

  He held a magic blade that didn’t look like it belonged in a royal guard’s hand.

  It was too bright.

  Too clean.

  Too mocking.

  The blade’s name was worse than the blade itself.

  Pickle.

  He swung once.

  A crescent of force slammed into Ace and Hina at the same time.

  Both of them hit the wall hard enough to crack stone.

  Hina’s vines snapped like dead branches.

  Ace’s hammer clanged and skidded across the floor.

  Sir Reginal stepped forward, blade leveled, voice low and sharp.

  “That is enough.”

  Hina laughed—small, breathy—like she’d been waiting for him.

  Ace didn’t laugh.

  Ace stared at him like he’d just insulted her bloodline.

  Sir Reginal’s eyes flicked to Ace first.

  “Lady Ace,” he said, controlled. “Leave. Now.”

  Ace’s electricity crawled up her throat.

  “You’re ordering me,” she rasped.

  “I’m preventing a disaster,” Sir Reginal replied. His grip tightened on Pickle. “You are in the World Tree Palace. You will not turn this into a slaughterhouse.”

  Hina’s head lolled against the wall, grin still there.

  “Slaughterhouse,” she echoed softly. “Mmm. I like that word.”

  Sir Reginal didn’t look at her.

  His gaze stayed on Ace like she was the larger threat.

  “Go,” he repeated. “Before I make you.”

  Ace’s lips parted.

  A sound came out that wasn’t a laugh.

  It was worse.

  A broken, incredulous exhale—like she’d been spat on.

  Pickle.

  A blade named Pickle.

  A command to leave.

  Like she was a misbehaving pet.

  Like she was the joke.

  Ace’s eyes went flat.

  “You think this is funny,” she said quietly.

  Sir Reginal’s jaw flexed.

  “I think you’re out of control.”

  Ace’s pupils thinned.

  Pink sparks died.

  For one breath, there was nothing.

  Then—

  something ancient inside her shifted.

  And the dungeon learned what “out of control” actually meant.

  Ace’s body locked.

  Her horns flared brighter—then changed.

  Not longer.

  Older.

  The shape of them sharpened into something that looked carved by time, not grown by flesh.

  Her wings expanded with a sound like tearing silk.

  Pink lightning didn’t crawl anymore.

  It poured.

  The chamber filled with it—thick, blinding, violent.

  Sir Reginal’s eyes widened.

  “Lady Ace—”

  Ace didn’t answer.

  She transformed.

  Fully.

  Ancient dragon form—pink and black, electricity rolling off her like a living ocean, her scales catching the light like storm glass.

  The rune circle screamed.

  The walls vibrated.

  Pickle’s blade flared as Sir Reginal threw up a guard—

  Ace’s lightning hit him anyway.

  Not a strike.

  A flood.

  It surged through his arms, into his chest, into his spine.

  His muscles seized.

  His teeth clenched.

  Pickle slipped from his grip and clattered across the stone.

  Hina’s grin widened as the lightning found her too.

  She tried to laugh.

  The laugh became a choke.

  Her trickster form flickered—thorn-script circles stuttering, vines turning to ash mid-bloom.

  Ace’s lightning didn’t care about tricks.

  It didn’t care about clever.

  It cared about ending.

  Hina convulsed once.

  Then went limp.

  Sir Reginal hit the ground a heartbeat later, body smoking faintly, unconscious.

  Ace stood over them in ancient form, chest heaving, lightning still surging like she couldn’t turn it off.

  And above—

  a shadow dropped into the pit.

  Black flame.

  Rings.

  A sister who had already been wounded and still came anyway.

  Vespera fell hard, then rose—

  and transformed.

  Ancient dragon form—black as a burned sky, flames coiling around her like mourning cloth, the holes in her wings still there, still wrong, still visible even as she grew.

  She looked at Ace and didn’t posture.

  Didn’t threaten.

  She begged.

  “Ace,” Vespera said, voice shaking, huge and raw in the stone chamber. “Stop.”

  Ace’s lightning surged again—instinct, anger, reflex.

  Vespera flinched but didn’t move away.

  “Please,” Vespera said, and the word sounded like it hurt her pride to say. “Let’s go back.”

  Ace’s ancient head lowered slightly.

  Her eyes—bright, furious—locked on Vespera.

  For a long second, it looked like she might strike anyway.

  Then Vespera said the one thing that cut through the storm.

  “You’re dying.”

  Ace’s lightning stuttered.

  Her ancient form trembled.

  Only then did she seem to notice the blood—her blood—running down her side, soaking the stone, pooling in the rune grooves.

  The wound Hina had opened earlier hadn’t closed.

  It had been ripped wider by the fight.

  Ace’s breath hitched.

  Vespera stepped closer, careful, wings dragging because of the holes, voice low.

  “Come back,” she pleaded. “Come back to me.”

  Ace’s lightning faded—slow, reluctant.

  Like a beast being leashed.

  Ace’s ancient form collapsed inward.

  Scales shrank.

  Wings folded.

  Horns shortened.

  In a blink, she was back in humanoid dragon form—kneeling, shaking, hammer barely within reach, face pale under the lantern light.

  Vespera shifted back too—humanoid dragon form, black flame reduced to a trembling edge around her rings.

  She swayed on her feet.

  The holes in her wings bled slow, stubborn.

  Ace tried to stand.

  Failed.

  Her hand slipped in blood.

  Vespera caught her.

  Not gently.

  Desperately.

  “Let’s go,” Vespera whispered. “Now.”

  Ace’s eyes fluttered.

  “…Okay,” she breathed, like agreeing cost her everything.

  The dungeon stayed quiet after they left.

  Not peaceful.

  Just emptied.

  Sir Reginal lay where he fell, Pickle beside his hand like a joke someone had finally stopped laughing at.

  Hina lay on her side, small again, jester dress torn and stained, horns dim.

  Her chest rose.

  Fell.

  Slow.

  Exhausted.

  Twenty minutes passed.

  Then—

  Hina’s eyes snapped open.

  She didn’t sit up.

  She couldn’t.

  Her body shook like it had been wrung out.

  But her grin returned anyway.

  Wide.

  Uncontrolled.

  She giggled.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Then it turned into a stream of giggles she couldn’t stop—like the laughter was the only thing still moving inside her.

  Her eyes stared at the ceiling, unfocused, bright with something feverish.

  “Ace,” she whispered between giggles.

  “Ace and Vespera.”

  Her fingers twitched weakly against the stone.

  She couldn’t stand.

  Couldn’t chase.

  Couldn’t even roll over without shaking.

  But her smile sharpened as if movement didn’t matter.

  Because the decision had already been made.

  A prize.

  A hunt.

  A promise.

  Hina giggled harder, breath hitching, eyes glittering like a knife in candlelight.

  “Mine,” she whispered.

  And the dungeon—old stone, old runes, old cages—held that word like it understood exactly what it meant.