The moment the sun moth’s pillar of fire struck, the world erupted into chaos. A torrent of searing flames thundered down, blasting through the colossal fungi forest with a deafening roar. The shockwave hit like a fist, cracking trees like brittle twigs and igniting the colossal mushroom caps in an explosion of smoke and ash. Heat scorched the air, turning it thick and suffocating.

  … Oh no.

  Dahlia barely registered Muyang’s arms hooking beneath her and Emilia, the ground vanishing beneath her feet. Her stomach lurched as the beetle man ran. He wasn’t sprinting—he was tearing through the forest, every step a thunderous impact as roots, dirt, and shattered debris exploded around him.

  The earth shook behind them. Dahlia twisted her head to look—regretting it instantly.

  A second pillar of fire smashed into the ground, swallowing entire mushroom trees whole. A third pillar of fire detonated another colossal mushroom, releasing plumes of toxic spores and dust into the already blistering air. The light of the flames burned into her retinas, searing through her mind like a warning: Don’t stop. Don’t look back.

  If even one of those pillars hit us, we’re dead.

  Muyang didn’t slow. He barreled forward, dodging around splintered trunks and rubble. The wind whipped against Dahlia’s face, stealing her breath. Her teeth rattled as he leapt over a massive root, landing so hard the shock punched through her spine.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” Emilia said, almost too casually as she twisted in his grip to look back. “It’s gonna catch up at this rate, and it’s not like there are tons of trees left for us to hide under, anyways. It’s been a whole month since we started. We’ll reach the edge of the arena pretty soon!”

  “I am trying to run, Miss Emilia—”

  A low, vibrating hum cut through the air—a sound so loud it made Dahlia’s antennae stand up straight, her bones ache. She turned her head again, panic tightening her throat.

  The Mutant-Class sun moth, thirty metres long, swept above the mushroom canopy like a living storm cloud, its white scales shimmering with fire. Every beat of its wings sent shockwaves through the forest. mushroom caps disintegrating into flaming shreds. Molten orange light bled from its giant beady eyes as it continued honing in on them, and this time, its mouth was aglow with swirling, gathering power.

  Dahlia’s heart seized.

  [Tell Muyang to–]

  “It’s coming again!” she cried, her voice breaking. Muyang’s grip tightened around her ribs as he threw himself sideways. A second later, the moth’s strongest pillar of fire yet obliterated the ground where they’d been. The fire slammed into the earth with the force of a falling mountain, scorching a crater, and the air turned white-hot. Dahlia screamed as waves of heat lashed against her skin, embers burning through her antlion cloak.

  Muyang lost his footing.

  The shockwave knocked him off balance—Dahlia felt him lurch violently—and then she was falling. Both her and Emilia. She hit the ground hard, pain slamming into her side like a hammer, and she had to consciously hold onto her Amalgamated Hammer with all her might. Her Swarmguard Arms moved automatically to brace her head, but it was just to minimise the hurt. Something still went crack in her sides as she tumbled across the dirt, rolling over jagged roots and stones until she came to a gasping stop.

  “Miss Dahlia! Miss Emilia!”

  Muyang’s shout broke through the haze. She forced herself upright, pain screaming through her limbs. The ground where they’d stood moments ago was gone—a crater of blackened earth and smoldering ash. Trees had been shattered into splinters, their remains glowing orange in the ruin.

  Dahlia coughed, her lungs raw. The air stank of burning wood, spores, and sulfur. Every breath tasted like ash.

  [Get up, Dahlia!]

  [Focus!]

  [You’re still alive, so you can still fight!]

  Dahlia staggered to her feet, legs trembling. Muyang was already up, hauling his giant beetle helm behind her, and Emilia was standing perfectly still as she dusted soil off her shoulders. Dahlia frowned at the cicada girl for a moment—Emilia seemed far too calm and steady despite having watched Blaire steal their prey from right under their noses—but a deep, tremendous bellow from the front tore her gaze away from her teammates.

  The sun moth was coming again.

  It swept low through the final colossal mushrooms in the entire forest, its molten eyes fixed on them. Fire bled from its mouth in thin streams as it swirled and gathered another blast, the very air around it shimmering with heat.

  … Can we beat that, Kari?

  A C-Rank Mutant-Class sun moth?

  Kari didn’t respond immediately. Dahlia’s four hands were gripping tightly onto her hammer, but her strength was long spent. She’d used most of it when she used her Art to zap and incapacitate the beetles.

  [I don’t know,] Kari admitted. [But you must try nevertheless.]

  Dahlia wasn’t of the same mind, though. The entire desert was around them. They could still try to make a break for it—race out onto the dunes and hope the sun moth would lose their tiny forms in the shifting sea of sand—but Muyang was scowling, grimacing, and putting his giant beetle helm over his head.

  He wasn’t planning on running.

  And neither was Emilia, who stepped in front of them without a word.

  … Huh?

  Dahlia tilted her head quizzically as Emilia straightened, her back rigid and her chin lifted. Dust streaked the cicada girl’s face and sweat beaded down her skin, but her expression was calm. Steady as ever. Her gaze was fixed on the sun moth in front of them, solid as stone.

  “Alright,” she whispered, sounding almost… giddy? “Let’s go home.”

  Then, the air around Emilia thickened.

  Dahlia felt it—something sharp and suffocating pressing down on her chest, as if the very atmosphere was being crushed. Her aura. It was being overshadowed by another. Emilia exhaled slowly, and the ground seemed to shudder beneath her feet.

  The killing pressure that followed hit like a physical blow.

  Muyang grunted and took a step back. Dahlia’s knees buckled. She clutched her chest, her Swarmguards Arms braced her face, and her breath hitched as the full weight of Emilia’s aura slammed into her.

  [... What is this?] Kari mused. [This killing pressure—this isn’t normal for a participant of the Hasharana Entrance Exam.]

  [This girl… is…]

  Kari never ended up finishing her sentence.

  Because as the Mutant-Class sun moth continued barrelling straight at them, preparing to fire its strongest, fiercest beam of fire yet, Emilia rubbed her throat and began singing a song.

  An ‘anthem’.

  And Dahlia’s heart skipped a beat as Emilia’s aura engulfed what was left of the colossal fungi forest.

  Jiayin ran an arrowhead down her whetstone as she kicked back on her couch, slow and deliberate. The rhythmic shhhk, shhhk filled the observation room, the only sound cutting through the quiet.

  She was bored.

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  Across the room, Alice was sprawled out and dozed off on a long velvet couch, arms thrown over her face and snoring aloud. William sat on a rocking chair next to the honeycomb glass screens embedded in the walls, eyes fixed on the murder mystery novel in his hands. None of them had talked to each other in days—they’d shared a few drinks and took turns grabbing food from the city’s diners every once in a while, but after the first hundred or so participants died rather unceremoniously, they stopped paying so much attention to the goings of the exam. It wasn’t until a few minutes ago that she felt a wormhole opening in the room next door to drop a Pioneer through, and even then, she wasn’t too inclined to greet their first passing participant in person.

  Two more people dropped out of another wormhole a minute ago, landing in the same room as the Pioneer, but the first stage wasn’t quite over yet. Even if the twin beetles had been slain, the exam wasn’t going to end until the time limit was reached, or until every single Mutant-Class in the forest was slain. And Jiayin could wait a few more hours until the time limit was reached. She’d already waited so long to be free of the tiny observation room.

  Then William stiffened all of a sudden.

  A ripple of killing intent rolled through the room like an unseen wave. Subtle, yet unmistakable. Jiayin stopped sharpening her arrowhead. Alice moaned and rolled around in her sleep. William’s mouth curled into a grin as he looked up and around at the honeycomb glass screens, all broadcasting live footage of the Mutant-Class sun moth swooping down at the final team of participants from a hundred aerial angles.

  “... Say, Jiayin,” he murmured, “how much did you spend on nurturing the sun moth again?”

  Jiayin stared at the sun moth through the screens for a few more moments before shrugging, looking back down at her whetstone.

  “A few hundred thousand silvers over the past four or so years,” she said, mumbling under her breath as she resumed sharpening her arrowhead. “Why do you ask?”

  “You won’t miss it, right?”

  “How so?”

  “You’re the invigilator of the first stage,” he said pointedly. “You take a look.”

  Sighing, Jiayin wiped her arrowhead clean and turned her attention to the honeycomb screens again. Live footage from the colossal fungi forest filled all of them—mushroom canopy in flames, trees blackened and collapsing under molten heat. In ninety-nine out of a hundred frames, the sun moth was surging downwards forward, a living firestorm barreling down on its prey. In the last frame, three tiny participants stood defiantly in its way. Small. Insignificant.

  She could barely make out any of their features.

  “My moth will be fine,” she said, unimpressed.

  William raised a brow, pushing up his glasses with a small smile. “Fine?”

  “They’ll lose, obviously.” Jiayin didn’t even pause. “It took me years before I even killed my first sun moth. Years. And I caught that one myself five years ago before spending a few hundred thousand silvers feeding it, modifying it, strengthening it—I can’t claim to have ‘tamed’ the bug like the Tamera from the far east do, but I put a fortune into that thing. No way three participants are taking it down.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Jiayin frowned faintly at the tone in his voice, and she tore her gaze away from the screens to scowl at him.

  “And just what are you getting at?”

  The man was just about to answer when she heard it.

  Music.

  A thin, sharp sound drifted from the screens. It started as a whisper, fragile and strange against the faint crackling flames of the forest. But it grew. Swelled. It was… an anthem. Familiar. More than familiar. High, shrill notes cut through the air, scratching at her ears, echoing through the forest, into the satellite moths capturing the footage, and into the observation room where all three of them sat in waiting.

  Jiayin blinked.

  The air in the observation room changed. Heavy. Electric. Fiery. Her eyes darted to William, then to the snoring Alice, then back to the screens. Without warning, all one hundred panels of honeycomb glass started to shimmer—then they cracked. Tiny fractures spiderwebbed outwards, faint at first, then sharp and sudden.

  Crack.

  Crack.

  Crack.

  Jiayin narrowed her eyes.

  Every screen was still showing the same thing: the sun moth diving through a forest ablaze, its wings leaving trails of fire in its wake. Its eyes glowed molten orange—two suns of fury ready to obliterate the forest and everything in it.

  And there, small as an ant before a storm, stood one of the participants surrounded by a barrier of physical sound waves—the sound waves of a Cicada Musician—but there was something a little… off about the musician.

  The girl was singing the anthem by herself. Seven pitches with one voice. And the air trembled around her, as if her aura couldn’t bear to even cling around her own body.

  The music grew louder.

  The anthem grew louder.

  The girl screamed her anthem into its crescendo, and then—detonation.

  Right before the sun moth could unleash its flame pillar, a shockwave ripped outwards from the girl, shredding the moth like paper. Its massive body exploded midair. Wings, carapace, fire, and light splintered apart. The force hit the forest like a bomb. Flames from the shredded moth spilled from the sky in sheets, and the shockwave flattened the few remaining colossal mushrooms in the forest. The sound shattered the honeycomb screens, too. As every standing tree erupted into flames and mushroom caps shattered into ash, Jiayin whipped her bow over her head to protect herself from the falling glass shrapnel.

  And as the Cicada Musician played the fading, closing notes of her anthem on that one honeycomb screen that’d been focused on the participants—that one screen that hadn’t shattered from the music—Jiayin narrowed her eyes, her voice low and cold.

  “... That participant,” she said, “who is she?”

  William already had the answer. He grabbed a thick book from under his chair and flipped to a marked page. “According to the exam registry…” He turned the book toward her. “The Cicada Musician is simply listed as ‘Emilia.’ No household name. No origin.”

  Jiayin’s scowl deepened as she stared at the scrawny signature on the page.

  “Tch. ‘No household name’, my ass.” Her eyes snapped back to the screen. “That’s Zora’s kid.”

  Alice sat up straight, rubbing her eyes and pulling glass shards out of her hair as she blinked at Jiayin. “Did someone say the Magician?”

  “Ranked two of the Arcana Hasharana, and the third strongest human alive after me and Enki,” William said, humming lightheartedly as he returned to reading his novel. “I had my suspicions when I saw her name in the registry, but I had to actually see those amber eyes before I confirmed anything.”

  Jiayin ignored Alice’s loud yawns, her gaze still locked onto the screen. “If Zora knew she was coming here, he should’ve stopped her.”

  “There’s no rule saying that one person cannot be in two bug-slaying organisations at the same time. She can be a Cicada Musician of the Long March and a Hasharana of the Worm God.”

  “It’s not about rules. It’s about balance! Do you know how much effort I put into keeping that sun moth alive? Enhancing it? That bug was supposed to last for… five years, at least!”

  William chuckled. “Guess she didn’t get the memo.”

  Her glare could’ve split stone. “This isn’t funny. I’m filing a complaint with Amadeus Academy. She shouldn’t have been allowed here.”

  Jiayin turned away sharply, her eyes drawn back to the screen once again. The destruction still flickered across the feed—blackened forest, smoldering ground, and three tiny figures standing alone in the wreckage.

  The participants were still alive, and the final Mutant-Class had been slain.

  “... I’d say she’s the second strongest participant we’ve had in a decade,” William said softly, almost to himself. “She’s Zora’s daughter alright.”

  Jiayin’s jaw was tight, her eyes cold. “And who’s the first?”

  William’s gaze slid to Alice. The young girl had woken up to take a peek at the surviving participants only to fall asleep again, and now, she was snoring softly on her couch once more.

  Jiayin clicked her tongue.

  “Thought so,” she grumbled, grabbing her bow and quiver as she stood up and headed for the door. “Send the participant list to my room after this. I’m double-checking the rest of the people who passed the first stage.”

  William returned to his novel. “Will do. Handle the debriefing, and then let’s all go out for lunch in that chic far northwestern-style cafe. Twelfth Aphid Street.”

  “The debriefing will go faster if you’re there.”

  “I’ll join you in a bit. I’m on the penultimate chapter–”

  “The murderer is the head servant. She did it because nine years ago, the protagonist’s father killed her previous master.”

  “Fuck you.”

  … The world was fire and ash.

  Flames crackled around Dahlia as she stood frozen, her breaths thin and ragged. What remained of the colossal fungi forest was nothing but blackened stalks, crumbling in the heat like ancient pillars, and the air shimmered with smoke, thick and acrid. The bloody remains of the sun moth lay strewn in every direction. Great swaths of its body had been shredded mid-air, pieces of its wings still glowing faintly as they burned. Its molten eyes were gone. Obliterated. In hours, the golden desert surrounding them would extinguish the flames and wash over the fungi forest, burying it as though this entire forest and its inhabitants had never existed in the first place.

  Somehow, both Dahlia and Muyang had managed to stay on their feet, but only one of them was really ‘standing’ tall and proud.

  Emilia stood before them among the wreckage, her cloak and blouse damp with sweat, her braided hair having come loose and clinging to her face in damp strands. Around them, the physical sound wave barrier that'd protected them dissipated slowly, and the final echoes of her solo performance had faded, replaced by the steady pop and snap of embers scattered across the charred earth.

  Dahlia’s heart continued skipping beats in her chest, a heavy rhythm she couldn’t shake.

  Her knees were weak.

  She didn’t dare move.

  She didn’t dare speak.

  And when Emilia turned around to face the two of them, she wore a carefree, lopsided grin. One that didn’t match the destruction around her. Her amber eyes glittered, bright and unbothered. Despite the sweat and the obvious exhaustions across all her limbs, she looked like someone who’d just finished a casual walk—not someone who’d reduced a C-Rank Mutant-Class sun moth to pieces.

  “... Whoops.” Emilia rubbed the back of her neck, glancing sheepishly at the stunned expressions on their faces. “Guess the jig’s up, huh?”

  Dahlia blinked. Her mind raced, but the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘The jig’s up?’

  That’s all she has to say?

  After… that?

  A low hum rippled through the air, and suddenly—shimmering voids. Glowing blue wormholes began to spiral open beneath their feet, slow and deliberate, thrumming faintly at the edges. Dahlia instinctively tried to stumble back, but unless she wanted to wade out onto scorched earth, there was no ground left to move to.

  Emilia, unfazed, extended two hands to each of them, knowing neither of them were close enough to actually reach her.

  “I’m Emilia Fabre. Daughter of the Magician, ranked third of the Arcana Hasharana,” she said casually. “I’ve had my fun lazing around, so I’ll be taking over the second and third stages of the exam from now on.”

  There was no opportunity for Dahlia to even think about shaking her hand.

  The wormholes beneath their feet opened completely, and the ground dropped out from under them.

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