THE REAL PROTEGE

"Because for years, your aura was dormant. Asleep. Sealed beyond mortal reach. And I thought — perhaps foolishly — that letting you live as someone ordinary was the safest kindness." Shinsei said with a sigh.

Pharsa's hands clenched. "I've killed with it."

"You've saved with it." Shinsei retorted.

Pharsa stared at Shinsei. "It's too much."

Shinsei's voice softened.

"It is not a weapon. It is memory wrapped in blood. You inherited not just magic — but choice."

A gust of wind curled through the alcove, flaring the lantern.

Pharsa lowered her head.

"Enchanted Dale wants to rewrite me. Erase me from the line of protectors. If he succeeds —what happens to everything I reclaimed?"

Shinsei reached out slowly and tapped a finger to her brow — where the last glyph of her ritual had been drawn.

"Then we will fight memory with memory. Blood with will. And you, child, must remember not just what you are… but what you became to everyone who now carries your name in protection."

Pharsa closed her eyes. Tears welled but didn't fall.

She whispered:

"I'll carry it."

Shinsei didn't smile.

But his silence felt warm.

Twin Training: Legacy Handed with Care

Beside the frozen pine grove, Kim Kim and Chin Chin stood poised within twin flame-and-wind sigil circles. The air was thick with mana, frost crackling at the edges of protective wards.

Pharsa, robed in pearl-gold ceremonial cloth stitched with elemental silk, knelt between them. Her aura no longer spilled uncontrollably — now it moved with intention, coiling softly like river smoke under her skin.

Ling Li watched from the upper steps, arms folded, expression unreadable but proud.

Pharsa extended her palms, and from them emerged a soft pulse of spiritual wind, tinged with flickers of blue fire. The twins instinctively mirrored her stance.

"You don't need control," Pharsa murmured. "You need conviction. You're not channeling power to impress — you're shaping it to protect."

Chin Chin furrowed her brow. "But what if I shape it wrong?"

Pharsa leaned closer. Her voice dropped to a near whisper.

"Then break it. And start again. You don't protect with perfection. You protect with purpose."

Kim Kim summoned a gust of air and accidentally flipped a charm bowl into the snow. Chin Chin giggled. Pharsa grinned and snapped her fingers — the bowl soared back into place, carried by a swirl of fire-kissed wind.

"Not bad. But tomorrow, let's try not to set the pine trees on fire."

The twins groaned in unison. Ling Li allowed herself the faintest smile.

Pharsa's presence wasn't just instructive; it was also inspiring. It was calming — the kind of power that held tension in one palm and grace in the other.

Return to the Forge: Tracing the Unraveled Thread

Ling Li formed a hand seal and created an array for her and Pharsa. They both arrived at the old family ancestral shrine. The torches flickered low. The ruined forge lay silent, its ritual tubes shattered, its sigils faded into stone.

Pharsa and Ling Li descended together, footsteps echoing. They were not with Shinsei, Shi Min, and Master Jirou when they came, so Ling Li and Pharsa decided to see the place themselves.

The air still carried a metallic bite — scorched memory, twisted intent.

Pharsa reached out toward the cracked obsidian disc that had once manipulated her ancestral imprint. As her fingers brushed the edge, her aura pulsed instinctively, repelled, then drawn inward. She gasped.

Ling Li steadied her.

"It still holds fragments. Let me anchor you."

Together, they pressed palms to the disc. A ripple of spirit storm surged outward. The forge responded — not violently, but as if exhaling trauma.

A voice crackled faintly from the remnants.

"SHE MUST NEVER KNOW WHAT SHE IS."

Pharsa flinched. "He tried to rip me from my own history."

Ling Li closed her eyes. Her immortal thread moved through the echo, sifting through time-layered secrets.

"Not rip. Reassign. Enchanted Dale aimed to twist the recorded origin of your soul — to replace your bloodline in the Codex with something malleable. Corrupted."

Pharsa's eyes widened.

"Erase my lineage from the protector's line?"

Ling Li nodded solemnly.

"He wasn't just after your power. He wanted you forgotten. So he could rewrite the prophecy with his own vessels."

Pharsa stepped back, hand clutching her chest. Her breath hitched — not from fear, but from clarity.

"Then everything they wrote about me — everything sealed away — wasn't just myth. It was protection."

Ling Li turned to her, fierce and focused.

"And now it must be remembered. We'll retrieve the original Codex.

Pharsa's voice dropped, brittle and determined.

"I'll re-enter my own story. And this time... I'll be the one who writes it.

Twin Awakening: Questions Written in Smoke

Moonlight curved across the sleeping quarters, casting silver veins through the protective silk canopy overhead. The dream veils woven by Ling Li shimmered faintly, pulsing in rhythm with the heartbeat of the estate.

Then — it snapped.

An invisible ripple surged through the air, subtle yet seismic. Deep underground, the echo of the destroyed forge whispered through the ley lines.

At the exact moment Pharsa and Ling Li shattered Enchanted Dale's puppet chamber, the twins stirred.

Kim Kim bolted upright, eyes wide and glowing faintly with residual wind aura.

Chin Chin gasped and sat up more slowly, one hand clutching the edge of her spirit blanket, her other pressed to her chest.

"Did you feel that?" Kim Kim asked, voice shaking with awe.

"Like something… broke," Chin Chin said. "Like a door we didn't know we had just closed."

For a long moment, they said nothing.

Then Kim Kim climbed out of bed and fetched the scroll Ling Li had gifted them for training. She opened it to the crest their joined powers had summoned during the Frost Sigil trial — the dragon seal of wind and flame.

It had changed.

A new sigil had appeared below it — small, crooked, unfinished.

Chin Chin traced it gently.

"It's from our mother's side," she whispered. "But not Mom. Not Ling Li. Someone else."

Kim Kim tilted her head.

"Is it… from Aunt Pharsa?"

The moment the name was spoken, the veil above them rippled.

No reply came.

But deep inside, both twins felt something stir — not fear, but a call. Not threat, but invitation.

Something in their blood was echoing with the forge's death. Something Enchanted Dale had tried to rewrite. And now, the twins were hearing what had once been silenced.