The city's morning was cold and calm.
A thin mist clung to the ground, and the dawn of the Techno Kingdom wasn't lit by the sun, but by ribbons of light slowly awakening—pulsing like veins between the towering buildings.
Helya stood on the balcony, her gaze passing through the seemingly flawless Glass City.
She had barely slept the night before.
Dreams like blades had torn through the layers of her sealed-off heart. She once believed those memories had long been buried, but Cael's words—strangely enough—had acted like a key, unlocking what she thought was locked away forever.
"You're not someone who lives only for the mission."
She closed her eyes slowly, but her heartbeat remained out of rhythm.
That cat… It had merely been a moment of accidental kindness. And yet, it left behind a feeling she hadn't allowed herself to feel in a long time—hesitation.
The official diplomatic itinerary began at first light.
The delegation was divided into groups to visit the Techno Kingdom's research institutes, energy core, and the much-touted "Eternal City" exhibition hall. Helya was assigned to one of the teams, but she deliberately avoided Cael. She disliked unpredictable variables—especially ones like him.
But fate has its own sense of irony.
In the main exhibition hall of the "Consciousness Link Lab," Helya once again encountered the noble girls from the Federation—the same ones who had tried to provoke her during the banquet.
Their smiles remained polished, but the tension beneath them was noticeably thicker.
"Well, I didn't expect a magic-kingdom delegate to understand a tech exhibition," said a girl named Melira, her voice laced with mock surprise.
"You know they still use parchment and quills to record magic scrolls, right?" another chimed in. "To her, this place must feel like stepping into an alien civilization."
Around them, Techno Kingdom reporters hovered with hovering cameras, clearly enjoying this open-format 'interview.'
Helya smiled slightly, her eyes passing over the lenses. "You're right. I'm quite curious about everything here."
She walked to a floating screen and quickly brought up a neural circuit diagram used in the Federation's mental mapping tech.
"For example—your current psychic link relies on linear quantum synchronization. The adaptation model is 'triple-core parallel processing,' but it seems like you haven't solved the issue of emotional resonance interference, have you?"
She looked up, meeting their now stiff expressions. "If the resonance amplitude reaches the critical threshold, the entire circuit experiences severe latency. In some cases, users fall into a state of compulsive sleepwalking. We call that cognitive echo reversal."
Her tone remained calm, but each word was razor-sharp.
The hall went quiet. Some began discreetly searching the terms on their terminals.
Melira's smile finally cracked. "You… how do you even understand this?"
Helya's voice was soft, but unwavering:
"If you truly devoted yourself to understanding the enemy's every piece of technology—you would too."
She gave a slight bow, graceful and composed. "Thank you for the insight."
The cameras hadn't stopped rolling, but Melira and her companions had already turned away, their faces dark with frustration.
And from a distance, Cael saw it all.
He had only been doing a routine patrol, but at that moment, he couldn't help but pause.
He remembered the way she had healed that cat the night before. Her gaze then—just like now—was calm on the surface, but beneath it shimmered sharpness and sincerity.
"Her greatest weapon isn't magic," he thought.
"It's her mind."
That night, after the day's schedule ended—
Helya returned to her room and sat at the desk, beginning to open the day's briefing packet.
But her eyes drifted instead toward the balcony.
Outside, the city's nightscape was cold and clear. The light-trails between towers moved like transparent nerves, silently operating the vast organism that was the Techno Kingdom.
She rested her fingertips on the desk, yet did not open a single document.
She thought of the girls' mockery, her own unfiltered response, and most of all—the words Cael had spoken.
It wasn't part of the mission. She wasn't supposed to react.
But she had.
And what disturbed her most wasn't their challenge—it was his clarity.
"You're not someone who lives only for the mission."
He shouldn't have said that.
He shouldn't have seen that far.
She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. There were no dreams tonight. No nightmares either. But she knew, with clarity sharper than any blade, that the memories she thought had drowned were beginning to rise again.
She reached for a blank sheet of paper and wrote a single line.
She didn't send it. Just folded it, and placed it into a private compartment of her case.
The note read:
"It's not because I forgot who I was—
it's because I've started to remember who I used to be."