The door shut behind her like the closing of a tomb.
Inside the Spire, light forgot how to move. The only thing that existed was the cold. Not physical cold—the kind that lived in memory. In mistakes. In old magic.
Minus stood still, letting her eyes adjust. Not even her heartbeat echoed.
"Cozy," she muttered.
"You're not here for comfort," Serie's voice floated from deeper within. "You're here to remember who you were. Or decide who you're becoming."
Minus followed the voice, boots silent on the polished black floor. The Spire was older than the war. Older than kingdoms. Older, perhaps, than names.
And it knew her.
Each step she took, the stone responded. Threads of mana beneath the surface twisted faintly, like they were sniffing her out.
Serie stood at the center of a wide chamber, ringed in stone monoliths carved with incantations no living mage had spoken in centuries.
In her hand was a staff—not hers.
Minus's.
Or at least, the one she had formed in her final days. The one built from her own mana, crystallized and burning with fury.
"You kept it?" Minus said, voice quiet. Almost… surprised.
Serie gave a faint smile. "I don't collect trophies. But you died holding this. It refused to fade with you."
The staff pulsed. Faintly. As if it recognized her—but wasn't sure what she'd become.
"Is this another lecture or am I finally going to learn something useful?" Minus asked, stepping forward.
"You'll learn," Serie said. "If you survive it."
The air twisted. One of the monoliths groaned and split open.
From the dark inside it crawled a figure—humanoid, but unfinished. Not a demon. Not a construct. Something in between.
No eyes. No mouth. No face. Just old magic stitched into bone and breath.
Minus frowned. "You really know how to roll out a welcome."
"It's a Mirror Revenant," Serie said calmly. "It shows not your reflection—"
The creature twitched—
"—but what you tried to bury."
It moved. Fast. Not with strength, but certainty.
Minus barely dodged the first strike. Her body—Milirade's body—reacted with old reflexes that didn't quite feel like hers.
Not yet.
The revenant shifted—suddenly it looked like her.
Not Milirade.
Not Minus reborn.
But the Witch of the Northern Sky.
Eyes burning. Mana spiraling like a storm. The version of her that once silenced armies and made the Empire hunt her like a beast.
Her past self attacked without hesitation.
Minus fell back, hand to the floor, magic lighting beneath her fingers. "You're showing me a ghost. That's your big trick?"
"Not mine," Serie said from the shadows. "Yours."
The duel began.
Every spell she cast was answered with one sharper, faster, crueler. Every movement of the revenant was perfectly her—how she used to fight, before rebirth softened her magic into something subtler. Every blow reminded her:
You are not whole.
Yet.
But Minus didn't step back. She ground her teeth, rewrote a spell mid-cast, let it fracture into three forms at once. It wasn't something the old her would have done.
The revenant blinked, staggered.
Minus surged forward, grabbed it by the jaw, and injected raw mana into its skull.
It collapsed in a silent burst of light—its own magic dismantled by an evolution it couldn't imitate.
She stood there breathing hard, watching the ghost of herself burn away.
Serie stepped forward, calm as always. "You didn't win because you're stronger than her. You won because you're no longer just her."
Minus spat blood, wiping her mouth. "You make it sound like that's a good thing."
"It is," Serie said, handing her the staff. "Because the next time you see Frieren… she won't be looking for Milirade."
Minus took the staff.
The moment her hand closed around it, the mana inside settled.
Silent.
Accepted.
She looked up, eyes sharper now.
"Then let's continue."