Evelina walked through the hallways, and found Henderson in the foyer, staring at the courtyard thermometer. The glass had already cracked long ago, unable to contain the expanding mercury.

"Your Grace," he whispered, his voice hoarse from the dry air.,"The horses... they are collapsing in the stables. The air... it even burns to breathe."

Evelina looked out toward the fields. The lush green grass was turning a brittle, straw-yellow before her very eyes.

The chaos in the Alvarez estate was nothing compared to the carnage in the Capital.

The Imperial Council had spent the previous evening laughing over chilled wine, mocking Evelina’s delusional grain hoarding. Now, they were in a state of blind panic. The pleasant rain from yesterday had been no less than a slap on their faces, because the current heat seemed to have dried every drop of its moisture.

By 2:00 PM, the market reports hit the palace like a thunderclap.

Wheat prices blasted. Since the bumper harvest across the Empire had been effectively incinerated in the fields within a single morning, the only viable grain supply left was the one Evelina had secretly monopolized before the matter blew up.

The Merchant’s Guild, which had been laughing at her buyers only twenty-four hours ago, was now frantically trying to rescind their contracts. They sent messengers to the Alvarez manor, offering double, then triple the original price just to buy back a fraction of what they had sold her.

Evelina sat in her darkened study, reading the reports by the light of a single candle. The heat in the room was intense, but she sat perfectly still, her [Merchant’s Eye] tracking the golden numbers flickering on her system screen.

[Notification: Local Wheat Value: +400% Market Increase]

[Status: Monopoly Confirmed]

[Heart-Wrecker Points: +1,200 (For the sheer terror and confusion you have incited in everyone’s heart)]

[Current Balance: 3600 Heart-Wrecker Points]

A frantic knock came at the door. It was a Royal Messenger, his uniform stained dust and his face scorched a painful red from the ride.

"Your Grace!" he gasped, collapsing against the doorframe, "A message from the Imperial Council... they demand an audience. They request you release the grain reserves for the public good. They offer... whatever price you name."

Evelina didn’t even look up from her maps, "Tell the Council that I am currently occupied with the safety of my own lands. If they wish to negotiate, they can send someone who didn’t spend the last month questioning my sanity."

Helpless and unable to get one word further with her, the man left after a while.

She could feel the System humming in the back of her mind. The red warnings were gone, replaced by a cold blue.

[Current Estate Liquidity: 85% and Rising]

[Note: Host’s gut instinct has outperformed Data-Driven Models by 1,400%]

Evelina sighed softly, one couldn’t guess what she was thinking.

The sun began to descend in the form of a crimson sphere that seemed to take up half the sky and the heat did not dissipate. Instead, the pressure seemed to intensify. The air became so thick it felt like walking through hot oil.

Ace entered the study then. He was covered in soot and sweat, having spent the day trying to organize fire brigades to prevent the dry forests from spontaneously combusting. But the sharpness of his handsome face looked rather attractive.

The man looked at Evelina, and for the first time, his eyes weren’t just filled with worry or confusion.

"Somehow, you knew this all along," he said, his voice a hoarse rasp.

Before she could answer, the heavy front doors of the manor were thrown open so hard they slammed against the stone walls. A rider from the Southern territories, his horse lathered in white foam and nearly collapsing, screamed for the Duke.

Ace and Evelina met him in the foyer. The man was trembling, his eyes wide with an evident fear.

"The rivers!" the messenger shrieked, clutching Ace’s sleeve, "The Southern Rivers... the Great Arteries of the Empire... they’re vanishing! My Lord, I watched it with my own eyes. The water boiled off the banks! The Southern Rivers have dropped three feet in four hours! The fish are rotting on the dry beds!"

The room went silent.

A drop in the great rivers by three feet in a single afternoon was almost impossible, unless the Heat Dome was even more powerful than even Evelina’s calculations had suggested.

The messenger sank to his knees, "The trade ships are grounded in the silt. The capital’s water supply is turning to mud. It’s not just a drought, Your Grace. It’s an apocalypse."

Ace and Evelina had a change of expressions at the same time.

Evelina looked past the messenger, through the open door at the horizon. The orange sky was turning a sickly green as the heat distorted the already unbearable atmosphere.

She felt the [Prototype Steam Engine Blueprints] pulse in her mind like a second heart. The water was gone from the surface, but she knew exactly where it was hiding.

[Warning: Continental water scarcity detected]

[Mission Update: The Great Ignition has reached Phase 2]

"It’s fine," Evelina said, her voice cutting through the panic like a blade of ice. "It’s not the end of the world yet..."

She ignored the befuddled look of the other person and glanced at Ace, who was now looking back to her, "Get the smiths, Ace."

...

Outside, the the depressing shades of the sky had started to haunt people. And inside the Alvarez Estate, the only sound was the frantic breathing of the Southern messenger.

Evelina ignored the chaos around her, her gaze fixed on the flickering blue interface that only she could see.

[Internal Query: Host, a discrepancy has been detected!]

The System’s voice calm and superior voice sounded a little strained as if its logic processors were grinding against a gear they couldn’t turn.

[System Analysis: Sensors failed to predict the Heat Dome’s presence until hours ago. Yet, Host seemed to be so certain. Query: How did you know?]