The humming carried clearly through the quiet cabin.

As she had pointed out, her current status was nothing more than “suspect.”

Suspected of stealing a valuable item belonging to a Master Demon Hunter—not just anything, but specifically the Alchemy Apprentice’s Ring.

According to the inside information Julian had provided, Aldrich had apparently conducted a reverse analysis of the earliest batch of potions she’d sold on the market, tracing the techniques used, and inferred certain abnormalities in her alchemical craft from that. He had then submitted a formal accusation against her to the Disciplinary Court.

Half a month had passed. Aldrich himself had gone relatively quiet recently, but the Disciplinary Court’s investigation had been moving forward by its own steady, procedural momentum the entire time.

And today was the day the Disciplinary Court had officially approved the order to bring her in for questioning.

Thanks to Julian’s well-placed connections, Pandora had known they were coming long in advance, which was why she had been able to receive this development with such composure.

But no matter how composed she appeared. No matter how easy she made it look.

She was still walking through the Disciplinary Court’s heavy doors at the end of this ride.

The melody of Pandora’s humming didn’t change.

Her gaze grew imperceptibly deeper.

..................

Not long after. Less than halfway through the journey.

“Hey, I’m just saying—”

The girl’s voice drifted over again, carrying that particular brand of relaxed ease that the green-haired man found infuriating on a molecular level.

He didn’t know why, but from the moment he’d laid eyes on this girl today, his right eyelid had been twitching.

A mild but persistent, deeply unsettling flutter.

“—you’re not actually planning to interrogate me here in this vehicle, are you? That’s incredibly unofficial.”

The green-haired man drew a slow breath and forced himself to continue staring at the retreating street scenery outside the window. His voice came out through his teeth.

“Be quiet.”

“No but seriously, are you actually doing this?”

The girl showed no signs of stopping. If anything, she escalated, her tone layered with theatrical bewilderment.

“Has the Disciplinary Court’s case procedure really gotten this informal? No proper interrogation room at all? Or is it that—”

It wasn’t just the eyelid anymore. The green-haired man felt his scalp begin to tighten and pulse in rhythmic waves.

“Close your mouth.”

“Julian did ask me to be reasonably civil toward you. But don’t push it. This isn’t a place where you can do whatever you like.”

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“Hey, are you even listening to what I’m saying...”

Her voice stretched out, carrying a maddening note of injured innocence.

“Damn it—”

The green-haired man finally lost his grip on the anger that had been getting poked at steadily since the moment they’d met.

He spun around sharply, ready to use a considerably harsher tone to shut this insufferable girl up once and for all.

But—

His movement stopped dead.

His words stopped dead.

He froze.

His pupils contracted in an instant.

He swept his gaze instinctively over Pandora, still sitting on the bench across from him.

Then his eyes moved. Slowly. Extremely slowly. Carrying a disbelief so complete it was almost physical.

To the seat beside Pandora.

Sometime between then and now.

There was another person.

A woman.

She wore a deep grey longcoat, cut with exceptional precision to her frame. The fabric looked strange, almost like it was absorbing the surrounding light, giving it a flat, matte quality.

Beneath the coat, a simple black turtleneck.

Her face looked young. Her skin was pale to the point of near-translucency. Her features were refined with the exactness of carved stone, but they held no expression—as cold and still as a marble statue.

What drew the eye most were her eyes.

Pure grey. Entirely without impurity.

Like frost crystallizing on a winter morning. Like polished lead-grey metal.

Deep. Indifferent. Completely without ripple.

When had she appeared?

How had she appeared?

The green-haired man’s breath stopped completely.

He hadn’t felt any shift in the air. Not a single fluctuation of presence.

This woman had simply... condensed out of nothing. As if she had always been sitting there. As if he just hadn’t noticed until now.

He snapped his gaze to Pandora. His voice came out dry and rough, scraped raw by shock and the sudden cold spike of danger.

“Who is she?!”

Pandora blinked. The teasing expression she’d been wearing shifted rapidly into something that looked far more genuine—confusion, and... innocence?

“I mean... you’re asking me?”

She spread her hands.

“Besides, wasn’t I literally just asking you about this? Whether she was someone the Disciplinary Court arranged? But you kept telling me to shut up.”

There was even a faint note of grievance in her voice.

The green-haired man felt something drop in his chest.

A surge of acute danger seized his heart and sent a wave of cold prickling across his scalp.

Not from the Disciplinary Court.

Appeared without a sound or a trace inside the Disciplinary Court’s own official detainment vehicle.

What kind of infiltration capability was that?!

The dark green hair on his head—slightly curled, slightly tangled—seemed to acquire a life of its own. It began to move. Slowly writhing, extending, the tips catching the cabin’s dim light with the cold gleam of metal.

This was his Third-Rank ability: Living Hair Dominion.

As one of the stronger Third-Rank apprentices around, he had the capacity to react in an instant—to restrain or outright eliminate targets below his rank without giving them time to respond.

But—

Just as his hair was about to shoot forward and coil around the mysterious grey-eyed woman—

A finger.

A single finger. Slender, pale, looking as though it had no strength in it whatsoever—appeared, without sound, in the exact center of his field of vision.

Occupying everything he could see.

Less than an inch from the space between his brows.

No air displaced.

No energy discharged.

Not so much as a current of breath disturbed.

It was as if it had always been there.

As if he simply had “not seen it” until this moment.

The next instant.

The green-haired man realized, with creeping horror, that he couldn’t move.

Not restrained.

Not suppressed.

Something more complete and far stranger than either.

He couldn’t feel his hair.

The strands that had always responded to him like extensions of his own limbs were now dead things attached to someone else’s head.

He couldn’t feel his fingers.

He wanted to close his fist. He wanted to trigger an alert. His fingers gave him nothing back.

He couldn’t even feel his own eyes moving.

He could only stare, directly and without choice, at the pale finger hovering inches from his face.

At the grey eyes behind it.

Cold. Colorless. Carrying nothing.

Cold sweat.

It soaked through his undershirt in an instant. Clammy and icy against his skin, running the full length of his spine.

“Oh boy.”

The girl’s voice came again.

But this time—this time it sounded completely different to him. The edge that had made it so infuriating before was gone. In the terror of where he currently was, it was the only sound in the cabin that felt, in any sense of the word, normal. The only thing keeping the situation from becoming pure dread.

“Silence.”

The grey-eyed woman finally spoke.