Liliana and Obsidian stood in front of each other in the green grass, surrounded by flowers and greenery. Earlier in the morning, she invited her homeland companions for daily training to keep them all busy. Thus now they were breathing a little bit faster after trading consecutive blows under the soft morning sun.

They were not really sparing yet. More so measuring each other's methods and strengths by going through some traditional military forms and drills. Both held a combination of sword and shield in hands. Obsidian's was flaming red like moldem stone. Liliana's were a replica of the divine instruments of Schutzaria and Ewigeliebe made out of ice. When they exchanged blows, the weapons would hiss and smoke against each other violently.

However, it took one well landed attack from Liliana to catch Obsidian by surprise and make him return with twice the force. The drill quickly escalated on a full out sparring, both of them rushing through the grass as forces of nature. Fire and ice raged as if Ewigeliebe and Leidenschaft were battling for Gedulh, sparks and snowflakes littering the air with each traded blow.

And like the God of Life himself, Liliana was destined to lose, if only for a short while. Obsidian's attacks were brutal and destructive and, even if all her own blows were to hit him true, it would barely dent his unending stamina. She surrendered while she could still stand with some resemblance of grace, even if flustered by the battle glow, and washed herself with the blessing of Flutrane.

Gods bless the years of carefully pinning her hair to her skull to the point of numbness. Not a single hair was out of place.

"Thank you for sparing with me, Sir Obsidian. May I offer you the blessings of the healing waters of Flutrane?" Her smile was measured and polite. A perfect noble.

Honestly, even far away from home, she didn't know how to be anything else.

As Rowan kept his hands busy with his work, whatever it was, Liliana's own hands travel through the book covers lined on the walls. Her eyes scanned the titles, many about the matters of life, death and the soul, coming from many different places. She turned around to look at her new acquaintance - her new master in the arts - and took in his appearance once more.

The knight could understand that some would find him frightening. Black was the color of the Grimm, but only because Chaocipher wished to have the God of Darkness for her own. Having no color of her own, she made them of the likeness of the object of her greed and made their eyes glow with the fire of summer, twisted into anger and hatred. Rowan was nothing like those. He was passive and steadfast as the Lord of darkness, spreading his cape over the skies in silent watch while waiting for his wife's return. However, Liliana had the impression he looked equally lonely. Something inside her whispered that it was wrong. Maybe it was his eyes. There was not even a moon to set light to those skies, permanently devoid of the grace of the supreme Goddess.

She tore her eyes away from him.

"You read about many cultures, you said? I am devoid of Mestianora's blessing when it comes to the words beside this one, but I am aware that my beliefs are not universal. Even so- I find likeness to them even here. In my land, we believe that our colors, our souls, are blessed by the gods, some more than others." She looked down at nothing in particular as she spoke. "To me, you seem deeply blessed by the supreme God of Darkness himself. He is the one that rules over the realm of life and death, welcoming the souls to the top of the towering staircase when the time comes. Though you seemed to lack the company of the Goddess of Light to aid in your own endeavors."

The knight said the last words due to his lack of light in his own person, not even the white of his pupils, nothing more. However, he seems to pause at her words and, for a second, Liliana felt that she might have overstepped her place and stretched her stay. Placing a hand on her chest, she bowed to him.

"For now, I shall return and settle down. I may return at a later date to seek your guidance. Until then, may the gods bless you, Master Rowan. Do be at peace."

And she calmly and elegantly makes her escape.

First up is Mizuki's internal mental framing of her transness being a "secret" and being "deceptive" to not tell Nightcord, this shows her internal othering and internalized transphobia occurring from her past trauma, she treats it like something is wrong with her for being the way she is and makes her feel guilty that all of it is HER fault. And Mizuki is as shown willing to hide that even from her closest supporters who know everything, ie Rui & even Yuuki when first time meeting her in person for the first time in years during Unchanging Warmth, Mizuki avoided telling her sister most of the important things that were weighting on her mind.

We also have Mizuki's abandonment issues, since she's had 0 long lasting friendships (Rui only one close to resembling one), Mizuki for a long time shown to have felt a feeling that she'll be abandoned once more as its always happened...

Then ties to her confirmation-bias, which shows apparently with how Mizuki during the festival keeps thinking of it as her final time with nightcord, it was clearly mizuki was looking for any signs of the worst or even a not good outcome since she couldn't imagine much less believe in any positive outcome, because Mizuki hasn't herself hold onto such hopes. Her biggest flaw though is her self-sabotaging habits, ie the way she let herself and ena separate at the festival cause she places no priority on herself when she could have said no or asked ena to come with her, even though she loves helping others. Worse is how it stops her from reaching out to others for help even from her sister...

Finally I think so the pressure on herself both internal and external, Mizuki obviously put a lot of negative pressure on herself which raises question why not wait until Mizuki can address that before coming out... (ignoring that Mizuki's current issues made her refused her best chances to set things on a different path already such as in Picnic, Footsteps, Ribbon, and Warmth) But then you get the external pressure when you remember Mizuki is the youngest of Nightcord by a year... and with Mizuki's deep seated uncertainty of long term friendship then the fear of the graduating and all the change that could bring to Nightcord and would make her potential miss her chance to make them that would make things worse and crush her if she waited too long. So Mizuki was on a hard limit of less than a year whether she liked it or not and Mizuki is probably aware of that on some level making it worse for her.

Ena can be an incredible person really, but it would have taken an actual saintly miracle for Ena to navigate all of that by alone herself without knowing even half of how those things that were impacting her.

tl;dr Mizuki was doomed by herself AND the narrative, the deck was really stacked against her fun!

At least Ena has clue's about Mizuki's existing issues now and she's really gonna have her work cut out for her and as I tagged my fic 'Save us Yuuki Akiyama' because I think Mizuki needs someone more mature and experienced to be able to challenge some of these things enough to change, cause it's a LOT honestly for someone Ena's age to handle, maybe can do it with Kanade but still... Mizuki doesn't just need to come out as trans to be okay and happy, while that's important for sure...

Fundamentally Mizuki needs to learn to accept hope and trust others more than anything and that's going to be hard with how strongly Mizuki has resisted that up until now... Then she can maybe begin learn to not hate herself, to forgive herself, to value herself, to feel safe talking about her fears & hardships, and to realize not everything was her fault...

So that she can accept it's okay to be trans, it's okay to be herself, to be a girl, and that's not something she should feel guilty about.

I think those things need to be done before she can face her negative habits & trauma responses which will probably take even longer in story to truly overcome.