Fifty Iron Cross Knights stood in silent ranks on the largest clearing of Red Fort Town, like a wall of frost-edged shields planted in earth.
No one spoke, no one drew steel—yet doom pressed on every villager like a sealed vault with no window.
The dead hush lasted only minutes, yet stretched like a lifetime lost in fog, until the front-most knight, his tower shield rimmed with a band of gold, stepped forward, turned to face his squad, and clicked on his mic.
[At ease.]
Boom!
The remaining forty-nine slid a half-step right-front in perfect unison, settling into textbook at-ease.
[All residents of Red Fort Town, hear this. Someone here runs clandestine passage to the independent city-states, and shelters a heretic sigil of an outsider god. Inform, and you will be spared collective punishment.]
The town fell silent, like the hour before dawn when even roosters hold their breath.
Everyone knew “inform” was a fig leaf—if you knew and waited until the Iron Cross arrived to speak, you’d escape collective punishment and still be cut down as a suspected accomplice.
No difference at all.
The moment the captain named the crime, the town—and everyone in it—had its fate sealed like wax under a stamp.
[Search.]
Forty-nine knights fanned out, clean as clockwork, hacking open doors and flooding homes.
Chops, splinters, screams—Red Fort Town turned into hell on earth, a furnace fed by fear. The captain stood alone at the center, sword grounded, brows knotting beneath the heavy helm as he thumbed on his built-in music player.
A lone melody and an airy soprano filled only his ears, a private river of sound cutting through the din.
[Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee—]
A hearth went over, fire ran the tablecloth like foxfire, then climbed the curtains, the beams, the roof. Armor feared no flame, but he moved fast, braced the door, pinned three suspects like moths against glass, then returned to the search once all three lay still.
[blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus—]
…
Half an hour later, all the knights finished and returned to the clearing.
A stubbled man in coarse cloth was dragged to the center; the knight behind him kicked the back of his knee, and he folded to the ground beneath the captain’s shadow.
[We found a signal jammer under his bed.]
[Evidence conclusive. Sentencing.]
The hand rose; the blade fell.
Before head and body hit earth, the captain’s voice rang out:
[His soul is entered into Hell’s ledger. But living day by day beside a sinner and remaining blind, letting him sink in the mire of guilt—that is the failure of you all.]
[From this afternoon on, Red Fort Town is removed from local administration.]
That didn’t mean self-rule. It meant the map would cease to have a dot called Red Fort Town.
Some clenched pitchforks and hoes—a harvest of useless iron and wood—but they knew those “weapons” couldn’t scratch a knight’s shield.
The knights began at the town’s rim, herding every resident toward the clearing like ducks driven down a muddy lane, ignoring the laughable tools clutched in shaking hands.
[Evidence conclusive. Sentencing.]
They were going to be killed.
For a hidden passage to a smuggler’s boat; for longing after lands the Church couldn’t reach. Low sobs rose in waves like damp mist, but the pure, white armor didn’t tremble.
…Was there anyone,
anyone who could come—
…
A boy clutching his mother’s hand suddenly stared wide-eyed at a point in the sky.
The clear, cloudless blue glitched like a torn page: a silver rectangle hung still against the heavens.
Then a “something” took shape behind it.
Then it ripped the light-curtain open at the center and crossed a boundary into this sky.
It was—
a silver dragon wrapped in red flame.
The captain drew his sword, raised his tower shield, and shouted to the open air: [Identify yourself! No—are you a dragon?!]
“My name is Balafaruth—”
The dragon was still no more than a coal in the distance, yet her voice rang direct and clear in every mind, a bell struck in the skull.
“Ancestor of Mechanical Dragons, crimson harbinger of silver wings—”
The captain paused his player.
Balafaruth. So that was its name?
Never heard of it. No record at all. The size and pressure—undeniably a true dragon.
“Unstoppable, unopposable—”
“I am—”
“—Ca-ta-clysm—!”
Its target—the Iron Cross Knights.
Why would dragonkind stick its claws into Church affairs?
Is it not afraid its kin will be culled?
What is it?
Mechanical ancestor… mechanical—Could it be a creation of the City of Ivalice?!
In that heartbeat of confusion, the fireball that was Balafaruth had already closed enough for everyone to see her features.
What a dragon to etch into memory—
Metal-bright, blade-sharp silver scales plated her like armor, yet they couldn’t hide the feminine grace in her lines; a pair of iron wings twisted like bone claws, venting red particles in an endless spill of embers.
With those powerful limbs and that long, arched neck—she was a champion among dragons.
Another segmented burst, skipping distance as if the middle was cut away; every eye on the ground caught the horns forged from streams of crimson draconic energy.
Those savage iron wings, those horns severed and re-grown—everything screamed man-made. A relic of some old hunt? Did she spot the Iron Cross and seize the chance for revenge?
[Form ranks, engage!]
The captain lifted his sword and roared:
[Large target, dragon-hunt formation—activate Super Transformation mode!]
At the word, every motion snapped to a stop. Some arms retracted into torsos, some legs fused, some bodies folded at the waist; all five squads were cyborg knights who kept only human brains.
They lifted from the square, wheeled and locked, fast as hawks building a storm: two colossal legs, then a torso, then two hands.
“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel—for you have wrestled with men and with God, and prevailed!”
Thrusters flared behind the captain, launching him to the crown of the thirty-meter combined frame; his lower body slid into the waiting slot.
[I’ll form the head—Twelve Apostles-class mech ‘Israel’, sortie!]
The residents had already slipped away while the knights were busy, vanishing into the near forest like deer melting into shade.
“Israel” didn’t care; it rolled its joints and took a ready stance to meet Balafaruth’s fall.
A low hum.
Space itself shuddered; momentum bent like a reed. The mechanical dragon froze midair, wings flaring to their widest, casting a sun-swallowing shadow across the hills.
The red flame wouldn’t stop; it shattered into meteors that fell toward “Israel,” each caught or parried by armored fists, leaving no real mark.
Silver dragon and silver mecha, near the same size, stood off across a hundred meters, still as statues between the swells of the land.
[State your purpose, dragon!]
Balafaruth didn’t answer.
A thirty-meter dragon—no easy foe. The captain pinged the Church in the dark while his eyes stayed locked.
She’d descended shrouded in Infinite Power, yet didn’t strike or parley. What did she want—
Suddenly, a fierce music burst across the field!
It sounded like a symphony, yet its pounding drums and threaded chant cinched the air tight; the silver-winged dragon turned silhouette against the glow, as if even the sun dimmed for her.
[Wha—]
A sonata drilling into bone, a might that could remake the world—could this be an Ancient Dragon from the old tales?!
Why would such a primal mystery wake without omen? On the eve of the World Tree bearing fruit, has the Pope’s interdiction loosened?!
Treating it as an enemy fit to end an age, the captain lifted his sword to smother the fear clawing up his heart.
The now-diminished blade sang; the other forty-nine swords wrenched free of earth, flew and packed together, becoming a battleship-cleaving greatsword of interlocked fangs.
[Brothers, today’s the day to carve our names in glory!]
In the forest at “Israel’s” feet, a white-clad figure slipped through brush and hid in a denser thicket.
She’d looped a ring of Voice Casting to play the prologue and the BGM, and burned a heavy dose of Dancing Light behind her to forge a blazing backlight—she’d done all she could.
This roadside interlude wouldn’t derail her true destination. Ling Yi knew Europe staged tragedies like this every hour; there was only one Balafaruth, and they had little room to play international savior.
She took one last look at the gorgeous silver dragon, and for no clear reason, let a bitter smile slip.
“Half a year ago, could you have imagined this?”
“I sure couldn’t.”
