A blood moon hung behind Kanofia like a scarlet coin pinned to midnight. Rings of unheard-of arrays hovered under her feet, runes circling the figure at the core like drifting leaves. A blood-red bat sigil burned on her brow; its wings flared, ready to fly from her skin like a startled shadow.

Mapleleaf felt a prickle of unease before he noticed it: Kanofia’s wine-red eyes looked lost, like someone half-dreaming at dawn. A red crescent glimmered in those pupils, and her water-blue crystal pendant answered with an azure glow, like dawn light on a lake.

“Wind chimes?”

The tinkling came soft and clear, ding-ling, ding-ling, like a breeze nudging a porch chime on a lazy afternoon, peace spilling like warm tea.

With a ringing clang, the crystal pendant shattered, shards drifting into Kanofia’s body like rain into soil. For a heartbeat, Mapleleaf glimpsed a silver-haired, silver-eyed woman in a robe of stars, her backward glance timeless as starlight.

“Flowing Light Wheel… and the Eternal Pendant!”

Relief hit first, then clarity. Mapleleaf understood why Kanofia could return, like a candle relit at dusk. The Eternal Pendant froze her final moment, and the Flowing Light Wheel rewound that frame of time like a river turning upstream.

“Heh. Time and Eternity—fine craft.”

As Mapleleaf’s sigh faded, Kanofia’s wine-red crescent eyes gathered spirit, like embers catching wind.

————————

The war between the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire burst like a sudden storm over dry plains. Creatures from the Cursed Lands surged like a mad tide toward both empires, froth and claws flooding the borders.

The Eastern Empire blamed the West, anger boiling like water under a tight lid. The Western Empire swore the beasts were gene-forged by the East, words thrown like stones across a river.

The West sent troops into the Cursed Lands, banners snapping like crows’ wings in a harsh wind. Then the East hurled a nuclear strike; a mushroom cloud rose like a poisoned flower over black soil. Only a leading arcanist survived by folding into space like a swallow vanishing into fog.

By grim coincidence, millennial wraiths from Qiuya City in the Western Empire slipped through a passage Ouyang had left, like smoke through a crack. As if drilled soldiers, they poured toward Eastern cities like a black river and butchered a small city of a hundred thousand in a single night.

The Western arcanist fled home, breath ragged like torn cloth, and reported the Eastern atrocity, the mushroom cloud burning like a brand in his memory. The Western Empire reeled at first, then flared in fury like a prairie fire.

Eastern satellites caught the wraiths in cold light, wearing Western dress and wielding Western supernatural arts like borrowed blades. Both sides fumed, tempers flaring like summer thunder.

The Millennial War was due within years anyway, a wheel grinding round like a millstone. If you want a fight, we’ll see it through to the end.

The first clash erupted in the Cursed Lands, smoke and screams rolling like storm surf for three days and three nights. A thousand-strong mage corps of the Western Empire was cut to pieces like paper in rain; the Eastern Empire’s army was wiped—only they were robots, iron shells stacked like tins.

On paper, the West had annihilated the East, banners snapping like victory pennants. In truth, robots were mass-made like assembly-line shadows. The West realized the loss like a cold wind through a thin coat—tin cans had shredded their thousand mages; that trade felt sour.

So the Western Empire loosed a goblin horde like locusts in harvest season. Robots were mass-made; goblins were mass-bred, goblin-kind multiplying like weeds if given a burrow and a night.

Each year, a Goblin Tide swelled in the West, streaming from deep forests like a beast wave rattling the treeline. Western arcanists joined hands and opened a stable portal in Eastern inland territory, a glowing ring like a wound in air, letting endless goblins spill like grit into gears.

The plan worked, success cutting clean like a sharp blade. A mega-city went down hard, paralyzed like a body under winter frost. Corpses alone clogged the roads like fallen logs; goblins that dove into sewers died and jammed them like stones in a throat. The city stalled, lights snuffed like candles in rain.

Only when a neighboring city sent a robot army, steel ranks rolling like thunder carts, did the city survive by a thread, breath thin as smoke.

The West’s trick burned the East’s pride like salt on a wound. Too scared for a straight fight, so you go dirty?

The Eastern Empire answered with a cold smile like ice on river stones: we can play dirty too.

A month later, an Eastern fighter flight skimmed Western skies like hawks over wheat. The West, seasoned by years of skirmish, moved to seize the air like a net; a griffin squadron climbed, wings cutting moonlight like knives.

The fighters fell in streaks like meteors, but the West found they’d been played; those were drones, shells without breath. When the drones shattered, hidden viruses spilled like ink, and tens of thousands died, lives snuffed like lamps in a gale. A god holding the divine seat of Life descended, green rain of light falling like spring on parched fields, and the virus was erased like chalk in rain.

Both sides realized shadow games cost too much, coins bleeding like water through a sieve. They agreed to meet and fight again in the Cursed Lands, blades bared like winter branches.

This time, both empires burned hot, true fire leaping like sparks in pitch night. The East chose a moonless, high-wind night to launch missiles first, steel spears piercing sky like red comets.

“Report, sir. Trajectory computed. Ready to launch.”

“Good. Fire. Let those savages taste our bite.”

Missiles roared, tails spitting red flame like fox tails in the dark. Western night watch saw the streaks sharp as wounds, and torches flared like a field of stars.

“Enemy attack, enemy attack, enemy attack!”

Three shouts rang like gongs, and all hell broke loose, tents bursting like birds startled from brush.

“Quiet! Don’t panic!”

Mages and arcanists stepped forward, calm like stones in a river. Once they understood the Eastern volley, Western hearts eased like knots untying. Arcanists rose into the air, robes fluttering like banners, and traced the missiles’ lines like poets reading staves. They opened a spatial gate along the path, a vast ring like a moon made of ink.

The missiles slid in without suspense, vanishing like fish into a dark pool, and the other end opened over the Eastern encampment like a cracked sky.

“Report, sir—”

“What is it?”

“Sir, bad news—the missiles came back on their own!”

“Came back on their own?”

A moment later, the Eastern base erupted, a flower of fire blooming like a bloody peony. The gate had appeared too suddenly; their defenses lagged like a sleepy guard, and the blast erased everything like a sandstorm over tracks.

This round, the East lost a step, pride bruised like fruit. Face-to-face, who’d win was hard to say, but a sneak strike that backfired cut deep like a blade to one’s own palm.

The East took the hit, remnants falling back like leaves on a stream.

They rallied afterward, gathering armies like clouds to reclaim face in the Cursed Lands. But as both sides prepared to pull back and reset for another clash, the Cursed Lands went wild, monsters breaking like dams. From a black river, trident-wielding fishfolk surged like surf; countless rats drilled up like a dark flood; the sky packed with cloud, striped by crimson lightning like wounds.

“What’s happening?” Western soldiers stared at the sky’s warped omens, knowing the phenomenon wasn’t Eastern craft, nor Western hand—only a third shadow fit this script like a hidden actor stepping onstage.

“Contact the Eastern commanders, fast—” A Western officer barked, instinct cutting clean like a blade. They brawled often, yes, but they wouldn’t let unknown jackals meddle, the way wolves keep order under cold stars.

Monsters blocked the roads like thorns, and undead rose like mist, each wraith brimming with rage like furnaces, ancient and hungry as millennial ghosts.

Combat erupted without warning, steel ringing like rain on stone. Vanguards from both empires didn’t flinch, courage hard as iron. But Western high mages felt their lives ebbing like sand through fingers, a terrible curse coiling around every throat like ivy.

No one could break free, and no one could untie that knot of doom.

In this cursed earth, every living thing would fade like dusk and become monsters like shadows. This was the first curse, the root gnawing the trunk.

Under that grip, neither Eastern nor Western soldiers could leave, feet weighed like lead. Life fled in a hundred ways: some aged in moments like candles burning down; some fell to accidents like stones tumbling from cliffs; some went mad, blades turning on friends like wolves in famine.

Unseen, the blood moon climbed high, an omen bright as a wound. By all reason, under such thick cloud, no moon should show; yet it broke the rules like a red eye opening, tinting the cursed land crimson beneath heavy cloud like wine spilled on stone.

Across both empires’ camps, every sign of life dimmed and died like embers under snow.

No one returned with news; neither side knew what the Cursed Lands had done, and each assumed the other’s hand in the slaughter, logic cold as iron. If the West had erased Eastern forces so completely, with no report escaping, only one explanation fit—the West’s gods had moved.

If the East had wiped Western armies clean, only one answer stood—the East had used nuclear fire, a sun forged in steel.

Both sides took these as given, the Millennial War’s wheel grinding on like fate. They began plotting heavy blows, schemes weaving like spider silk. With superior comms, the Eastern Empire aligned first, choosing the opening strike like a gambler’s first card.

Missiles blanketed the West like iron rain, leaving the empire reeling like a boxer hit blind. A third of their lands were hammered to rubble like pottery smashed on stone.

If the East lit real fire, the West wouldn’t swallow it, pride stiff as pines. A god who held the Cataclysm seat wandered into the Eastern Empire, and disasters fell like hail, one after another.

Across the continent, small nations sank into despair like ships in black water. From the look of things, the Eastern and Western Empires meant to honor the covenant of the Millennial War, and for the little states, there was no breath left—no green shoot in this storm.