“Violet... how did you make it to the Demon World?”

Curiosity rippled through Aphelia like wind over still water, and she sat up against the headboard, stroking Violet draped across her like a fainting petal.

The mortal realm held no coordinates for the Demon World, a blank sky with no stars to steer by, only cold void and dead ends.

When the invasion burned hottest, space mages walked into the storm like moths into a torch, and they found nothing but darkness and death.

The strongest space mage of mankind wandered off into the void like a lost ship in a moonless sea, never finding the way home.

Because of that missing beacon, Aphelia was mauled before the final battle, forced toward a mutual ruin like two cliffs collapsing into the sea.

Her arrival in the Demon World had been a stumble of fortune, a coin tossed into a gale that somehow landed upright.

“It was Sister Lena and the Valkyrie who sent me over,” Violet breathed, her voice a thin reed in the wind. “It’s complicated—look at this first.”

Tears veiled her eyes like mist over glass, and she lifted her left arm, where Crimson Flame leaked from her wrist like dawn spilling through a crack.

The blaze wrapped the two of them like a scarlet cocoon, then the room shed its skin and turned into a green ocean—the Nature Elves’ forest.

By a colossal treehouse like a living cathedral, armored Nature Elves formed a ring like silver leaves around a heartwood trunk.

At their center, Lena stood in splendid robes, her gaze sharp as a drawn blade, taking reports from a deputy and sending orders like arrows.

The two women’s viewpoint shifted, like a hawk wheeling, and settled into the eyes of the Valkyrie, bright and steady as winter stars.

The Valkyrie parted the guards like a river through reeds, stepped to Lena’s side, traded a few low words, then turned their gaze toward Aphelia.

From a seat within the treehouse, both women looked straight at her, so lifelike it felt like breath fogging the same pane of glass.

“Aphelia, thanks to the Lady Valkyrie, the war in the mortal realm has steadied,” Lena began, her smile a candle cupped against the wind.

The robe fed her with verdant life like sap rising in spring, yet it couldn’t hide her weariness, the arcane fatigue shadowing her eyes like dusk.

Still, joy broke clean across her face like sunlight after rain; this wasn’t comfort—it was ground won and held.

“The Southern Empire accepted the Lady Valkyrie’s pact,” she said, voice even as a level blade. “They’ve ceased hostilities, withdrawn support from the Church, and will stay neutral.”

“But many of our kin have already returned to the World Tree’s embrace,” she added, the words soft as falling leaves but heavy as stone.

Aphelia’s fingers curled tight like a fist around a thorn, and a sigh moved through her chest like a tide slipping from rocks.

If she had returned sooner, perhaps the river wouldn’t have burst its banks and drowned so much ground.

Warmth touched her knuckles like a hearth spark; Violet’s hand found both of hers, and her voice was gentle as midnight rain.

“Aphelia, this isn’t your fault,” she murmured, her blood-red eyes tender as wine. “Some things won’t bend just because we will it.”

“At least Sister Lena’s leadership preserved more than half our living strength, like seed grain saved through winter, and that’s enough.”

The words hurt sweet as salt on a wound, and Aphelia pulled Violet close, holding still as if sheltering a flame in a gale.

“We’re only speaking of the south,” Lena went on, steady as drumbeats. “The Easterners and the Dark Elf clans aid us, and the Church won’t trouble us soon.”

She glanced aside to the Valkyrie like a pilot taking the wind, then drew a strategic map and unfurled it like a storm-tossed sail.

In Aphelia’s arms, Violet trembled like a plucked string, and unease rose in Aphelia’s heart like frost on a window.

“Very unfortunately,” Lena said, voice falling like winter ash, “our ally, the Northern Grand Duke, was assassinated by beastmen.”

“The entire northern line has collapsed like ice under a thaw,” she continued, “and the Lady Valkyrie has gone to extract Violet and their remnants.”

“She’ll bring them out if there’s a gap to cut through, like a knife through canvas; the details, I think, Violet can tell you.”

A sigh left Lena like breath in cold air, and her gaze darkened like a stormbank, because that Grand Duke wasn’t just a name on parchment.

He was Violet’s father, the Northern Empire’s famed frontier blade, and the Hero party’s staunchest ally, a rampart hammered from flesh and will.

Who would believe a pillar that withstood the Church, the beastmen, and imperial infighting would fall to dull-witted beastmen knives?

Violet shook harder in Aphelia’s embrace, like a tree in a cutting wind; she only clenched Aphelia’s hand, bit her lip, and her eyes burned red.

“The Church flipped our own people,” she forced out, each word a shard of ice. “They used an Archangel that day, and with the beastmen’s strike, they took my father...”

The more she spoke, the worse she trembled, grief pounding like surf in a storm, barely held by skin and breath.

“I’m sorry, Violet,” Aphelia whispered, and heat prickled her eyes like embers. “I’ll make them pay, I swear it on steel and flame.”

Rage rose in her chest like a black tide, because the Northern Grand Duke had carried a continent on his shoulders and died to friendly knives in the dark.

If he hadn’t held the northern line against beastmen raids from the Exiled Lands, the Northern Empire would’ve bled for decades and shattered like thin ice.

This time, the Empire had abandoned the entire line like a shed snakeskin, and winter-fat beastmen would never squander such heaven-sent prey.

No augury was needed—northern lands were a furnace of screams now, a human hell paved with snow and cinders.

“I must say this too—sorry, Violet,” Lena added, voice low as a mourning bell. “We couldn’t help you.”

“The Northern Queen has been missing for years, and we can’t reach her, so the north is a snarl of rope and smoke.”

“The old allies on the line won’t lend hands anymore, and we can only pin our hopes on the Lady Valkyrie, like sailors on a lighthouse.”

It was the right call, a cold blade’s choice; charging north blind would break the southern front and hand the Church a wedge to split their pact.

Violet knew it in her bones like a bruise that would not fade; she couldn’t blame Lena, because in that seat she’d choose the same bitter bread.

“As for Yi and Augustus...” Lena paused, and her sigh slid out like a spent tide. “Forgive me—after the Church used some aberrant magitech device, we lost them.”

“Judging by the Church’s recent moves, their odds are poor, like candles guttering in a draft.”

Leader of the Hero party, Lena watched friends and comrades sink into quicksand one by one, and her power felt like smoke in her hands.

Hearing how the mortal realm had twisted, Aphelia dimmed like a lantern in rain, and a slow bitterness rose like tannin in her mouth.

Lena had more to say, but the Valkyrie leaned close and whispered like wind through pine, and Lena gave a helpless, small smile.

“Given the current board,” she said, words crisp as frost, “the Lady Valkyrie plans to send Violet to the Demon World.”

“I’ve heard about your condition from her, and I hope you’ll find Violet quickly and take care of her, like rain over parched fields.”

The image blurred like ink in water, Lena’s voice cut off clean, and the Crimson Flame around Aphelia unraveled into a single Rune.

It drifted down like a red leaf and settled into her palm, warm as a heartbeat.

Aphelia looked at Violet with pity soft as velvet, smoothed her hair like a stream over stone, and spoke in a hush.

“If you don’t want to speak about what came next, you don’t have to,” she said, offering shade like a tree at noon.

She didn’t wish to tear open scars, because Lena’s words and Violet’s state already smelled of worse storms—ambush, ruin, and a brush with death.

Violet shook her head, drew a long breath like air before thunder, and steadied herself as a blade on a whetstone.

“Three days after the city fell,” she said, eyes lit by a furnace of hate, “I led the remnants of my knights in a breakout.”

“We were ambushed by three Cardinals and a beastman of near-Titleholder rank, a hammer from the dark hitting a cracked shield.”

“Twenty Rune Knights,” she said, and the number fell like stones in a well, “every last one died.”

“After the bloodbath, I broke through to Titleholder rank, like iron tempered in a kiln,” she went on, voice flinty and thin.

“But two of those Cardinals were Titleholders too, and after I cut one down, the rest smashed me to pieces, like waves breaking a cliff.”

“If the Valkyrie hadn’t arrived when she did, I would’ve been a name carved in ice.”

Even in memory, confusion crawled like fog; Cardinals who had been high-advanced, near-Titleholder, suddenly bloomed into two full Titleholders and struck with a near-Titleholder beastman.

“But the Valkyrie was tangled by a strong foe, a chain on a thunderbolt,” Violet said. “She only had time for basic healing.”

“She sealed that message in my body like a seed under bark, and then she sent me.”

“When I landed in the Demon World, the so-called royal scions took me, like hawks stooping on a wounded hare.”

Aphelia’s eyes narrowed like shutters in a storm, and cold killing intent filled them like black ice.

Royal blood of the Demon World? Given the recent stir, it likely wasn’t Nero. So, his elder sister? Or those two brothers?

Even Phoenix, whom Aphelia had personally cast into the void, had crawled back like a ghost in frost, twining with Demonic Knights to spring a trap.

The royal scions of the Demon World seemed tired of breathing, like candles begging for wind.

Savage, winter-cold fury flared up her spine like oil catching flame, and seven black-winged angels loomed in her memory like a night crown.

If she drove that power again, and washed the Demon capital clean, perhaps their memories would be branded like iron on skin.