Blood-speckled steel dragged a feral crimson wind, and the three on the observation deck held their breath, waiting for Aphelia’s power to erupt again.

Yet the heavy blade chopped down; blood sprayed like rain, and Aphelia’s figure vanished. The Aether light they expected didn’t flare. The blade landed, and only a chain-embedded arm remained.

That hollowed, power-stripped feeling flooded her again; even with brute strength, the armored knight who looked like Oz was climbing in power like wildfire.

She had met earlier strikes with body alone, but now she faltered; if she hadn’t abandoned that arm bound in chains, her head would’ve rolled like a crushed gourd.

“Master Merlin! Stop!”

Seeing Aphelia pay an arm, Violet finally sprang up, temper flaring like dry tinder.

What kind of corner demands a power surge? She’s about to die and you still want a breakthrough? You kidding me?

Merlin didn’t budge. His gaze stayed cold on Aphelia’s ragged retreat. His staff tapped, and silver-white radiance poured into the air again. This time he didn’t hide it from Violet; he let an Aetheric surge roll out.

Even if Violet wasn’t a True God, she felt where that power flowed, like a river under ice. His resolve hardened her narrow gaze; a sliver of killing intent bled through. Her fingertip slashed her pale wrist. The blood didn’t spurt; it gathered into a single stream, and she gripped it like a cord.

A spear of blood took shape in a blink and kissed Merlin’s throat. Her eyes, once red, turned the shade of fresh spill, scarlet as a cut sunset.

“Still feeding those brutes power? You trying to kill Aphelia?!”

Merlin only looked, faintly surprised, at the crimson spear in her grip—no, at the way she commanded blood like a tamed serpent.

A burst of silver-white light flared from nowhere, snaking in from Violet’s blind spot to bind her in a heartbeat. But to Merlin’s surprise, several blood-red spears shot from her wrist. With Arcane Power alone, she nailed Merlin’s Aether to the floor. It couldn’t move.

Taling at the side raised a hand to intervene, but Merlin stopped her with a curt wave.

“What a curious force. Not even before the Epoch did we see one like yours. I wonder—did you forge it yourself, or is it—”

Merlin didn’t finish. Violet’s killing intent erupted; the blood spear pushed an inch and split Merlin’s skin. The expected blood didn’t spill. Instead, star-white pupils unfurled in his eyes, and a vast force swept her like a storm, slinging her away.

The blood-spears vanished in an instant. Even Merlin couldn’t catch them; the crimson threaded through the silver light and fled into the air, gone like mist at dawn.

Taling darted forward. Fine machinery peeled from the tower wall at her gesture, caging Violet’s tumbling body and hauling her back before them, clattering like iron rain.

“Miss Violet… don’t be so tense…”

Merlin stepped up and worked a few controls on the frame. Silver-white beams lit at its ends and circled Violet. The blood clinging to her wrist let out a thin, terrible scream, writhing to rush back into her skin.

This time Merlin wouldn’t let that “blood” slip away. The silver-white glow hardened into a barrier, turning the air around her wrist to vacuum. The blood lost its drive and hung midair, then the machine harvested it like fireflies in a jar.

Wrapped in that glow, Violet felt her killing urge melt into a warm current. The agitation ebbed; the bloodshine in her eyes faded like sunset into ash.

Her urge to kill thinned to smoke and blew away. Taling’s quiet reassurances steadied her. She decided to hear Merlin out—if only a little.

“Trust Aphelia, please. She isn’t fragile. It’s just an arm. Back then, to save you, she was utterly destroyed. I believe in her. As her lover, why don’t you?”

Merlin’s words jolted Violet. Heat rose unbidden to her cheeks, a blush blooming like cherry dawn. She turned her face away, forced calm, and said—

“We aren’t lovers…”

“Sure, sure. I’ll stabilize you first. Let’s put our faith in Aphelia.”

Merlin gave a weary chuckle and turned his eyes back to the battlefield, gaze like frost on steel.

Aphelia, one arm gone, was flagging. She could only dodge Oz’s hunt in ragged arcs, while calling hard to the Aether within. She knew this cliff-edge—only Aether could carve a path through.

Each hewn stroke of that old, weighty greatsword carved bone-deep gashes into her. Oz grew almost gleeful; the heavy blade moved with short-knife speed, driving her into a corner with a hail like winter branches.

In that crush, Aphelia’s thoughts drifted back—back to the moment she chose to seek the Valkyrie as her teacher, the shard that changed her whole sky.

“Aphelia, tell me: if you lose your eyes, how do you fight?”

“With my ears.”

“If you lose your ears?”

“Then I lean on instinct…”

On a mountain peak, Aphelia gripped his blade bare-chested, standing against knife-edged wind, feeling what the Valkyrie called “heaven and man as one.”

The Valkyrie sat on a boulder, eyes glazed on drifting clouds. Wine had soaked her clothes. She drank from a gourd with no care for image, not even for Aphelia standing beside her.

“…Lose instinct, then use Arcane Power…”

“No, no… Arcane Power? That’s crude. However I teach you, it’ll stay crude. Can’t you use your head… hic.”

Drunk to the edges, the Valkyrie tossed the gourd at Aphelia and sprawled on the rock, muttering like a half-sleeper lost in dream fog.

Aphelia grumbled inside. If Arcane Power was crude, what counted as fine? She was clearly a true powerhouse, yet she sprawled half-dazed—and that half-open robe…

Aphelia stood at the cliff’s lip and drew a long breath. Back then he was a virgin boy; he’d never met such heat. The blade-cold wind cleared him a little, cooling the flare in his blood.

Like she’d caught a joke, the Valkyrie giggled. One pale arm pressed, and she was suddenly behind Aphelia. Her full body leaned into his back; the bare contact made him draw a sharp breath. He instinctively tried to slip from her hold.

“Then—cast off your cluttered thoughts. I’ll strip your five senses right now. Try it. See what you do~”

A crisp snap rang by his ear. Aphelia startled. The strength holding his body seeped away. His feet at the cliff’s edge began to tremble, like aspen leaves.

He tried to keep his balance, and the world went suddenly dark. All sensation vanished. Wordless fear ate through him in a single rush, like ink in water.

“Stay calm~ or you’ll die~”

Though his five senses were gone, the Valkyrie’s voice sounded inside him, deep as a bell in fog. Even Aphelia had never felt this. After that first mute terror, he finally steadied.

If losing these gifts means defeat, then how do I ever beat the Demon King who stands beyond all?

Stripped of everything, Aphelia’s inner pillar hardened. The once-turbulent sea of mind smoothed. After who knows how long—half-asleep, maybe—something fell into that sea, like a pebble dropping into still water, and it rose in ten-thousand-foot waves.

It coursed like current through his body, and like a shock of pure bliss filling every hollow. His blurred senses were replaced in a single instant by something else. His body lit up. The stripped senses and power snapped back into his hands.

When he opened his eyes again, he still stood at the cliff’s edge. The Valkyrie still held him tight, smiling. Yet the sight he’d gained in that instant showed him their gulf with cutting clarity.

If he was a single blaze, the Valkyrie was the world-drowning conflagration. That was the only time Aphelia leveled the field enough to see her true strength. In her words, it was “heaven and man as one.”

And now, her eyes couldn’t keep up with the blade’s speed. Her ears dulled from blood loss. The well of strength was almost dry. Facing the onrushing rain of steel, Aphelia drew a deep breath and chose to close her eyes.

Thump—thump-thump—

Heavy heartbeats thudded in her chest. The instant her eyes shut, the whole world seemed to go still, like a lake under moon.

The iron legion’s roar, the beast’s bellow, the shriek of wind, the blade that clipped hairs—everything lay outside her world now. She recalled that feeling that pierced her whole body. In her sea of mind, at this very moment, it was a still well waiting for the pebble’s drop.