Violet had been outside. She’d watched a black canopy drop from the heavens, like night upended. Only now did the city’s true horror click.

Crimson armor latched onto her like fresh lacquer hardening. A storm of Demonic Spears lunged for the limbs on the wall. Needle-fine Arcane Power slammed forward, bright as razors, yet snapped piece by piece under the thick black fog.

The backlash flung her like a leaf in a gale. She wouldn’t stop. It felt like deliberate self-harm; blood fountained from her shell. Countless Demonic Spears flocked around her like iron crows. The next assault gathered, fiercer than a bellows-stoked blaze.

Before she could strike, cold flooded her, marrow-deep. Scarlet eyes opened inside the twisted black mist and fixed on her. That gaze rose like malice from the Abyss, freezing her stiff. Even the thought of moving an inch wouldn’t come.

Her heart drummed like war. The blood power that should’ve obeyed her leaned toward that stare, as if hooked. Her blood wanted to leap from her veins. Arcane Power stampeded through her like panicked herds. Keep this up, and there was only one end—death.

From behind, Natalie sprang, a shadow turning into a shield. The frail, slender girl swelled in a heartbeat into a full-bodied warrior. Her curved blade flew at the scarlet pupil, a silver crescent. At the same time, she shoved Violet out of that sightline. With that shove, the mountain on Violet’s shoulders vanished without a trace.

The blade took the weight meant for Violet. Its edge, etched with strange patterns, cracked in silence. With the breaking, Natalie spat blood and screamed.

She lurched up, whispered a single syllable, and a crimson Rune unfurled on her forearm like a burning brand. A patina-like sheath filmed over the blade. The failing edge held fast, a poison-fed reprieve. But the sheath warped and twisted, and hairline ruin traced her left forearm as flesh began to crumble.

With Violet gone from its view, those feral red eyes lost interest. The blade, spared from being crushed, finally escaped and clanged to the ground.

The red eyes faded into the writhing black fog. Limbs sprouted in messy profusion, like a thicket of fleshy roots, burying the stout city wall. They even crept over the land beyond.

As the tide of limbs slowed, the city’s noise vanished too. Here and gone—too quick. It felt like a giant hand moved unseen, toying with everything like pieces on a board.

Natalie slipped out of the body she’d borrowed and staggered forward. Her forearm looked flayed by a thousand cuts, slick with blood.

Violet didn’t hesitate. Blood surged from her like a tide and wrapped Natalie’s forearm. The life packed into that blood took hold. The arm that looked fed through a grinder knit back to whole.

“Stand guard for me. I need to recover.”

As she spoke, the blood sphere frayed into a storm of threads and cocooned her. More threads drove down like tree roots into the barren earth, plundering without mercy—living or dead.

As the great cocoon formed, Violet’s presence erased itself, a candle snuffed. Even the red cocoon blended into the desolate ground by slow degrees. Even Natalie felt some force under the dry earth being sucked madly away.

She stood with her blade, quiet as a post. She turned her head aside and refused to look at the city drowned in darkness.

She opened her eyes—blood-red crowded the world.

Her body felt heavy as lead. Pain owned every inch; even breath jabbed and hitched. At her ear, whispers kept threading by—urging, arguing.

Where… was this?

The black-haired girl jolted awake, panic first, then motion. She pushed up from the rubble. A high wall lay broken; desks lay strewn. The world looked overturned in one night.

It felt like an earthquake had chewed through everything. The teaching building she was in had collapsed completely. She even wondered how her luck held—alive and untouched. A pocket of space had formed by chance, just enough to crawl free.

“Is… anyone there?”

She rose carefully, brushed dust from a school uniform she didn’t remember, and picked her way out of the rubble. Her voice came out rough as sand.

There might be survivors. Maybe they could help each other, coals banked under ash.

Her hand touched the wall. She jerked back—terror first, then the stumble. She lost her footing and hit the ground. When she pushed up again, she pressed into a wedge of broken stone, shaking.

Only then did she see it: bones woven into the rubble, white slick with clinging flesh. Not just parts—multiples, halves, even whole skeletons.

They looked tortured to the limit. From those ruined faces, she could feel a last moment of pure terror. She bit her lip and didn’t dare breathe deep.

After a long while, the tremors ebbed. She forced her gaze away from the scattered dead and moved quickly toward the outside.

An instant stretched like a century. Sweat darkened the fringe of her bangs. When she finally stepped out of the collapsed building, she felt like something dragged from a river.

Why is it like this? Where am I?

She knew only her own name. Everything else was blank. Where from? No idea. Where was she? No idea. What did she do? Even less.

It felt like a knife driven into her mind. Every time she reached for memory, pain spiked and washed the world white.

If so, then don’t think… not yet.

The here-and-now mattered more than ghosts.

She looked over the campus laid to waste. Buildings stood half-broken like teeth. What matched everywhere were the corpses, scattered like thrown dice.

They didn’t look long dead. Those organs were still bright, too fresh.

Campus? Wait—what is a campus?

The thought rose and jolted her. When she tried to follow it, pain crept back, dull and insistent. She let it go.

Campus it is. Remember the word. The urgent thing is getting out.

She scanned around and found what memory—or gut—called the exit. An iron gate sat warped under weight. In her bones, she knew that was the way out.

As she moved toward it, a scream split the campus—too shrill for any human throat. Pain flared in her ears. She clamped her hands over them and dropped to her knees.

A huge black shadow swept through the air. Before she could focus, it was gone. A broad patch of corpse-chunks on the ground vanished with it.

What was that? A fighter jet? Wait… what’s a fighter jet?

Memory churned again. Pain pressed in, but this time she steadied quickly. That scream had warned her enough.

She scanned the area. When she was sure the shadow was truly gone, she hurried past the bodies and headed for the deformed gate.

The gate wasn’t high. Even with the piled remains, she could climb it without much effort.

Just as she swung a leg to climb, a bell tolled—deep and heavy, ancient as stone. Amid ruins, it rang so abruptly it jarred her bones.

She ducked under broken rock by the gate, hiding to watch what came.

Before she could see, a figure appeared and crashed into her.

It was a long while before Violet eased out of the shock. The churned mash of Arcane Power and blood in her body spread and settled back to form.

Natalie stood guard with her curved blade clenched, but she didn’t take on the future-borrowed shape. She shrank into herself and stared at the city smothered by warped power.

“Natalie, what is going on?” Violet adjusted her breath and spoke low.

“I… I don’t know…”

“Natalie, tell me the truth.”

The cold in Violet’s tone made Natalie go taut. Violet sat still, but the air iced around her. Natalie tried to step back on instinct. Cold blood bound her ankles. Panic washed her clean.

“Miss Violet, I—I really don’t know…”

The words barely fell when crimson Demonic Spears burst from Violet’s palm and kissed Natalie’s throat. Her eyes, dyed red, brimmed with savagery—nothing like before.

“If you know nothing, then what were you so afraid of? Just now, you borrowed power without blinking to answer those eyes.”

Faced with Violet’s demand, Natalie wept. Her gaze held pure fear—and guilt, dark as damp ash.