“Who are you, and what happened here?”

Confusion pooled like cold ink in her chest before her hands moved; the girl wrote both questions in her notebook, her pen scratching like rain on tin.

Memory stabbed behind her eyes like broken glass; for someone who felt a spike of pain whenever she tried to remember, anyone who could explain was a sudden downpour on parched soil.

Her common sense kept ringing like a cracked bell, telling her the world shouldn’t look like this, shouldn’t feel like this shadowed stage.

On the first question, the red-haired woman was crisp as a blade; she bent over the notebook and wrote.

“Lilo.”

She tapped the name like a drumbeat, then tapped herself, a quiet gesture under a dim lamp.

The second question was a knot too thick to cut in a sentence; Lilo drew a watch from the bedside drawer and pointed at the time, a tiny moon on her palm.

The word “watch” rose on its own like a ripple in the girl’s mind; the recognition soothed then flared, a migraine blooming like lightning behind clouds.

She tried to chase the memory and pain bit down like a steel trap, so she let it go, a leaf floating back to still water.

Three a.m. wasn’t a good tide for deep talk; outside, a weird “lamp post” stood like a cold spear, and Lilo seemed wary of that silent sentinel.

The girl grabbed the notebook with a quick breath, ink flowing like a narrow stream.

“What is that lamp post outside? Is that why we need to talk this way?”

Lilo nodded with the clean snap of a knife, flipped to a later page, and passed it over; a photo was pasted there, the same lamp post pinned like an insect.

Handwritten notes crowded its margins like vines on old stone.

Watcher Fiend… what a tasteless name, though a wretch like this could be called anything.

The lowest-grade infected, only a listening eye for Fallen Demons’ lackeys; it sees and hears, no telepathy yet, with night hearing sharp as a bat.

Often disguised as trees or lamp posts, sometimes as towers or base stations; rare variants with no solid reference targets.

It sweeps its surroundings in bursts, sniffing for life like a blind hound; searches start at dusk and run dark.

It only swings simple tentacle strikes, a rope of meat under moonlight; no known way to destroy it—blown apart, it repairs within one to three days.

Seeing the girl absorbed, Lilo said nothing; she took a blanket like a cloud and slipped to the sofa, killing the desk lamp’s amber glow with a click.

A faint ache fluttered in the girl’s head like moth wings; in its place, a cold certainty rippled up—she remembered how to end a Watcher Fiend.

Her fingers lifted the pen, instinct tugging like tide on a mooring; she glanced at Lilo sleeping like a guarded fox and set the notebook down.

She rose without a whisper, light as a shadow peeled from a wall; she drifted toward the door, silver-white sparks flickering in her black eyes like frost-fire.

Same day, dawn.

No spear of sunlight broke those heavy curtains, yet Lilo’s eyes snapped open like shutters; she exploded up from the sofa and caught the pistol at her side.

She swept the room like a storm hawk, held her breath, raised the gun; the sequence clicked in under a heartbeat, training braided into muscle and nerve.

She exhaled, a small wind under the ceiling; the pressure of years was a boulder on her spine, and this ritual vigilance was her daily bread.

Then a chill pricked her neck; the black-haired girl who should’ve been in bed was gone like a print erased from sand.

Lilo rushed out, boots soft as cats in the hall; she checked the few intact rooms and found no shadow of the girl, anxiety fizzing like sparks.

She’d taken so long to find a living person, maybe even a Valkyrie candidate; please, she prayed, don’t let anything go wrong under this cracked sky.

She braced for the worst and returned to the room; she yanked open the drawer beneath the bed like a trap sprung.

A well-kept rifle lay in pieces like a clockwork heart; she slammed brass rounds into a magazine, each click a pebble in a tin can.

Before she finished, a soft, rhythmic knock tapped the door, a metronome in the hush outside.

She seated the magazine with a solid thunk; Lilo dropped low, slid to the door, and pressed herself flat, an ink stroke along wood.

She peered through the peephole, breath thin as thread; the black-haired girl stood patiently, a reed in still water.

Lilo didn’t loosen her guard; the rifle’s safety nudged open with a small click, and she gripped the handle, muzzle kissing the door’s edge.

She eased the door out, a dark seam widening.

“Lilo, are you there?”

The door opened to no visible host; the girl frowned, ready to step inside, and a black muzzle touched her forehead like cold rain.

Lilo slipped from behind the door like a spring snake, hands locked on the rifle, eyes hard as flint.

“What… what is this?”

“What’s my name?”

“Huh? Lilo, right? You wrote it down yesterday.”

The questions stacked like tiles; the girl’s brow creased, her voice steady, a calm river under wind.

Lilo watched her face as if reading smoke; she also flicked her gaze to a small device clipped on the rifle, waiting out the long breath of doubt.

She sighed and lowered the gun, shutting the door with a soft thud; tension leaked away like steam, but her finger still lay across the trigger like a warning.

“Where did you go?”

She had lowered the barrel yet kept her spine taut; her vigilance hung in the room like a taut string.

“Me? I went out and killed that thing—the Watcher Fiend you mentioned.”

The words landed like stones; Lilo gasped, eyes bright with disbelief, and her right arm snugged the rifle as she strode for the curtains.

She had used shaped plastic explosives on that Watcher Fiend, and still it healed like rotten flesh knitting; and this girl stepped out one night and said, I killed it.

“You said you weren’t with the Valkyries, and now you—”

The sentence snapped as the curtain swished; the lamp post that had stood like a spear was gone, replaced by a crater like a dark bowl.

Twisted chunks of meat lay scattered like drowned idols; at the center, a deep-purple mass glinted, crystal-like, a bruise of light in the pit.

Lilo spun, eyes wide as dawn; the girl sat thinking, a quiet pool in a stone garden, and Lilo rushed over, pointing past glass, voice trembling.

“D-d-did you really do that?”

“I did.”

“How did you do it? Where’d you get a weapon?”

“Like this.”

Her reply was snow-cold; silver-white particles drifted up her forearms like starlight, and a pair of Bracer Gauntlets shaped themselves, art more than metal, faintly glowing.

At that sight, Lilo let the rifle fall to safety like a cooled blade; she surged forward and clasped those gauntleted hands, her old armor of caution shedding like scales.

She sank to her knees, devotion breaking over her like rain, tears bright as beads on stone; the girl flinched at the sudden weight of it.

“You… no, my lady! You truly are a Valkyrie…”

“So tell me—what is a Valkyrie, exactly? I can’t make sense of it. What happened to this world? What happened to me? Why is everything gone in my head?”

Lilo’s grip hurt like a plea; the girl’s temples throbbed, a drum in fog, and the word “Valkyrie” rang hollow in her empty gallery of memories.

Since Lilo’s stance changed after seeing the Bracer Gauntlets, she took the chance; she wanted answers in the light, not shadows.

Lilo didn’t answer at once; she rose with careful respect, bowed like a reed in wind, and spoke neat as folded paper.

“You haven’t had breakfast, have you? Please allow me to prepare it, then I’ll explain everything.”

Without waiting for consent, Lilo set the rifle aside as if laying down a burden; she moved into a mostly intact room, drew out food like treasures, and busied herself in ordered rhythm.

Steam soon curled up like morning mist; breakfast spread between them, generous under ruin, yet the girl stared like a traveler with no hunger for road or hearth.

It felt less like pickiness and more like absence, appetite blown out like a candle; Lilo mistook it for displeasure and asked softly.

“Lady Valkyrie… are you unhappy with the food?”

“Ah—no, of course not. Let’s talk about the earlier questions first. What’s happened to this world?”

She shook her head, tasted a few bites like pebbles on the tongue, then lifted her eyes to Lilo, steady as a lantern.

Lilo didn’t dither; she set down her knife and fork, the clink a note in a quiet room, and pulled a timeworn parchment from her side, its edges like dried leaves.

She handed it to the girl with both hands, voice firm and reverent.

“I only have fragments, but they record everything tied to Valkyries. Now that you’re here, it belongs with you.”

“As for the world—this will be a long road to tell.”

The girl ran her fingertips along the parchment, and its sequence of weapons lined like constellations; it felt less like age and more like fine machinery under skin.

Each touch drew a whisper of familiarity, a bell in a deep valley; déjà vu rose like mist from cold ground.

“This world, as you see, is half-shattered already,” Lilo said, knuckles whitening around her fork, her tone dropping like dusk.

“To name the cause, we start with the descent of those outer Eldritch Gods.”