“Eight years ago, those indescribable abominations—the Eldritch Gods—broke our world’s defenses for reasons lost in fog, and their projections fell like night across our planet.”

“We call them gods only because old books groped for a name. They’re higher beings. A single projection shattered an entire American continental plate, like a hammer through glass...”

Lilo said it, but her body shook like a leaf in winter wind, as if the old shadow over humankind rose again before her eyes.

“Of course, Valkyrie, you might not even know what America is...”

“No. Now that you say it, it’s coming back. Two of the five continents. In my memory, they covered a vast swath of land. You’re saying one projection erased the American plate?”

The girl spoke softly. As Lilo’s story unspooled, the mist over her memories thinned like dawn lifting sea fog.

“Yes. I was training in Africa then, a small ant under a burning sun. Even across thousands of miles, I felt pure malice bite like frost. It embodied chaos and ruin. It came to destroy—beyond good and evil, without even a purpose.”

Lilo tapped the emblem on her vest, the mark of her unit, like a coal she kept or a thorn she couldn’t pull. She ground her teeth as if chewing iron.

“The Eldritch Gods didn’t end us in the first breath. They left only an afterimage, like a brand on the sky. That sliver of mercy let us struggle. The Pacific Seventh Fleet vanished in a blink, like foam under a breaker. Nukes that never launched blossomed at home like poisonous flowers.”

“Nuclear weapons... right, I remember. But that thing was already obsolete, a rusted spear in a museum.”

The girl mimed a missile with both hands, like a child at play. Lilo froze, caught between a laugh and a sob, like rain trapped in a cloud.

“Of course, Valkyrie. In your era, nukes weren’t much more than fireworks. The strongest weapon was you, a blade of thunder in human hands. Because of you, we kept a single thread of chance.”

“Wait—my era? Don’t tell me we’re not from the same time.”

She looked at their clothes, as if comparing two mirrors; she ran a hand over the room’s bones, like counting ribs. Everything said they were contemporaries.

“Oh... I’m sorry, Valkyrie. You don’t remember. By strict time, our civilization stands on the ruins of yours, like grass on blackened stone—nearly a hundred million years later. Our tech is far below what you knew.”

Lilo faced the girl with a soldier’s solemnity, like a fir tree in wind. The girl blushed scarlet, her mind shorting out like a lantern in rain.

“W-wait... that’s hard to grasp.”

Her mood surged first, then her hands flew to her head. Pain spiked like a nail, and she clenched the table, teeth grinding like flint on steel.

She looked up—and saw a figure of pure white standing behind Lilo, a candle in fog. A white dress flowed; light blurred her face; a half-smile hovered. Back to the girl, she hummed a lullaby, like water over stone.

For no reason she could name, the girl’s heart stilled like a lake at dusk.

The figure seemed to feel her gaze. She turned, and reached out a hand like a falling petal.

“Lilo... do you hear it?”

“Hear? Of course I hear you. I hear your voice. Easy now, I’m right here beside you.”

Flustered by the girl’s pain, Lilo turned, fingers fishing pills from a tin like pebbles from a stream. Before she could offer them, the girl folded onto the table like a wilted flower.

Lilo sighed, a tired wind through pines. She hoisted the girl to carry her back. A glance at the table made her click her tongue like a spark.

Where the girl had gripped it, the wood bore deep finger dents, like clay pressed by iron.

“Lady Violet, this won’t hold,”

Natalie muttered, eyes hard as stone. Her saber flashed like a crescent moon, cutting through the crowd and harvesting lives like grain.

But the kill-rate lagged. Soldiers kept welling from the black mist like ants from a nest. Their Rune heavy armor turned them into fearless madmen. Some grabbed foes and self-detonated like burning seeds. Even with a Titleholder’s borrowed strength, Natalie felt three shades of fear coil like snakes.

The ring tightened. At her side, a blood-red blur ripped past like lightning split from a storm. Thunder boomed in the press of bodies. A blood-red spear cut air like a comet, and a clean “pure land” opened around Natalie, a circle free of death.

An eight-legged crimson warhorse reared and screamed, a volcano given hooves. Violet hauled the reins and stopped beside Natalie, calm as ice. The crimson spear still crackled with Thunder, fireflies clinging to steel. She lifted her snarling oni mask, and her cold gaze swept the mist-shrouded city like winter over fields.

“Right... they’re corpses, candles already cold. No life at all. They’re here for me.”

“Natalie, I’m giving you something.”

“Lady Violet, I truly don’t know what these things are—”

She still clung to the line, but the eyes behind her bone mask told another story, like a mirror that won’t lie.

“I don’t need you to know. Just carry this.”

A Rune burning with Crimson Flame arced into Natalie’s hands like a red moth. She braced for pain, like a swimmer for surf, but the flames passed through her palms without heat, like light through water.

In their brief exchange, Violet watched the Rune-armored horde swell like a flood. She drew several blood-red javelins from her saddle, left and right, like thorns from a rose. She didn’t even aim. She hurled.

The short spears wound with scarlet Arcane Power, like serpents around branches. On impact, they burst with a different force. Thunder rolled wide through the ranks, a god’s scepter sweeping wheat.

“That was left by Ophelia’s master. If I go in and don’t return...”

She breathed out, and the breath wore a crimson stain like wine. “Crush the Rune. Don’t hesitate.”

“But—”

Before Natalie could say more, Violet snapped the reins. Hooves shattered stone like brittle ice. The charge speared up into the sky. The crimson oni mask fell into place, a moon behind cloud. Man, spear, and warhorse became one, like storm, shaft, and thunderhead.

The crimson thunderlight bloomed with eerie beauty, a poisonous flower in night. It broke the clouds, then snapped down like a hawk stooping. For a heartbeat, Natalie felt a power that pressed the soul to its knees like a mountain.

Air thickened like syrup. Speed cut to a blade of light, yet time crawled like a tortoise. The black mist seethed, a pot at boil. Countless tentacles tore from Rune soldiers and city walls like roots ripping soil, and they surged to block the crimson Thunder.

Meters remained. The crimson bolt dimmed like a sun behind eclipse. Limbs and tentacles froze for a blink, a held breath in a storm.

The crimson Thunder thinned to a dark-red filament and slammed into the mist and the wall like a nail of wrath.

The strike shook heaven and earth like a bell struck by a hammer.

The solid wall gaped with a vast breach, a wound in stone. Mist and limbs rushed to mend it like ants, but blood-red short spears punched through and exploded like grenades of dawn. Pursuit through the crack wasn’t even a dream. The dark-red Thunder, wrath at world’s end, gouged a road through the mist-drowned city like a river through ash.

In the city lord’s mansion, a man in finery who called himself Raz knelt like a dog before a slender figure. He ignored the roaming bolts as if they were fireflies. With her here, the storm meant nothing.

Seeing the breach, the figure smiled instead of frowning, a crescent with venom. Her voice held a strange music, a flute that hooked the mind. Raz’s veins bulged like cords. He panted like a beast.

“Rare—how rare. Raz, you did well. Thanks to the Demigod body you offered, we finally got this chance.”

She rose, and black mist and tentacles gathered like courtiers to a throne. Eyes opened along them, a field of pupils, and they stared at the dark-red Thunder, casting onyx light like oil on water.

“Come, then. Show me what a long-lost True God can do!”

She cried out, giddy as a storm bride. She leapt from the balcony, a swallow cut from silk. Tentacles and mist streamed with her, and she charged the dark-red lightning without a blink, like tide meeting cliff.

The warhorse screamed; the monster roared. Two storms met over a broken sea.

A dark-red Demonic Spear lunged for her heart like a falling star. Tendrils whipped the crimson armor without mercy, rain on iron. Hidden barbs narrowed like awls and stabbed for Violet’s waist, snakes in shadow.

Light crossed; figures parted. The clash blew the nearby blocks to rubble, like dandelions in a gale. The fighters fell back to opposite sides, two peaks across a valley.

Astride her blood-red steed, Violet snorted, ice over steel. Before the slender figure could plant her feet, several crimson Demonic Spears were already in flight, meteors tearing a dark sky.