"This is the work of my life. Even if I’m shattered again, body and soul, I’ll fight the Eldritch Gods to the death—like a lone flame against night. That’s why I prepared this vessel for you, Aphelia."

As she spoke, the pure-white silhouette’s voice dimmed, like moonlight slipping behind cloud, tinged with regret and apology like ash on snow.

"With just you, you struggled against one Fallen Demon, like a skiff in a storm. Don’t even mention an Eldritch God. In this age, talking about fighting them is building ladders to the sky."

At that, Aphelia remembered the one who looked so much like her, and she turned toward the pure-white shape like a stalk bending toward wind. "Then… was Koko also a vessel you made for yourself?"

"No. She’s a manufactured product, like glass blown to a mold, and not comparable to you. If I must give an example, she’s a higher-grade expendable. Against the Legions of Fallen Demons, clones like her are necessary, like arrows spent to thin the dark."

Seeing Aphelia ready to argue, the pure-white figure lifted a hand with weary helplessness, like a crane folding its wing, and cut her off. She pointed beyond the barrier at the towering, heavily armored knight, a mountain of iron in the mist.

"You saw that Fallen Demon, didn’t you? Don’t think ‘expendable’ is a cruel word like salt in a wound. You’ve never seen how brutal the battlefields of the Age of Extinction were, like winters that never broke."

"That was a true wall of flesh and bone, a rampart of bodies like cliffs. Even with a blade lodged at your throat, you pushed forward into steel, like a river cutting rock. Aphelia, tell me—do you have the resolve to command such a war, like a captain steering a black sea?"

The cold question froze Aphelia’s tongue, like frost seizing a leaf, and every ready rebuttal died in her throat. The problem was a knotted root, and the Aphelia of today couldn’t pull it free.

She’d endured the demon invasion, yes, but what she’d done was a one-woman suicide run, like a moth straight into the flame. If it’s her life on the altar, she never refuses the knife. But the lives of the whole world in her hands? Does she have that kind of resolve, like iron that doesn’t bend?

She didn’t need to speak. Her silence showed her answer, like still water showing the moon.

"So then, Aphelia…"

The pure-white figure sighed, soft as falling snow, and drew Aphelia into her arms, like a mother sheltering a child from wind. The embrace steadied her confusion, like warm tea under cold rain.

"…Let me carry that weight. Such a burden is a mountain, and it was never meant for your shoulders. You’ve suffered trial after trial because you carry shards of my soul, like glass in your palm. You don’t need to bleed for it anymore."

Her words sank in, and Aphelia went quiet again, like dusk pooling in a valley. After a long pause, she spoke, voice steady as a drawn bow. "If you’re truly so great, then what is life to you—just expendables, like straw on a pyre? And what am I?"

The pure-white figure drew breath to answer. A mass of Crimson Flame tore the Aetheric barrier like a blade through silk and flared before Aphelia like a sunrise.

"Aphelia. Steady yourself."

The Crimson Flame snapped into a human shape, heat sculpting a woman like a figure from a kiln. The peerless woman was her teacher—the Valkyrie.

Only this Valkyrie of flame was ragged with wounds, like torn petals swept by wind, and the sight stabbed like a thorn. Since Aphelia had known her, she’d never seen her so battered, like iron hammered thin.

Even so, the Valkyrie stood firm before Aphelia, a shield of fire between her and the pure-white figure, like a wall of embers in snow.

"No matter what she says, don’t take any of it as truth, like a sailor ignoring siren song."

"Heh, Mist Bloom, why say it like that? You chill my heart like frost on a harp string."

The Valkyrie started to speak again to Aphelia, but the pure-white figure cut her off, and forced the Valkyrie to turn, body and will braced like a blade before the whetstone.

"Don’t call me so warmly," the Valkyrie said with a cold smile, sharp as ice. "In the end, you’re just that person’s afterimage, like moonlight on water."

Scarlet Inferno shaped the Valkyrie’s body and bloomed into a wall of fire, like a red lotus, sealing Aphelia behind her.

The pure-white figure only laughed, light as wind in reeds, and didn’t rush to refute her. Her slender hands pinched the pure-white Aether the way one plucks a thread, and she lifted a radiant Crystal Blossom like a frost-born rose.

The dense Aether and light that veiled her began to disperse, like fog under morning sun, and her true face emerged.

"No… how is this possible?!"

At the unveiled sight, even the Valkyrie gasped, the sound like a chord snapped. Through the Crimson Flame, Aphelia saw the woman with perfect clarity and stood rooted, like a tree struck by lightning.

Beneath the Aether was a woman of breathtaking beauty. Her black hair fell like a waterfall at midnight. Her skin held the luster of carved jade. Her lips were cherries in snow. Her eyes were phoenix-red, slanted like rising flames. She was a classical woman of the East, mist-veiled and dream-soft, like incense curling in a shrine. Compared to the Valkyrie’s lazy, mature allure, she was a restrained, gentle moonlight, another extreme of the sky.

If the Valkyrie was languor and wine-dark dusk, this woman was quiet spring and river-light. Two extremes that fit together like yin and yang, a pair that looked born as one, like twin stars in a single orbit.

The part that shocked Aphelia most was their identical face. No—Aphelia’s face was the copied mask, chiseled after this original. In the presence of the original, the copy dulled like tin beside silver.

"Aphelia, don’t make that face. You’re me too, just an incomplete me, like a half-drawn moon. There’s no higher or lower between us."

She laughed softly. Her phoenix eyes narrowed into two crescent moons, sweet enough to intoxicate like spring wine.

"Don’t make me laugh," the Valkyrie snapped. "She’s dead. I watched her die in my arms, like a candle guttering out. What are you?!"

"Mist Bloom—my Mist Bloom, I’m Brynhildr. Brynhildr is me. Epoch ID 0000, Primordial Walker. From top to bottom, thread to thread, not a single stitch is false, like silk straight from the loom."

Brynhildr—that was her name?

At that name, Aphelia’s skull rang with a boom, like thunder over a plain, and something clicked into place. In that memory, the red-haired woman had given the black-haired girl this name, like fire gifting a spark.

She looked at the black-haired woman facing the Valkyrie and remembered everything she’d said. That aura that brooked no denial, the gravity that made you want to kneel and offer everything, like tides pulled by the moon, made Aphelia trust her more.

Her face, blurred between maiden and matron, green and ripe, matched the black-haired girl in Aphelia’s memory like a reflection in still water.

More than that, from Brynhildr’s body Aphelia felt a familiar power—the pure-white Aether, cool and bright as winter sun. The dense Aether around them had crystallized into clusters of Crystal Blossoms, and their source was Brynhildr herself, like a tree heavy with frost-fruit.

So strong. So beautiful. Like a peak above clouds.

"Of course it’s possible," Brynhildr said, voice warm as lantern light. "Merlin kept my remnant soul, like ember in ash, and hunted my traces through the Aether. When this little one’s resonance peaked, he hooked me back, like a fisherman hauling a moonlit net. Otherwise I’d still be lost in the Aether, wandering like a leaf in fog."

"Don’t you dare," the Valkyrie roared, her fury a bell of iron. "That death wasn’t a trick. Crimson Sakura felt it, like frost biting to the bone. You can’t twist that with honeyed words. Stitching scraps to mimic her is desecration, a paper idol in a storm."

As her shout rolled like thunder, Brynhildr walked toward her through the heat, unhurried as rain across stone. She didn’t lunge for Aphelia. She stopped before the Valkyrie and cupped her cheek with pale hands, like a lover smoothing a crease.

The Valkyrie didn’t shove her away. She bit down on silver-white teeth, eyes knotted with storms, like clouds before lightning.

"If you don’t believe me," Brynhildr murmured, "let your Crimson Sakura feel me. Am I real or not? You trust your Crimson Sakura like a compass. I’ll bare my Aether for you. Taste it—don’t fear hurting me, like wind fearing reed."

Brynhildr smiled gently and pressed a hand to the Valkyrie’s chest, firm as vow and tender as rain. She closed her eyes, offering herself like a shore to the tide.

With her touch, soft light seeped from the dense Aether, like dawn through mist. The clustered blossoms loosened and fell back into single Crystal Blossoms, each one blooming in the Valkyrie’s sight like stars breaking cloud.

Seeing her bare herself, the Valkyrie steeled her heart, like iron in the quench. The Crimson Flame surged into the Crystal Blossoms, a tide of fire into glassy groves. The expected burning never came. The Scarlet Inferno thinned into rills, like streams through shale, and slipped through the crystal petals without harm.

Aphelia stood behind the Valkyrie, silent as a shadow at noon, and watched. In this pure-white space, the two before her were sun and moon crossing, and she was only the sacrifice on the altar, like a bowl set between them.

She looked at Brynhildr—eyes closed, a gentle smile she couldn’t hide curling her lips, like spring under snow—and let out a long breath, wind through pines. Maybe she’d been too stubborn. If this truly was the one who fought the Eldritch Gods, then even if she offered her body like a sheath to a blade—so what?

Could a muddled True God like her really stand against them, like a lone gull against a gale?

She watched the pure-white Aether that once circled her flow away, like sand slipping through fingers. It left her like tide leaving shore, and her heart grew calm, like a lake after rain.

At last, the Valkyrie’s eyes snapped open, and tears brimmed like dew on bamboo. Brynhildr opened hers as well and smiled, warm as a hearth.

Before Brynhildr could speak, the Valkyrie seized her, like wind catching flame, and kissed her without hesitation, a spark to tinder.