Before Hrok could finish, a fleck of crimson light seeped up from the verdant solution like an ember under jade water.

“This…”

She plunged both hands into the green bath, cloth be damned, and scooped the glow like a river thief lifting a pearl, eyes drinking it in.

What lay in their palms was a wisp of Crimson Fire, feeble as a dying firefly, yet stubborn as winter grass, burning in Hrok’s hand with dogged life.

To Lilo, the flame was likely a Valkyrie’s remnant; to Hrok, it was a thread of fate knotted tighter than that.

“As expected of Mist Bloom…”

She murmured, slid the Crimson Fire back into the emerald solution, then used Aphelia’s own hands to press it against the woman’s heart like a seal of dawn.

She lowered the heavy lid with a dull stone-thud, turned, and before Lilo could ask, shouldered the great coffin and headed uphill like a mountain moving.

“That’s a lifesaving cure,” she said, voice cold as well-water. “With it, even if Aphelia dies, I’ll rip her from hell’s river.”

Relief washed Lilo like warm rain. She hurried after, but the giants ahead loomed like boulders rolling downhill, and her heart stumbled.

Hrok’s face looked anything but light. Lilo swallowed the question, and a crimson Aether crystal bloomed in her palm like frozen fire.

If those giants twitched wrong, the crystal meant she wouldn’t lose her chance to strike back, even in a storm.

“Relax. Once we enter the Abyss, you’ll understand,” Hrok said, voice flat as iron.

“Enter the Abyss? Wait, the Abyss is—”

Hrok stopped, looked at Lilo with weary eyes, like a teacher gazing at a stubborn stone.

“Is what? All twisted monstrosities? Has anyone among you actually gone in?” Her words cut like sleet. “You remember the old war. Do you remember how it began?”

Lilo shut her mouth like a blade sheathed. Hrok only shook her head, lifted the black coffin again, and strode past the giants like wind past crooked trees.

The deformed giants didn’t lift a hand. They only rumbled like distant thunder and passed by, hulking shadows in milk-white fog.

The higher they climbed, the thicker the mist poured in, a white sea that swallowed sight and swallowed thought.

By instinct, Lilo stirred her Aether. Yet within the fog, her dragon’s gaze that once reached a thousand miles dulled to mortal glass, drowned by the white tide.

A soft cough rippled from the fog, thin as a reed’s whistle.

Lilo surged forward on reflex, but Hrok moved first. Two fingers became a sword, and she cleaved the fog like cloth, exposing the hidden silhouette.

“Your Highness… Princess?”

Fenrir lay in shattered stone like a fallen comet, blood-soaked and breath-thin, scales crazed with cracks, black wings snapped to bleeding roots.

She had fought a brutal duel near this peak, and her foe had crushed a Titleholder outright, leaving not even the wind to carry her away.

“Lilo… why are you here? Forget it, cough… where are the giants?”

Fenrir tried to rise like a broken bow, but pain snapped her down. Hrok didn’t forbid it, so Lilo stepped in and lifted her like frost lifting a leaf.

“Long story. The giants—bone blades in their hands, yes?”

“Yes, them! They’re Abyssal Progeny, true as night. Send word to His Majesty—say a new Abyssal war is about to—cough!”

She blurted like one giving last rites, then spat blood onto Lilo’s Aether robe, which hissed and steamed into scarlet mist.

“Your ‘Majesty’?” Hrok tilted her head, smile thin as a knife-edge.

“Gone, most likely. Someone else appeared, and she’ll give up the throne without blinking. What follows is wind and blood, rain and knives.”

Hrok said it lightly, like weather, as if the Demon World’s storm would never wet her boots, sword-brows sharp as cold peaks.

To the others, the words struck like iron bells. Fenrir, drowning in her own blood, stared wide-eyed at Hrok, trembling like a string.

“What… do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Your Majesty now serves under someone else’s skirts. No—wrong way to put it. She’s a woman too.”

“Impossible. Father can’t be a woman…”

Hrok wouldn’t spar with her grief. She looked to Lilo instead. “If you’re taking her, move. Miss the timing, and the gate closes like a jaw.”

She split the heavy fog again and walked on, intent as a blade, as if leaving Lilo in the rubble was nothing but draft on a page.

Fenrir wouldn’t last here. Leaving her was slow death. Whatever doubts gnawed her, Lilo wouldn’t abandon her now; her crimson Aether boiled the blood away and lifted Fenrir like a tide.

“Your Highness, come with me. Keep your life first; the rest can wait till dawn.”

Without waiting for argument, Lilo rode her Aether toward Hrok’s path, not daring to waste a heartbeat.

Fenrir knew which way survival flowed. Live first, then test Hrok’s words against the sun. Die here, and even regret has no echo.

Soon they followed the cut path through the fog and reached a vast chasm, a canyon like a cut in the world’s throat.

Hrok waited there, conversing through Aether with someone unseen, voice like ripples in a black well; when they arrived, the wave quieted.

“This is the entrance to the Abyss?” Lilo asked, stepping back as the rift breathed cold, a tide of Arcane Power that clawed at the soul.

Even as a True God, she felt small as a moth before a moonless sea, resistance a candle in a gale.

“Of course—this is the entrance to the Abyss~”

The voice curled at her ear like silk, teasing, and Lilo startled, Aether slipping, feet scuffing back two steps like leaves before a gust.

A figure wrapped in deep-violet mist took shape, the outline of a lithe woman swaying like water over stone.

“Don’t be nervous~ Hrok, did you bring her back?”

The violet silhouette laughed behind her hand, posture flowing like ink, a shape to snag any wandering gaze.

“Brought her. And a tagalong. Deal with it,” Hrok said, pointing back without a ripple, as if this arrival were yesterday’s news between old friends.

Fenrir chose silence, wise as a hunted beast. That violet presence set her instincts screaming, apex to prey, mountain to grass.

When the figure fully arrived, even fear went numb, like limbs gone to sleep in cold; she didn’t dare twitch.

The violet woman noticed, laughed softly, sliced her aura down like a shutter, then stepped to Hrok’s side, close as shade.

Thick mist fanned from the rift like breath from a cavern, curling around the black coffin and dragging it down as if the deep had cast a hook.

Lilo drew breath to speak, but the violet hand lifted like a quiet bell.

“Don’t worry. You’re going too. Just don’t use Aether to resist.”

The words barely fell when countless deep-violet tendrils shot up like spears of night, snaring them without a beat to flinch.

A brutal pull surged through the coils like a riptide, and they were hauled into the black throat of the Abyss, swallowed without a splash.

As darkness took them, Lilo’s vision flooded with endless Aether, a reef of kinds, more than all Arcane Power she had ever seen.

The weight crashed over her like a collapsing sky; she lasted a heartbeat, then blacked out, drifting as the riptide dragged her down.

At the bottom, a vast city waited like a lantern under the sea, armored sentries massed on the square, guarding a maze of glowing arrays.

“The sky is changing!”

Above the city, the air twisted like heated glass. At the captain’s cry, helms tilted up as one to watch the ripple.

“The one our lord arranged must be arriving. Do we start the array now?”

A heavy-armored guard ran to the mage like a messenger hawk, breath quick.

“Now. Fire the array. Have the citizens ready and receive them like rain after drought!”