In the central park broad as a forest, the twin stone effigies still stood at the heart, like the goddess Hrok once described, keeping a silent vigil over the world.
Nearly half a year had slipped by since the ritual. People still came to worship, like migratory birds returning to a grove. But the old tide of people never surged again.
By the statues stood a woman in a white dress, her whole body swathed in bandages. She leaned on the stone like a quiet moon against a cliff and stared into the sea of trees. People flowed past like rivers, yet no one knew when she had appeared.
She held a branch too, but not as if in prayer. One day a knight, patience worn thin like a frayed rope, stepped up to help. Her answer fell like cool rain.
“I’m just thinking about some things.”
Her voice was lovely, yet to the knight it was wind over cold stones. She moved like a sleepwalker; beyond leaning here day after day, she spoke to no one. If asked to make way, she would rise, drift to the great tree nearby, and stand again like a puppet on a string, never raising a quarrel.
The angelic sentinels by the statue never drove her away. It was a lantern left lit at dusk, tacit leave to stay.
“Ladies—thanks for today.” A young man in close-fitting armor smiled at the two angelic sentinels, a demon knight behind him offering the same easy smile.
“It’s not exactly hard,” the left sentinel said, smiling and shaking her head. “Guarding the Goddess’s relic is honor enough. The Aether here even helps our training.”
“Yeah,” the other stepped up, voice light. “The lords drop by now and then to offer pointers. It’s just that one…”
Their gazes slid to the bandaged woman by the statue. The gesture was too obvious. She noticed, misread it, rose without a word, and walked to the great tree, resuming her doll-still pose.
Awkwardness pricked like thorns. They hurried the handover. The demon knight stepped forward and gently explained the misunderstanding to the bandaged woman, voice like a warm breeze.
“Well, since Lady Shilwen told us to protect that lady, we’ll do it right. As for reporting to Miss Hrok, that’s on you two, ladies.”
The young knight took the Rune seals from their hands, traded salutes, accepted the guard’s weapons, and took his post, waving them off. The demon knight led the bandaged woman back to the statue. He didn’t lose patience with her lifeless quiet. For his kind, it looked like an oddity—perhaps, down in the Abyss, this was simply the norm.
“How is it? She still won’t say a word?” the young knight asked as the demon knight returned, a wry smile like a cut in water.
“Don’t bring it up. Same as ever. I want to help, but I don’t even know where to start.”
“Then it’s not our business. We just make sure she doesn’t get hurt. It’s rare to come back and guard the Goddess’s statue. The war out there is a meat grinder. Good thing that lord has a sharp mind, or half the knight orders would’ve stayed buried on that field.”
Regret crossed the young man’s face like shadow over snow, a quiet salute to fallen comrades.
“It can’t be helped,” the demon knight said, voice steady as earth. “We grew to adulthood under the Goddess’s shelter. We should be content.”
The young knight nodded, feeling that truth settle like rain. Touching something tender, they spoke no more and settled into their watch. They didn’t know every glance and word had been seen from the manor, carried through Runes like ripples on a still pond.
“Is this really alright, Miss Hrok…?” Lilo watched the image flowing through a Rune and couldn’t hide her worry, as if a hand clenched her heart.
“Of course. Otherwise, what help do you think you can still give her?” Hrok stood in the vast Rune forge, unconcerned by the scene. She carved a Rune into the weapon before her, then tossed it into the furnace, letting the blaze scour the marks away, and did it again, like a tide falling and rising.
Lilo didn’t answer. Or rather, she didn’t know how to answer. One stood at the forge door like a willow in wind. The other repeated the act like a bell toll, until the furnace-fire guttered low.
“You’re still here? I told you—no one can help her. Least of all you…”
“Even so, there has to be something I can do, right?”
Hrok’s words were barbed. Lilo clenched her fists like stones. The sight of the bandaged, puppet-still woman in the Rune’s image carved at her heart like a knife. She wished the pain would burn her instead.
Hrok didn’t answer. She simply reached out, bare hand into the furnace, and drew out a weapon glowing red. She ignored the heat like winter air and bent to carve Runes again.
“What is it you want to do? The Aphelia now isn’t the Aphelia you knew.”
“But—”
“She got her flesh back. She wrenched life from the Reaper’s hand. And she lost her power forever—lost even the ability to cultivate. You, a True God, a ‘strong one,’ tell me—what do you think you can give her?”
Lilo’s breath caught. The words plugged her mouth like a stone in a spring.
“What weighed on her before was too heavy. Shackles tied on under every kind of pretext. With power, she could tell herself it was a mission and push through. Now she’s a thorough mortal, cut off from any power. The burden’s still there. If she can’t untie it herself, who can?”
With each sentence, Hrok scored another Rune into the metal, venting like thunder under her skin. At the end she snatched up a sledge and brought it down. Sparks flew like a meteor shower across the forge. Neither of them moved, letting the stars fall around their feet.
“A person in shackles can keep going while they’re strong. Without strength, they’ll be crushed by their own weight. If she can’t walk out of it herself, we can’t drag her free.”
Resolve edged her voice, with a helplessness like frost left at dawn. Even Hrok could only watch the bandaged woman—Aphelia—and come up empty.
All this began a few days earlier, when Aphelia woke.
In a great black coffin, emerald liquid drained away. Aphelia’s translucent body filled with a Crimson Flame. Bone, muscle, vessels—the parts Brynhildr had stripped—began to return, until skin sealed her figure like dawn closing the night.
Her long slumber broke. Breath returned. Her full chest trembled like a leaf.
But before anyone could exhale, Aphelia’s eyes snapped open. The fire that was about to die flared, turned to a roaring blaze, and bent back to devour her own body.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Her scream filled the forge like a blade of ice. The Crimson Flame acted like a beast that never tires; touching her only fed it. Even Lilo and Hrok had to draw on Aether to ward it off, isolating those terrible flames like a wall of rain.
“How can this be!” Lilo was the most frantic, a storm trapped in a cup. But the surge of power was a riptide. She didn’t dare move. One wrong touch, and her Aether might wound Aphelia twice.
Worse, Aphelia’s new flesh had been reforged by guiding the Crimson Flame. If they ripped the fire out, who knew what would happen?
Hrok’s and Shilwen’s faces darkened like thunderheads. They had expected this, and it was the worst of it.
“Shilwen, bring that thing!”
A razor-fine white light left its sheath like lightning. Hrok’s aura rose to the same pitch as when she faced Brynhildr—she was the white light itself, standing before the Crimson Flame, and she shouted to Shilwen behind her.
The Crimson Flame felt that point-to-point edge and turned, a maddened beast wheeling on Hrok. For a breath, even Lilo saw an illusion: that onrushing red could drown the world.
Before it fell, white light thrust out, a rainbow spearing the sun. The sky-flooding fire collapsed under that one sword. The beast’s momentum vanished like mist.
Shilwen, already prepared, rushed in with a strip of pure white cloth. Cloth that should have burned to ash swelled instead, splitting into countless bands. With the Crimson Flame, it wrapped Aphelia’s body and bound her tight, leaving only her eyes. She looked like a mummy under winter moonlight.
Wrapped, the Crimson Flame fell silent, like a tide pulling back. It didn’t flare again.
“Good thing… we kept this. It’s sealed. For now, at least, she’s out of danger.”
