If the woman in the white dress was right, and Aphelia was born from Brynhildr, then whose will now stood before her, like a shadow left on stone? The claim ran opposite to Hrok and the others, and confusion pooled in her chest like fog after rain.
“That’s a leftover from history—ugh, such a headache. Do you really want to know? It might make you question your whole life,” the woman in the white dress sighed, palm to her brow, her gaze cutting to Aphelia like a cool blade.
“Of course. I’m ready.” The feeling came first, a rough wind through a broken house. Her life was already in tatters; a few more rips were just more stars in a torn sky.
The question that had gnawed at her like night tide was finally close to an answer. This “human” with no clear birth—where did she come from, and for what?
“Then let’s answer them one by one.” The woman in the white dress exhaled, a helpless breeze in a tight room. A crisp snap rang by Aphelia’s ear like flint to tinder, and the scene upended in a blink, drowned by a boundless sea of Aether.
Ruins rose backward like vines rewinding through time; towers sprang up in a night like forest trunks; fallen corpses stirred like seeds after thaw. The broken crown where they had stood unfurled into a vast plaza, and at its heart loomed a statue carved of white jade, bright as moon on snow.
“This is…” Aphelia lifted her face as if to catch rain, eyes on the white-jade goddess. A woman in a white robe stood immortalized, a blade in her left hand, a spear in her right, a cloth over her eyes, her bow slight, as if about to offer the world a gift cupped like water.
Just standing before it moved Aphelia’s heart like wind ruffling a lake.
“Ahem—what you’re looking at is the prototype of the Twin Goddess statue,” the woman in the white dress sang, her voice a bell on a breeze. “Raised by the Goddess cult for the new world’s Valkyrie, and even blessed by the goddess herself, a shelter for humankind that could last ages upon ages.”
She planted a foot on the statue’s head like a sparrow on a shrine, and the nearby guards didn’t so much as blink. No—more than ignoring them, their eyes passed through as if the women were mist in sun.
Not just the woman in the white dress. Even Aphelia was a ghost to them, walking the crowd like a breeze that moves sleeves but gets no greeting.
“Short version? The you-that-was built a sanctuary for this world’s humans,” the woman chimed, smile like a crescent. “Well? See anything off?”
Seeing comprehension dawn like light through leaves, she hopped down, came to Aphelia’s side, and cupped her cheeks, angling her face toward the white jade.
“What’s off…” The word was a pebble dropped into deep water. Before she could finish, the woman pushed Aphelia into the statue’s shadow like a teacher steering a stubborn child, sighing in a staccato that felt like rain on stone.
“Wrong… wait—wait! I’m not seeing things, right? You didn’t add that on purpose, did you?” Aphelia’s breath caught like a bird in a snare.
With the hint, her gaze slid to the shadow cast by the statue, like ink running down silk. It wasn’t the same figure as the jade goddess, and yet it came from the same source. The gentle smile turned into a face of bewitching allure, like a flame behind gauze; the holy spear’s edge flashed like a comet, pointing straight at whoever stood before it, and even at a glance the killing intent felt like sleet on bare skin.
The woman in the white dress seemed pleased by Aphelia’s flinch, like a cat hearing a can open. She let go of Aphelia’s cheeks, patted her shoulder, and went on, voice light as falling petals.
“This is the seed of the Twin Goddess statue. As for how it became what it did later…”
Her body blurred and snapped back, pulled to the far side of the plaza like a kite tugged by sudden wind.
Another clear snap cracked the air, and the world around Aphelia sped up like a reel on fast-forward. The statue shed its first softness like a snake sloughing skin; the shadow-face grew vivid, stepped out from darkness, and a fissure line marred the jade like frost on glass.
Time ran until breath ran thin. The scene jerked, and the guards were gone like smoke. In their place, a woman in a white robe knelt at the plaza’s heart, clutching her head as if the sky had split inside it.
The plaza’s rim was a tide of people, a hush like snow over fields. No one stepped forward; no one spoke. Whether moved by faith or crushed by fear, the goddess’s subjects all bent to their knees, hands and foreheads to stone like waves bowing to the moon.
Weightlessness rolled through Aphelia like an elevator drop, then her feet found ground again, cold as riverbed rock. She and the white-dress woman appeared in the plaza as if out of a heat shimmer, only a few paces from the robed woman, yet Aphelia dared not move.
Fear came first, sharp as winter air, then thought. The eyes of the woman in the white robe held no human weather, no sun or rain, only the steel calm of a machine.
Just a few steps and she could see her face. Aphelia stayed rooted like a stake in frozen soil, unwilling to cross that line. Her heart hammered like a drum, and instinct hissed like a snake: go closer and something will break.
Memories flashed like lightning across a night plain. The scene felt old, déjà vu blooming like moss, and low murmurs and frantic struggles rose like a tide in Aphelia’s chest.
“Don’t dodge. Face her.” The woman in the white dress crossed half the plaza in a heartbeat, appearing at Aphelia’s side like a swan’s shadow on water. Her voice dropped low, a bell with no give.
Aphelia’s heart pounded, and with the robed woman’s struggle, something in her own body twitched like roots cracking stone.
Noise crowded her mind like crows on a branch. Pain surged back through her nerves like a storm front, and the closer she stepped to the kneeling woman, the sharper it scraped, grinding her will like sand on a whetstone.
“Aaaaaaah!” The scream ripped across the plaza like a torn banner in high wind. The woman in the white robe clawed herself open in a brutal motion, and a dark shape slid out like smoke from a kiln. Aphelia’s body answered in kind, and from her heart a Crystal Blossom of blinding white grew like ice, drinking her life like parched soil drinks rain.
Pain and whispers spiked to a pinnacle, a mountain peak knifing the clouds—yet Aphelia’s hand closed around the radiant Crystal Blossoms without a beat of doubt. Its edges sliced her palms like glass reeds in a frost field, blood beading bright, but she didn’t give an inch. With a howl, she snapped it at the stem and hurled it away like a burning coal.
With the Crystal Blossoms torn out root and all, the static in her ears vanished like mist in sun. The agony twisting her flesh melted like iron going soft, and though she had carved out a piece of her inner self, she felt a strange fullness, as if emptiness were being filled grain by grain.
“Nicely done.” The woman in the white dress caught Aphelia at the perfect moment, a hand like warm wind at her back, keeping her from falling. Gentle Aether passed over Aphelia like a tide over sand, holding her steady to watch the scene to its end.
The woman in the white robe coughed lightly, a little rain on marble. She looked at the other “her” that had split from her body, then stood with a complex face and stepped forward as if walking into snow.
The other “her” also rose. Unlike the robed woman’s sanctity, she burned with a demonic allure, a beauty at the edge of holiness like ripe fruit behind a forbidden gate, sweet and dangerous.
As they drew close, two torrents of Aether speared upward like twin pillars of storm, colliding above the plaza with a crash, strike answering strike, a war pregnant in the air.
The woman in the white robe looked conflicted, and from the air around her she grasped, fingers closing on Aether as on silk. A pure white blade and a long spear formed in her hands like frost coalescing, and in the next second they could’ve pierced the other woman without a hair’s sway.
“You… are me.” Her words fell like snow on a quiet shrine.
“I… am you.” The split woman smiled at her, and Crystal Blossoms bloomed around her feet like a garden after rain. In seconds, the empty plaza became a field of stone flowers.
“You’re born of my evil thought. You shouldn’t have been born,” the robed woman said, pity clouding her eyes like dusk. Pain and struggle crossed her face like wind-shadows. In that instant, she was no longer the cold, spotless figure Aphelia had seen, but a person, complete, with weather in her heart.
“That’s a pity, Goddess,” the bewitching woman said, voice like wine with a bite. “I was born, and I still love this world. So—will you kill me?” Aether clothed her in razor armor, plates snapping on like wings, and she stood like a Valkyrie walking out of myth.
They faced each other across open air, and neither moved, like two storms waiting on a signal.
“Enough… I’ll entrust the holy spear to you. I hope the future-you can shelter this world like I did.” The robed woman sighed long, a willow bowing to wind, and leveled the spear. Aether wrapped it like a veil as she offered it to the self that had split away.
“Of course. I’ll do better than you.” The split woman nodded without hesitation, her tone iron under silk. On this, the jest fell away, leaving ritual and vow.
In that moment, Aphelia felt a strange illusion, like a mirror cracking down the middle. The world seemed to split cleanly in two—half to the robed, holy woman; half to the bewitching one.
“From that day on, the once-pure Valkyrie Brynhildr became two people,” the woman in the white dress said, her voice a wind over old graves. “One embodied absolute good. The other embodied absolute evil. But it didn’t make them weaker. It made them the two strongest powers under this sky, stronger than before.” She watched the scene and let out a long breath, her expression tangled like roots under snow.
