Despair, helplessness. Like black frost crawling over a winter lake.

Pain, fear. Like knives of wind under a moonless sky.

When was the last time she felt this storm?

As her blood ebbed like a draining tide, Aphelia’s vision blurred like misted glass, and her mind fell back to the Abyssal mountains, to sinew peeled like wet bark from bone.

Back then… Violet—ah, Violet was ash on the wind.

The enemy was a mountain then, and she was a lone reed now. Why… why didn’t she go with Violet into the dark? Why make herself taste this fire again?

“Aaaahhhhh!”

With her roar, Crimson Flame burst from her body like a volcano cracking the earth, and the world became a raging sea of fire.

That helplessness—like sinking in tar—no more. That abyss of despair—like endless night—never again.

Lend me power, anyone. Demon or god, storm or star—pour it all into me.

The purgatory from her memory flared to life, guided by her wrath like a torch in a gale, godlike fury spilling to burn all things beneath heaven.

Anger. Anger. Anger. Like drums of war beating a thundered sky.

Pain and wrath flooded her heart like tidal lava, and the body forged by Primordial Soil shifted in silence, an unspeakable force spreading like roots and melding into the Crimson Flame sea.

After the first wild surge came a dead hush, like snow falling on ash.

As the fire-sea rose, the slender silhouette of Aphelia twisted in the flames like a heat mirage and faded from the giants’ eyes; only a dark pool of blood marked that she had ever stood there.

Seeing her vanish like smoke, the two giants didn’t relax. The Crimson Fire rolled toward them like a red tide, and they chose to leap away without a heartbeat’s hesitation.

They were not as clumsy as mountains; their battle instinct was a blade. The ground dented like wet clay at their takeoff; the air popped like cracking ice, and their hulks flew up as if denying gravity, almost clearing the forest canopy.

Boom—

They came down in a spray of dirt, but met not damp loam nor gold field—only a furnace sea. Flames lapped their feet like acid surf and gnawed skin like locusts.

They tried to retreat, but the fire stretched like a horizon. No matter how they churned, it felt like running in place on a nightmare shore.

The blade-wielding giant grew anxious, like a caged beast. He hacked the Crimson Flame beside him again and again, cleaving the sea like a fool cutting at waves.

It felt as if the world itself had flipped like an overturned cauldron.

As their agitation peaked, the change struck.

From the endless fire, a warped figure rippled into being behind the blade-giant like heat-bent air, and the whole fire-domain shivered like a plucked string. A razor thrust through his chest like a spear of dusk, and the blade-giant crashed down like a felled tree.

The frost giant lunged to avenge him, warhammer lifting like a stormcloud, but stopped mid-charge. His hands trembled on the haft as if winter bit his bones.

Through the warped glow, he saw eyes like hell’s hungry ghosts. Eyes that devoured life like wolves. A world where only anger and despair could breathe.

From the Crimson Flame, a hungry ghost took form, unspeakable as a nightmare name.

The flames cinched into a cage, and the hungry ghost stepped out like a warden. She hoisted the blade-giant high like a skewered boar and looked at the frost giant with the lazy challenge of a hunting tiger.

At the first touch of that gaze, fear broke him like thin ice. He roared, and a forest of icicles sprang up, only to melt in the Crimson Fire like snow under noon sun, his power draining away like water from a cracked jar.

Skewered, the blade-giant howled, his neck melting under her grip like wax. He could feel those claws coming for his throat like hooks from the deep.

They roared again, trading harsh syllables like stones. The hungry ghost seemed to understand; her hollow, night-black eyes curled with a smile, like a vulture eyeing meat.

Whatever they said no longer mattered. To Crimson Flame’s hungry ghost, words were smoke.

Despair, anger, fear—black waves flooded the frost giant’s mind. Under the burning pain, he longed for release like a drowning man for air, his will to fight washing away like chalk in rain.

The frost giant fell silent, as if hearing his comrade’s death wish like a bell. He bellowed, grief-thick, swung his warhammer, and smashed toward the edge of the fire like a battering ram.

“Awrooooo!”

With the swing, blinding arcs sparked in the Crimson Flame like white serpents. Power unlike fire braided with it like crossing rivers, and the blast hurled him down like a tree struck by a gale.

The Crimson-Flame hungry ghost didn’t spare him a glance. She kept torturing the blade-giant with cold curiosity, poking holes through his flesh like red-hot awls, teasing screams from him like a cruel musician.

Seeing she didn’t interfere, the frost giant roared again, seized the warhammer, and struck the flame-wall.

Another crushing blow fell, and a bolt as thick as a man’s arm was born from nothing, slamming the wall like a falling pillar. The web between his thumb and forefinger tore like old leather, and alien blood spattered like ink.

This time, as if heaven blinked, the tight wall of fire split with a crack like ripping cloth.

Both giants roared, wild with hope. The frost giant snatched up his warhammer once more. Countless sparks of Thunder burst from it like stars, and he bathed in a sea of lightning, charging the gap with the courage of the condemned.

At the heart of the blaze, the hungry ghost flinched, sudden panic flaring like a torn veil. As if a weak point had been found, she hastened the burning of the blade-giant, flames climbing him like ivy.

Yet pain didn’t take him; instead he spat strange syllables like laughter, a mockery rising like smoke.

With a terrible sea of Thunder roaring around him, the frost giant rammed the crack and vanished into the fire like a ship into storm fog. The blade-giant roared in joy, heedless of the Crimson Flame eating him like ants.

Then the hungry ghost’s fluster vanished, mask dropping like a shed skin. Her face returned to terror’s calm. The flames on the blade-giant eased like a receding tide.

She lifted him and walked toward the crack, unhurried as a hunter watching prey step into a pit.

Fear iced the blade-giant’s gut. If his comrade had escaped, why was this wraith so calm? What had that sudden panic meant? The questions gnawed like rats.

The closer she drew to the gap, the thicker his fear swelled like a storm front, and the Crimson Flame burned him fiercer, a kiln stoked to white.

At last she stood by the crack. She raised him high and laughed, mad as crows at dusk. She held him to the slit, making him look through like a condemned man peering past bars.

What he saw beyond made him tremble like a sapling in wind. He glared at the Crimson-Flame wraith and roared, his blade drinking black power like ink, and he chopped for her throat like a guillotine.

It didn’t matter. The strike met a wall like iron.

She tilted her head, mockery soft as ash. Fine flames crawled up the blade like red ants, burning the black power like dry leaves and diving under his skin like sparks.

His despairing screams tore the air like ragged banners, and the Crimson Flame turned him to ash, slow as winter killing, until only the blade remained like a cold relic.

“Cough—ah… Aaaaaaah!”

With both giants dead, the Crimson-Flame wraith lost its prey and howled like a wounded beast. She tore the fire from herself like peeling scabs, and from within stepped Aphelia, the one who had vanished into the Crimson Fire.

In agony first, then motion, she crawled to Wende’s corpse like a storm-tossed swimmer. She stuffed torn shreds of Crimson Flame into Wende’s body like packing a wound with burning cloth.

“Don’t die…”

Pain first, then purpose. Under her will, the Crimson Fire melted into liquid like molten gold and flowed to Wende’s severed neck like a river seeking its bed.

It wasn’t enough. Driven by something as old as grief, Aphelia stripped pieces from her own body like bark and smeared them on the wound like clay.

Crimson Flame braided with Primordial Soil like roots and fire, and Wende’s ghastly wound knit by degrees like a closing eye.

But the cold body lay still as stone, without a flicker of returning spring.

“Why… why…”

Aphelia’s Crimson Flame dimmed like a dying coal, her strength bleeding away like sand through fingers. The repair began to falter like a sagging bridge.

Panicked, she groped and drew out the pale-cyan Rune from before, as if a hidden current guided her hand like a tide. She pressed the Rune to Wende’s heart like a seal to wax.

In an instant, heaven and earth changed color like a scroll overturned.

Stars vanished under boiling cloud, and a sudden gale lashed her side like whips. It wasn’t Crimson Fire; the wind threatened to snuff it like a candle.

“What is this?!”

Before she could breathe, blinding Thunder crashed down beside her like a falling mountain. The air thickened with Aether like summer humidity, stinging Aphelia to the marrow.

Moments ago, the world held no trace of Aether; now it seethed with the most volatile Thunder Aether, alive as hornets.

The next heartbeat, another bolt fell like a spear of day.

It struck Wende’s heart with unerring aim, a guide-star turned hammer. The violence of it drove Aphelia back like a leaf in gale; she had to retreat or be shattered.

It didn’t stop. Thunder descended again, then in multiples, turning the space around Wende into a blazing sea of lightning like a sunken sky. That world-shaking force poured into him endlessly like a river into the sea.

The massive warhammer and the black blade shuddered, then flew toward the lightning sea like iron to a lodestone.

“A god… has descended?”

Within that sea of Thunder, an overwhelming will woke like a dragon opening its eyes.