Ismail, born into a Middle Eastern house of magnates, a falcon raised on gold winds.

A candidate for the Valkyrie Program, her native Aether ripples brushed the A‑rank peak, like a river pushing at a dam. Backed by her clan’s weight, her path before the Academy was smooth as polished marble. Even inside the Academy, years of drilling her body made her a spear among spears, a blade that caught the sun.

In her life, she’d only hit three walls, each like a mountain in fog.

The first came at the entrance ceremony. Yuan beat her in under three minutes, a lightning strike from a clear sky. Shame hit first, hot as iron on skin. In her bones she felt the gulf; not talent, she thought, but years—the long winter of experience and insight on the martial path. Otherwise, how could someone with near A‑peak Aether lose to that busty glasses girl from the East, a wave breaking on a shy shore?

The second came in her first live op with the Valkyrie squad. Awe came first, cold as snow down the spine. She watched a wine‑red‑haired girl step into a sea of men with one gun, like a lone wolf crossing drifts, and there was no one else in that storm. On that battlefield, blood became her stage, a scarlet moon over ruins. From that moment, Ismail knew the gap was a canyon no wealth could bridge, a drought no fountain could fill. Her heart shifted like plates under the earth. That wine‑red‑haired girl became the demon in her mirror, and every similar face among students turned into offerings on her altar.

The third is now, a thunderclap at noon.

What just happened?!

That question cracked through every mind present like hail on glass. No one saw Aphelia move. They only had the afterimage—Ismail’s body arcing over their heads like a hurled comet. Then their eyes found Aphelia standing where Ismail had stood, a quiet cliff after the wave.

Ismail wasn’t top of the world, but she was no fish on a chopping block. She was a thorny branch; touch her and you bled. Yet she’d been swatted away like trash in a roadside wind?

Thud!

Her body slammed the rear wall, a drumbeat that rattled dust from the beams. She slid down boneless, eyes unfocused like rain on a lens. Blood bubbled at her lip, bright as berries. Seeing her fold, the Enforcement Squad girls in back dared not dally; they lifted her like handling shattered porcelain.

“No good—half her ribs are gone! We need a medic teacher now, or she won’t hold!” Panic first, then practice—her voice shook like a plucked string. With Aether armaments, these girls could wrestle a road roller, steel against steel. To break one like this, it felt like getting hit head‑on by a missile, a storm of iron.

Fear spread up front like frost. Aphelia wore nothing, no gleam, no halo—just bare hands pale as winter water. No Aether armament flashed, no rings of light. How did she smash Ismail, who had her Aether gear, into a collapsing kite?

“What a… monster,” Yuan breathed, a wry smile the color of dusk. She pushed her glasses up with two fingers, a habit like a shield.

She hadn’t seen the strike either, only sensed the wake from behind Aphelia. The last touch was a palm “push” into Ismail’s abdomen, a quiet tide. No Aether armament in sight; at least, the wristband recorder showed nothing—only silence where thunder should be.

Bare hands putting out missile‑class force—possible?

Yuan looked at her own palms, moons pale under fluorescent light. In her memory, some could do it—the Elders in the Valkyrie squad, those ancient blades in scabbards of flesh. The gap between her and them was a night with no lanterns.

The thought tried to spiral. Anxiety hit first, a whirlpool; then she slapped her cheeks and climbed out of it, breathing deep like drawing in a cold dawn. She eyed Aphelia’s back with a crooked smile, half bitter, half bright. She’d almost birthed Ismail’s same inner demon. Luckily her martial path didn’t worship assault and slaughter; still water found itself again. And to think she’d wanted to protect this monster—what a joke tossed into the wind.

Done. After this, she’d make sure Aphelia crossed hands with those Elders. That clash would drop every jaw like stones in a lake.

“What’s wrong? None of you coming?” Aphelia didn’t know Yuan’s thoughts, those clouds chasing each other behind glasses. She watched the girls flinch from Ismail’s fall, and her mouth curved, a flower opening at midnight.

She raised both hands and stepped forward, a calm tide. The Enforcement girls stepped back in a single sweep, like grass bent by wind. The front rank trembled, knuckles white on their weapons, as if one more whisper would make them drop steel like hot coals.

She didn’t grasp the weight crushing them. Most had never touched a battlefield, never breathed the copper of fresh blood. When Aphelia moved, the killing will she’d honed in life‑and‑death trenches seeped out like winter chill. To them, she was a Demon King clawing up from a heap of bones, shadow crowned.

Fine then—let’s give them a scare.

Her body twitched, a spark jumping a gap. That finally lit their fuse. The lead girl rushed in, long blade chopping at Aphelia’s flank, form messy but all the angles went for arteries, windpipes, hearts—a storm aimed only at kill zones.

The rest surged in from both sides, weapons raised, a tide with no thought of return. They threw their lives onto the road to seal Aphelia’s retreat, a wall of flesh and steel. Aphelia almost laughed; did she press them that hard? Or—

Had these fresh‑faced girls already learned to open with killing strokes, like flowers fed on iron rain?

Her bare hands chopped, white arcs in fluorescent light; steel screamed and snapped, blade turned to broken ice. She almost went for a high kick, then felt the drag of her long skirt, silk like a net. She bit down, ditched the idea, slid like a ghost past the flanking strikes, and let her fists fall.

Muffled groans popped like damp firecrackers. The first circle around her collapsed. Aether armaments shattered into glittering shards, then smoke, then nothing. Aphelia walked out like she’d strolled through mist. On the way, she ripped her long skirt, fabric sighing, and wrapped strips around her hands, white bands like winter cloth.

“Come on!!”

She shouted, but her eyes sparkled with mischief, a cat at the rim of a pond.

If Aether gear and basic forms couldn’t touch her, why go all out? Play with them; call it rehab after a long winter. They hadn’t come with goodwill anyway. So… broken bones, not broken lives.

As for Ismail—she had meant to kill. Reflex took over. Not my fault. No, not my fault, she told herself, like a leaf talking to the wind. I held back, I did.

If the girls had heard her plan, they’d have wept to the floor. Who wants to be a monster’s rehab partner? But they were already jammed in the corridor off Ismail’s call. Behind them were Ismail and a sea of onlookers. If word spread that the Enforcement Squad got scared off by a girl without Aether gear, their banner would turn to paper in the rain.

So they screamed from the gut and charged, Aether armaments flaring like cheap fireworks, the air thick with a tragic heat. To Aphelia, it was all she could do not to laugh, a wolf smiling at a breeze.

“Yo—one!”

Her palms pushed lightly, and the Aether armament powdered like old bone. The girl shot out the window like a kite cut loose.

“Two!”

Aphelia cut into them like a tiger into sheep. She barely bothered to dodge; flesh alone smothered their constructs, a tide drowning candles. She pinned one girl, tapped her out, and took her Aether gear—two long, odd‑shaped polearms, twin moons on sticks.

“Huh, what’s this… three!”

She pulled a trigger and blinked. Magitech firearms—conjured by Aether, clever as clockwork in a priest’s robe. Still—

She didn’t fire. She threw them. The poles spun and thunked into two foreheads, lights out like snuffed wicks. Then came the downpour—punches and palms like rain on a tin roof. One body crushing a crowd, a joke becoming a mural before everyone’s eyes.

“You’re kidding me—sending fifty from the Enforcement Squad at one girl with no Aether gear?!”

Violet’s eyes widened, wine‑red brightening to bloody garnet. Fury hit first, a furnace in the ribs. Her blood‑red spear kissed a young officer’s throat, a winter thorn at the jugular. Aether roared around her like a storm front. If she wanted, she could pulp this waste in a blink, meat to fog.

The young officer didn’t flinch; arrogance sat on him like a bad cologne. “Oh? Valkyrie Violet, go on and press that spear harder. You believe I won’t push this button and drop all of you right here?” His voice was oil on water.

Guns rose around them like a forest, muzzles black as wells. Violet’s wristband glowed red, a sick light like a dying sun.

“It’s my first day on duty,” he sneered, eyes sliding over her curves like a fly. “They dared challenge the Enforcement Squad, so let her bleed. And you—do you really have the guts to kill me, Valkyrie Violet? I’m the son of a U.N. Army general. You know the waves that’ll make.”

He even whistled, a dog call in a chapel, never seeing Violet’s smile sharpen like a knife.

The moment the whistle cut air, blood‑red Aether bloomed from nothing, a rose exploding in a glass room. It tore the armed soldiers into ragged cloth, meat blossoms in a red wind. Gore and viscera painted the command room like a butchered mural. The hand clutching the remote popped free, severed clean, trapped in a crimson field that hummed like bees.

“The U.N. Army general’s son? Crawl back and tell Simmons this: the Valkyrie Elders squad will visit him in person. He’d better line up every nuke in the Americas before the Eldritch Gods arrive—or get ready to kneel and beg.”

Violet’s wine‑red eyes burned into true scarlet, coals blown to flame. She dropped the words like stones into a well, then turned and left the command room, a blood‑scented storm walking out into cold air.