The specter, long as a serpent and slick as night rain, lunged for Aphelia. It never guessed the wicked nature of the Crimson Fire. Each time a blade skewered its shade, a shard of Aphelia’s soul flared like a brand and scorched its flesh. By the time it rushed into her reach, it was ash at the core and char on the skin, collapsing from fire within and without.
Humans of this age may lack practice against giants. Aphelia didn’t. Dragons, giants—she’d culled them like storms pruning forests. A Daemon Beast like this? Hardly worth a frown.
The first grip felt heavy, like catching a falling anvil, but not enough to force a retreat.
Her Bracer Gauntlets locked around the ink-black thing. Power surged up her arms like a tidal bore. From crimson plates, searing jets roared out, a furnace vented to daylight. It writhed like a hooked eel, but its fate was already carved.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” The scream tore the air like a rent banner.
With her roar, the force in her arms began to rip the serpent-shadow’s hide like old bark. It thrashed in pain, a storm-tossed rope. Aphelia gave it no window. In a blink, the Crimson Flame flooded its body like wildfire through dry grass. Her hands pulled, and the Daemon Beast was torn clean in half.
No corpse remained to foul the field. The two silk-robed maidens appeared again, crimson staves in hand, and set what was left alight, like priests tending a pyre.
In that instant, from the night’s vault, Aphelia felt a twisted will brush her like a cold wind. She didn’t yield. Her soul, tempered with the Crimson Fire, was iron in a gale. Strength of mind, strength of will—she met it and pushed back. The watcher recoiled like a burned hand, its prying gaze snapping away.
That warped will… an Eldritch God, no doubt. If you want to watch, then watch your fill.
Aphelia sneered and hurled the two halves back onto the battlefield. Under a sea of Crimson Fire, she clenched her right fist and lifted it high, a torch against the night.
“The Daemon Beast of the American Theater has been felled by me!”
A simple line, yet it ran like thunder and rolled across the whole world.
With her warrior’s poise and the Crimson Fire blazing like a sunrise, anyone who saw it felt the scene branded into memory, a sigil that would never fade. They hadn’t just witnessed history. They’d witnessed a miracle without caveat.
All present—Elders, Valkyries, and soldiers—stood stunned, like trees struck silent by snow.
For years the Daemon Beast had hounded humanity, swallowed lands, and devoured lives. Now it was gone. This wasn’t Simmons’s stage-play bombardment. This was bone-close combat, a clean kill wrought with Aether.
Shock passed like a breaking wave. The field boiled.
Soldiers and Valkyries erupted in cheers, a volcano venting flame. Veterans sobbed and fell to their knees, men who’d lost faith bowing to wonder again. If this wasn’t a miracle, what else could wear the name? Recruits and Valkyries howled for Aphelia, fever-bright. For those who wager life on the line, nothing sways the heart like supreme power.
“No way…” In the helicopter, Shilwen froze, lips parted, a bird stunned mid-flight. Aphelia’s display was too much. Even an Elder went silent.
Violet’s cheeks flushed a strange rose. Her wine-red eyes carried a thousand shades of charm, yet they only rested on Aphelia, as the moon clings to a tide.
Across the world, citizens and leaders watched the same blaze. Simmons’s pride had built the global broadcast; now it crowned Aphelia instead. After tonight, the world would remember one name.
Violet drifted to Aphelia’s side and let Aether carry her voice like bronze bells. “This is the leader of the Elders—Aphelia!”
She meant to carve the name into the world’s bark and heartwood.
In the command towers of every theater, her appearance struck like a stone into still water. Waves spread, arguments rose, and every faction turned to one subject: Aphelia. Power like that, and a presence like that, draws the world’s eye like fire draws moths.
But that was for later.
Guided by Violet and the others, Aphelia descended into the theater. The cheers around her rose like surf on rock, and something old stirred in her chest.
Emotion first—then memory. In past wars, as a Hero, when she turned battles or led victories, this same roar washed over her. Back then her Hero party stood at her side. Now, the Valkyries of an ancient civilization kept her company, steel sentinels beneath a dying sky.
“Everyone, everyone! Please, quiet!” Only with Shilwen and several Enforcer soldiers holding the line did the noise ebb, like wind easing after a squall. Yet their eyes still burned, embers under ash. One beckon from Aphelia, and the spark would race into a prairie fire.
Shilwen’s task was to let that heat take root, to plant this flame deep in soldier’s hearts.
“Everyone, the Daemon Beast of the American Theater has been removed. Your foolish Supreme Commander will be sent to the Allied War Tribunal to stand trial. You’re free now. You don’t have to die for their stupidity!”
She waved, and a soldier brought up a tactical computer. After a few taps, the projection bloomed like a flag. Simmons, shackled and dragged toward the tribunal, looked like a dog in the rain. The sight pulled another cheer from the ranks.
“So that guy was really that unpopular?” As Shilwen steadied the crowd, Aphelia turned slightly to ask Violet. She truly had never seen a commander so bereft of basic awe, a king without a crown.
Some of it was era and culture, but Violet still explained. “The original Supreme Commander here had real charisma. With humans and Valkyries together, he’d driven back a Daemon Beast. The theater loved him. The mid and upper officers were close. In a war like this—facing an outside species—guess how he died?”
“Killed by a Daemon Beast? Probably not, judging by this outrage…” Curiosity pricked Aphelia like a thorn. Infighting in a war like this rots morale and can shatter a front.
“Assassinated. Obvious, the kind a child could parse. They even told the public it was a heart attack. Then Simmons parachuted in, so fast it felt like he wanted the world to know who held the knife.” Violet shrugged, a half-smile like a razor’s edge. Aphelia couldn’t help a dry laugh.
From Violet and the others, Aphelia sketched the map of now. Once the Elders and Valkyries held the line like a levee, the rear filled with a backward kind of bureaucracy, eyes closed to the flood.
To them, a frontline theater commander was just a trade token. Grab profit, find a scapegoat, toss the post. As for the dead at the front—fog on the river, nothing to them.
“And the Aether-dissociation weapon?” Aphelia asked, voice cool as dew.
“Our plan,” Violet said, “meant to blind Simmons and the hands behind him. An Aether-dissociation weapon? If that existed, the world would’ve cracked already. You don’t break the rules that keep the sky up and call it strategy. Letting men like him stand is the real instability. If we don’t pin them to the ground, the American Theater will kick up new storms.”
Aphelia nodded, the motion sharp as a blade. Extreme, maybe, but better a clean cut than a festering wound. Those who reach into a war zone deserve more than their hand lopped off. If it were her, she wouldn’t stop at Simmons’s overreaching “hand.”
In that other age, the Church had done the same…
Her fists clenched until knuckles whitened like frost. If she’d seen this clearly then, perhaps the Church wouldn’t have stirred such waves. But her trouble wasn’t a single Church. The true culprit drifted in the undertow: Sigdrifa.
The name brought a chill like shadow over snow. In Asgard, the one who whipped the waters was Sigdrifa. Could it be her again now?
Back then, she only shoved Sigdrifa into the rift. If Aphelia could cross into this era, why couldn’t Sigdrifa? That would explain why heirs of the ancient civilization woke, yet the age still cracked like thin ice.
If Sigdrifa pushed from behind, the pieces fit like bones in a hand.
At that thought, killing intent rose in Aphelia, cold as moonlight on steel. Frost bled from her skin. If that specter still clung to the world, this time she’d make the price heavier.
“Aphelia, Aphelia.” Feeling her aura darken like a gathering storm, Violet nudged her, quick and gentle. Aphelia surfaced from the pull of obsession and came back to herself, breath settling like a lake after wind.
