So you’re saying that whole time, you didn’t show up and hunt Daemon Beasts like I did, a blade in the dark?

Aphelia’s brow pinched like a tightened bowstring. Brynhildr’s soul sat braided to hers, twin shadows in one lantern. Truth rang clear as still water; her pain stung raw as salt on a cut.

You couldn’t fault Aphelia for caution; too many traps had scored her like thorns on a path.

Exactly. Back then I never got the chance to wake, Brynhildr said, voice heavy as rain on old stone. I could only watch, trapped in our protective incubation pods, while Valkyries died like stars going out. Some were sealed, cast into reincarnation. The lucky ones found vessels like driftwood on a flood. The unlucky… most were swallowed by this era, like leaves in winter.

She sighed, a low wind through bare branches. She looked like a sickly girl, pale as winter light, and that frailty carried a beauty few could touch.

Aphelia had no mind for beauty. That one sentence struck like thunder over a calm sea. Her face darkened, storm rolling in. She hesitated a breath, then asked.

By the lucky, you mean Shilwen and Hrok? And the unlucky… you mean Violet?

She thought of Violet across two eras, two flowers sharing a scent but not a root. The conclusion fell like frost.

Hrok and Shilwen kept memory and edge, steel that never dulled. Stronger now than then, mountain to foothill. Hrok even forced Sigdrifa back once, a storm pushing a storm. It’s hard not to think she’s brushed Brynhildr’s height.

But Violet wasn’t that kind. She was a similar blossom, yet not the same branch. Power mirrored, not identical. If Violet had been the lucky one, then atop the Abyssal Range, how could she have—

The thought bit down. Aphelia clenched her jaw. Her nails dug into her palm like thorns into bark, and she didn’t feel it.

You’re right. Violet wasn’t one of the lucky few, Brynhildr said, her gaze gone dusk-dark. In the time I lived, she died before me, stopping a human uprising, a candle snuffed by the wind. The Violet of your era holds fragments of her soul, a shard of moon in a puddle. They aren’t the same person.

Then how can you still endure humans!?

Aphelia exploded up like wildfire. Crimson Fire raced down her arm, a river of embers. She slammed Brynhildr to the wall like a wave pinning driftwood. She roared, and tears slid down like rain cutting soot. In those black eyes, anger and grief churned like a storm sea.

Aren’t you the invincible Valkyrie? How could mere humans run riot under your sky!?

Brynhildr knew that pitch of pain, a blade she’d tasted. Because she knew it, she didn’t stop Aphelia’s rough hands, a cliff taking the surf.

When my memories first returned, anger and pain only grew, she thought, dusk spreading like ink. A world of ruins, and only those with power still walking like ghosts. I could do nothing. I poured my fire onto humans like lightning onto a dry plain.

And what did that buy me? An echo in an empty well.

In the ragged end-times, I slaughtered and drowned myself in red, trying to forget. The return was cold: nightmare after nightmare, nights like endless winter. I woke alone, again and again, and fed myself that pain, a thorn-crown I wouldn’t take off.

Power too great and a body that won’t die—those aren’t heaven’s gifts. They’re curses, iron chains in silk. I watched comrades fall, one by one, like constellations winking out. Some died under human knives, a farmer’s blade cutting a swan.

I asked why I should save humans at all.

Even outside the end-times, human nature is thin as paper in rain. A few blows, and the lantern goes out. Bonds fray first, rope snapping strand by strand.

What about them is worth saving?

If they’re that brittle, let the Eldritch Gods break them like dry reeds. The Valkyries should’ve been the survivors, the seed to start a brighter forest. Human civilization is old wood, easy to rot, easy to burn. No right to go on. So why did the ancient civilization forge us with such stubborn care, yet refuse to command us with iron?

If they had, I wouldn’t doubt. I could go on numb, rowing a boat named Salvation through black water.

My answer came from a woman so ordinary she was air, that human named Lilo. With hands wet with blood like mine, I finally found a cup of warm tea in winter. Lilo walked beside me, spring after a long frost, and led me out of shadow, a lantern lit in wind. She rekindled my hope in humans, a coal nursed back to flame.

Because I walked that road, I know: this kind of pain can’t be reasoned away. Empathy is a pretty lie; even shared scars aren’t the same wound. No one can enter another heart’s night.

Besides… Aphelia is steadier than my old castles in the air, clouds pretending to be stone. She was made as a spare body, yes, a vessel on a shelf. But after living a full life, she is herself. Not my hollow shell. Not Sigdrifa’s furnace of hate.

Aphelia is Aphelia. She thinks for herself. She’s whole, like a mountain that knows its roots.

Sorry, Aphelia…

Brynhildr forced the words out with a crooked smile, a crack in ice. In Aphelia’s black eyes, the fire dimmed, embers under ash.

Aphelia knew she’d only been lashing out, a blade swung at shadows. She had bet everything on keeping this era’s Violet alive, as if that could ripple back and rewrite her own past, keep Violet from dying under Sigdrifa’s hand. Brynhildr’s words cut the last silver thread.

I was reckless. Sorry, Brynhildr.

She uncurled her fingers, let go of Brynhildr’s arm, and fell back onto the sofa like a sail gone slack. She stared at the Crimson Fire licking her palm, a fox of light, pain pooling in her gaze.

Brynhildr let out a soft breath, a reed flute note. She sat beside Aphelia and hugged her from behind, a cloak over cold shoulders.

It’s alright. I’ve carried this pain too. I also once didn’t understand why I should save humans. If I have to name a reason… maybe because Lilo stayed by my side, like a warm hand in winter.

Her voice was low, a night breeze that didn’t chill.

At the name Lilo, Aphelia trembled, a string plucked. She drew a few long breaths, steadying like a boat in chop.

Don’t tell me Lilo also met tragedy in this era?

Of course not.

Brynhildr shook her head, calm as a still pond. That Aphelia could leash her fire and speak again was already good.

She was just human—ordinary, at most an excellent soldier, a steady blade. When her life neared its end, I sealed her with Aether, a pearl in ice. She was reborn in your era. Not the same person, two rivers with one source. But if she can live happily on, my heart can be at rest, like a lamp set down.

Aphelia’s anger ebbed like a tide. The hurt didn’t smooth easily, a scar still tender, but reason returned, a cool hand on a fever.

She dabbed her tears away and let out a long breath, mist on a cold morning.

Fine. Say what you will, I’m still going to try to change Violet’s fate. Stop me or help me, your choice. Now tell me, properly, the method you laid in my mind—the so-called Project Valhalla.

Aphelia forced her voice level, a blade sheathed. Seeing her like this, Brynhildr sighed, unsure if it was fortune or sorrow, sun through rain. Sometimes that kind of reason means compromise, and more pain afterward.

If I’d had Aphelia’s reason back then, would the ending have changed?

The thought rose and she crushed it like a spark. She had once seen across time like a hawk; for her there was no medicine for regret. To dwell on it was to deny herself, a snake eating its tail.

Alright. Project Valhalla. It failed in my era, a bridge that never reached the far bank. But before I explain it, I have to tell you why you appear in different eras on this world, a traveler between seasons.

Brynhildr’s voice settled, deep as a bell. As she spoke, a pure white crystalline flower opened in her palm, a bud of frost under moonlight. It hadn’t bloomed, yet power pressed out like spring under snow.

As a spare body crafted by Sigdrifa, you took a road no one foresaw. You resonated with my Origin, a tuning fork struck by thunder, and even stole a portion of my power. Because of that, Sigdrifa’s plan never came to fruition, a net torn by its catch.

She pointed to the white flower, a shard of winter sky.

This is the power you seized, and the strongest gift I bore as a Valkyrie of the ancient civilization. It’s a thread through time, a line that stitches history, an anchor in the rivers of space-time. With it in your flesh, you can see—and even walk into—any period of human history, like stepping stones across a flowing river.