Almost every Valkyrie held to the same hush, like snow settling after a storm. The wounded, soothed by Violet and others, drifted into sleep.

The fortress was a bare shell, a rough nest without even a blanket. Most Valkyries leaned shoulder to shoulder, eyes closing as fatigue washed over like a tide.

After handing out what little she had, Violet stepped outside. The sky pressed down, black as iron. She let out a long, frayed sigh.

Helplessness gnawed first, then action faltered. Even the former leader of Valkyries felt lost, like a compass spinning in a magnetic storm.

“Violet, the inventory’s done. Judging by what we cleared today…” Shilwen slipped in beside her, list in hand.

Her clothes hung in tatters, a robe like a torn banner barely covering her. It was only women here, so no one flinched.

Her face was ashen. In the last fight, she’d shielded trainees from a swarm of monsters born from human flesh. Then the quake swallowed her into the rubble.

The trainees found Uroboros and dug her out, stone by stone, like pulling someone from a grave. Crawling free, she learned the planet stood on the cliff edge of extinction.

No one had a good mood left; the air tasted of dust and endings. “This area’s supplies are too little,” she murmured.

“Even if we mash every can into paste, it won’t last days. We have the injured too. Aether’s ample, so medicine isn’t the priority.”

“Where’d you get the food? Small shops, or big markets?” Violet bit her fingertip, a thorn-pricking habit whenever a wall closed in.

Past problems were wars. Brynhildr had covered logistics like a mountain, steady and sure. Now the planet felt like a cracking egg with no hands to hold it.

Shortages and hostile ground hemmed them in. Building a fortress and throwing up defenses in half a day was a miracle to Violet.

Most had seen some battle, green blades bent by wind. True veterans were only a few dozen, mostly hurt. They couldn’t be leaned on soon.

At least the Earth-shaping trainees survived. Their grasp of Aether was weaker, but their hands still turned soil like clay, enough to raise this rough shelter.

“Most military lights died in the quake,” Shilwen said. “Even the working gear’s useless without power. Our Aether-to-power girls haven’t woken.”

“The rest are wide-area discharge types, stormcasters not batteries. We found a few diesel generators. Not many. Not much fuel.”

They’d combed a deep ruin, a collapsed base, hauling out whatever still breathed. Shilwen had insisted on the generator, an old ox they almost left to rot.

In this world, electricity was a shrinking river. Big machines might endure somewhere, if you dug the whole globe. Small devices weren’t worth our dwindling light.

Resources were the sharpest blade after wounds. The lack cut everywhere. Transport was a ghost. The terrain turned labyrinthine.

To reach complex zones, they’d rely on Aether and muscle. Hunger was a hollow fire. Endurance would burn faster than food could feed it.

And there were the wounded. Violet pressed her brow, headache pulsing like a drum. Her sigh scraped out, thin and weary.

Ordinary Valkyries needed food to refill their bodies. The badly hurt lived on borrowed Aether, a thin candle barely warming ice.

Because it wasn’t their own Aether, healing crawled like winter thaw. Food and medicine would help. If only they could be found.

Earth had been in flames. Daemon Beasts struck like surgeons at the heart, cutting rear hospitals to ribbons. Outside the Academy, most doctors refused the front.

Some hid who they were. Military medics were locked behind walls, watched like treasure in a siege. The war made cowards of systems.

“Then we focus on food first,” Violet said, voice steady as a spear planted in loam. “Not everyone can live on Aether alone.”

“Most trainees need to eat. Take a squad tomorrow. Widen the search. I’ll have Uroboros secure your route. Bring any medicine you find.”

She sent Shilwen to rest. Dragged from a grave, then thrown into scavenging and command—her strength was sand through fingers. She needed sleep.

Watching her leave, Violet exhaled, slow and long. Work still piled in drifts. She’d taken the deep-night watch, too.

Partly to keep Uroboros and Sigdrifa sharp as tempered steel. Mostly because she wanted to see Aphelia climb from that abyss with her own eyes.

Thinking that, she wandered to the great pit. Its walls were smooth, like carved bone. The passage yawned deep, a throat calling you to leap.

“Aphelia… what am I supposed to do?” Her voice caught like a thread in thorns. She sagged beside the ruin near the pit.

A half-wall hid her, a modest curtain in a broken theater. She didn’t want the Valkyries to see her soft under the armor.

“Someone calling me? I could use a hand! Anyone!” The voice rose from the abyss, echoing up like a bell underwater.

Violet froze, then bolted to the rim. A keratin-lined hand clawed the edge, pale against stone. Aphelia. Her heart leapt like a bird.

Aphelia smiled, awkward as a bruised sunrise. One hand clung to the rim; the other held Hrok with iron knuckles.

Violet ran crimson Aether, blood-silk unraveling into strands. The threads wound them both and hauled them up, fishing two souls from the dark.

“You… what happened down there?” The pull had drained her. Something below felt like a weight dragging Aphelia back, a hook in the deep.

“Violet, later,” Hrok said first. Her voice was thin, like wind over empty fields. “Water, please.”

Her face was pale, steel turned porcelain. Even a steadfast Valkyrie looked like a powerless girl, a storm without lightning.

Violet unclipped her canteen and pressed it into Hrok’s hands. She offered a compressed nutrient tab, a small square of man-made aid.

As a former high command, she carried such things, though she herself trusted Aether over pills, wind over chemist.

Hrok was weak, and human tools might help. Violet glanced to Aphelia. Aphelia looked spent, meeting Violet’s gaze with a sheepish smile, leaning on stone.

“What in the Earth Vein did this to you?” The question came out like flint striking.

“A curse,” Hrok said. “Origin’s curse, left inside the Earth Vein.”

She didn’t drain the canteen. She sipped, small ripples on a still pond, only a fifth gone. She split the tablet, ate half, handed back half.

Origin left a curse in the Earth Vein? Violet’s breath snagged. Aphelia had shattered Origin in space. How could it reach below and brand the earth?

“This planet…” Aphelia exhaled, fog lifting from a field. “Maybe Origin visited long ago.”

“I don’t know what enemy it faced then. Somehow, Origin was bound for a time within this planet’s Earth Vein.”

“It left a powerful projected curse. If time hadn’t eroded it, I might not have brought Hrok out alive.”

She sighed. The fight in the Earth Vein had been a cliff-edge. The keratin on her arms hadn’t regrown. Pain still smoldered in her body.

The return had taken too long, steps heavy as stones. “Someone could imprison Origin? How is that possible?!”