Violet didn’t overthink; she unclipped the canteen at her waist, cool as moonlight steel, and pressed it into Hrok’s hands like passing dew to a withered leaf.

She added a compressed nutrient tablet, a dull pebble of medicine issued when she’d been high command; a Valkyrie like her always ran better on Aether than on pills.

Hrok looked faint, like a lamp in wind; maybe human-made tonics would reach her roots.

Violet’s gaze slid to Aphelia; Aphelia’s face was drawn, a tide gone out.

She caught Violet’s look, gave a shy, frayed smile, and leaned against the wall like a tired cliff.

“What’s in the Earth Vein that left you both this drained?”

“A curse,” Hrok breathed, voice rough as sand. “A curse Origin left inside the Earth Vein.”

She didn’t chug the water; she sipped like a sparrow at a puddle, dropping the level by a fifth.

She snapped the tablet in two with a crisp crack, swallowed half like chalk, and returned the other half to Violet.

Origin’s curse lingering in the Earth Vein—how?

Shock surged through Violet like cold rain.

Hadn’t Aphelia shattered Origin in outer space?

How did it slip below ground and brand the Vein?

None of it fit, like a broken pattern on silk.

“This star…” Aphelia exhaled, breath fogging like winter glass. “Origin may have visited long ago.

I don’t know what enemy it met, but someone managed to confine it, briefly, within the Earth Vein.

Origin left a powerful projection curse there.

If not for time’s slow erosion, I doubt I could have hauled Hrok out alive.”

She let out a long breath; pain throbbed through her like embers under skin.

The hardened plating on her forearms hadn’t regrown.

Injuries pulsed, a distant drum, and her bones felt heavy as wet wood.

The return trip had eaten hours like moths chewing cloth.

“Someone could imprison Origin? That’s impossible!”

“I know it sounds unreal,” Hrok said, voice steady as a stake, “but it’s fact.

Aphelia faced power Origin left near its prime.

Its rule-simulations were tighter, and the projection copied Aphelia almost to the grain.”

Hrok swallowed the cool water, each gulp a pebble dropping in a well.

Her body was new, raw as fresh clay; it needed time.

With no strength, she treated herself as an ordinary person, clinging to basics like a raft.

To live, you keep water moving through you.

She forced down the discomfort and kept talking, thread by thread.

As a bystander in the Vein, this new shell saved her; she carved the curse’s patterns into memory like scars before the madness could eat her thoughts.

“Then the quantity?” Violet’s tone was a blade wrapped in cloth.

“If Origin was bound in the Earth Vein, it wouldn’t leave only one curse, right?

You should see more through the Vein.”

Hrok’s tale stunned Violet like thunder, yet calm returned like a settling lake.

Origin has walked a thousand worlds; Earth may have been one.

It could have met a rival, a mirrored mountain.

But would something that cruel leave only one hook?

“So far, our nearby Vein held just this one,” Hrok sighed, breath sinking like a stone.

“Aphelia erased it, and the Vein steadied like a quiet pulse.

Steadied, yes—but we only pushed the world’s death-day further down the road.

Other regions may hide more curses.

We weren’t strong enough before to touch that tier.”

Violet’s face darkened, a storm on horizon.

She’d barely calmed the Valkyries.

If this leaks, hope will collapse like brittle ice.

Leaving becomes a dream; even living turns uphill through ash.

“Keep this quiet for now,” Aphelia said, voice cool as iron water.

“I’ll hunt the remaining curses, if the Earth Vein still holds.”

She gestured for them to go.

She’d seal this mouth in the stone, to keep Aether winds from the Vein from spilling onto the skin of the world.

Violet and Hrok obeyed, boots whispering like reeds.

When they vanished, Uroboros stepped out of the shadow like a snake from dusk.

“You,” Aphelia sighed, finishing the last stroke of her array like ink on rice paper, “change that habit.

Anyone else would die of fright.”

“Aphelia,” Uroboros murmured, voice a low river, “tell me.

What really happened below?”

Not long before, inside the Earth Vein, Aphelia had been ready to punch upward with Hrok in tow.

Then a nightmare silhouette fell before them like a shroud.

“Hrok,” Aphelia said, calm pressed tight as a band, “don’t try to meddle with the Aether.

From Vein to surface is far, a climb through knives.

Aether storms block the path like spinning thorns.

Cling to me.

Don’t let go, no matter what happens.

Got it?”

Hrok’s arms wrapped Aphelia’s waist like a rope on a mast.

Crimson Fire and black Aether pulled inward, a cloak shrinking to cover two figures in a tight ember shell.

The trip down had cost Aether like oil feeding flame, but still within her ledger.

Taking someone up demanded caution, a tight-footed dance on glass.

To descend from the surface, an Aether storm looks like raw chaos, a cloud of stray blades.

You dodge what comes from every direction, and you live like a fish finding eddies.

From below, it changes.

The storm becomes a true storm: dense spirals of Aether twisted like braided vines.

It’s subdivided finer than the eye can count, layered like scales, and spinning along hidden lines.

So many layers stack that it looks solid, like cloth hammered into iron.

Treat it as one sheet and search for gaps like you did on the way down, and you’ll be trapped forever under a glass sea.

Aphelia, at her current height, had mapped most ways Aether moves, including this storm’s spine.

Many layers make a wall, a mountain built from grains.

She’d invert the logic: don’t break the face, pierce a point.

Shrink the breach to a needle.

Pack force into a single thorn and stitch through.

Simple as a proverb; hard as climbing a waterfall.

“Aphelia,” Hrok warned, numbers flickering behind her eyes like fireflies, “this storm at this grade—two people breaking through is brutal.

Even for you.”

“Trust me,” Aphelia smiled, calm like snow.

“I wouldn’t be here without a net.”

They took the first step, and Aphelia froze, mid-stride, like a hawk sensing a quake.

Her hair prickled; her eyes widened like twin moons.

Her Aether cinched tight, a bowstring drawn to the ear, ready to sing.

She wasn’t alone in that alarm.

The maiden Reaper, hidden in warped spacetime, felt it first.

She’d meant to rest on her rubble throne; the surge kicked her up like a spring.

The strange clock at her neck spun crazy-fast.

Her Mirror of the Stars flared open like a lake of night.

“Impossible. How could this be!” she cried, voice sharp as broken glass.

The Demon King jerked awake, scowling like thunder.

He turned to speak, then saw the star-mirror snap wide.

He rushed to her side and peered toward distant Earth, eyes narrowing to blades.

“What in hell—how is this possible?!”

Heron and the collective consciousness, adrift in the spacetime rift, stared as well, breath caught like fish in ice.

They saw Aphelia craft a flesh vessel that could house a soul, a lantern for a wandering spark.

They almost went mad, joy slamming like drums; it meant the long, bodyless drift through the cosmos—