Power detonated between the two like colliding stars. Pitch-black will slammed into silver-white radiance, two absolute forces that should’ve lived at opposite poles. They crashed and clawed, rabid and relentless. The wielders hadn’t even closed to trade blows, yet their powers had already become hell-wraiths, desperate to devour each other whole.
“Come on, again! Again! Despicable fire-thief, you stole a power that was never yours. Let me see what your ruined mortal shell can still muster. Fifty percent? Thirty? Ten? Not even five? Your body’s already failing, isn’t it?”
Uroboros raved like a storm-broken madwoman. A dreadful black mist billowed with her tidal might, spreading like famine on the wind. It knew no end, knew no rest, only the urge to swallow the enemy alive, even if it burst from its own gluttony.
The bone soldiers swallowed by the mist let out shrill howls. They were bare skeletons; they shouldn’t have had a voice. But Uroboros’s eerie power pinned their souls in place. The twisted will shackled the dead to their bone frames before their wraiths could flee. Only rabid malice remained, puppets jerking on her invisible strings.
When the frenzy of mist swept past, even their shabby gear changed. A heavy carapace seemed to plate those skeletons. Their broken blades became grinning skull greatswords, or abominations stacked from severed limbs, too warped to be called weapons.
The silver-white figure didn’t rush. She lifted a silver shield like a moonlit veil. A cross flared across its face, and power poured from her hands. The force flashed dreamy in everyone’s eyes, yet if you looked closely, it burned like fire, circling her pale silhouette.
Those silver-white flames were her strongest trump. They looked soft, almost formless. Yet they could change into anything, strength coiled within. They could rip through an enemy like a storm felling dead wood. Or soften into a gentle bulwark, guarding her calm at the center.
“Uroboros… why won’t you understand? Even if this body is broken, even if it’s falling apart, even if this power has become the reaper of my candle-in-the-wind life, I have to hold it. Because it’s humanity’s last hope.”
At last the silver-white figure stepped out of the glow. Power burst from her small frame like a geyser under moonlight. The sight startled more than a few. Beneath that tall silhouette of light was a girl not yet grown, slight as a reed. But her golden eyes carried road-dust and winter, a gaze that had seen through the world.
Against Uroboros wrapped in black fog, the girl looked like a porcelain doll. One brush of that pitch-dark haze and she’d shatter into glittering shards, beyond saving.
“Hmph. Humanity’s last hope?”
Uroboros laughed like she’d heard a joke fit for the gallows. Her serpent pupils gleamed with bloodlust as she fixed on the silver-haired child. A legend once claimed a real hero could kill with a glance. At Uroboros’s level, even that old boast felt practical.
Her gaze hit the girl’s shield, and vast ripples boomed across the silver barrier. It was like a brutal blow had smashed into it from nowhere. The cross-lit ward surged on instinct, scattering that needle-point killing intent in a breath.
“So many races in the cosmos. What makes it your humans’ turn? We, the Ouroboros clan, have always walked the knife-edge between extinction and legacy. When did we ever stoop to something this vile? You’ve betrayed us; then don’t crown yourself with racial righteousness. Don’t dress your greed as a cause!”
Rage flared like oil catching fire. Uroboros’s teeth clenched; her voice was all iron filings. She stretched into a vast, warped shadow, then charged straight at the silver-haired girl, her black-mist monsters pounding after her like a tide.
“Not of my kin, not of one heart…”
Pity vanished from the girl’s eyes. Silver-white fire shattered into a rain of spears across the sky. They aimed dead center at Uroboros and her horde. War snapped taut. Light roared forward and washed the world white.
“Fenrir, hey… this doesn’t match my memory, does it?”
Aphelia frowned. Unease came first, then thought. In the scenes before her, only Uroboros fighting the silver-white figure lined up with what she knew. Everything else had drifted. Not just Uroboros’s manic state. That silver silhouette should’ve been a Valkyrie carrying a sliver of Brynhildr’s will. Why did it turn into a pint-sized version of herself?
Fenrir only smiled and shook her head.
“Different memories are normal. This wasn’t something the you of this world ever lived. Timelines and worldlines twist together. No version of you is exactly the same. Even a twig of a fork can grow a completely different Aphelia. Like the Stellar Goddess I once saw.”
Different memories bloom from different worlds. The Aphelia who became the Stellar Goddess might not even share their timeline. If so, then deep in the Origins of both Aphelias, only a portion of essence overlaps. The rest, pressed by different external forces, has flowered into different fates.
That’s why the Stellar Valkyrie warned Aphelia: once you parse the power of your parallel self, there’s no way back. It’s like copying your parallel self into your arms. Because it’s the same person doing it, two almost identical worldlines will merge under some mysterious push.
“At first, I didn’t believe it either. Later, under the Stellar Goddess’s protection, I fused with the me from another world. That me was on death’s doorstep. In that world, Brynhildr faced terrible foes. The Valkyries were wiped out. By chance, she learned how to slip into the past. She walked the same road as the me of this world.”
Pain dulled Fenrir’s eyes like ash on embers.
“When the me of that line found me, half her body was already erased. That was when, under the Stellar Goddess’s shelter, I saw it.”
“It? What is ‘it’?”
At that word, a cold prickle ran from Aphelia’s nape to her heart. The feeling came first, the shiver before thought. It was as if something woke at the shape of the sound, and began peering from a dark corner. The sensation was awful.
“Unspeakable. Can’t be named. I saw the force that fuses worldlines. It let that fading me fold entirely into my line, and become part of me. Because of that, I glimpsed futures that shouldn’t belong here.”
Fenrir lifted her head. Her black eyes looked like they meant to pierce time, to follow the river upstream. She suddenly clasped Aphelia’s hand, her voice solemn, almost a vow.
“Please, Aphelia. Save us, in that time.”
“But even if you say that… I don’t even know how to get back to my own era. Much less reach your Asgard in that time.”
Aphelia sighed, helplessness first, then reason. Never mind saving other Valkyries. She could barely look after the ones at her side. This planet was already walking the cliff’s edge. Even saving the Valkyries of her own world was a knotted problem.
She was strong now, yes. Strong enough to stand face to face with the Origin. That didn’t make her all-knowing or all-capable.
“I can give you a way back to your era. I can let you take your Valkyries to Asgard back then, or move them into the Earth Vein for me to guard awhile. As long as you go to Asgard of that time, I can save your side. Will you take the deal?”
Fenrir exhaled long, like letting winter out of her chest. If she could, she wouldn’t bargain like this. But if she didn’t corner Aphelia into a choice, Aphelia might choose safety over duty.
She couldn’t bear more weight.
“Tempting terms. Fine—I’ll agree. But I need one condition added. If that Valkyrie squad is as strong as you say, once I save them, I want their help to return to my era and reclaim my home. Deal?”
“Deal, of course! Then I’ll—”
Fenrir’s face lit. She moved to trigger the transit. Aphelia caught her wrist, quick as a spark.
“Hold it. You said that thing is unspeakable, fine. But at least tell me what kind of enemy in Asgard wiped you out. I need to prepare. If the enemy is exactly that force, I have to know whether you can pull us back en masse from that era.”
