“We’re back. How bad is it?”

As they drew near, Shilwen let her Aether glow once, a firefly in fog, and the Valkyrie guards at the gate eased their grip on their rifles. They’d switched to standard-issue army pieces—cold iron in tired hands—to save Aether they couldn’t spare.

Aphelia saw the truth in a glance. Those guns were blunt teeth at best. She wondered where Shilwen had scavenged them. Fine to scare off common beasts, but useless against those aberrant things from before. To kill, they’d still need Aether’s edge.

“Captain Shilwen—wait, is that… Lady Aphelia!”

The gate Valkyrie saluted, turned, and nearly screamed when she saw Aphelia behind Violet and Shilwen. Her shock rippled like a pebble in a pond; her partner looked over and froze, mouth open, words stuck in her throat.

“Hush. Easy. Don’t wake the others.”

Aphelia moved first. A gentle veil of Aether sealed their lips—no harm, just hush—then she stepped close and raised a hand, palm down, a quieting tide. She wasn’t hiding her identity. She just refused to rattle the camp and drag resting Valkyries back from hard-won sleep.

The two Valkyries stared at Brynhildr, joy and awe brimming like dawn on water. They’d seen Aphelia fight today. The black ring that smothered the sky, the crimson shadow that cracked the heavens—images burned into bone. With Violet and Shilwen spreading the tale, Aphelia had become, in their hearts, a figure nearly untouchable.

They nodded quickly. When someone almost invincible asked for quiet, you listened. And it was for their sisters’ sleep, not pride.

Aphelia eased the Aether from their mouths and gave a small nod. Then her warm Aether flowed over them, a spring rain over parched earth. Cuts knit. Old aches loosened. Even buried sicknesses uncoiled and went still. Heat bloomed under skin, so comfortable they almost gasped aloud. They clapped hands to their mouths, eyes shining as their bodies changed.

Their wounds weren’t grave. Aphelia lingered anyway, tuning muscle and breath, pulling out fatigue like splinters, so they wouldn’t crack after one more day of standing watch.

“I’m entrusting the camp to you.”

She said it with full weight, eyes steady, voice that opened its chest. The two felt tears sting. Once, they were just ordinary Valkyries—power beyond mortal, yes, but far from the summit.

Aphelia’s gentle hands broke their composure. They folded into her, cheek to her chest, sobbing under their breath, shoulders trembling like leaves in a night wind.

Something in her memory stirred. She stroked their backs, whispering, “It’s okay,” the words soft as moss. She signaled to Uroboros to cover for a while, then guided the two aside to settle them.

“All right. Tell me what you ran into out there. I know you may never want to touch those shadows again. But we’re human—we face what comes. We can’t live stuck in yesterday. I’m here. No one will lay a hand on you.”

She spoke like balm, and the story came.

After the Daemon Beasts swept through, they were only homeless strays. Nations had already fractured, crumbling like cliffs under Heron’s deliberate assaults. Before the Valkyries awakened, they lived by scavenging the wasteland, fingers numb, stomachs hollow.

Hold on. Someone will come. That hope was a dying ember they guarded with their hands.

They hid in caves because they couldn’t make fire, cloaking themselves in mildewed leaves and grass. They couldn’t hunt, so they snared mice, small shadows scurrying in their palms. When monsters came they couldn’t fight, they played dead, then ran like startled deer. When people came with smiles, they watched like cornered foxes; in this chaos, the kindly “uncle” of one heartbeat could turn man-eater in the next. Anything was possible.

Strangers at first, the two girls leaned on each other through the ash. They walked and walked, seasons blurring, until they met an enemy they couldn’t cross.

A deranged killer. Once just a teacher. One girl even knew him—famous for gentle manners and a warm voice. In the end-times, even familiar faces demanded knives of caution. Their hiding was poor; he found them quickly. And the way he acted—soft words, careful hands—made their guard slip.

They chatted. He sounded like the old teacher, though war had pared him to bone. He even put on the coat of “responsibility.” When he spoke of a nearby camp—built by former classmates and teachers—their joy rose like tide, washing the reefs of vigilance. Before they knew it, they followed him.

They should’ve known better. They’d woken in ruins far from home; running so long, how could they meet someone they knew—much less a whole group? A miracle too neat is a snare.

The “camp” was an abandoned site, long emptied of people. Inside, dread scratched at them. Then the smell of stew curled through the air, rich and warm. They hadn’t tasted cooked meat in ages, let alone something seasoned. They drank the broth. The trap closed.

Maybe the carnage of this world cracked his mind. Maybe peace had only masked what he was, a polite skin over rot. When they woke, they lay in a dungeon strewn with white bone, a reef of skulls under stale air. They’d seen bones before; this many made the stench crawl into their lungs. They retched, spilling up the stew—because they knew, now, what meat had simmered in the pot.

He put the older girl on his table first. She thrashed and somehow fate blinked—just once. They slashed his hands and bolted for the exit.

Then worse news. He hadn’t come down by ladder or stair. He crawled. His mutated body wriggled down the wall like a pale centipede. The girls had to face the worst—fight whatever he’d become, to the death, in the dark.

The end was ugly and still a mercy.

They killed the monster. He toppled into his own cauldron, cooked down to meat he’d once served, dead beyond doubt. But the older girl’s body was severed, and the other had a lung pierced. Breath whistled like a broken flute. She was fading.

Despair flooded them. At the edge of night, they asked the sky—did any god exist, one who could pull them from this pit?

A pure white figure stepped into the gloom.

“Children, do you want to live?”

The voice was calm, warm. Even without a face, they felt her gentleness, a spring that ran under rock. To minds slipping into dark, it was music.

“Then I grant you life. In return, when I appear again, you’ll be my hands. Offer me your loyalty.”

Of course. Yes.

The will to live flared like a spark in dry grass. They forced their eyes open. The figure laughed softly, then broke into a drift of white motes, snow in a windless room. Light covered their bodies, sealed the ugly wounds, and laid a new power in their blood.

Aether.

After that, they finally had the strength to live on this scorched earth. No longer naïve, they pulled others together, a small banner in the wastes, and hunted the roaming horrors. Until Violet, under Brynhildr’s name, rebuilt the old Valkyrie Academy.