“Then I’ll grant you life, like dawn breathing over frost. In return, when I appear again, be my hands and lay your loyalty at my feet.”

“Of course!” The answer burst out like thirsty mouths finding a spring.

The will to live surged first, sharp as a blade in the chest. A shadow laughed softly, like wind on reeds, then burst into pure white motes, a snowfall of light.

The points of light flooded their bodies like a tide, sealed those ghastly wounds like ice knitting a river, and, in the same breath, gifted them new strength.

Aether.

From then on, the girls held enough fire to survive this wasteland, like lanterns in dust-storms. They shed their naïveté, rallied a small faction, and hunted monsters across the ruins.

They fought and bled until Violet, in Brynhildr’s name, founded the once-glorious Valkyrie Academy, like a banner rising from ash.

“I see…” Aphelia exhaled, heavy as rain. Tragedy was a season after the apocalypse—borne not only by these two, but by all who clawed the wasteland.

Compared to many, the girls were almost lucky, like boats that found a narrow inlet before the storm broke.

Most never lived to see Brynhildr’s brief awakening. Violet and Shilwen said our world was struck by Daemon Beasts—Heron and her cohort, deliberate as a scythe.

Monsters twisted by Aether roamed like wildfires. Good people cracked under that shock, minds splintering like glass, dying by their own hands or turning into life-plundering creatures, like that teacher.

It was already war-scarred ruins. Humans had no whole walls, no true weapons—no high ground against beasts. Before them, humanity was small as sparrows before hawks.

Those who hid in deep mountains held a sliver of dawn. Those trapped on the plains ran like hares, with nowhere to anchor shelter or hope.

On the flatlands, huge beasts and human-shaped horrors found humans as easily as fireflies in midnight fields.

The girls lived only because they found a cave like a throat of earth, mapped the monsters’ hours with risk like a dice roll, and learned when to vanish.

Those days turned them gaunt as withered reeds; hiding wore their strength thin, their steps slow as winter.

Brynhildr’s awakening had Heron’s Aether Civilization meddling behind it, but also Brynhildr’s own goal—a rebirth tailored to this era, like a phoenix picking its hour.

She broke her power into Aether seeds, star-grains planted into despairing girls, turning them into the Valkyries of now, like saplings forced toward sun.

It was forced growth—an eager gardener yanking seedlings skyward. The implanted seeds cut off their climb to true strength, like a path bricked over.

As they used Aether more, they would lean closer to Brynhildr—shadows shaped by one lamp—becoming more and more like her.

Aphelia felt the trouble first, a thorn under the skin. In a harsher future, blocking their path was just delaying death, like moving the hourglass.

But to girls already half a foot into the land of night, Brynhildr’s power was gospel, a bell tolling them back to dawn.

She sighed again, sound heavy as tide on stone.

From some forgotten age came a saying: Heaven and Earth care for nothing; all things are straw dogs. Today, Heaven and Earth might be the Origin of this world.

Only the Origin’s power feels vast enough to fit that old symbol of “Heaven and Earth,” like the sky’s weight on the sea.

If so, why does every civilization that dares the deep cosmos get crushed by “Heaven and Earth,” like ships broken on hidden reefs?

And not just crushed—struck again and again, like harvesters cutting fields, snuffing embers of culture. If it’s neutral, why hunt this planet’s civilization without end?

Heron’s work was only the prologue. The endgame was waking Brynhildr and that former Zerg Queen, ending their eon-long drift like anchoring a starship.

All roads of tragedy led back to the Origin, like black rivers to one sea.

That’s what tangled Aphelia: if the Origin’s so strong, why fixate on Earth’s civilization like a cat with one mouse? The cosmos is wide; she believes others touched Aether too.

So why haven’t they appeared? Back then, Heron even drew the Origin’s favor, grasping Aether to a depth few could dream, like a diver reaching the trench.

But when Heron left Earth with a vast civilization, the Origin answered with endless ruin and war, a storm fit to erase nations and names.

If Aphelia had to judge, the Origin felt like a sly man-eater. It greeted humanity with a smile, let us taste Aether, then devoured us once fattened.

The thought chilled her spine like ice water.

“You’ve suffered enough… It’s over now. I’m back.” Aphelia’s voice was warm as a hearth.

She stroked the girls’ backs, soft as falling leaves, trying to ease their shaking. Seeing her, they flushed with relief, memories rising like smoke.

Tears welled, sudden as a summer shower. After today’s upheaval, body and mind were both spent; they slept in her arms without meaning to.

Fatigue fell like a blanket—no one could bear both weights. Aphelia had Shilwen carry them off, then walked toward camp, a shadow among shadows.

No Valkyrie could sense her now. Earth’s strongest was Aphelia, then Sigdrifa. Even Sigdrifa would struggle to find her, and she’d been wounded today.

The camp held together by scraps—big tents stitched from the last materials, a windbreak more than a home, like sails turned into roofs.

Conditions were spare. Each girl had a blanket, or two shared one, sleeping shoulder to shoulder like swallows on a wire.

“What’s wrong, Aphelia? Feeling guilty again?” Uroboros appeared at her side like a snake of dusk.

She spoke with helpless warmth, a small pity in the tone. As her bond with Aphelia deepened, something in her shifted like thaw.

Were old memories surfacing, or was Aphelia changing her? Uroboros found herself valuing humans, like a dragon counting tiny lanterns.

“Yeah,” Aphelia said, rue bitter as brine. “I keep asking: is this our fault or the Origin’s? If we never reached Aether Civilization, would we be spared?

“But that’s absurd. If the Origin means to end us, then without Aether we’re ants under rain.”

She said “ants” with a crooked smile, like tasting iron.

The world ran in circles. In her time as a Hero, demons invaded because human power and tech surged—so they said—bridging planes by accident.

That was the popular theory then, a map sketched in fog. Yet after meeting Lilo’s world, she learned demonfolk had long outrun humans.

Their power and tech were a whole staircase ahead; their civilization had shed feudal chains, moving toward light, like ice breaking in spring.

Human coordinates were known there already; no “accidental link” exposed us. So was the demon arrival fate, or a coincidence born of our sprint?

“I can’t answer that,” Uroboros said, shrug tossing like a wave. “A mad writer once claimed curiosity brings ruin, and bliss is ignorance.

“It sounds wrong, yet from one angle it explains why the Origin strikes Earth’s civilization, again and again, like winter returning without fail.”