Krok’s strike shattered the pure-white, thorned spear to ash, like frost blown from stone. Relief washed the deck like a receding tide.

Fear hit first; then Lena dropped the light shield and stumbled. Holding a near-forbidden spell had wrung her mind dry like a soaked rag, and it was close to siphoning her life.

The red-haired elf folded her blood-red coffin like a closing flower and sat, face pale as paper. She was no better than Lena. Wrestling that coffined force against the pull from the deep void had split the webs of her hands like cracked bark, and her strength guttered like a spent candle.

“I’d say Brynhildr’s personal Valkyrie guards top out around this, right?”

Her giant shield had already flowed into a spear and slid back across her spine. She watched the sigils on the deck fade like embers under snow, panting raggedly, hoping she could finally steal a breath, then flopped down without care for image.

If they’d been ready, they wouldn’t be this spent. But the Blood of Calamity is a storm without a face. No one guessed it would lock onto Ophelius.

Silence lay over them like fallen ash. No one wanted to raise it—the question of Ophelius’s bloodline. It had to be asked; the answer was a coiled snake they all avoided.

“Wait—why hasn’t Aether’s blood returned to my hand…?”

Red froze; winter water ran her bones. Realization struck like a gong. She tried to warn them, but it was already too late, and the sight before them was bottomless despair.

Shnk.

A pure-white lance shot out of the void and rammed through Kainzberen’s fragile body, punched through her heart, and nailed her to the deck like a butterfly.

With the lance fell their faces—shock like thunder, regret like rain.

“No!”

Lena clawed at the black lance, frantic heartbeat first, then hands. It didn’t budge. Its edges bit her palm, and blood streamed like a red thread.

“Enough, Lena! Cut by Aether’s blood—are you trying to die? You think you’re Sigdrifa’s heir? One backlash, and you’ll turn to powder on the wind.”

“Don’t joke with me. I’ll die if I have to, but I’m getting her out!”

Lena sank, helpless, tears streaking her cheeks like rain on stone.

“She’s our last hope!”

The pure-white bramble lances didn’t come back. They felt like a cruel toy—show teeth, then vanish. Even after Lena, Red, and Krok threw up defenses with almost everything they had, the white spears faded like ghosts and left no trace.

Still, the three didn’t dare drop their guard. Ten long minutes they held the stance, counting heartbeats like beads. Even the earlier Aether ripples thinned to nothing. Only then did they breathe, limp and spent, collapsing onto the warship’s deck and staring into the boundless, silver void.

No one spoke. After a shock like that, even bold hearts go mute. They were fugitives already, and an unknown, crushing power had just swept them; words dried up.

“Lena… like this, can we even make it to Lady Sigdrifa?”

Red’s sigh was heavy, like wind through pines. They’d pinned such hope on that Aether summoning circle. With a homunculus as rare as Kainzberen—a face near to Sigdrifa’s—she was, in a way, the most successful construct.

Sigdrifa forged her homunculi in her own image. Whether they lived or died, she barely cared. The few that mirrored her closely were plucked out, and under Sigdrifa’s strict training—training that often meant death—they became warriors who bled for her name.

But a vessel with that kind of potential—on their most precious Aether summoning—failed, and drew a nightmare. Lena felt a survivor’s chill. If Kainzberen’s body hadn’t given out, and if Arcane Power and Aether hadn’t already run dry, that will might still be hunting them like a hawk.

Red didn’t dare picture it.

It was old-sacrifice logic: the finer the offering, the brighter the god’s smile. Kainzberen, so close to Sigdrifa’s likeness, was the perfect offering to that horror called from the void. What came wasn’t Sigdrifa’s will, but a hungry wolf drawn to a feast.

“What was that thing…?” “No idea.”

Lena’s voice snagged in her throat. She looked at Kainzberen, chest pinned, and pain swelled first; then words failed. Sigdrifa’s knights had rebelled and driven them ragged, and now they’d lost the tool they trusted most to find Sigdrifa. Even Lena’s iron will started to crack.

Thinking of that horror, she wanted to scream at her past self to cut the link between Kainzberen and that will. Even if it turned Kainzberen into a fool, at least she’d live. They could wait for the space to settle, then seek another coordinate to cast an Aether summoning. It didn’t need to end like this.

“If worst comes to worst, we can turn her body into an Aether crystal…”

Krok offered the thought, then trailed off, silence like a closed door. She knew the truth. In this endless void, even condensing Aether was hard. Reverse-refining a body into an Aether crystal? Lena hadn’t even dared to consider it.

“There’s really no way, Lena?”

Red rose slowly, eyes on the silver void, waves folding and unfolding like breath. In this space of pure nothing, the homeward coordinates were barred by traitors. They had no coordinates to any other realm. With only three of them, probing for new coordinates was near impossible.

They’d been driven into flight and stripped to rags already. Now this. Who knew how strong that peering will was, strong enough to strike across the void, even feign weakness to soothe their guard, then slam down and kill Kainzberen. It would rather no one have the prize than let the three of them reach it. That kind of mind chilled Lena’s spine.

“There is a way. It’ll be rough. Red, your Crimson Eye—hasn’t it stayed dormant this whole year? It’s time to wake it.”

She spoke after long, knotted thought. Emotion rose first, then reason. Lena’s face shifted, a war played under her skin. Her willow-green brows ticked up again and again, as if to deny her own heart. At last, after several near-stops, she forced the words out.

“Wait, the Crimson Eye? You want me to use the Crimson Eye in the void? Are you trying to kill me?”

Red blinked, then her expression twisted like hot metal. Ignoring wounds and weariness, she sprang up from the deck, eyes sharp as knives, and almost raised a slap by reflex. In the past, anyone tossing that suggestion would have kissed the floor.

But this was Lena—the one who’d served Sigdrifa for years. Her loyalty didn’t waver; her knowledge was an ocean. Lena had led Sigdrifa’s knights more than once.

“Why would I send you to die? You think I don’t know how precious the Crimson Eye is?”

Lena’s mind spun through everything she knew about the Crimson Eye. She forgot little about such rare treasures, especially those carried within their own cadre. Red’s loyalty to Sigdrifa had earned her the artifact called the Crimson Eye, turning hair that should have been green into a cascade of blood-red.

They called it an eye because it replaces an eye. It doesn’t pour raw might into you. It magnifies the senses and, in its early use, drives them to thousands of times sharper—pain swollen to a storm.

Red still remembered the night Sigdrifa gifted it. She wanted to claw her own eyes out. And that was only the left eye replaced. With senses cranked that high, don’t even talk about plucking a globe—one light touch made tears spill for long minutes.

This wasn’t a joke. Red once thought her will could face it down. Sigdrifa thought different. She never coddled. If you choose loyalty to me, be ready. A ruler shouldn’t have to soften for you.

From Sigdrifa’s angle, that made sense. Loyal ones like Red were never scarce. If one broke, she picked another. To Sigdrifa, Red was merely a subordinate—more loyal than most.