At some point, the view simply became this.
A battlefield woven from blood and fire; screams and shouts braided against her ears. Shells fell like iron rain, smothering everything. The survivors braced for another rush of monsters. Aphelia stood atop the airship, cold-eyed, watching from above as the escort skiffs dropped gasoline incendiaries. The ground bloomed into a wide curtain of flame, a burning sea rolling in waves.
She felt nothing for the blaze. These terrifying firewalls were basic measures. The real escalation was her.
“L–Lady Aphelia, i–it’s time to don the armor.”
The girl in a white coat approached on soft steps. In those sapphire eyes, worship shone like a lantern at dusk, and fear hovered like frost. Another girl saw the stumble and pinched her waist; pain snapped the sapphire-eyed one back to stillness. She straightened as if to salute. Her companion bowed, voice quick and tight.
“Lady Aphelia, forgive us! She’s new—please, your pardon…”
No anger rose; only a faint curiosity sliding like ice. Forgive her? She hadn’t meant to blame her.
Aphelia’s indifferent gaze brushed the girl and slipped away. In that brief contact—excitement and dread were clear as moonlight on water. In those eyes, Aphelia’s reflection was winter itself. Only then did she remember how frightening she looked to others.
Cold. Unfeeling. Like a madwoman who walked straight out of a blood-soaked field.
Every word for frost and crimson could be hung on her shoulders. Seeing herself like that stirred no ripple inside. She knew where the change began.
That damned mithril. After they injected it into her spine, everything turned. They said it would raise her synchronization with the “device.” She felt no rise at all. She felt herself slip further from being human—detached, as if she hovered outside her own skin, judging like a god from a legend.
She would never say that before people of the Church of the Gospel. She still had to take her cues from their faces. Theology meant nothing to her at first; only after she became their Paladin did she begin to learn the Church’s “history,” page by page like cold rain.
Thinking this, Aphelia walked toward the rear of the airship. Several Church technicians waited there. The artificial spine, steeped in emerald marrow, writhed like a living thing. Weapons stacked nearby slid into racks with the steady clack of steel. Seeing her, the technicians halted and straightened, saluting like reeds in a wind.
Aphelia didn’t see them. Her eyes caught on the crimson armor that loomed like a giant, and would not let go. Every time she saw it, her gaze fell as if by gravity, helpless, the way one stares at a mountain that feels born, not made.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
The heavy scarlet plates looked as if they had walked out of a high fantasy painting. The streamlined body bore battle scars like claw-marks, but the designers had cut them into the Lion King’s fangs. A dark-gold lion’s head spanned the breastplate, alive enough to seem like a sealed beast that breathed beneath the steel.
When it fought, you could imagine that lion lunging to tear open an enemy’s chest, biting clean through a throat.
The faceplate told another story. It was closer to a respirator built for nightmare conditions—interlocking rings fed into the neck, a clever twist of function and grace. As Aphelia studied the armor that had ridden with her through years of war, the technicians finished loading the weapon systems.
The weapon cases shut with a final click. Even closed, each one rose nearly to her chest. Aphelia was taller than most—over one meter eighty, long-limbed like a winddancer. The two cases were only half a person wide, but stood two-thirds of her height. The Church had labored over them like craftsmen cutting jade.
With the help of articulated arms, the cases mounted onto the armor’s back and thighs. The back had a natural bay for weapon pods, smith-work built for a flood of steel. The thigh mounts were pure custom, tailored to Aphelia’s demands.
“Lady Aphelia, please suit up. It’s time.”
They had to tug her back from her reverie. She nodded, stepped to the technician holding the artificial spine, and untied her white robe without a second thought.
The new girl flushed scarlet. Her hands flew to her eyes—proper thoughts in a storm—but she left seams between her fingers, curious as a sparrow. The others moved like men used to winter; they caught the robe and folded it with quiet respect. It was simple: beneath the robe, Aphelia wore a close-fitting underlayer. She opened her arms. They fitted the artificial spine to her smooth, pale back as carefully as setting a blade into a scabbard.
Emerald marrow was poured into a side pool, liquid green as forest light. The mechanical vertebrae unfolded, clinging to her spine with precise, reverent pressure. Clicks whispered like falling seeds. Her body trembled once and steadied.
Blood welled in thin threads along the edges. Technicians wiped it away with alcohol gauze, quick, gentle, and they left one to handle the final steps. The rest guided the articulated arms to unlock the armor, freeing a knight from sleep.
“T–this… this is the Aether Synchronization System? L–Lady Aphelia, Aether sync complete. Rate above ninety-five, stable at ninety-five. Please relax…”
The numbers stunned the sapphire-eyed girl; her words tripped like pebbles. Fear for her idol tugged at her breath. Her companion only sighed, touched her shoulder, and eased her aside.
“Relax what? Lady Aphelia keeps a brutal standard. Didn’t think you were from the academy. Let me take it. Lady Aphelia, how’s your state today—need the cap raised?”
“Set the limiter’s cap to one hundred,” Aphelia said. “If needed, I’ll adjust.”
The tech nodded fast, made fine tweaks along the artificial spine, and patted Aphelia’s shoulder like a comrade in frost. Aphelia lowered her hands, rolled her shoulders once, and walked into the armor’s open embrace.
Inside, a knight’s skeletal frame gleamed—steel, stark, and patient.
The outer plates spread like petals. Unfolded, the suit stood near three meters. Its inner structure coiled around the knight’s bone. Along the spine, an interface waited like a mouth for the artificial vertebrae.
Aphelia’s face stayed calm. Her voice fell like a prayer into steel.
“Hallelujah.”
She pressed back into the cradle. The dock clicked home—bone to bone, machine to marrow. Deep in the armor, systems woke. Machines roared. Steam howled like a winter gale. The emerald marrow ignited, green fire feeding iron. Plates sealed with a thunder of locks, swallowing her slender body whole.
In her place rose a giant of steel, stepping off the rig with the weight of mountains.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” the sapphire-eyed girl whispered, tears glassing her lashes as the giant stood. Her fingers pinched her companion’s sleeve like a small bird clutching a branch.
“Of course it hurts,” the companion answered softly. “Every suit-up means the system drives needles into her spine. But Lady Aphelia has walked this road by fire and frost. Why else is she the strongest armored knight in the world?”
