This was before the Dark Tide broke—Aphelia’s heaviest sacrifice, a nightmare lodged like a thorn in her mind, still flashing before her eyes. It was Old Calendar 979, before the Iron Cross Empire marched.

She’d received “reliable” intel: on the rim of nowhere, a small town whispered of a werewolf bloodline. Their goal was simple as a knife—verify the truth of that lineage.

Hybrids between darkness and man weren’t unheard of, but what they’d seen before were twisted things, like weeds grown wrong under a sick moon.

If the inheritor stayed sane, Aphelia would weigh the risks and pull them into the hunters’ fold. If it was just a warped hybrid, she’d cut it down on the spot, clean as winter wind.

With that grit in her chest, Aphelia led three companions into the village. What met them was not a rumor, but a sea of fangs—werewolves beyond counting, hemming them in like tide against reef.

To buy her comrades time, Aphelia fought until the world went red, then black. When her lids fluttered open in a haze, only one last memory burned in her skull.

Black-Robed Uncle Ronnie and Hercules stood like men carved from blood. Their skin had burst in ragged seams, one cruel gash after another blooming like red flowers. There wasn’t an inch left whole.

Lena’s cheeks were salted with tears. Behind her, their comrades balanced on the knife-edge of death. She could only choke a prayer, begging Aphelia to wake, her hands shaking like leaves.

Cough.

Both men spat a mouthful of dark blood. Their knees buckled, yet they kept the Iron Curtain device humming, a steel-gray dome against wave after wave of bombardment.

“Looks like we won’t be seeing Aphelia wake up,” Hercules said, trying to wipe the blood from his mouth, then stopping—everything on him was already stained.

“Then we stake our lives,” Ronnie murmured, his voice low as embers. “If Aphelia lives, there’s still a horizon.”

“It’s always been like that, huh…”

They shared a crooked grin. Feathers appeared in their hands—pure white, light as breath, yet bright as a fallen angel’s halo, a pearl that refused dust.

“Don’t! If you use Angel’s Dust again, I won’t be able to save you!” Lewin’s voice cracked like ice. Aphelia had already burned herself on Angel’s Dust to shield them. Her life flickered like a candle in wind; if Lena slipped once, she’d go out.

Angel’s Dust sounded like a Church relic, but it wasn’t. It was the hunters’ thousand-year “taboo,” a ladder of bones against heaven—violating human ethics to reach for the visage of the Origin with flesh.

It forced open the wellspring inside a human. But no power comes free. Each use burned the body’s living spark. Once or twice, maybe. Use it often, and the flame eats the wick.

They only laughed, reckless and bright. No fear lived in their eyes. They nodded to each other and crushed the feathers to light.

Lewin broke into sobs, fingers white on a crystal orb, refusing to move an inch, as if his stance could hold the sky.

A-Heng and Lena’s faces were rain-scored. Comrades-in-arms, and yet they couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder now. They could only watch their brothers fight to the last, hands bound by fate.

“Watch over Aphelia,” Hercules called, voice like a bell in storm. “Avenge us. In front of her, these mutts are nothing.”

The white feathers burst into motes, orbiting the two like fireflies. Torn flesh knit fast. Drained mana surged back like a spring freshet, then climbed higher still.

The dying men were gone. In their place stood warriors, alchemical weapons blazing like constellations, throwing down a gauntlet to every enemy in sight.

“This is the last stand, Hercules.”

“Yeah, Ronnie. I love to joke about your name, but at a time like this…”

They bumped fists on a shabby rooftop, a prow of wood over a sea of wolves.

Howls ripped the air. The werewolves trembled at that sudden return to full strength, rage covering fear like paint. If every foe could do this once, breaking out—or breaking them—wasn’t impossible.

The werewolf chieftain stared down with a sneer, then dropped to the rooftop, claws dripping scarlet light that pointed like spears at the two men.

“You’re really throwing your lives away for Aphelia. She’s no longer the invincible Huntress Queen.”

They only smiled, easy as dusk. “Even if she went home to be a village girl, we’d bleed out for her all the same.”

White radiance poured from Ronnie’s shield, coiling around them. It caught the chieftain’s scarlet glow on his long spear and held it outside like frost on glass.

“We owe her too much.”

Disbelief curdled on the chieftain’s face. How could they be dog-loyal to someone who, now, held no value? He snarled inside. Lies. Aphelia had to be hiding a worth he hadn’t seen.

“We’re not petty like you, chieftain.”

“Compared to your forebears, you’re a puddle to their sea. Their boldness—do you have it? That great-hearted courage—do you?”

Hercules’ grin was wolfish; the chieftain’s face went crimson. Boldness? His forebear’s “boldness” ended beneath a hunter’s blade. What boldness was that to boast of?

“Enough talk. I’ll end you here.”

He threw himself forward with the pack. Claws dragged scarlet streamers through the air, throwing a storm like blood rain.

Ronnie poured more power into the shield. The white barrier thickened, a winter wall veiling them from sight.

The chieftain’s claws slammed the light, a screech like steel on glass. The shield only rippled, refusing to shatter as he’d hoped.

“Damn.”

He cursed low and shifted, too used to their teamwork to get sloppy. He hauled up the Crimson Coffin to block, that blood-colored slab a wall of his own.

“Too slow!”

Hercules’ rasp sounded at his back. Twin pistols leveled, magazines dropping like falling leaves, muzzles spitting tongues of flame.

Bullets burst across the chieftain’s back. Small elemental storms tore at him like starving beasts, going for throat and belly with raw hunger.

Brass spun through the air in wild arcs, fluttering like butterflies—a terrible, fragile beauty.

Ronnie didn’t idle. His shield whirled, and the light inside grew dense as hammered gold.

“Golden Aegis!”

“Endless Barrage!”

The circling wards unfurled, becoming lances of white. Not the sun’s warm blaze but a cold, killing light, forged for one purpose.

“Conservation!”

“Headshot!”

Hercules slammed home the last magazines. He crossed the guns and drew a bead on the chieftain. Ronnie drove every beam onto the alpha, a blinding crown.

The barrage blossomed behind the chieftain like fireworks, chain-blasts of elemental shards ripping the air. The white light seemed to fade, but it had only shifted—plating his upper body in gleaming armor.

That left his back bare as night. Most of Hercules’ final volley sank straight into it.

“Gun Kata—Headhunt!”

Hercules didn’t relish the shot. Blades unfolded along both pistols, edges cold as moonlight. He flipped the grips back, turning them into twin short blades, and struck for the neck.

“Damn it!”

The chieftain wasn’t used to being hunted. With two pairs of claws he’d danced through armies, and even Aphelia hadn’t broken him quick.

His rage was swallowed by the tide.

“Golden Aegis, Separation!”

Ronnie lifted his shield and leveled it at the chieftain, carving an opening with everything he had. Every great hunter kept one last feather of Angel’s Dust—and this last one came spiked, brewed for a final gamble.

“Negentropy!”

The chieftain felt the world around him go hollow. The storm and the cold light vanished, leaving him suddenly naked in empty air. He leveled his spear at Ronnie, pupils burning.

Before he leapt, the old killing-itch prickled his spine. He glanced at Ronnie and found pity in the man’s eyes, soft as falling snow.

Boom.

In a breath, what had vanished returned—but as a hail of shards, snapping into being all around him like broken mirrors.

The shards bleached as they flew, like paper curling to ash in slow fire, turning sky to drifting gray.