*Flashback Nova*
The wind howled over the broken ridges, carrying with it the scent of iron and smoke. Nova stood tall amidst the ruin, clad in scorched armor smeared with blood that was no longer just his.
Around him, the battlefield was a canvas painted in death—limbs strewn, banners fallen, voices silenced.
He had once commanded legions with nothing but resolve in his voice and a map in his hand, but now… now all he held was the limp, broken body of Lieutenant Kairen, the boy who had once called him big brother even though they weren't bound by blood.
"Why… why did you stay behind, damn it..." Nova's voice cracked as he knelt, the flames casting flickering shadows on Kairen's pale face.
The young man's final smile still lingered, etched in defiance, lips barely mouthing "We won, didn't we?" before he slipped away.
Around them, the crackling of fire was like laughter, cruel and relentless. Nova pressed his forehead to the cold helm of the fallen soldier, choking on memories he couldn't erase. He had promised they would return home. All of them. That they would plant flags instead of graves.
Behind his eyes flickered scenes like a curse: the day they marched with pride, the laughter around campfires, the shared bread and dreams of a world without bloodshed. And then—ambush, betrayal, screams.
He could still hear his men calling out his name even as they were cut down one by one. No strategy could prepare a man for the silence that follows the death of every voice you swore to protect.
Even now, in Thelara, amidst light and rebirth, the ghosts of that war marched beside him.
He carried their names like armor and their faces like scars. That war didn't end when the last enemy fell. It lived on—in every decision he made, in every life he now tried to save. "Forgive me..." he whispered to the bones of the past.
"I'll make it right, even if it takes my last breath."
*Flashback Scarlet*
The grand halls of Fenrir's royal palace were carved from obsidian and frost, towering and majestic — but cold, painfully cold.
Scarlet's footsteps echoed like a stranger's in her own home as she walked past servants who bowed, not out of respect, but fear. Behind her, the heavy doors of the throne room slammed shut with the sound of finality.
She remembered standing there as a child, no older than ten, trembling under her father's piercing gaze. King Scarfin of Fenrir — a man of steel, known more for conquest than compassion — looked at her not like a daughter, but like a soldier-in-training.
"Why did you hesitate with your spell? A true war druid has no fear." he barked. That day, her hands were still blistered from miscasting a flame glyph, but she had dared to cry. And for that, she was locked in the frost cellars for three nights. Alone.
"Crying is weakness. And weakness has no place in our bloodline." Those were her bedtime stories. She was taught to wield weapons before she learned to write her own name, learned to mask her tears before she was ever told "I love you."
Her mother had vanished — rumors whispered she had fled the kingdom. Her tutors were more like taskmasters, and even the servants avoided speaking to her unless necessary. Her world was walls and drills, expectations and punishments.
She often watched the sunsets from the highest tower, clutching a dull book no one cared if she read. "Is this all there is to being royal?" she once whispered into the wind. And the silence that answered her haunted her into adulthood.
Scarlet's beauty bloomed not with joy, but in spite of pain. Her strength was forged not with love, but through loneliness. No one ever held her hand when she stumbled. No one ever praised her when she succeeded. Her magic — fierce and red as blood — became her only friend, her only language.
It wasn't until she met Nova that she heard gentleness in someone's voice. That someone looked at her and saw more than a weapon, more than a name tied to a crown. For the first time… she felt seen. For the first time, she began to believe that perhaps she could be loved — not for her lineage, not for her power… but for herself.
"To the people who believe me, to the man whom I love, I will become the bloody war maiden"
[Transformation: Scarlet — The Bloody War Maiden]
The air turned sharp.
One breath — and the warmth of Thelara was replaced by a rising chill, the kind that clawed at your lungs before fire surged in behind it. The sky, moments ago streaked with fading sunlight, dimmed as if the heavens themselves held their breath.
And then, Scarlet stepped forward.
Her footsteps echoed like war drums on marble. Her golden gown of royalty disintegrated into motes of crimson light, caught in a sudden swirl of wind and embers.
Replacing it was armor unlike any seen on the continent — a fusion of myth and nightmare. Blackened steel, etched with burning runes, hugged her form with terrifying elegance. Blood-red veins of molten magic pulsed beneath the surface, as though the armor was alive — and hungry.
Her eyes — once gentle rubies — now glowed a deep infernal crimson. They were not the eyes of a queen, nor a princess… they were the eyes of retribution.
Her hair unbound, flowed like a banner of fire, streaked with glimmers of violet arcane light. Around her, the wind screamed. The ground beneath her feet cracked, not from pressure, but from the sheer presence of what she had become. A form no longer constrained by humanity.
The Bloody War Maiden.
She raised her right hand, and with it materialized her weapon — "Crimoria," a glaive forged in the secret Druidic fires of the Forbidden Grove and tempered in Fenrir's blood rituals.
Its blade gleamed not with steel, but with crystallized bloodlight, ever-shifting in shape, seemingly whispering ancient chants. It pulsed with the fury of wars long forgotten, and each time it struck air, space itself seemed to ripple.
The assassins — hardened killers from the shadows of empires — recoiled.
Seven of them had cleaved through kings and generals without hesitation. But now, before them stood not a woman — but a storm in the form of a goddess.
Her magic thickened the air, her presence dulled even the sharpest of blades. A single step closer, and their joints locked, as if their bones remembered death.
Soldiers fell to their knees — not from fear, but awe. The war maiden stood above them like a warden of vengeance, her voice thunderous as she declared,
"You came to take my people? My home? I was forged in war. But now — I am war itself."
And then… she smiled.
A smile not of kindness, but of certainty. The certainty that no blade could pierce her will, no army could break her spirit — and that those who dared challenge her… would drown in blood and flame.
Suddenly in a flash of light she attacked the seven assassins.
The First — "Ravyn of Stromflame"
He vanished from sight, reappearing behind Scarlet, his blade drawn mid-flash. A master of silent killing, none had ever turned to face him before the strike.
But Scarlet did not need to turn.
Her glaive spun on its own — alive, sentient — and with a soundless swipe, it severed his limbs mid-air.
He landed in pieces, still alive, screaming as the cursed edge of Crimoria made his blood boil from the inside. Before death could take him, his body exploded in a burst of cursed fire, leaving nothing but a charred outline.
The Second — "Gulthra the wishper"
A poisoner. A shadow.
She conjured clouds of venom, hurling spectral needles toward Scarlet's veins.
Scarlet inhaled the mist.
She opened her mouth, and exhaled pure plaguefire — burning green, twisting, screaming. The mist ignited, reversing its course back to the assassin.
Whisperthorn's skin bubbled as her own poison consumed her, her lungs liquefying.
She clawed at her face, her own fingers rotting away until her skull caved in with a sickening squelch.
The Third — "Hulrik the devourer"
He tried to warp space, to trap her in illusion, shatter her mind.
But her will was a fortress.
She stepped forward, out of his illusion — unbound by his reality. With a gesture, she reached into the twisted pocket dimension he hid in… and ripped him out by the throat.
As he begged for release, her glaive carved ancient runes into his flesh — a punishment spell from the old world.
His body twisted backwards, bones snapping in reverse.
He died screaming… from within himself.
The Fourth and Fifth — "Fen and ysera, Gemini fangs"
Twin assassins. Fast as lightning. They struck together — one for the heart, the other for the throat.
Scarlet caught both blades with her bare hands.
Her eyes flared, and from her palms bloomed thorns of bleeding glass, running up the steel and into the twins' arms.
The metal melted into their flesh. Their hands became their coffins.
They tried to run — but she pulled the glaive into a spin. A tornado of slicing wind erupted.
Their bodies were reduced to petals of flesh, scattering across the blood-soaked field.
The Sixth — "Throne of Rot"
A brute of enormous size, enchanted with beast blood.
He roared, shaking the skies, charging with berserker fury.
Scarlet… laughed.
She grew wings of bloodflame and met him mid-air.
With one upward strike, she cut his roar in half — and then cleaved down his entire body.
He didn't just die. He shattered.
Each bone erupted into shards, his body unraveling like a poorly woven thread.
The Seventh — "Bran the shatterbron"
The deadliest. The leader. A man who killed kings with a word.
He spoke incantations of binding, of death, of oblivion.
But Scarlet raised her hand, and all words around him ceased to exist.
His tongue blackened. His runes cracked.
She walked slowly, each step echoing like judgment.
Then, in a voice deeper than thunder, she whispered,
"Speak now… in Hell."
She plunged Crimoria into his chest, and his body turned to ink, screaming as his soul was rewritten into an eternal curse — forever trapped within her glaive.
And when the battlefield grew silent once more, seven bodies — or what remained of them — littered the ground in grotesque, unrecognizable forms. Not a soul dared to breathe.
Scarlet stood tall. Her armor cracked with heat, her glaive humming.
She didn't need to say it.
This was her warning.
And gods help the next who would challenge The Bloody War Maiden.
"But she is just thristy for more, as she forgot who she was"
To be continued....