The civil war finally tore itself fully into existence like a beast ripping free from its own restraints.
What had once been whispers, riots, and scattered massacres now condensed into a single, irreversible moment of collision.
Across the ruined valley, two massive tides of humanity surged forward, armor clashing, boots crushing rubble into dust.
The armies of House Ferrante and House Vento advanced as one, their formation dense and suffocating, filling every street, every slope, every broken terrace with steel and spell-light.
The ground itself seemed to tremble beneath the synchronized march of thousands.
At their forefront walked two figures who embodied the old order's final will: Orion Ferrante and Zepherina Vento.
For a brief moment, they advanced side by side, their shadows stretching long and distorted across cracked stone.
Orion's massive frame was encased in his Laminar Fold Armor, its layered plates shifting subtly with every step like the scales of a living beast.
Runes flickered faintly across its surface, reacting to ambient mana, preparing themselves for impact. His jaw was clenched, dark eyes fixed forward, every muscle coiled for violence.
Zepherina, by contrast, moved with almost lazy elegance, her purple cloak rippling behind her in endless folds, her pale face calm, eyes glittering with cruel anticipation. Yet that fragile unity lasted no more than a heartbeat.
Without a word, Zepherina drifted backward into the protective layers of her troops, while Orion surged ahead, raising his massive arm.
"Charge forward!" Orion roared.
His voice crashed through the battlefield like a physical force.
The Ferrante and Vento troops answered instantly, erupting into motion. Shields slammed together, weapons rose, mages began chanting, and the entire formation accelerated into a violent wave, pouring through the ruins Orion himself had created weeks earlier.
Crumbled towers became ramps. Burned districts became corridors. Bodies from earlier clashes were trampled into unrecognizable stains.
From atop a fractured ridge, Wolf watched the oncoming tide without the slightest tremor in his posture.
Wind tugged at his coat, dust clung to his hair, and distant explosions reflected faintly in his eyes, yet his breathing remained slow and measured.
He turned his head slightly, not even bothering to fully face his companions.
"Moritz. Zenji. I'll leave the army to your care."
Moritz stepped forward immediately, rolling his shoulders, a confident grin carving itself across his tired face. "Leave the army to me." His voice was steady, ironed flat by experience.
Zenji followed, fists tightening at his sides, his gaze burning with restrained resolve. "I will do my best."
Wolf nodded once—short, final. Then he turned away.
Behind him, Moritz and Zenji surged forward, shouting orders, rallying units, redirecting formations, transforming scattered resistance into a living barricade designed for one purpose: to trap Orion and deny him any chance of interference.
Wolf shifted his attention to the two figures still beside him. "Varsh. Solina. Follow me."
Varsh offered no response, as always. His presence simply aligned itself behind Wolf like a shadow acknowledging its source.
Solina nodded quietly, her lips pressed thin, her amber eyes reflecting distant flames.
They moved.
Not through open paths, but through the broken skeleton of the city itself.
Collapsed buildings became bridges. Half-standing walls became cover. Jagged cliffs forced them into vertical movement. At times, all three activated their gauntlets and armbands, thin silver cables shooting out with sharp metallic snaps, anchoring into stone and steel.
They swung between ruined balconies, slid down fractured towers, vaulted across chasms filled with smoke and fire.
The terrain itself tried to kill them—and failed.
Even as they advanced, Wolf's mind calculated continuously.
Orion remained occupied. His armor made him unsuitable for direct engagement. Laminar Fold Armor was a masterpiece of adaptive defense—plates swelling on impact, folding inward under pressure, redirecting force along fluid lines.
Combined with Orion's monstrous physical strength, any reckless confrontation would be suicide. Zepherina was the true target. Remove her, and the enemy's strategy would collapse.
Everything remained within projection.
That was until it didn't.
As they reached a narrow stretch between shattered cliffs, preparing to split and begin their search, laughter erupted from the smoke ahead.
Zepherina emerged.
She stepped out from the haze as if descending from a stage curtain, cloak unfurling behind her like folded wings. Her pale face twisted into a cruel smile, gray eyes glittering with triumph.
"You really think we wouldn't see through such simple strategy?" she laughed.
"All of you… will be buried here!"
With a flick of her wrist, a chain materialized in her hand, black metal etched with glowing veins. She hurled it forward. Mid-flight, its links unfolded, tiny blades snapping outward one by one, spinning violently.
The chain transformed into a shrieking ribbon of rotating steel—a saw driven by centrifugal force.
Wolf reacted on instinct. His body twisted sideways, coat ripping as the chain passed centimeters from his chest, shaving stone behind him into powder.
The air screamed where it passed.
Before Solina could even gasp, Varsh vanished.
No flash. No sound.
He simply ceased to exist in that space.
Zepherina drew back her arm for another strike—
Varsh appeared!
He materialized several meters before her, feet planted, posture flawless.
His non-dominant foot stepped forward. His knee bent slightly. His spine aligned. His left hand gripped the midpoint of the pike.
His right hand locked around the butt-cap, thumb resting on a small, embedded trigger.
His breathing was invisible. His eyes were empty.
He advanced.
One step.
His body extended fully, muscles and joints synchronizing in perfect sequence as he drove the spear forward.
Click.
His thumb pressed.
The pike detonated internally.
A tightly coiled metal-sheet spring exploded outward, unfurling at impossible speed, spinning with devastating torque.
The thrust ceased to be human. It became artillery. A portable cannon disguised as a weapon.
Zepherina's eyes widened.
The spearhead reached her face—
And passed through.
Her body dissolved into pale fog, scattering like mist under sunlight. The weapon cut nothing but vapor.
Varsh halted instantly, adjusting.
He retreated three steps, boots scraping stone.
One. Two. Three.
He vanished again, slipping into another layer of existence.
"…Hmph."
Within the Purgatory, Varsh frowned faintly.
So, fog transformation? This will take longer. His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
Delay meant postponed judgment. And postponed judgment was unacceptable.
His passive skill activated fully.
Purgatory Leap.
The world around him became translucent. Buildings, corpses, soldiers, walls—everything lost solidity.
He walked through them like drifting through memories.
Above distant enemies' heads, colors ignited—reds, blacks, purples—manifestations of accumulated sin.
The darker the hue, the faster his body responded, drawn toward them like gravity.
Yet limitations bound him.
He could not strike from here. He had to manifest.
And if he remained still for more than two seconds, reality would drag him back whether he wished it or not.
Varsh's gaze did not waver as he drifted within the hollow stillness of the Purgatory.
The battlefield below him—collapsed towers, fractured streets, burning banners, and screaming steel—existed only as a muted echo, distorted like a reflection beneath frozen water.
Sound did not reach him here. Heat did not touch him. Even the stench of blood and smoke was reduced to a faint, distant memory.
Only the colors remained.
Countless faint stains of sin hovered above soldiers and commanders alike—pale, wavering clouds that pulsed weakly with every breath they took.
Most were familiar. Dusty Yellow clung to frightened recruits. Murky Green wrapped around opportunists and traitors. Frigid Blue marked those who had killed out of duty rather than malice. Corrosive Orange burned around veterans who had long since abandoned mercy.
All of them were predictable.
All of them were small.
Then—there.
In the distance, beyond the shattered pillars and drifting smoke, something stood apart.
Something wrong.
A mass of putrid, dissimilar, suffocating color churned violently against the muted void.
Varsh's pupils narrowed.
Putrid Purple.
No—worse.
It was not truly purple.
It was a deep, almost black purplish-black, so dense it seemed to devour the light around it. Thick vapors boiled from it like fumes from rotting waste pits, rising and collapsing endlessly, as though the color itself were alive and breathing filth into the world.
Every time it shifted, the surrounding air warped, as if reality recoiled from touching it.
It was one of the dirtiest things he had ever seen.
Varsh's expression remained rigid—his jaw unmoving, his brow uncreased—but something cold tightened behind his eyes.
"…So it's you."
His voice did not exist in Purgatory.
Only his thoughts answered.
This is the worst I have seen so far…
A fragment of memory flickered.
Dusty Yellow. Murky Green. Frigid Blue. Corrosive Orange.
Four colors.
Four thresholds of moral decay.
Then—
Indigo.
Wolf.
The deepest shade he had ever witnessed.
A vast, starless night sky compressed into human form. Shimmering with oily reflections.
It was beautiful, terrifying and repulsive at the same time.
Its vapors spiraled like warped letters written by madness itself.
Even that had felt… distant.
Controlled. Contained.
But Zepherina's sin—
This was rot without restraint.
This was cruelty refined into obsession.
Varsh exhaled slowly.
A second passed.
The Purgatory began to tighten.
Invisible pressure crept across his skin like cold fingers.
He could not linger.
One second left.
That was all he had.
Before reality dragged him back.
His body shifted.
Without sound. Without resistance.
He moved. Not by stepping nor leaping but by gliding.
Like a shadow slipping between mirrors.
Like ink spreading through water.
His form slid through collapsed walls, broken statues, drifting debris—passing through matter as though it were mist.
No air was disturbed. No ripple followed him. Even space itself seemed to yield.
Ahead of him, Zepherina's dispersed form struggled to reassemble.
A swirling mass of purplish-black vapor churned violently, coiling inward, condensing, unraveling, reforming—desperately trying to rebuild her physical shell after Varsh's earlier strike.
She was vulnerable.
For less than a heartbeat.
Varsh adjusted his grip.
His fingers tightened around the shaft of his pike.
The metal felt distant. Unreal.
Like holding a memory of a weapon.
His stance aligned automatically—muscle memory carved through years of execution.
Left foot forward. Right heel anchored. Spine straight. Shoulders squared.
The invisible boundary approached.
The seam between worlds.
Now.
His eyes sharpened.
His breathing stopped.
"Verdict the soul."
The words escaped his lips at the exact instant his existence began to shift.
A singular skill.
His only exception.
As Purgatory peeled away from his body, as reality clawed him back, Varsh hurled his pike forward with every fragment of will he possessed.
The weapon vanished.
For a fraction of a moment, it existed in both realms at once—half spectral, half real—wrapped in pale, flickering runes that ignited along its length like ghostly chains.
The spearhead glowed with judgment.
It ignored flesh. Ignored armor. Ignored even matter.
It pierced straight into the core of the soul.
And the damage it dealt was proportional to corruption.
The more sin. The more suffering.
The pike tore through the purplish-black mist like a blade through oil-soaked cloth.
Then—
Reality snapped shut.
Varsh reappeared.
Dust exploded outward. Wind surged.
The battlefield's roar flooded back into his ears.
Shouting. Screams.
And—
Pain.
A shrill, distorted cry tore through the smoke.
The fog convulsed violently.
It collapsed inward.
Compressed. Condensed.
And suddenly—
Zepherina stood there.
Her body materialized mid-stagger, knees buckling, spine arching unnaturally.
"—Ghk!"
Her mouth opened in a broken gasp. Her fingers spasmed. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.
For a split second, she lost control.
Her limbs trembled as if seized by invisible hands.
Inside her chest, agony erupted.
It was as if an unseen, boiling-hot blade—coated in hundreds of layered poisons—had been driven directly through her heart, her mind, her memories, her sins.
Her vision fractured. Her breath hitched.
Blood trickled from the corner of her lips.
"Nngh…!"
Her shoulders jerked.
Veins bulged along her neck.
But—
She did not fall.
Her teeth clenched.
Her eyes burned with feral defiance.
"You… fucking…"
With sheer willpower, she crushed the pain.
She forced her muscles to obey.
Ether surged.
A violent torrent of violet-black energy erupted from her core, flooding into her right arm.
The chain in her hand screamed as it absorbed the power.
Crackling arcs of ether raced along its links.
Blades unfolded.
She swung with precision born of countless battles.
Her body twisted. Hips rotated and shoulders followed.
The chain lashed outward in a wide, murderous arc.
The centrifugal force warped the air.
A vacuum formed along the blade's path.
Compressed pressure collapsed inward—
Then detonated.
A crescent-shaped ether blade erupted from the swing, invisible except for the distortion it caused, slicing through smoke, debris, and stone alike.
It screamed toward Varsh.
His eyes widened slightly.
"…You!"
There was no time. No space to retreat.
He stepped.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Forward.
Each step struck the ground with unnatural precision.
The instant his third footfall landed—
Reality rejected him.
His body dissolved into pale mist.
Pulled back into Purgatory.
The ether blade passed through where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, shearing apart a ruined tower behind him in a thunderous explosion.
And Varsh vanished into silence—
Forced back into the Purgatory as Zepherina's ether blade almost hit him.
The battlefield stretched outward like a wounded continent.
Broken ramparts lay half-buried in ash. Siege towers smoldered like dying beasts.
Rivers of trampled mud and blood carved chaotic patterns between shattered formations.
Above, storm clouds churned in bruised spirals, trapping smoke and dust beneath them, sealing the war inside a suffocating dome of noise and ruin.
And somewhere near the rear of the enemy formation—
Wolf moved.
The world around him was drowned in red.
A dark crimson haze clung to the air like coagulated mist, thin yet impossibly dense, swallowing light and distorting depth.
Armor reflected nothing but warped silhouettes. Even shadows seemed hesitant to exist.
His active skill: Red Tide.
It bled outward from his body in slow, rhythmic pulses, like a living ocean of diluted blood.
Each pulse carried invisible pressure—an emotional undertow that dragged at the minds of those trapped inside. Fear. Fatigue. Disorientation. Regret.
All of it magnified.
Soldiers who stepped into it felt their hearts stutter. Their breathing grew uneven. Their vision dimmed at the edges. Memories they had buried resurfaced in broken fragments.
Dead comrades. Burning homes. Screaming families.
Promises never fulfilled.
Some dropped their weapons without realizing it.
Some whispered apologies to no one.
Some simply froze.
And in the center of it all—
Wolf advanced.
Around him floated a sphere of liquid metal.
A swirling halo of shimmering silver, constantly shifting, folding, rippling like mercury caught in invisible currents.
It moved with eerie obedience, never lagging behind, never colliding with debris. At its core hovered a radiant spirit crystal—bright, prismatic, pulsing softly like a second heart.
Soul-Pulse Quicksilver.
His newest weapon.
His most dangerous yet most exhausting one.
It had been born from destruction.
From the melted core of the vanguards he had seized through Zenji's covert operation.
From rare alloys scavenged across ruined continents. From relic fragments Zenji had collected over decades. From layered enchantments carved through sleepless nights.
And from memories.
Hyung-woo's memories.
Ether-flow diagrams.
Weapon harmonics.
Along with fragments inherited from the vanguard core itself—knowledge, instincts, half-remembered skills that sometimes surfaced without warning.
Wolf had fused them all.
Refined them.
Rewritten them.
And yet—
The spells he personally engraved were simple. Crude, even.
Nothing flashy. Nothing groundbreaking.
Just reinforcement arrays.
Synchronization loops.
Amplification runes.
They existed for one purpose only:
To make Soul-Pulse Quicksilver more itself.
More responsive. More violent. More absolute.
The weapon did not obey gestures.
It did not respond to voice.
It moved by thought. Intention. Subconscious impulse.
If Wolf thought of defense—
The metal expanded instantly, flattening into layered hexagonal plates that wrapped around him like an omnidirectional fortress.
If he thought of offense—
It fragmented into hundreds of needle-thin spears, folding and refolding mid-flight, curving unnaturally to pierce joints, throats, spines.
If he thought of suppression—
It unraveled into liquid threads that infiltrated armor gaps and detonated from inside.
Which meant—
Every second—
His mind was working at maximum capacity.
Calculating. Predicting. Filtering.
Suppressing hesitation, doubt and even fatigue.
It was like commanding an army with a single thought.
And paying the price with every neuron.
Wolf sprinted forward.
His boots crushed ribs. Splashed through blood.
The red haze parted for him like obedient water.
An enemy formation noticed him too late.
"It's the enemy—!"
Too slow.
Wolf's gaze flicked left.
Spears.
The Quicksilver exploded outward.
Dozens of silver lances materialized mid-air, screaming forward like meteor shards.
They curved, folded, twisted—
And impaled.
Three through helmets. Two through throats. One through a captain's chest.
Another folded mid-flight, pierced a shield, then unfolded inside the bearer's ribcage.
Wolf didn't stop moving.
He passed through the collapsing bodies like wind through tall grass.
Each strike activated Red Tide's secondary effect.
A siphon.
The moment his attacks connected, thin scarlet threads extended from the victims' cores, invisible to normal sight, funneling stamina, warmth, and vitality straight into him.
Their knees buckled. His breathing steadied.
Their hearts faltered. His pulse strengthened.
Their vision darkened. His sharpened.
Panic spread.
Men heard whispers.
Women saw figures that weren't there.
Shadows twitched.
Weapons felt heavier.
Orders sounded distorted.
Voices unspooled into broken gasps.
"W-why… why is it so cold…?"
"I… I hear my brother…"
"Mother…?"
"Don't leave me—!"
Some fled.
Throwing away their weapons.
Throwing away their pride.
Scrambling over corpses.
Some tripped and never got up.
Wolf cut through another squad.
His expression hardened.
Brow faintly furrowed.
"…Tch."
He had noticed it.
From the beginning it was too disorganized. Too unaware. Too unprepared.
No coordinated counterattack. No fallback formation. No emergency signals.
They didn't even know he was here until he was already inside them.
Which meant—
Orion and Zepherina didn't tell them anything.
Not about his movements.
Not about the ambush.
Not about the deeper plan.
Not about the risks.
Wolf cleaved through a lieutenant with a Quicksilver blade, then vaulted over a barricade.
They didn't even tell their army about my ambush…?
His eyes swept the surroundings.
Scanning. Analyzing.
Collapsed ridge to the east.
Burning supply wagons to the south.
No hidden casters.
No delayed traps.
No reserve formations.
"…Hm."
He landed, rolled, and rose in one fluid motion.
A faint crease appeared between his brows.
Actually…
Being separated isn't strange.
He acknowledged it calmly.
If both leaders stood together and an unexpected disaster struck—
The Chain collapse. Morale implosion.
Instant defeat.
Everyone knew that.
Every competent commander knew that.
So Zepherina staying behind wasn't suspicious.
No soldier would question it.
But—
Not telling them anything?
Not even minimal warning?
Letting casualties spiral?
Wolf's lips twitched.
A slow, thin curve formed at the corner of his mouth.
"…So Orion wants today to be as dramatic and traumatic as possible?"
He sliced through two more soldiers.
Red mist burst outward.
He kept thinking.
Raising casualties. Maximizing emotional scars.
If they win… after the civil war ends…
Those numbers will become history.
One million dead.
One million five hundred thousand dead.
On paper? Just some digits.
In reality?
A chasm. A narrative. A national wound.
"Fifty percent more loss…"
He whispered under his breath, voice low and dry.
"…is enough to rewrite how people remember everything."
Enough to turn victory into tragedy.
Enough to breed resentment.
Enough to shape generations.
Enough to justify future purges.
Enough to consolidate power.
His gaze darkened slightly.
And he's still confident he'll win?
Despite bleeding his own army dry?
Despite this chaos?
Despite me carving through his rear?
Wolf crushed another opponent's skull with a condensed Quicksilver hammer.
Blood sprayed.
"…Then he must have something it seem."
His thoughts tightened.
A hidden card.
A trap.
Something.
His mind twisted around possibilities.
"Heh…"
A quiet chuckle escaped him.
"Sneaky little shit…"
He ducked under a halberd, spun, and severed three legs in one sweep.
"…like the filling in a steamed bun."
You never know what's inside—
Until you bite.
That was why.
That was exactly why—
He had split his forces.
Moritz. Zenji.
Himself.
By logic alone, Zenji should have been with him.
Zenji's support.
With Zenji here, enemy losses would be twice as fast.
Zepherina might even be dead already.
And Moritz—
He was a former supreme war leader.
A strategic genius.
A man who could command storms of soldiers with a gesture.
It wasn't exaggeration.
Moritz alone could dominate an entire battlefield.
But—
That was risky.
It was too vulnerable.
If something went wrong—
Everything would fall apart.
So Wolf had split them.
Zenji with Moritz.
Information with power and support with command.
Redundancy and Insurance.
He exhaled slowly. Let the thoughts go.
He brushed it off like wiping blood from his sleeve.
His focus returned.
The Quicksilver tightened its orbit.
Red Tide pulsed again.
Wolf surged forward—
And continued his slaughter.
From the furthest edge of the battlefield, where smoke thinned into wavering veils and the thunder of clashing steel softened into distant, distorted echoes, Solina stood alone.
She had chosen that position deliberately.
High ground.
Broken remnants of an ancient watchtower rose beneath her boots—cracked stone stacked like fossilized bones, half-swallowed by creeping ash and climbing moss. From there, the entire battlefield unfolded before her like a living map of ruin.
And what she saw—
Was not war.
It was catastrophe given shape.
To her left—
Wolf.
Or rather, the thing moving inside the crimson fog.
From this distance, he no longer looked human.
He was a silhouette carved out of blood-colored mist, a shifting shadow that devoured light and life alike.
The Red Tide swelled and contracted around him like a breathing wound in the world, swallowing screams before they could fully form, dissolving formations before they could stabilize.
Within it, silver flashes burst and vanished—Soul-Pulse Quicksilver folding, reforming, exploding outward like fragments of a broken star.
Soldiers entered that mist.
They were erased.
To Solina's eyes, it looked as though a red ocean had risen from the ground, and within its depths swam a predator that had forgotten what mercy meant.
"…Wolf…"
The name slipped from her lips unconsciously.
Barely louder than breath.
To her right—
Far beyond the densest lines of combat—
Varsh and Zepherina.
There, reality itself seemed unstable.
It was like watching two storms collide in slow motion.
One—
A storm of silent wit.
Varsh moved like an idea rather than a body—appearing, vanishing, reappearing.
His presence distorted space subtly, like heat above desert stone, leaving behind faint fractures that sealed themselves moments later. Every movement was economical. Every attack was measured.
No wasted motion. No excess emotion.
The other—
A storm of decay.
Zepherina's purplish-black aura boiled and festered around her like a living plague cloud, erupting in noxious waves whenever she moved.
Vapors curled into grotesque shapes before dissolving.
The air around her corroded, cracked, and screamed silently under the pressure of her power.
As powerful as catastrophe.
Whenever they clashed—
The ground splintered.
Sound folded in on itself.
Space screamed.
Invisible shockwaves rippled outward, throwing corpses into the air like discarded dolls.
Solina watched both fronts at once, her eyes moving constantly, tracking trajectories, reading ether currents, calculating distances, predicting collapse zones.
She stood perfectly still.
Only her hair moved—long strands fluttering weakly in the polluted wind, catching soot and ash like black snow.
In her hands—
The Aether Staff.
She held it diagonally across her body, both palms wrapped firmly around its grip.
It was a masterpiece of arcane engineering.
Dull silver plates layered over one another in hundreds of overlapping segments, each engraved with microscopic runes that shimmered faintly when ether passed through them.
Between those plates ran thin copper-colored veins, pulsing softly like exposed nerves.
It was a system.
A living circuit.
At its shortest, it could collapse into a hand-sized rod.
At full extension—
Two meters of refined lethality.
And now, it was fully extended.
The staff elongated with a soft metallic whisper, plates sliding and locking into place with seamless precision. Along its center, the core was exposed—
A long, cylindrical cyan crystal. It glowed like frozen lightning trapped in glass.
Inside its steel frame, the crystal rotated at high speed, humming in resonance with Solina's ether flow.
The sound was barely audible—a faint, crystalline vibration that synchronized with her heartbeat.
At the top—
Three concentric rings floated freely.
They rotated independently, each spinning at a different speed, generating layered spell matrices in the air between them.
Invisible circles of power intersected and overlapped.
This staff existed for one purpose:
To let Solina reach where her body could not.
To let her touch distant death.
To let her save—or end—lives from afar.
She raised it slightly.
A group of wounded soldiers staggered through broken trenches below her vantage point.
One had lost a leg.
Another clutched his throat, blood pouring through his fingers.
A third crawled blindly, eyes burned by ether backlash.
They were still alive.
Barely.
Solina's jaw tightened.
She inhaled slowly .
Then whispered—
"…Rest."
The rings aligned.
The crystal flared.
Three thin cyan beams descended silently.
It was merciful.
She lowered the staff.
Another group fled, throwing down weapons, crying, stumbling over bodies.
Solina watched them.
Her fingers twitched.
She could end them easily.
One sweep. One command.
But she didn't.
She let them go.
"…Run," she murmured softly. "Live… if you can."
Her gaze shifted back to Varsh.
Her chest tightened.
She wanted to help.
Every instinct screamed at her to move closer, to reinforce him, to intervene, to share his burden.
But she couldn't.
It was out of position.
Out of plan.
Wolf's strategy had been clear.
If she moved now, she would destabilize the formation.
She clenched her teeth.
"…Damn it…"
This was her first time seeing war like this.
Not some reports.
Not some stories.
This.
First-hand.
The smell of burned flesh.
The sound of bones breaking.
The sight of children's fathers dying in mud.
The feeling of the ground trembling from dying hearts.
And worse—
She knew deep down.
She was part of the cause.
This tragedy existed because of choices.
Because of her.
Her fingers tightened around the staff.
The metal creaked faintly.
Her shoulders trembled once.
Then stopped.
She stared at the sea of blood.
At the burning city walls.
And her vision blurred.
Tears welled up.
She blinked hard.
They still fell. Hot. Silent.
One rolled down her cheek, tracing a clean line through ash.
"…Why…"
The word had no target.
No answer.
Suddenly—
Her memories surged.
It was uninvited.
Her family.
Her father's tired smile as he returned from council meetings.
Her mother brushing her hair.
Her younger brother laughing as he chased fireflies in the garden.
The warm dinners.
Soft voices. The sound of home.
All of it—
So vivid. So fragile.
Her breath hitched.
For one dangerous second—
She almost collapsed.
Then—
She shook her head sharply.
Once. Twice.
As if physically rejecting weakness.
Her tears stopped.
She lifted her chin.
Straightened her back.
Forced air into her lungs.
"I can't…"
Her voice was hoarse.
"…I can't be shaken right now."
She wiped her face with the back of her glove.
Left a smear of blood and ash.
Didn't care.
"I have to be strong…"
Her eyes hardened.
"…Because if it's not me…"
Her grip tightened again.
"…then no one will stand for our family."
She looked toward the burning horizon.
Toward Wolf.
Toward Varsh.
Toward destiny.
"Our House Armani…"
Her voice steadied.
"…will be restored soon."