A hot wind off the Arabian Peninsula swept through the lush palm groves, stirring up a soft rustling whisper.
On the grounds of this private estate — vast enough to host a small marathon — the spray from the central fountain refracted the sunlight into a blinding glare.
Two enormous purebred white tigers lay sprawled on the grass by the artificial lake, basking in the sun.
Jaws half-open, one of them yawned, baring a set of sharp canine teeth.
This was Susannah's home.
The five-day leave was drawing to a close.
On the terrace of the main villa's third floor, a sun umbrella cast a broad patch of shade.
On the table sat chilled grapes arranged on a solid-gold tray, alongside a few glasses of brightly colored cold drinks.
Sin Mal had one leg drawn up, foot braced on the edge of the white wicker chair.
She popped a grape into her mouth.
"Hey," Sin said, spitting a grape seed into the crystal ashtray beside her, "you live like this every single day?"
Susannah sat across from her on a lounge chair, lightly filing the edge of her nails with a small emery board.
"Yeah," Susannah said, glancing up from her nails toward the clear blue sky outside. "I sleep until I wake up naturally, wander the grounds after meals. Sometimes I go shopping for things I like, or read comics at night."
Sin rolled her eyes hard enough to nearly strain something.
Over these five days, Susannah had given her comrade-in-arms — an orphanage kid who'd grown up scrapping around in mud and garbage heaps — a thorough taste of what it meant to live like a Middle Eastern gem tycoon.
On the first day, Susannah had taken her to the legendary room supposedly filled entirely with gemstones.
Pushing open the heavy oak double doors revealed an entire wall of display cases: fist-sized rubies, flawlessly cut sapphires, diamonds of every grade, all blazing under specially fitted spotlights with a brilliance nearly bright enough to blind.
Sin had stood frozen in the doorway, the corner of her eye twitching for a full minute.
The most valuable thing she'd ever laid eyes on in her whole life was a reasonably well-maintained black-market assault rifle.
Displaying wealth that could buy out a small nation's entire military arsenal as casually as marbles in a room seriously rattled her worldview.
On the second day, they'd ridden a stretched armored limousine to a private club downtown for a feast of white truffles flown in fresh.
Afterward, Susannah's older brother even suggested taking them up in a private helicopter to see the city skyline at night.
"Filthy capitalist exploiter class," Sin said, rapping her knuckles on the table. "A rich brat like you wouldn't last three days in the neighborhoods I grew up in — they'd strip you down to nothing, not even your underwear left."
Susannah didn't take offense.
She put away the nail file and took a sip of the cold drink on the table.
The chill slid down her throat into her stomach.
"If this had been a month ago," Susannah said, looking across at Sin, "I would've dragged you off to see my first-edition superhero comics, shown off all those custom figures I paid a fortune for."
Sin let out a scornful little laugh.
"But now," Susannah said, setting the glass back on the gold tray, "when I look at all this stuff, it just feels... boring, somehow."
It wasn't just the figures and comics. Even these gilded rooms, those priceless gems — after a month of hellish training, after watching blood spill and bones snap with her own eyes—
—none of it carried the same weight, to the girl named Susannah, as the standard-issue rifle she'd been given.
The sun sank slowly westward, staining the estate in shades of burnt orange.
Night fell.
The sprawling villa was very quiet.
It was the fifth day.
Tomorrow, they'd return to Arc City.
Susannah sat alone by the floor-to-ceiling window of her room, watching the sun set at the edge of the desert.
The sky shifted from burnt orange to deep purple, then to inky blue, stars blinking on one by one.
There were three knocks at the door.
"Come in."
It was her father who entered.
The man who commanded storms in the business world and pulled strings across the political and commercial circles now stood in the doorway, his face carrying a hesitation Susannah had rarely seen.
"Mind if I sit?" He gestured toward the chair beside her.
Susannah nodded.
Her father sat down and said nothing for a long while.
Outside the window, more and more stars appeared, the desert night wind blowing in dry and clean.
"Sweetheart." Her father finally spoke.
"I don't know exactly what you went through this past month."
His voice was low, low enough that it seemed afraid of shattering something fragile.
"But from what I've managed to find out... it was real military training. Live ammunition. Hand-to-hand combat. And—"
He paused.
"Fatality quotas."
Susannah said nothing.
"Honestly," her father said, hands folded over his knees, "when I agreed to let you try out for the Starfire Furnace selection, I only meant for the difficulty to scare you off."
He gave a bitter little laugh.
"Ever since you were little, your head's been full of nothing but being a hero — your room's stuffed with superhero movies, comics, stories about saving the world."
"I figured if you saw how brutal real training was, you'd understand it's nothing like the comics, and you'd come running back home to keep being my carefree little princess."
"Five hundred elites from all over the country — special forces, fighting champions, sniper prodigies — every one of them stronger than you on paper. I figured you wouldn't last the first week."
Her father raised his head, looking at Susannah.
Those eyes, which had weathered every storm, now held emotions so tangled even he couldn't put a name to them.
"But you didn't just survive. You rose above all five hundred of them."
"Sweetheart, you really..." The words caught in his throat.
Susannah watched him.
Watched the gray hair at his temples.
When had it grown in?
She remembered riding on his shoulders to watch fireworks as a little girl, back when his hair was still jet black.
She remembered when he'd taught her to ride horses, his temples holding only a few scattered silver strands.
Now those strands had spread into whole patches.
Susannah drew in a deep breath.
"Dad." Her voice was soft, but steady.
"I have reasons I have to go back. Reasons I have to fight."
Her father froze.
Susannah's gaze slipped past him, out to the boundless starry sky beyond the window.
An image surfaced in her mind — that day in the arena.
Supreme Commander Su Yu, standing on the high platform, slowly laying out the truth.
—Less than five months remained before this world fell to Honkai's invasion.
—On the day Honkai arrived, they would be the last line of defense. Should that line collapse, Arc City would face Destruction.
—Once Honkai invaded and its monsters ran rampant, this world's Destruction would only be a matter of time.
She and Sin had both collapsed from exhaustion after opening their Genetic Locks that day, but the next day they'd watched the recording again.
She remembered Sin standing beside her, the careless look on her face gone for the very first time.
In the footage, Instructor Rita stood behind Su Yu, and in those eyes that always carried a hint of a smile, there was a weight Susannah couldn't quite read.
That was when she finally understood.
A hero wasn't like the ones drawn in comics.
It wasn't about slipping on a battlesuit and soaring through the sky, or shouting a catchphrase to defeat the villain, or everything working out happily in the end.
A true hero was someone who, knowing full well they might die, knowing full well they might fail to protect anything at all, still chose to stand at the very front of the line.
"Dad." Susannah drew her gaze back, looking into her father's eyes.
"Before, I wanted to be a hero because I thought heroes looked cool. Because in comics, the hero always saves the world, always arrives just in time, always lets everyone live."
"But it's different now."
"Now I know that's not what a hero really is."
"But even so—" Her voice didn't waver.
"Even so, I still want to be a hero."
Her father looked at his daughter.
At that face still touched with youth, at those eyes so utterly different from a month ago.
Once, Susannah's eyes had held a light that was airy and weightless.
Like a soap bubble — shimmering with color, but bursting at the slightest touch.
Now, her eyes were still bright.
But that light was no longer a soap bubble.
It was fire.
The kind of fire left behind after being hammered again and again, seared by relentless heat.
Her father opened his mouth, meaning to say something.
In the end, he only let out a deep sigh.
"You've grown up. You really have grown up."
Susannah stood, walked over to her father, and bent down to hug him.
His shoulders were broad, but as she held him, she suddenly felt he seemed smaller than she remembered.
"Dad, I'll come back."
Her father reached out and patted her back.
"Mm."
Susannah let go and turned toward the door.
"Sweetheart." Her father's voice came from behind her.
Susannah turned back.
"What exactly..." Her father's throat bobbed. "What exactly are you all fighting?"
Susannah thought about it for a moment, then smiled.
The smile was the same as always — a little silly, a little carefree.
But what filled her eyes now was something else entirely.
"To borrow a line from my favorite superhero movie—"
"I guess you could call it... destiny."
Susannah closed the door.
She'd taken only two steps before she stopped.
A small figure leaned against a marble support column along the hallway.
Sin Mal stood with her back against the cold marble, hands shoved in her pockets.
The hallway was empty and open — no matter how well soundproofed the door, it couldn't have blocked out that rather heated conversation.
She'd clearly heard every word of it.
"So you've really decided?"
Sin straightened up.
She didn't look at Susannah, instead walking over to the wall and giving the corner a light kick with her toe.
"Staying here and living as some rich heiress wouldn't be so bad," Sin said, her voice a little dry. "Eating well, living large, playing with your little figures every day."
She stopped kicking the wall and turned her head.
"And you know as well as I do — against whatever bullshit Honkai apocalypse is coming, people like us have no real chance. Go back, and we're just cannon fodder."
Susannah walked up in front of Sin.
Less than a meter separated them.
"I know," Susannah said, looking Sin in the eye. "Even someone like Supreme Commander Su Yu — with enough Strength to take on a Honkai Beast dozens of meters tall single-handed — says he has no certainty at all against the apocalypse. We might go there tomorrow and be dead on the line the day after."
The hallway lights stretched their shadows long across the plush carpet.
"But even so," Susannah said, her eyes shining, "Supreme Commander Su Yu, and Instructor Rita too — they've never once considered giving up or falling back. Not for a single instant."
Susannah raised a hand and shaped it into a fist in the air.
"And besides — compared to when the end comes, just huddling with everyone else in some vault, waiting in despair for those monsters to break the door down—"
She looked at her own fist.
"I'd rather pick up a gun and fight on the front line until the very last moment. Dying on a battlefield beats dying tucked in bed."
Sin stared hard at Susannah's face.
For a full half minute.
On this rich girl's face, there was nothing left of the old squeamishness that used to shriek at the sight of a bug — nothing but a resolve so fierce it made your teeth ache just looking at it.
Sin suddenly unclenched her jaw, the corner of her mouth curling up.
"Hmph." Sin gave a short laugh. "Didn't expect a weakling like you, who couldn't carry a bag of rice, to come out with something that badass. Guess you're not a complete embarrassment to yours truly."
"Heh heh." Susannah lowered her hand. "Besides, I can't just leave you to fend for yourself, Senior Sin. If you charge ahead too fast on your own, you'll die a nasty death."
"Don't get too full of yourself." Sin raised a fist and thumped it against Susannah's shoulder. "In the training ahead, if you ever drag me down again, I'll ditch you on the battlefield and run without a second thought, you hear me!"
"I know, I know. Look after me, Senior."
A dull thud rang through the hallway air.
Two pale fists collided in midair.
It was a pact between two soldiers about to march off to war.
The two fists pressed together.
Outside the window, the desert night wind blew past.
The stars filled the sky, burning so bright they seemed about to catch fire.
Meanwhile.
In different corners of the country.
In a tavern in some small town—
—a young sniper downed the last swallow of liquor in his glass, tucked a few large bills under the empty cup, shouldered his pack, and walked out into the wind and snow.
In an underground black-market fight club—
—a man covered in scars stuffed a thick wad of cash he'd just won into a little girl's arms, ruffled her hair, and walked out of the tin shack without looking back.
For those two hundred and fifty rookie soldiers, that night stretched long and agonizing.
Some made up their minds, went home, ate a lavish meal with unsuspecting family, and said all sorts of strange, cryptic things.
Some shut themselves in their rooms, agonizing between going and staying until they'd smoked their way through two whole packs of cheap cigarettes.
Some, under cover of darkness, boarded flights bound for Arc City.
Some wept and said they were sorry.
Some gritted their teeth and refused to say goodbye.
But no matter what torment they went through that night—
—time waited for no one.
The next day.
Eight o'clock sharp, Shenzhou time.
Two hundred and fifty personal terminals buzzed at once.
A message popped up.
It contained nothing but a set of coordinates.
And one line of text.
"Deadline: 8 p.m. tonight. Anyone who fails to arrive at this location by then will be treated as having automatically forfeited their qualification."
Susannah stood on the estate's helipad, a simple backpack slung over her shoulder, looking at the coordinates on her terminal.
The helicopter roared behind her.
Sin leaned against the cabin door, a lollipop in her mouth, the desert's noon sun reflected in her eyes.
"Let's go."
Susannah switched off the terminal and drew a deep breath.
She glanced back once more at that "big house" built of white marble, at the ten-foot solid-gold falcon statue standing by the entrance, at the figure standing by the second-floor window.
She waved at that figure.
Then she turned and climbed aboard the helicopter.
The cabin door closed.
The roar of the rotor blades swallowed everything.
The helicopter lifted off the ground and flew east.
Susannah looked down through the window.
The estate where she'd lived for over a decade shrank smaller and smaller, until it became a tiny white speck in the desert, and then vanished completely below the horizon.
She pulled her gaze back and leaned into her seat.
Sin sat across from her, legs crossed, the lollipop switching from the left side of her mouth to the right.
"Cry if you want to."
Sin's voice came out muffled around the candy.
Susannah shook her head.
"Not crying. Once the apocalypse is over, I'm coming back to live in my big house."
Sin studied her for two seconds, then snorted with laughter. "Fine, rich brat. Just remember to treat yours truly to a whole roast lamb when that day comes."
"Heh heh, all you can eat."
The two girls' fists bumped together in midair once more.
The helicopter cut through the clouds, golden sunlight pouring in through the windows, painting the whole cabin gold.
Ahead lay Arc City.
The apocalypse countdown.
An unknown fate.
But right now, aboard this helicopter flying east—
—two girls' fists remained pressed together.
Neither let go.
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