[???]
The open chamber was a space dressed in sterile white—a lightless white that didn't illuminate but rather consumed. Its blank, seamless walls stretched beyond in every direction, creating the illusion of endlessness.
And in the center hovered the Divine Blade Nihil, suspended in a latticework of restraints,.
And then a new color entered this sanctum.
A searing red.
With a violent cough, the figure of Aegraxes lurched forward, collapsing to one knee. His body trembled as his hand scraped against the smooth floor, slick and wet with fresh blood. He spat.
"Blegh—!"
Another mouthful of blood splattered violently across the white beneath him. The red liquid spread unnaturally, its pattern writhing for a moment before slowly stilling—forming odd patterns. Aegraxes exhaled—slow and ragged. His breathing sounded torn and uneven.
"...Still alive..." he muttered to no one in particular, a grin crawling across his blood-streaked face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the blood further across his chin and cheek. His body swayed slightly, bones audibly popping as he straightened his posture.
His eyes—sunken and rimmed in veins—closed for a brief second, to dull the burning sensation within them.
("Alchemy. An equivalent exchange...") the thought passed through his skull, ("...A few useless organs, a portion of my soul, and what was left of my empathy—") He coughed again, this time quieter. ("...All traded away. A bargain paid in destruction… to rid myself of those three wild cards.")
He chuckled—eyes opening once more.
His gaze slowly rose, locking onto the suspended blade.
Nihil.
A divine weapon of annihilation. It glowed ominously in its containment, as if acknowledging him. Aegraxes took one slow, ceremonial step forward, the echo of his bootfall delayed by half a second. He stood before it now, shoulders squared, the blood still dripped from his mouth.
He spoke aloud now to no one in particular.
"The mana has been harvested and the vessel is ready. The gate has been primed. The stars are in position."
His hand clenched into a fist.
"And the Divine Blade Nihil..." he exhaled slowly, "...awaits no longer."
He stared deep into the blade.
"With this—" his tone darkened, "—I begin the First Calamity."
His gaze hardened.
"This… is not vengeance." He said it slowly, as if repeating it to some council. "It is not wrath. It is not justice. Those are chains the weak use to justify impulse."
He stepped forward again, ignoring the spray of blood that followed from his own internal damage. His body was breaking—he didn't care.
"This is spite."
His voice burned with venom.
"Spite for the Gods who play fate like a cruel joke."
"Spite for the Dragons who nest atop history and call it heritage."
"Spite for The Keepers of Order who clutch at their precious rules while reality bleeds."
He raised his arm toward the blade, knowing it would burn him, maybe even unmake what was left of him. But his fingers never wavered.
He whispered now—lowly.
"I will break every heaven."
"I will smother every law."
"I will drown their stars in silence..."
"...until only a calamity remains."
A final pulse erupted from the blade.
The room did not shake, it wept. Thin strands of white peeled from the walls like dead skin, exposing something dark beneath. Aegraxes laughed once more. Not in triumph. But in grief. It sounded like a man who had accepted his own damnation and chose to walk deeper into it.
"Let the Calamity begin..." he whispered, a final breath slipping past lips cracked with blood.
And somewhere, beyond the chamber…
…something woke up.
---------------------
[???]
A deafening sound tore through the air as a surge of plasma erupted, carving a scar across the ground. It was blinding energy that devoured everything in its path. The searing blast came from the shifting arm of the towering colossus—Alpha—its black limb having contorting into a cannon.
Fiona gritted her teeth, eyes narrowing into slits as her legs coiled. Then she launched herself skyward, twisting in midair, her hair whipped violently, scorched by the near-miss, as the plasma wave surged beneath her heels. For a brief moment, she hovered—suspended—before gravity reclaimed her, dragging her back down toward the unstable terrain.
She landed hard—a bone-jarring impact that sent cracks rippling beneath her sabatons. One knee buckled, her palm slapping the ground as her breath hitched. Dust and superheated soot blew around her. Her ears twitched once, twice—locked on to the source of the voice that slithered from within the monstrous machine.
"Still the nimble little wolf, aren't you?"
The voice echoed from deep within the machine that towered before her. Anuran. Smug, voice filled with condescension made Fiona's blood boil.
She growled low in her throat, her fingers tightening into fists. Her muscles screamed for action, her detest for magitech was getting the better of her yet again.
["Steady yourself, Fiona."]
A second voice entered her head—it was Victoria, speaking with telepathic magic.
["Don't let her bait you. Anuran's words are hooks. You're not a fish, you know. Don't bite."]
Fiona's chest rose and fell with a breath that did little to calm the anger. ("I know,") she snapped mentally, though not at Victoria. At herself. At this damned moment. ("But if I don't move soon, I'll lose more than composure.") She needed to get her mind away from the rage. ("How's everyone else holding up?") she asked, eyes locked forward, waiting for Alpha's next move.
["Astrid and General Mai are currently locked in combat with the other Von Auerswald's—Emilia and Amaury. Mirabella and Agatha are lingering—no movement yet. Lucinda is... occupied with the golden Ancestor. Lukas... is gone. Eliminated. Adrian is out there. But still not acting."]
("Lukas is...") The thought halted in her mind, unfinished. Her jaw clenched, they've already lost someone. ("Damn it. Then I can't afford to hesitate. I'm not here to lose. I don't care if it takes blood, teeth, or soul—I'll bury this walking abomination.")
["Then Fiona, you're going to need to use it."]
("Use... it?") Fiona's thoughts barely finished forming. ("You mean the Divine Relic...? Now?")
["Yes. Let a ruin wolf take shape."]
Fiona's brows knit together, sweat streaking down her soot-stained cheek. She crouched instinctively—but still, she hesitated.
("Ruin wolf? Why that form? There are others—ones with direct power, offensive magic—why the ruin wolf? That one's not made for combat. It's... passive.")
["Because you're fighting a Vel'ryr machine. Alpha is a magitech construct—its primary weapon is mana. Plasma. Energy. A ruin wolf is one of the few naturally occurring Astrothians, designed to passively absorb mana through their embedded rune systems. The longer the fight continues, the more powerful you'll become. You'll turn Alpha's strength into your own."]
Fiona's eyes widened.
("So you want me to... feed off of it? To use its attacks like fuel?")
["Exactly. It's time you learned that not all victories come from striking first. Some come from enduring—then devouring it whole."]
Her jaw clenched, her fingers twitched.
She hated this situation.
And she hated machines that walked like Gods and destroyed like Dragons. She hated synthetic monstrosities that pretended to be alive—without soul, without purpose, without heart. And she hated Anuran's smug voice more than anything else in this world.
But even more than that… she hated losing.
("Fine...") she thought to herself.
She drew in a breath, sharp and deep. And then her hand shot to her chest—the Divine Relic pulsed once within her. Then again. Faster. A hum built in the air around her.
The transformation began.
Her pink hair whipped upward, strands twisting, lengthening and darkening. The color bled out of it, replaced by a glossy, jet-black color. Her ears grew longer, more pointed—framed by a wild mane. Her armor warped—plates growing sharper, more angular, as black twisted edges rose from her shoulders, hips, and body.
Her legs bent lower and her arms trembled. Her fingertips thickened into claw-tipped gauntlets, the runes carved into them now glowing with a pale indigo glow. Her irises flooded with color, the salmon pink vanishing, replaced by a chilling blue.
And her teeth—when she bared them—had grown sharp.
"Hmph," came a voice from within Alpha, Anuran's voice echoed again. "Oh my. Now you're speaking my language," she cooed, sickly-sweet. "You've really outdone yourself, little wolf. That hair, those claws, those eyes—oh, what a marvelous pet you'll make once I tear the fight out of you."
Fiona's claws clenched.
"You just don't know when to shut up, do you?" she growled, her voice layered now.
"Try all you like," Anuran purred. "But magitech always wins in the end. Machines don't tire. They don't bleed. They don't break. But you—oh, you'll break beautifully."
Fiona's glare narrowed. The rune light across her limbs pulsed brighter now, absorbing the residual mana that leaked from Alpha's presence.
"We'll see," she snarled, voice trembling—with barely-restrained rage. "I hate your voice. I hate your smug breathing. I hate that you exist. And I swear by my very soul—I will rip you from that throne of filth you call a cockpit."
The ground trembled violently as Alpha suddenly lunged forward. Twin gouts of propulsion fire erupted from the clusters of blade-like wings at its back, illuminating the area in a violent red glow. Its massive arms shifted mid-motion—organic metal bending, reconfiguring with crunching groans and machine clicks—into dual elongated blades. The red filaments running beneath its armor pulsed in erratic rhythms.
With a snarl, Fiona launched herself from a collapsed boulder, the explosion of mana behind her feet cracking the terrain as she twisted her body horizontally midair. A flash of red sliced the space she had just occupied—Alpha's left blade—followed by a horizontal sweep from the right that came from below, trying to catch her in recovery.
She twisted again, knees compressing mid-flight, ears twitching to the pitch of the vibrating air, and kicked off a crag mid-spin. A razor-thin cut formed across her shoulder armor—so shallow it barely bled, but deep enough to sting.
"You're fast, little mongrel," Anuran's voice hissed from deep within Alpha's core, almost purring. Her voice was modulated, but Fiona could still hear the smugness. "But I wonder—how long can you really run from progress?"
Fiona's response was a grunt and a scoff. Her hair whipped around her sharpened eyes.
The mech twisted and hovered sideways, gliding around Fiona in a circle. "You don't understand, mutt. You were born in blood. I was built in it. You're a creature of instinct, but I am the will of order, forged in the womb of intellect and steel. And you—"
A burst of thrusters cut her off as Alpha shot forward.
"—are going to look perfect in a cage."
Alpha's bladed arms came in a corkscrew slash—a twist of both arms aimed to gut and dismember in a single moved.
Fiona saw the intent behind the movement. She read the current of mana through the thrusters, through the shoulder servos, the exact delay between each segmented rotation. She leapt into the attack, sliding just beneath the first blade, pivoting on her knuckles, and then rolled up and over the second slash. The air howled as the blades carved near her—but did not touch.
Her claws glowed with stored mana.
She slashed—one, two, three times—sparks erupting as her nails clanged against Alpha's side plating, forcing the mech to bank hard and rise, steam hissing from microscopic vents.
"How detestable you are, gliding around in such filth," she muttered beneath her breath, low and bitter.
"My, my why do you hate magitech so?" Anuran's voice prodded. "Did some poor little gear-shined war machine outpace you once? Did your instincts not keep up with a turret?"
Fiona didn't answer. She launched forward instead as Alpha descended like a meteor, both blades extending with arcs. Fiona sprinted through the wake of its impact, leaping sideways as its foot came down, the talon-tipped appendage cleaving through stone like paper. The shockwave lifted her—but she twisted midair, landing sideways along Alpha's arm and sprinting up its limb.
Alpha bucked. A cannon port snapped open.
"Wrong move, wolfie."
Fiona felt the hum of mana. She dropped to all fours and slid, the cannon beam discharging a second too late—vaporizing a swath of rock behind her. She flipped off Alpha's elbow, landing on a ruined pillar and crouching low.
"You think this is new to me?" she growled. "You think any of this is new? I've fought things like you before. And I'll say it again…"
She stood, raising one clawed hand, now brimming with siphoned mana.
"I. Hate. Magitech."
"…Still so bitter," Anuran sighed. "It's adorable. And here I was hoping you'd join me in the future. But no matter. The more you struggle, the sweeter your defeat."