"Where… am I…"
Aria's voice cracked from the back of her throat as her eyelids began to twitch open. A dull, searing ache pulsed behind her eyes like she'd been unconscious for days. Her mouth was dry. Her limbs were numb. And her throat burned, like she hadn't spoken in hours.
She tried to raise a hand to rub her face. Nothing moved.
Again, harder.
Still... Nothing.
Her eyes snapped open fully.
She was bound.
Aria's breath hitched as she blinked rapidly to clear her vision. It was dark, no, dimly lit, but not in any normal way. The light above her wasn't fluorescent. It was slow, rotating, a violet glow sweeping across the ceiling like a spotlight at an observatory, making the entire space feel surreal, artificial, like she was in a dream.
Her vision steadied.
And then it sank in.
She was strapped to a throne.
Not a chair. A throne. Big. Elegant. Empty of warmth.
The room around her stretched into a circular, hollow void, about fifteen meters wide, lined with seamless, polished black walls that reflected light, but not clearly.
The surface shimmered whenever she moved, her reflection warping like a funhouse mirror, always slightly off. Nullglass. Even without knowing its name, she could feel it, the way it pressed on her soul, cancelling her energy, muting her power, smothering her sublimation like a pillow over a face.
The floor beneath her was smooth and matte, with faint hexagonal runes glowing softly around the throne like an ancient summoning circle.
And then came the bindings.
Her wrists. Her ankles. Her neck.
Thin, white silk-like cables had slithered up from the floor and latched onto her, pulsing with a soft, sickly blue light. They didn't cut. They didn't bruise. But she could feel them siphoning her power bit by bit, like her own body was bleeding into the walls.
Aria thrashed.
Nothing moved.
The throne didn't even shake.
"Let me go... LET ME GO!!" She screamed.
Only silence answered. Silence and the low, constant hum vibrating through the floor.
No doors. No vents. No windows. No escape.
Only her breathing and the ghostly hush of the room were watching her.
She tried to summon her sublimation. Even just a spark.
Her guitar, the music, the one part of herself that gave her power, her identity, her name.
But as soon as she reached for it...
The cables reacted.
Tighter.
Her body stiffened, and pink static flashed in her vision. Like the world itself glitched for a second. Then it was gone. She gasped in pain, slumping against the restraints.
"Help…" She whispered. "Please… Kentaro… Anyone…"
And then, like a blade to her chest...
The memory came.
Kentaro.
His body. Bleeding. Motionless.
Her tears came all at once, unbidden, unstoppable.
"If I hadn't… If I never met him… He wouldn't… He wouldn't be like that…" She sobbed.
She was crying so hard her voice gave out. Only small, broken hiccups filled the air now. Her head slumped forward, hair shadowing her face, the chair towering behind her like a monument to defeat.
Behind the Nullglass, in an observation room she couldn't see, they watched.
Spire.
Scientists logged data without emotion, each fluctuation of her energy captured in graphs and silent drone footage.
And Reiden Vale stood at the centre of it all, drink in hand, smile curling like smoke.
"Hahahahaha… Marvellous, Velza. Truly marvellous."
He hadn't stopped grinning since the moment Velza returned with Siren in tow.
"You did a great job capturing her, killing the boy was a plus as well, though I would have wanted to extract his power first, but never mind that." He sipped from his crimson glass of imported wine, letting the taste roll across his tongue. The light in the lab reflected off his face like moonlight off a blade.
Velza stood beside him, arms crossed, still wearing her battered uniform. The tear in her side from Serica's earlier strike was faint but noticeable.
Reiden raised a brow, amused.
"Ah? That mark... That wouldn't be from Siren, would it?"
He leaned closer, voice rich with mockery.
"No… That level of precision... Akio perhaps? Or-"
His grin widened.
"One of her friends?"
Velza looked away, jaw tight.
"A miscalculation," she said flatly.
"It won't happen again."
Reiden chuckled and turned back to the glass.
Aria hadn't moved. She was shaking.
"Good. Then let's not waste the moment." He raised his glass slightly toward her, as if toasting her collapse.
"Begin the preparations. Power the absorber. I want her hollowed out before sunset."
Velza didn't speak.
She simply stared forward, her eyes fixed on the trembling girl in the chair.
The girl who had cried Kentaro's name.
*
Back at Cradle HQ's central command room, Akio's fury was boiling over.
The entire main screen showed footage from the aftermath of the city battle:
Broken Spire units, scattered Null remains, a dome of glacial chaos rapidly consuming the skyline, a fracture bloom, unmistakably Ice-Breaker's doing.
But none of that registered anymore.
"Damn you, Velza!!" Akio screamed, slamming her fist against the already destroyed desk. Her eyes sparked with rage, crackling with the unstable heat of her fury.
She had just watched it happen.
Velza Cain, her rival, her shadow, her oldest wound, had descended from the sky and stolen Siren with barely a scratch. As if that wasn't enough, the bloom that followed had erupted like a soul screaming through frost. It meant only one thing:
Kentaro Takamiya was dead.
Or close enough to it.
And Serica, the Ice-Breaker, had shattered.
"I swear you'll pay, Velza," she spat under her breath, too quiet for the others to hear. Her hands shook. The tendons in her arms coiled like wire. The rest of the officers in the room kept their heads down, avoiding her eyes. Nobody wanted to be the next object of her wrath.
But she wasn't unhinged.
Not yet.
She was a Commander, and she had a job to do.
Akio turned sharply. "Everyone, evac protocols, now. Get the recovery teams into that zone. Medics, supply units, stabilisers. Right now, the public eye isn't on that location, but if someone releases a shot of that Fracture Bloom, Spire will shift the blame before we can even react. MOVE."
"Yes, Commander!" The command centre replied in unison, screens lighting up with movement orders and tactical overlays.
Akio exhaled sharply through her nose and turned back to the display, her jaw clenched, her eyes seething.
But then...
She saw something strange.
On the replay feed.
A flash.
Just before the bloom hit.
Her brow furrowed. "Wait, hold that. Rewind five seconds. Slow it to quarter speed."
The operator complied, tapping the feed.
And there it was.
Two figures.
One male. A face she didn't recognise
Another female. Black hair. The other Alberline that was with Kentaro
They were running. Limping, really. One of them carried Kentaro, the other kept him from falling. But then.
Light.
Not white. Not blue. Not teleportation, they recognised.
It shimmered, distorting the edges of the screen like heat haze through oil.
Then they vanished.
Not moved. Not lifted. Just… Gone.
Akio froze.
Her pupils dilated.
"Again."
They rewound it. Played it again.
Same result.
The energy signature didn't match any of Cradle's tech. Or Spire's. Or Nullborne extraction. It wasn't a portal. It wasn't a drone extraction. It wasn't even natural sublimation.
She took a step back.
It felt familiar.
Like something she had known once. Like a scent from childhood, too faint to name but too distinct to forget.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Don't tell me…"
She stared at the screen as the image looped.
The man. The black haired girl. The vanishing light.
Kentaro disappearing...
*
Kira tried to chase after Velza, but it was pointless; her legs felt like they were moving through syrup, every step heavier than the last. She was running out of steam fast.
Her boots scraped against the rooftop as she slowed, finally stopping near the edge. From here, she could see it, Serica's Fracture Bloom tearing the air apart in the distance, violet and ice-blue light churning like a storm.
She couldn't go back.
Not near Serica.
But her team was there, Milly, Commander Isak, still fighting, still in the middle of it. She couldn't just leave them.
Her chest heaved, but the sound of her breathing was drowned out by the high-pitched whine in her ears. Her vision wavered. She could feel it, her consciousness slipping, her body hitting the hard stop she'd been ignoring for too long.
The suit's systems were failing with her, cutting power, shutting her down in self-preservation mode so she wouldn't burn herself out completely. But that didn't make the crashing fatigue any less brutal. Her thoughts were fogged. Her limbs… Light. Too light, like they didn't belong to her anymore.
She tried to move forward, staggering toward a gap between rooftops. Her knees wobbled. She should've been able to fly over it, but the moment she kicked off, her body gave out. She hit the ground hard, her palms scraping against the concrete.
Her arm stretched out toward the distant, swirling Fracture Bloom.
"Milly… Commander… Everyone… Kentaro…"
Her voice was barely a whisper now.
The edges of the world bled into black. The last thing she felt was the cold air against her cheek as she crumpled onto the rooftop's edge, too weak to even catch herself before darkness claimed her...
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