The rooftop stank of scorched ichor and something worse.

Chunks of rebar jutted up through cracked concrete like ribs through burned skin; countless structures across the roofs had melted into metallic, unrecognizable slag. A billboard frame leaned at a forty-degree angle, its LED panels flickering between static and the remnants of a perfume ad. It cast a ghostly lavender light across the crowd of girls gathered here.

Violet Tempest exhaled, trying to steady the storm of colors behind her eyes.

Deep breath, Vi. Don't throw up from adrenaline. Not cute. Not heroic.

Hana sat closest to the ledge, legs tucked beneath her, oversized rifle across her knees, aura drawn tight around her body like a small, flickering sun. She looked like she belonged in a museum painting - except her hands shook every few seconds. Little tremors. Barely visible unless you were Violet and noticed everything about her.

Dawn After the Cataclysm. Yes... that would be a fitting name for a piece.

Shasta stood behind her like a pillar in red silk, the afternoon haze turning her dress into a floating ember. Her bandaged arms glowed faintly as she channeled Lumina into one of the injured rookies. Slow, steady pulses, immaculate control as always.

Rookbreaker Sable's hammer lay beside her, its runes now dull. Two unregistered rookies Violet had never seen before were half-propped against an air conditioning unit. Bellatrix of the Crimson Glaive's crimson armor was cracked at the chest plate, and her hair, usually a vibrant cascade of fire, now looked like ash, clinging to her pale face. They were the two senior B-Ranks with them on the roof they'd co-opted for triage, and even they had been brought to the brink.

They all looked to the trio, even when they pretended not to.

It wasn't the rank. It wasn't the victories. Violet Tempest was just… loud enough to convince people the world hadn't ended yet. Sometimes that was all they needed.

"Alright, chickadees," Violet said, clapping once, letting her aura brighten her palms like twin lanterns. "Who needs a top-up? I've got plenty, and if I collapse, I collapse fabulously."

Good. Humor was a color too, and right now the entire city's palette skewed toward sickly greens and bruise-violets. Violet wanted yellows. Or at least peach.

Rookbreaker Sable spoke first, her voice a gravel scrape. "Violet Tempest… you sure? You already..."

"Yep!" Violet interrupted brightly, sticking out her tongue. "Already did the math. Got at least… like… three shots of espresso worth of Lumina left. Hana would scold me if I said anything less."

Hana blinked, golden eyes lifting. "Hana would scold you even if it was more," she said quietly. "Recklessness is unbecoming."

Violet ruffled Hana's hair affectionately; Hana stiffened like a startled cat but didn't pull away.

"I know, sunshine. But right now they need us full-spectrum."

"Rhiannon is still buying us a miracle," Bellatrix croaked, spitting a gob of blood onto the concrete. "That thing... it isn't a chaos beast. It's a funeral pyre with teeth."

Hana sulked quietly, aiming at the battle beyond with her rifle. She kept her eyes on the fight six avenues blocks, where the sky boiled silver and red around two figures in the tempest.

They need me to keep talking. Because silence means looking at the smoke plume and imagining our friends lying smoldering and broken in it.

Radiant Rhiannon tore through the skyline like a living comet. Every few seconds a burst of silver light broke through the clouds, followed by a thunderclap so deep it rattled cups and broken glass.

Rhiannon's silhouette was barely visible between the bursts of mana, but even from miles away Violet could see the colors: incandescent whites, phoenix-red coronas, gilded shockwaves cracking outward like halos from the two titans clashing.

Something's about to shift again, Violet thought.

I can feel it. The palette's wrong. Everything's too bright where it should be dark, too dim where it should be bright…

She forced herself to smile anyway.

"Okay. Lily, you first. You're shaking so hard your freckles are vibrating."

Goldenheart Lily squeaked, clutching her wand harder. "S-Sorry—!"

"Nope! Not allowed to apologize in my presence," Violet said, kneeling beside her. "Tempest law. I will arrest you with hugs."

Lily giggled through the tears. The sound softened the jagged teal edges that had been swarming Violet's vision around her.

Shasta's voice floated over, warm and weary:

"You have a way with people, Violet."

"Aw, don't hype me up, I'll get shy," Violet said.

"You're always shy."

"Correct, but I'll get noticeably shy. Even if I'm shy, you know I love it when you hype me up, Red."

"I know."

The other girls chuckled quietly.

Shasta furrowed her brows as she walked over to a young girl with pink hair tied in twin buns. Magenta Bloom, an unregistered rookie who'd arrived with Lily. The girl's breathing had gone shallow and thin, eyes unfocused and trembling.

Her breathing fluttered in short, shallow stutters, her aura flickering and sputtering in unstable, red-edged pulses that made Violet's vision prickle with static.

Shasta knelt, pressing her glowing hands over the girl's sternum.

"Stay with me," she murmured.

Magenta whimpered -not from pain but from something deeper, something Violet could feel in the colors around her. The red lightning the Beast had branded them with earlier wasn't fading. It was responding.

"The Imperator of Desolation's Authority... such a terrible, lonely power," Shasta murmured, more to herself than the others. She rested a glowing palm over the girl's chest. "It corrodes the soul. Eats the bonds that tie us to the world."

"Her presence," Lily whispered, clutching her staff. "It's fading… I-I can't...I can't lose her."

Then the world lurched.

A shockwave bloomed across the cityscape. Silent, wrong, like gravity itself had twitched.

The Beast of Desolation's silhouette convulsed in the distance, its outline warping, bulging, then erupting outward in a grotesque lattice of red lightning that spiderwebbed across the skyline.

Hana flinched first.

Then Bellatrix arched like she'd been struck by a live wire.

Goldenheart Lily's tiny body jerked, her wand slipping from her fingers as she gasped, back arching against the rooftop. A hiss of crimson static danced over her limbs like invisible barbed wire.

The two unregistered rookies convulsed, their auras shredding into red-and-white noise as the spiritual pressure ripped through whatever meager defenses they had left.

Sable slammed a hand over her heart, teeth bared, hammer slipping from nerveless fingers.

Even Shasta winced—a tiny sound, but from /her/ it was alarming.

Violet felt the hook sink into her sternum again: cold, metallic dread threading into her Lumina. Her vision sputtered, colors distorting—greens turning acidic, blues collapsing into bruised purple.

Then—

It stopped.

Not the pain.

Just the pulse.

Shasta exhaled shakily, sweat beading on her brow. "Thank the heavens it's only an echo…"

Violet swallowed, forcing her breath steady.

"What do you mean... echo?" Sable whispered.

Shasta wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "The Imperator of Desolation... the real one's. Well, it's quite unpleasant to say, but Its Authority was capable of tearing its victims apart on contact. This… this is only shredding the surface. If this were the Authority in its original form...."

She didn't finish.

She didn't need to.

But Lily heard enough to choke out, "S-so we'd be…"

"Gone," Bellatrix whispered hoarsely, finishing the thought anyway. "One grazing hit. One resonance like this and—"

"Nope!" Violet snapped sharply, clapping her hands once, a bright lavender thunderclap that cut clean through the panic. "No doomsday lamentations unless it's mine. Everyone breathe. Love your optimism, Red, but maybe save the 'mass vaporization' talk for after the morale circle? Lots of peeps are counting on us."

Rookbreaker Sable gasped, clutching her hammer-hilt as Violet moved to her. "It… burns behind my eyes," she choked. "Like something's chewing the back of my mana reserves."

"Yeah, that's the Gramgeist signature," Violet said, forcing her tone soft, matter-of-fact, like a nurse reassuring a child. "It tries to unravel your spiritual stitching. But if we drown it in external Lumina... bam. No unravelling on my watch."

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Sable gave a weak laugh. "You sound… too cheerful for this."

"That's because I refuse to let the vibes die before we do," Violet said brightly. "Hold still."

She channeled again. More than she should have, feeling her own mana reserves dip sharply.

Then—

A thunderous crack split the sky.

The girls on the rooftop froze.

A bone-chilling roar and screech rang from the battle's direction as a shockwave of sickly orange light flared from the battle into the skies above.

Violet Tempest flinched, her smile freezing in place as the very air around them vibrated with an impossible, mechanical wrongness.

The billboard's perfume ad dissolved into a blizzard of blue static. The metallic tang of the air intensified, thickened with the acrid smell of burning plastic and hot circuitry.

"Darnit... Darnit, darnit! I was hoping I'd be wrong." Violet muttered.

The second time tonight.

"Maaaan..." Violet Tempest grumbled. "Celestial Sonata set the canvas for us so well too."

It was perfect. Straight out of a comic book.

Violet Tempest had even picked out a name for next month's work when she'd joined in on the attack. Celestia Everlasting.

The minutes of breathing room the pink-haired Magical Girl had bought had given everyone else a much-needed chance to triage to group. And with Radiant Rhiannon here they had the monster on the ropes.

But Violet Tempest, who could see the colors on the wind - had tasted something sour in the air. She'd hoped she was wrong.

She was rarely wrong with this stuff. She hated her intuition sometimes.

The strongest fighters in the city had descended on the chaos beast all at once, unleashing everything they had to bring the monstrosity down. And then, it'd taken nearly all of them out at once.

"What... is that?" Bellatrix gasped, clutching her chest.

Hana didn't answer. Her head snapped up, her eyes wide, her hands flying to her rifle. She had seen it.

A few blocks away, where a tide of pure, primal chaos had raged moments before, the beast was rewriting its own anatomy. It wasn't healing. It was… upgrading.

Sickly red flesh bulged and split, peeling back to reveal glistening, metallic plating underneath. A thousand lines of jagged, cyan energy erupted across its new chassis, crackling and sputtering like faulty wiring.

Below them, across the city, new rifts were opening.

Dozens.

Scores.

Jesus effing—

Thin red seams slicing vertically through the skyline, each one pulsing with muffled roars and the silhouettes of things trying to climb through.

One of the unregistered rookies burst into tears.

"No. Not again... We... we can't fight that. We can't. There's too many!"

Another whispered, "We're going to die up here. We're all going to die."

Magenta Bloom clawed weakly at Shasta's sleeve. "Shasta… I don't want to… disappear…"

Bellatrix, still pale and drenched in sweat, rasped, "Rhiannon can't hold all of that. The Beast alone is growing by the minute. How... how are we supposed to..."

Even Hana's aura flickered with fear.

The palette of the rooftop plunged—

gold fading

into gray

into bruise-blue

into despairing violet-black.

Violet Tempest loved Violet. Loved black.

But not like this.

She inhaled.

Exhaled.

Then she stood.

"HEY!"

The entire rooftop jolted at the authority in her voice.

Violet planted her boots, hands on hips, chin up, eyes blazing.

"Look at me."

Dozens of trembling eyes turned toward her.

"Listen carefully," she said, voice warm but iron underneath. "If this were truly hopeless, we wouldn't be standing here right now. Because her?"

She pointed toward the distant silver star of the battlefield.

"That walking supernova up there's barely warmed up yet. I know watching Celestial Sonata leaving the battlefield all bloodied and mangled was quite the shock. But she's not done either. She's alive."

A distant explosion of silver light punctuated her words.

"Rhiannon's telling us we're not done. So I'm telling you now."

Violet spread her arms wide.

"WE are not done yet."

Lily sniffled. The rookies stilled. Even Sable pushed herself a little straighter.

"A bunch of rifts opening?" Violet shrugged. "Cool. That means the Beast's scared of her. Good! I love a cowardly final boss. Makes the comeback arc juicier."

A C-Rank Violet remembered as Moonveil Aqua let out a broken but real laugh.

Violet spread her arms.

"We're alive. Rhiannon's still fighting. Sonata bought us time. And as long as our hearts haven't cracked in half, we are not out of this fight."

The rooftop breathed again.

Air moved.

Auras fluttered.

And she felt the familiar pull in her chest.

Color flickered back into their auras.

Warm yellows.

Soft pinks.

Lavender.

Red, but this time the gentle kind—Shasta's kind.

The hope was still fragile.

But it was there.

But then—

A thread of color slithered across her vision.

Not red. Not blue chaos energy.

Something… else.

A thin filament of silver-blue layered over an undertone of pink and lavender that didn't match the battlefield, didn't match Desolation, didn't match anything she'd ever painted or sculpted or seen in seven years of fighting monsters and twelve years more trying to make sense of the world through art.

It coiled, faint and trembling, like a hairline crack in reality.

And it was underpinning everything in her field of vision.

Her smile twitched.

Okay. That's new. That's really new. That's 'write this down for therapy later' new.

No one else reacted.

So either she was hallucinating....

....or something really weird was...

Violet swallowed and forced another breath into her lungs.

Focus. Rally the girls. Freak out afterward.

She turned just in time to see Shasta finish channeling her Lumina into Magenta Bloom.

The girl let out a weak sob of relief, her aura brightening from shredded red static into a trembling gentle rose.

But it wasn't just relief that made Violet's breath hitch.

It was Shasta.

Her glow.

Her hands.

Her expression.

Shasta had been a pillar of strength for as long as Violet Tempest had known her. When they'd met in the aftermath of the Zhou Ling Incident, the stoic, quiet, dauntless Magical Girl had served as a witness for Hana of the Dawn - corroborating side of her story.

Not the type of witness you dragged in to vouch in front of cameras and courts.

The quiet kind.

The one who'd already seen seven different versions of this sort of catastrophe and had somehow not dissolved.

Back then, Violet had thought: She feels like a cathedral.

Now, watching Shasta work, the thought came back with teeth.

Where the rookies' Lumina flickered and snapped like candles in a draft, Shasta's moved in slow, deliberate layers. A deep, passionate earthy undercurrent, thin ribbons of gold, a faint topwash of soft white. Old colors. Weathered colors. Like pigment mixed from crushed stone, instead of the fine factory smoothness from someone like Cybernova.

Magenta Bloom shuddered as the last of the red lightning's stain bled outward, chased to the edges of her aura and dissolved.

Shasta's palms dimmed.

Not flickered.

Dimmed. Controlled. As if she'd simply closed a tap.

She didn't sag. Didn't pant. Didn't show the slightest tremor.

If Violet squinted with her Aura-Sight, she could almost see it: the excess she hadn't used, folding neatly back into Shasta's core like a tide going out.

She saw it too. Violet could tell from the way her dear friend's eyes narrowed, the slightest tension at her jawline.

Hana of the Dawn was many things, but blind to battlefield math was not one of them.

She caught Violet's gaze, just for a heartbeat.

They didn't say anything.

They didn't need to.

They'd both watched Shasta "run out of mana" in three different engagements over the years. Each time, she'd withdrawn just before the fight tipped from bad to apocalyptic. Each time, the numbers had been wrong.

Too much left unspent.

But it was the correct call every time. On paper.

Violet's fingers itched for a paintbrush.

She wanted to layer Shasta properly. To see how many glazes it took before the red finally stopped and you hit whatever color lay at the very bottom.

Something older than red.

Shasta glanced up then, as if she'd felt the scrutiny.

The world lost its edges. Rooftop, girls, distant dragon, all blurred into broad strokes, as if someone had pulled a wet sponge down the canvas.

Shasta's gaze slid past her to the sky.

"Rhiannon is holding for now," Shasta said, voice quiet but level. "We must ensure there is still something left to hold for."

The palette shifted. Hesitant, but moving away from bruised despair toward something warm again.

Violet let the tension drain from her shoulders just a little. They weren't fixed - not by a long shot, but they weren't drowning anymore. And that counted.

She checked Lily first. Then Sable. Then the two nameless rookies, adjusting the trickle of Lumina until their auras smoothed into recognizable shapes again. When she finally glanced back at Shasta, the red-haired girl had just coaxed the last of the stain out of Magenta Bloom's core.

Not a hint of exhaustion in her posture.

Of course not.

Violet pursed her lips.

Shasta never looked tired.

But today… it was more noticeable. The way her aura folded in layers. Smooth Practiced, like she was hiding just how much force she wasn't using.

She filed it away. She wasn't pushing Shasta. Not today.

Not ever, unless Shasta offered it.

"Okay," Violet said, dusting off her hands and letting her grin return. "Triage complete. Temporary morale restored. Tears postponed for at least five minutes, you hear me?"

Lily hiccupped a laugh.

It helped.

It always helped, a little.

And then—

A faint shimmer slid across Violet's vision.

That strange filament again.

Silver-blue with a blush of pink and lavender underneath, threading the air like someone had underlined the world with a trembling brush. Violet blinked hard.

It didn't go away.

It just wavered.

Like it was waiting.

Nobody else reacted.

Great.

Either she was hallucinating, or this was a "Violet sees spooky metaphysical things" kind of day again.

Focus, Vi. Freak out later.

She turned back to the group. Just in time for the sky to erupt.

A blazing line of cobalt-white tore downward from the clouds as the NCS Dauntless surged into view, its massive silhouette parting the smoke like an iron cathedral on engines. Runic plates unfolded along its sides as its primary magitech cannon built a glow bright enough to paint the rooftops.

Bellatrix's breath hitched. "Are they?!"

"Yep," Violet said, hand on hip. "Big, shiny, internationally-funded backup finally has a clear shot. Love to see it."

The cannon fired.

A beam the size of a commuter train speared the Beast's flank, punching through plating and exploding in a shockwave that split whole cloud banks apart. The monster reeled, howling, its internal circuitry flickering wildly.

Cheers burst from the rooftop.

Rookies half-sobbed in relief.

Even Hana let out a tiny breath she'd been holding for far too long.

For a heartbeat. Just one— the color of the city warmed.

"We might actually have a chance..." Lily started.

Then Violet felt it.

Like a finger trailing down her spine.

Something shifted at the far edge of her Aura-Sight.

A single orange tendril. Thin, shadowy, shimmering like a volcano smeared into a line - curled into existence from absolutely nowhere. It didn't tear space so much as… press into it, until reality thinned and gave way around it like soft clay.

A small, silent hole opened.

No roar.

No flash.

Just emptiness with a pulse.

The girls froze.

"…That is not one of the normal rifts," Hana whispered.

"No," Shasta said softly. "It is not."

The tendril twitched, as if testing the air.

Then it snapped upward like a grappling hook fired by an invisible hand.

Straight toward the Dauntless.

The tendril lashed onto the hull.

The ship jerked violently mid-bank.

Lights along its spine flickered blue, then red.

Then to a rotten, pulsing orange that matched the tendril's glow.

"Oh no," Bellatrix breathed. "It's..."

"Hijacking it," Hana said, voice tight.

The Dauntless lurched sideways.

Runic stabilizers dimmed.

Its engine arrays coughed orange static.

And for several seconds, the giant warship hung crooked in the sky like a puppet missing too many strings.

Violet slapped a hand over her face.

"Of course. Of COURSE the giant expensive city-leveling airship gets possessed today. Why not? Just add it to my list why don'cha?!"

Another tremor shook the Dauntless.

The orange tendril tightened its grip.

The ship began to tilt into a slow, catastrophic roll.

Girls screamed.

Rifts crackled.

The Beast roared triumph.

And the weird silver-blue-pink seam in Violet's vision pulsed again, almost accentuating the fear that was beginning to fall over the small crowd around them.

Violet furrowed her eyebrows.

No.

Not warning.

Not fear.

It was a pleasant color that pulsed almost in a pleading manner.

As if... tugging her upward. Pleading for aid.

Violet dropped her hand from her face and pointed skyward.

"Hana! Shasta! Time for something stupid. Volunteers welcome. Bellatrix! Sable! Leaving the juniors to you."

Hana was already rising on a flare of gold.

Shasta followed in a clean, controlled arc of red.

"Do you have a plan, Violet Tempest?" Hana muttered.

"Yeah uh, my Aura Sight picked up something interesting near the Dauntless. Not a color I've seen from the Desolation stuff. I think it's friendly! Or at least less hostile."

"Less hostile is not an improvement," Shasta said.

"Ain't much of an improvement! But I could definitely use friendly right now!" Violet said as she flew in that direction.

Together, the three shot into the sky. Toward the falling Dauntless, the tightening orange tendril, and the invisible seam in reality that only Violet Tempest could see trembling like the world itself was about to blink.

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