[Timeline: Time skip Year 4]

[Location: The Old Iron Mines – Vertical Ventilation Shaft 3]

The mountain was screaming.

Deep beneath the earth, the Void Reactor had gone critical.

The hum that had permeated the facility was now a deafening shriek, a sound that vibrated the very fillings in Lyra's teeth.

"Move!" Lyra roared, blasting a gust of wind upward to push the stragglers.

She and the twelve Valkyries were in a vertical shaft, scrambling up the rusted maintenance ladder.

Or rather, Lyra was flying, riding the updraft, while the Valkyries were climbing.

They moved like insects, just as they had in the chamber below.

Their bone claws punched through the thick steel walls of the shaft, allowing them to scramble upward with terrifying speed.

They didn't need ladders. They were like predators fleeing a forest fire.

KR-RUMBLE.

The shaft shook violently. Dust and rocks rained down from above.

Below them, a wave of purple light began to rise. It was the reactor pulse, a tide of pure disintegration rising to consume everything in the complex.

"It's catching up!" Alpha hissed, looking down. The purple light was dissolving the metal ladder fifty feet below them.

Lyra looked up. The grate to the surface was still a hundred feet away.

"I can't carry all of you," Lyra said, gritting her teeth. Her mana was running low from the fight with Subject Zero.

She needed to do something and do something fast, or else it would be too late!

Instantly, her brain began to race, deducing what to do next.

Within the next few seconds, she had already thought over dozens of plans and scenarios, but none to her satisfaction

However, just as she was about to give up, she suddenly looked at the walls.

"Brace yourselves!" She yelled.

Lyra stopped flying. She spun in mid-air, facing downward toward the rising tide of Void energy.

Drawing her Phantom Bow in hand, she fired a wind bomb.

A sphere of super-compressed air shot downward, colliding with the rising energy wave.

BOOM.

Unfortunately, the explosion couldn't stop the wave, but the massive shockwave shot upward, acting like a piston in a cylinder.

"Jump!" Lyra screamed.

The Valkyries released their grip on the walls. The shockwave hit them, launching them upward like cannonballs.

They flew past the remaining hundred feet in a second.

Alpha hit the grate at the top first. She didn't bother to open it. She punched upward, her obsidian-hardened fist shattering the two inches of frozen steel like glass.

They burst out into the night air.

The cold was shocking, fifty degrees below zero. The wind of the Northern Wastes bit into their skin, instantly freezing the sweat and blood on their armor.

"Run!" Lyra ordered, landing in the snow and scrambling to her feet.

"Don't stop until we reach the ridge!"

The thirteen figures sprinted across the permafrost. Behind them, the ground began to bulge.

It looked like a giant beast was trying to claw its way out of the earth. The rock cracked. Purple light bled through the fissures, melting the snow instantly.

They reached the ridge, diving behind a massive outcrop of obsidian rock just as the mine collapsed.

KA-BOOM!

This time, unlike a regular explosion, there was no fire.

A pillar of pure Void energy, thick as a castle tower, pierced the crust of the earth and shot straight into the sky.

It punched a hole through the clouds, reaching up to touch the green ribbons of the aurora borealis.

The sound came seconds later, a concussive thump that knocked the wind out of them.

Then, silence.

The pillar faded. The ground where the mine had been was gone.

In its place was a massive, glowing crater of glassed earth. The factory, the Red Templars, the Flesh-Crafters... they were all atoms under this huge disaster.

Lyra lay in the snow, gasping for air. Her cloak was shredded. Her mana was empty.

Slowly, she sat up.

Around her, the twelve Valkyries were picking themselves up.

They were a terrifying sight. Their grey skin was stark against the white snow. Their eyes, black pools of Void, reflected the auroras dancing above.

They were shivering, not from cold, but from the adrenaline crash.

They looked at their hands. At the claws. At the scales.

One of the younger elves touched her face, feeling the ridge of bone where her eyebrow used to be. She began to weep. "Monsters... we are monsters..."

Another curled up, rocking back and forth. "Where do we go? I don't want to bring trouble to the other elves, plus the humans will hunt us."

Despair began to set in. They were alive, but they had no home. No identity. They were abominations created in a lab.

Children victims of cruel destiny, subject to such a harsh fate.

It's no surprise that they felt this way.

Seeing this, Lyra stood up.

She walked to the edge of the ridge, looking out over the endless white wasteland. The wind whipped her short, silver hair.

"You are right," Lyra said, her voice cutting through their sobbing.

"You are right, even if the queen accepts you, but to the other elves, your skin subject would easily lead to stigma; to them, you are corrupted."

"To the Humans, you are demons and experimental subjects"

The weeping stopped. The Valkyries looked at her, their eyes wide with fear.

Lyra turned to face them. She looked regal, terrifying, and absolute.

"But you are not monsters," she said firmly. "And you are not alone."

She walked over to Alpha, the one who had torn the blast door off its hinges.

"What is your name?" Lyra asked.

The elf hesitated. "Elara... of the Silver Leaf Clan."

"No," Lyra said, shaking her head. "Elara died in that cage. Elara was a victim."

Lyra reached out and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"You are the one who stared down a Void Reactor. You are the one who made a Templar beg for mercy."

Lyra looked at all of them.

"The world wants you to be weak. It wants you to die quietly in the dark so it doesn't have to look at its own sins. But…"

Lyra paused, letting the weight of the word settle.

"But you are not alone, you have me, you and you have him!"

"Him?" Alpha asked, her voice trembling. "The Lord Zero?"

"Yes," Lyra said. "He is the one who gave me the strength to find you. He is the one who waits in the shadows for the day we are strong enough to join him."

She drew her wind-dagger.

She knelt in the pristine snow. With the tip of the blade, she carved a symbol. A perfect circle with a slash through it.

Ø

"We have no clan," Lyra announced. "We have no kingdom. You are the daughters of the Void."

She stood up and pointed at the symbol.

"From this night, you are not 'Failed Subjects.' You are Valkyries. You are the elite guard of the coming King."

Alpha looked at the symbol. She looked at her claws the weapons that had saved her life.

Slowly, the fear in her black eyes faded. It was replaced by something hotter. Purpose.

She knelt in the snow before Lyra. She placed her clawed hand over the symbol.

"I am a Valkyrie," she whispered. "I pledge my claws to Zero."

One by one, the others knelt. The weeping stopped. The trembling stopped.

"We pledge our lives," they chanted, their voices merging into a single, dissonant harmony. "We are the Void."

Lyra looked at them. Her army. Her sisters. Unit Zero.

She looked South, toward the distant Central Continent.

'I found them, Boss,' she thought, a fierce pride swelling in her chest. 'And they are hungry.'

"Rise," Lyra commanded.

The twelve Valkyries stood up. They stood taller now. They didn't look like victims anymore. They looked like a pack of wolves.

"We move to the Ashen Belt," Lyra said, turning North. "We need a base. We need armor. And then..."

She smiled, her violet eyes glowing in the dark.

"...we need to hunt the rest of those Flesh-Crafter bastards!"

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