Chapter 5 | An Echo of Leaves Past

  ———

  A/N: There's quite a bit of FFXIV references in this chapter. Can you spot them all? ^^

  ———

  The Argent Canopy. Sapling's Rest. Yggdrasil's Cradle. Alfheim. YGGDRASIL. 2129.

  6 Months After Genesis.

  ManMan sat quietly by her luxurious canopied bed in her suite at The Argent Canopy. The air was still, the mood melancholic. The only sound was the melancholic strain of "Answers" playing from her Orchestrion.

  Six months. Six months of physical therapy measured in incremental, frustrating gains. Six months in YGGDRASIL, measured in a sprawling epic of cross-world wars and digital friendship. Her body was healing. Her avatar was a heroic champion poised for the final battle.

  Yet, she felt neither healed nor champion-like.

  Today was the day she reached the final quest of the lengthy five-chapter epic, the final Trial named "The Final Day." A fittingly dramatic title for a confrontation with the Endsinger— the final entity, the primordial despair, the one who represents Nihility, the harbinger of despair. She seeks to unmake reality itself, reducing YGGDRASIL and all of creation into silent, despairing stillness.

  The friends from her brother's clan, Nine's Own Goal, had erupted with enthusiastic offers to accompany her for the trial. She had accepted, of course, but she had also asked for a moment. Just a few minutes to… prepare. To remember why she was fighting a battle against the embodiment of oblivion in the first place.

  So much had happened, so much she had experienced. Her gaze drifted from her silent and plush room to a shelf of keepsakes. Trophies from the battles she had fought. Mementos.

  As "Answers" swelled into its tragic, choral peak, her avatar's long, slender fingers— fingers that could cast world-shattering magics in the game but in reality had difficulty gripping a physio-therapist's stress ball— hovered over the first memento she had ever received: a Black Sun Shard.

  She touched it. She could still feel its cold, jagged edges in her mind, humming with a dissonant, malevolent energy.

  The victory that day had been cold too. Hollow, she thought. The digital confetti and resonant cheers from Midgard's Victory celebrations that day seemed to flicker at the edge of her visions as the memory rose unbidden…

  ———

  The Black Wolf's Praetorium. Argent Fumaroles. Midgard. YGGDRASIL.

  A Realm Reforged, An Answer Unanswered.

  ManMan had been a fledgling Astrologian then, barely tested. After a thousand quests and with the weight of a "level 50" tag on her shoulders, she finally stood as part of the vanguard— a two-party player spearhead for a tide of hundreds of Midgard's warriors. Each NPC's face was an unique portrait of grim resolution, one that was rendered with detail that felt unnervingly personal.

  The approach had been a brutal, grinding gauntlet. They had fought trench by reeking trench, meter by blood-soaked meter, until the allied forces finally cracked open a path into the Praetorium. The fortress was a monstrosity of dark steel and blackstone, a brutalist carbuncle that seemed to have been clawed from the scorched earth itself.

  From the frontlines, she had watched waves of Midgard's finest throw themselves at the unyielding Muspelheim defences. It was here she had learned, with clinical horror, the hard limits of her power.

  Her Tier-7 [Astral Draw] and Tier-8 [Umbral Draw] were potent, yes— a significant boost to any single target. But they were a single, glowing card tossed into a raging ocean of blood and steel. She could only channel so much fortune so quickly. Her strongest cards such as [The Balance], [The Spear], [The Arrow], could turn the tide for a single combatant, but they were useless against the sheer arithmetic of the slaughter. Their parties had tried, but by the time the perimeter was breached, the ground was a carpet of the dead.

  They are not real, she had told herself. Beautifully rendered. Brilliantly voiced. Lines written by an overworked developer in a cubicle. Authentic, but not real.

  Yet, a cold shiver had run down her virtual spine when an older soldier, his face marked by a carefully modelled scar, had locked eyes with her avatar for a split second during the slaughter. In that brief, fleeting connection, she saw what felt like a flicker of fear before it was swallowed by resolve. The next moment, he was gone, charging into the fray, his warcry— "For my daughter's future!"— echoed with flawless, heartbreaking conviction.

  When they reached the Praetorium, the fighting inside its grim corridors was, if anything, more oppressive than the open-field bloodbath outside. The grand Alliance charge had bottlenecked into a suffocating grind. They were funnelled into kill zones and narrow hallways, forced to clear room by brutal room against the fanatical, last-stand defiance of the Muspelheim Legionnaires.

  Being players, they held their own easy enough, parting the black tide with relative ease.

  ManMan had put all her newly learnt spells and skills to use. Her Astrometer became a whirl of focused light as her fingers flicked Arcana cards to her allies with the precision of a croupier dealing a winning hand. [The Balance] here, [The Bole] there. Her unique ability, [Divinated Symphony], hummed to life, its buffs wrapping around her party members like a celestial crescendo that surged with every clash of steel. She was the unseen metronome setting their pace, speeding their passage to the throne room.

  Yet, for every legionnaire they felled with their overwhelming player power, another NPC ally would meet a gruesome, scripted end. A shield wall would buckle; a battle cry would become a wet gurgle. Each death was a ghastly and orchestrated sting. She did not know their names, but she knew their banners— the sigils of city-states whose streets she had walked, whose citizens had given her a thousand errands that now felt like a lifetime of shared history. By the time the massive doors to the throne room groaned open, the glorious alliance army was reduced to a scant, bloodied handful.

  And there, in the cavernous chamber, awaited the reason for all this sacrifice. The Ultima Weapon.

  The Ultima Weapon was a blasphemy of iron and divinity, a hunched, bipedal titan of blackened, arcane-alloy plates scarred with ritualistic runes. At its core, a crimson energy source pulsed from within the Heart of Zabik, its light bleeding unholy energies through the seams in its hell-forged armour. Its face was a single, massive draconic head with twin, unblinking crimson eyes that burned with cold, brutal intelligence— seeing all, yet wholly devoid of mercy.

  It was a machine of absolute, apocalyptic finality, commanded by the Legatus of the occupying Muspelheim Legion: Gaius von Baelsar, the Black Wolf himself.

  It was her most intense and exhilarating battle yet— a symphony of controlled chaos. The Ultima Weapon commanded the Midgardian Deities Garuda (wind), Titan (earth), Ifrit (fire) and Leviathan (water). His attacks were a relentless, elemental onslaught that demanded her absolute focus as a healer.

  The tanks were efficiently blocking the attacks and holding its hate, but the damage they were constantly receiving was a persistent mental alarm in ManMan's mind. She and her other supports had spent the entire fight layering shields, snapping off heals, weaving mitigation buffs between frantic dodges of the Weapon's heavily telegraphed, arena-cleaving attacks.

  Once, she had gambled. Greedy for one more cast of [Malefica], she had overstayed her position. The retaliatory swing caught her avatar square-on with a hammer-blow of pure force that sent her HP bar plummeting to a sliver— a terrifying 33% as the panicked shouts of her co-healers echoed in her ears. In that heart-stopping moment, the thrill vanished. Survival, not optimisation, became the priority. She made a mental note then to never greed the cast.

  It had been a taxing battle for her, but ultimately, victory was a foregone conclusion under the experienced onslaught of the other veteran players.

  As the Ultima Weapon fell, her first-person view panned across the hellscape they had wrought. The fight was won, but the surroundings were scorched and barren. The few surviving Midgard NPC warriors who had followed them in had all but been vanquished, with nary a speck of dust remaining to mark their sacrifice.

  When the final interactable cutscene began, she was locked into the celebrations atop the ruins of the Praetorium, a glass thrust into her avatar's hand. She watched through her own eyes as her character moved among the cheering Midgardian leaders and the scant handful of surviving Alliance warriors. They were smiling, triumphant, yet the music that swelled to fill the air was a tragic and haunting lament.

  To all of my children to whom Death now passes his judgment…

  "Answers" had played for the first time here. No victory fanfare, only the sound of a grieving mother, a weeping goddess, her voice full of a sorrow so unfathomable it felt devoid of all warmth and spirit, possessing only weary, painful grief. ManMan did not know its owner then, but she heard it as a dirge for all the fallen— Midgardian and Muspelheimian alike.

  She remembered. The determined face of a young Alliance lieutenant, saluting her before the final explosion that breached the gates. The scream of a soldier being burned alive by a Muspelheim caster her party could not fell in time. The empty space surrounding her party after Ultima was defeated, devoid of the allies who had fought beside them.

  She looked at the cheering Midgardian leaders, their celebratory cries feeling smaller and more hollow by the second against the goddess's ethereal sorrow. Their politics and relief were a tiny footnote in a much larger tragedy. They toasted with virtual champagne as digital confetti rained down, but the voice she had heard then was a heartbreaking lament. She wanted to leave this cutscene. The celebration felt wrong.

  As she approached the celebration's perimeter, her gaze fell below the opulent stage.

  There, in the shadows, were the true survivors. The soldiers and warriors who had bled in the trenches and survived the final battle. They were not celebrating. They huddled together, a ragged tapestry of every race that called Midgard home— humanoids, elves, dwarves, assorted demi-humans— all united in a silence heavier than any cheer. She saw tears tracing paths through the grime on their faces, saw hands trembling with shock and grief. They were mourning their fallen, their comrades, their deceased.

  Was this truly just a story? Was this truly just a game? If so, why was she feeling their sorrow? Why could she feel them asking the world, "Tell us why, why must we suffer?"

  She looked down at her elven hands, so flawlessly rendered, so impossibly graceful. They could weave spells that bent probability and shielded her allies from cataclysmic blasts, yet they had been utterly incapable of saving even a single one of the countless souls who had charged into the breach alongside her.

  What was this all for? Why must they be hurt? Why did they have to suffer an unfair destiny, like I had?

  And as the goddess's lament continued to weep from the sky, a single object rolled from the ruins of the Ultima Weapon: the Black Sun Shard. She heard Her speak for the first time then.

  "Beware... the sun's shadow grows long…"

  She did not know the voice belonged to Hydae-Lynn, nor what the warning symbolised. She did not understand the "Answers" that was sung, but she felt their terrible, undeniable weight.

  This was no fictional story. It was a facet of reality, every bit as real as the Fate that had taken from ManMan her life's purpose.

  She might be this world's hero, but the title came with a cost. An immense debt paid in the blood of others. To her, the only "Answers" she was left with here were but the ghostly faces of the fallen.

  That, and the inconvenient survival of an Imperial Legatus.

  From a smouldering pile of wreckage, the broken, staggering form of one Gaius von Baelsar hobbled forward. His iconic armour was shattered, but his will was inexplicably and theatrically, still unextinguished. He pointed a trembling, gauntleted finger directly at her avatar, his voice a guttural command that utterly vanquished the somber lament's final, dying melodies.

  "TELL ME… FOR WHOM DO YOU FIGHT?"

  He stumbled dramatically, catching himself on a shattered piece of his own war machine as Alliance soldiers rushed to surround him. The Legatus gazed out over the apocalyptic battlefield he had wrought with a mix of defiance and despair.

  "SUCH DEVASTATION… THIS WAS NOT MY INTENTION…"

  With that final, impeccably delivered line of melodrama, his strength failed him and he collapsed in a heap, unconscious.

  The sheer, over-the-top absurdity of it— the bombastic delivery, the perfect timing, the sheer nerve of interrupting a goddess's dirge with his personal theatrical soliloquy— was so comical that the sorrow that had engulfed ManMan moments earlier completely evaporated, replaced by a bewildered, breathy laugh that escaped her. "Pfft… hahaha!"

  Looking back, her friend Peroroncino had later filled her in on the legend of the Praetorium. The original ordeal involving Gaius von Baelsar and the Ultima Weapon used to take a full 36-man legion and was punctuated by endless, unskippable cutscenes. It had become a time-honoured tradition for players to temporarily AFH and log out, with one particularly dedicated crafter famously providing daily progress reports on her IRL knitting projects in the official forums while waiting for the cutscenes to play.

  Staring at the Black Sun Shard in her palm, the memory faded. She was back in her Alfheim suite. The echo of her own laughter felt strange in the quiet room.

  She placed the shard back onto the shelf. The Orchestrion's "Answers" was ending its loop.

  Her finger scrolled through the song list and stopped on "Dragonsong." A brief moment of hesitation. An imperceptible pause, a virtual breath held.

  Then she hit play.

  The first, hauntingly beautiful piano notes began to fill the room with its sorrow. Her gaze was drawn to the shattered shield mounted on her wall. A trophy of her greatest failure. Its polished silver still gleamed, painting a painful contrast to the massive, violent crack that ran through its centre. This was a wound that had never truly healed, a memory the song's melody now clawed to the surface of her consciousness…

  ———

  The Final Steps of Faith. The Gjallarbrú. Border Between Alfheim and Jotunheim. YGGDRASIL.

  Heavens' Ward, Dragons' Song.

  The truth behind the thousand-year war between Elfkind and Dragonkin had been laid bare— a simple, devastating misunderstanding, a folktale of love and loss twisted by mortal greed and draconic grief into an engine of eternal vengeance. ManMan stood at the precipice of The Gjallarbrú, The Echoing Bridge. This was the final Trial, The Final Steps of Faith. Alfheim must brace itself against the final onslaught of the draconic horde.

  Her party's mission was deceptively simple: stand with the thousand-strong Elven Aesirguard, The Grove's Auric Sentinels, and hold the line against the onslaught of lesser drakes and dragonoids. Whatever the cost.

  ManMan stared at the approaching black tide of dragons approaching from the air. A black tide of scales and fury blotted out the sky, the thunder of countless wings a pounding drumbeat of impending doom— elven doom. She turned to glance at her fellow players. A strange, somber ritual was unfolding. One by one, they were sending her— the only Sprout in the two parties— a string of sorrowful emojis (′；ω；｀) (???︿???) (︶︹︺).

  Puzzled, she sent back a confused (?_??) but none of the veterans offered an explanation. The silent pity was its own ominous warning.

  Her attention returned to her elven kinsmen. High elves, wood elves, dark elves— every elf that called the shimmering spires of Alfheim home stood united on that bridge. Resplendent in silver and gold armour, they gripped radiant halberds and shimmering tower shields. She knew they were NPCs, polygons and code placed by the developers to accentuate the atmosphere, but just like in the Praetorium, she could see the emotions they held.

  She saw the white-knuckled grips on their weapons, the subtle tremble in a young sentinel's shoulders, the stark fear in their beautifully rendered eyes. They knew death was coming. They could feel the bridge shudder, the skies quake with its approach. Yet, they stood.

  A song played. She knew its title. "Heroes", one that opened with a haunting, a capella choir. Solemn. Foreboding. A prelude to the coming tragedy.

  Soon, an NPC she recognised strode forth on his white unicorn— Ser Haurchenault Valeriant Galenor of the Silver Shield. The first NPC who had greeted her upon her entry into the frigid mountainous borders between Alfheim and Jotunheim. The light-blue-haired High Elf Paladin had welcomed her into his Frostreach Citadel, the very fortress they were now defending. He was the friend who had aided her unconditionally, a fellow elf who relentlessly, almost naively, believed in her potential.

  When she was framed for a crime and exiled, he had been the only one to offer her sanctuary, cheerfully saying, "Pray, look not so despairing! For sanctuary, you need only ask. My home is your home!"

  And now, he stood beside her, that same unshakable confidence on his face beneath his helm. As he drew his sword and aimed its tip at the approaching horde, he roared out, "Guide us, Oh Mighty Fury, Auri-El!"

  And the song answered him.

  Guide us!

  Guide us!

  Guide us!

  Guide us!

  Guide us!

  Guide us!

  Guide us to this victory!

  The drums kicked in, the draconic horde roared. The battle had begun.

  The first wave hit. ManMan held the frontlines with her fellow players against the crashing tide of scale, tooth, and claw. Her vision shook with an intensity she had never experienced in any dive or competition. A living wall of primordial, draconic fury smashed into the elven lines. Amidst her own frantic calls and casts of [Aspected Benefic], [Aspected Tutelica], [Aspected Malefic] and the complex weaves of [Aspected Astralise] courtesy of her new Aspectarian subclass— the only other sounds that pierced the chaos were the screeches of drakes and the raw, pained screams of her elven kin.

  Her player party was holding their own. Of course they would. They were players. Her tanks were immovable bulwarks, tying down the largest dragons in a storm of flashing steel and taunts. Her DPSes unleashed waves of physical and magical annihilation, fire and ice and lightning tearing into the horde. She and the other healers were prioritised preservation, their focus narrow and clinical. Keep the party alive. That was the objective.

  But beyond their small sphere of control, the battle was a slaughter.

  Soon, a dragonsong, led by two distinct, ancient voices, began their hymn of vengeance, its lyrics a chilling counterpoint to the carnage.

  Dys an sohm in

  [Our slumber disturbed]

  (Our ancient peace lies shattered.)

  Rhos an kyn ala na

  [All my kin awaken]

  (To arms, my grieving kin!)

  Yet, for every dragon they felled, she could see three more surge forward from the blotted sky. Those they had let slip— the smaller drakes, the swift wyverns— waded deep into the Aesirguard lines. Dragonspear artillery were shattered and hellfire breaths washed over formations of elves, their shimmering silver armour melting into their flesh. Vicious swipes of claw and tail sent bodies, once standing proud, flying through the air in broken arcs.

  Eehl an sohm in

  [Our peace sacrificed]

  (All tranquility shall be forsaken.)

  Sahl djas afah an

  [Vengeance will be ours]

  (Vengeance shall be ours!)

  The song shifted. The driving force of "Heroes" bled away, replaced by celestas and high pianos weaving a relentless, repeating melody. It was a fragile, desperate, and hopeless rendition of the expansion's core "Heavensward" leitmotif. Between the flash of her spells and the eruptions of stellar energy from her Astrometer, the full horror of the massacre seared itself into her mind— as a sheltered champion, she was now watching her homeland burn.

  Each repetition of the despairing leitmotif was punctuated by a fresh horror, a micro-second of elven slaughter:

  A young elven sentinel, his face filled with terrified determination, was swiped off the bridge by the crushing tail of a lesser drake. The motif played as he fell silently into the mountainous abyss, his scream swallowed by the din.

  An older knight, his armour adorned with the sigil of his house, shoved a younger sentinel out of the path of a blast of deathly pale blue flames. The motif played as the knight stumbled, his gilded plate— once shimmering with ornate filigree— buckling and melting, the man inside consumed by unholy fire.

  The bridge trembled violently as a fully-grown dragon landed behind their party, its weight instantly flattening an entire line of sentinels into a smear of broken metal and elven remains. As the song's strings surged with newfound urgency, the beast gave a defiant roar and charged deeper into the Aesirguard ranks. The choir swelled anew, its voices a wordless lament for the dying that synced perfectly with the dragon's tail sweeping in a devastating low arc. The melody soared to its peak, and with it, a hundred knights were thrown into the air.

  A single, held note from the sopranos hung in the air as her airborne kin, already shattered and broken by the attack, was incinerated by a coordinated blast of dragonfire. Their final agonised screams formed a terrible and fleeting harmony to the music's tragic grandeur.

  She realised then, that this was the sound of heroism, of Heroes— not the glory, but the cost. These were her kin. Each note of that harrowing motif was another elven life extinguished, another story erased, another reason to fight snuffed out in a burst of flame.

  Then, the skies tore open and a massive elder dragon landed.

  A shadow vast enough to eclipse the sun shrouded the bridge. The digital air grew heavy and thick with primordial hatred. This was no mere drake, no mere dragon. This was Nidhogg. The Hellfire Dragon Sovereign. Of the First Brood. Brood-Brother to his sister, Ratatoskr, and Brood-Brother to Hraesvelgr, whose beloved was an elven woman named Shiva. Both her and Ratatoskr were betrayed and slain a thousand years ago by ManMan's own elven forbears.

  As his six wrathful eyes scanned the carnage, a guttural, world-shaking roar erupted from his maws, a sound that seemed to warp the very music playing, twisting it into his own hymn of vengeance.

  Fulm ah il prent

  [Blood for our lost kin]

  (In blood, our sister's remembered.)

  Fulm ah il la prim

  [Blood for our lost love]

  (In blood, our love's lament.)

  He has returned. And he will have his revenge.

  Fulm ah il sa

  [Blood for our sorrow]

  (Let sorrow be our weapon.)

  Fulm ah ra gwin!

  [Blood for our wrath!]

  (And wrath, our final monument!)

  The massive, quadruple-winged beast unleashed a blast of scorching hellfire directly at her party. Her tanks immediately broke from their engagements, shields slamming together to form a desperate bastion against the apocalyptic flames. They held, but the cost was immense; their health bars plummeted as they paid a bloody toll for daring to stand against the Sovereign's wrath. Her party pivoted, concentrating all their fire on the colossal dragon. Spells and steel flew in a storm of defiance against the mountain of hatred.

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  But their efforts were pathetically insufficient. Nidhogg was not a dragon that could be felled so easily. Her tanks were buckling under the relentless assault, their defensive cooldowns evaporating. Her DPSes were being swarmed and pinned by the lesser drakes, their damage scattered and ineffective. The other healers' mana pools were draining into a void, their spells barely keeping the line from total collapse. ManMan watched her own MP bar gutter like a dying candle. She was out of skills, everything was on cooldown. In mere moments, she and the other healers would be empty. And then, they would be overrun.

  However, hope arrived in a flash of silver and light-blue. Ser Haurchenault, upon seeing her party about to be overrun, broke from his lines and charged the dread wyrm, his shield held high. He had made his choice.

  Amidst the absolute peak of the musical and emotional crescendo, the Elven Paladin slammed into Nidhogg. The impact was a mere spark against a mountain, but it was enough. The dragon's attention broke, the torrent of hellfire ceasing for a precious second, granting ManMan's allies a single, vital breath of respite.

  However, that relief was short-lived.

  As the flames died, Nidhogg turned his full attention and unimaginable hatred upon the elf who had dared interrupt him. ManMan watched, utterly helpless, as the wyrm summoned a flaming lance of concentrated draconic wrath and hurled it at Ser Haurchenault.

  The High Elf brought his silver shield up in a perfect block. For a heartbeat, it held. Then, a spiderweb of cracks exploded across its surface. The midpoint shattered, and the lance speared through the Paladin's chest.

  The music pulled back. The choir fell silent, leaving only a lone, haunting melody and the fading of faint percussion. ManMan's will screamed at her avatar to move, to cast, to do anything, but her avatar refused. This was an ordained moment in time, and the game's reality will not allow her to go off script.

  Ser Haurchenault turned toward her, stumbled a few steps, and collapsed. Only then was she allowed to move.

  Her avatar rushed to his side on rails, the animation forcing her to her knees. She desperately willed a healing spell into existence, but her MP was a dry well. He looked up at her, his gaze seeming to pierce through the virtual reality straight into her soul. A weak, characteristic smile touched his lips as he held up a trembling hand to her avatar's cheek.

  "Do not look at me so, ManMan Lai… A smile better suits a hero..."

  The hand fell. The battle lulled. The cutscene ended. Her party offered a quiet, respectful chain of grieving emojis, all from the veterans who had long known this was coming (′;︵;.) (???︿???) ?( ?? ︵?? )?.

  Their tank, his tone gentle, offered a simple line of encouragement. "Come, Sprout. The battle is not yet over. Nidhogg awaits."

  ———

  The Gjallarbrú was silent. Only the dead remained. Bodies of dead dragons and elves littered its stones. ManMan and her party now stood as the last, insignificant barrier between the colossal, heaving form of the dread wyrm and the heart of Alfheim.

  Nidhogg was a vortex of rage and pain. The air crackled with his palpable hatred, given a vicious, tangible form by the music that swelled around them: "Revenge of the Horde." It was a driving, brutal, percussive storm— a song of vengeance given sound, its harsh horns and relentless rhythm perfectly mirroring the dragon's own endless, bitter wrath.

  ManMan herself was quiet. Angry. Furious. Grieving. The next moments were characterised by silence. No callouts, no banter, just flawless rotations. It was a wall of numb efficiency against the brutal slog. Nidhogg's assault was a symphony of pain: punishing AoE hellfires, concussive raid-wide roars, rapid tank-busters that landed with the force of meteor strikes. Every brutal impact from the wyrm was underscored by a furious rush of percussion and harsh chorus, as if the song itself was attacking them.

  When the dragon finally fell, no fanfare accompanied her victory. The music abruptly silenced itself as Nidhogg let loose a final, defiant, guttural roar that dissolved into a choked gasp. His lifeless form, a mountain of scales and spent hatred, crashed onto the bridge. The silence that followed was absolute and utterly deafening.

  ManMan's cold fury receded, her revenge technically complete. Yet all that remained was a raw, hollowed-out emptiness. Vengeance was hers, yet it had fixed absolutely nothing. Haurchenault was still gone. Every elf who had stood with her was still dead, their bodies decorating the bridge and filling the ravine below. She had merely added another great tragedy onto the pile.

  And that pile, she knew with a sinking dread, was about to get catastrophically larger.

  With the beating of immense, silver-white wings, Hraesvelgr descended. His magnificent form radiated an aura of soul-crushing sorrow as he landed beside the body of his final Brood-Brother. And beside him, levitating with an air of casual, millennia-old arrogance, was the Immortal Emperor of the Muspelheim Empire, Emet-Soul. His reveal was one of quiet, smug acknowledgement, a reveal of his role as the one manipulating the strings of this thousand year conflict.

  He delivered the crushing exposition with the bored air of a critic reviewing a tedious play. He laid bare how he had fed Nidhogg's rage, stoked the first Elven King's paranoia, and orchestrated the entire thousand-year war— all as a mere diversion, a sideshow to bleed the Worlds dry for a much larger, more terrifying design. He dismissed their collective suffering, their lost kin, their sacred causes, as nothing more than "passing entertainment." With a final, dismissive glance, he vanished, his cruel experiment concluded.

  Hraesvelgr was left alone. The lone great wyrm, the last of the First Brood, looked upon his fallen brother's body and let out a sound that was nothing but desolate grief. It was a sound that resonated deep within ManMan's own soul, a mirror of the hollow scream she had swallowed moments before. For the first time in this conflict, she understood the wyrm. She knew what he felt.

  He had lost everything. His mate, Shiva. His sister, Ratatoskr. His brother, Nidhogg. And now, his purpose.

  He turned to look at ManMan, his ancient eyes empty and utterly devoid of spirit. And in that silence, the first, haunting piano notes of "Dragonsong" began.

  Then, Hraesvelgr charged.

  This was a different fight from the one against Nidhogg. This was a funeral dirge for one. For Hraesvelgr. He was not fighting to win. He was fighting to die. The song told his entire story.

  "Two souls, once intertwined,

  One true love they did find…"

  His attacks were beautiful and artful expressions of sorrow— blizzards of frozen tears, ice javelins that shattered like broken promises against their shields. The song accompanied his every movement; each swipe of his claws was met with a swell of strings. Each time an attack landed, the piano's lament grew louder, more urgent. Each time he was struck, the lyrics became more sorrowful, the singer's voice cracking with shared pain.

  "…He burned with frost, she shone with grace,

  'Neath the waning moon, they left no trace,

  Watching as their worlds were torn apart..."

  And soon, the lyrics peaked, a heartbreaking crescendo of Hraesvelgr's obituary, sung by the world itself:

  "A love, lying empty

  A bond, incomplete

  Alone, for eternity

  A pain, without cease…"

  ManMan realised the devastating truth. She was not fighting a monster; she was participating in a mercy killing. She was granting his final wish for release. This revelation was a more painful wound than any of Nidhogg's attacks. The entire millennia-long war was never a battle of good versus evil. It was a devastating tragedy with no villains, only victims— a story where nobody won, and everyone lost.

  As Hraesvelgr's physical form fell, the slow sorrow of the piano gently gave way to a chorus of transcendent, ethereal strings. Instead of a corpse hitting the ground, a magnificent, shimmering dragon of pure light rose from his body, hovering in the air as if waiting. Then, from the direction of Alfheim, the radiant spirit of an elven woman— one ManMan instinctively knew was Shiva— ascended to meet him.

  The two souls met in a mid-air embrace of swirling light and gentle frost, finally reunited after a thousand years of agony and separation. As they soared upwards, the red, angry spirit of Nidhogg— now cleansed of its all-consuming vengeance— rose to join them. The three spirits, the Brood-Brothers and the beloved, circled once before traveling upwards, reaching the constellations above and fading into starlight, their souls at last at peace.

  And it was here ManMan understood. The true villain was neither dragon nor elf, but the orchestrator of their pain. Her 'victory' was a farce, a bittersweet final note to a symphony of suffering that had lasted an age and the end of a thousand-year-old love story.

  The song ended. The serene silence of her Alfheim suite embraced her once more. She stood motionless for a long moment, the ghost of that ancient grief fresh and aching in her heart. Before the quiet could become overwhelming, the next track in the Orchestrion's rotation began to play.

  The stirring, defiant, and desperate chords of "Storms of Blood" crashed into the room. Instinctively, her gaze was drawn across the room, landing irresistibly on the bloodied and battered Resistance Banner Pin tucked beside the shattered shield…

  ———

  The Pyrekeep. Muspelheim. YGGDRASIL.

  Storms of Steel, Storms of Blood.

  ManMan remembered how the next chapter of the MSQ had felt… considerably different in atmosphere. While her stated goal was to liberate the lush, fertile world of Vanaheim and the subterranean realm of Svartalfaheim, the journey across their many provinces and cities had felt more like an epic road trip than some grim military campaign. Much of her attention had been spent in awe, simply admiring the breathtaking sights and rich cultures of the two leaves of YGGDRASIL.

  Vanaheim was a land of immense natural beauty— fertile plains, ancient forests, and nature-inspired cities that were built in harmony with the land. The Vanir culture, deeply connected to the world's aether, was one of druids, rangers, and artisans. The Muspelheim Empire had invaded to brutally harvest its resources via the strip-mining of its sacred groves and leylines. Here, ManMan's resistance fought a guerrilla war, turning the very land itself against it would-be occupiers.

  Svartalfaheim, on the other hand, was a realm of magnificent forges, deep crystalline mines, and incredible craftsmanship. Its inhabitants, dwarves and dark elves, were master smiths and engineers enslaved en masse to produce the Empire's war machinery. Here, ManMan's objective had been less about inspiring a people and more about a tactical campaign: wresting control of its strategic surface ports. Once free of the Empire's grip, Svartalfaheim's resilient people would naturally reclaim their home.

  ManMan had loved every second of that sprawling, vibrant road trip. The people, the cultures, the landscapes— it had been a welcome reprieve from the soul-crushing weight of the Dragonsong War.

  However, all good things must come to an end. The journey's finale was a violent return to form in a brutal, massive, and direct assault on the Pyrekeep, the imperial palace-fortress at the heart of Muspelheim Empire's molten capital.

  Now with an alliance of four worlds behind her, the combined forces of Midgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, and Svartalfaheim assembled for the final push were a phenomenal sight to behold. Legions of elves, dwarves, Vanir druids, demi-humans and Midgardian soldiers stood united. Yet, as ManMan stood at the forefront with her player party, the spectacle only fed a cold knot of dread in her stomach. This was the sum total of their strength; if they failed here, there would be nothing left to stop the Empire's inevitable crushing counterattack.

  Moments before the charge, a young humanoid soldier— no older than a teenager, his armour seeming too large for his frame— looked at ManMan. His eyes were wide with fear, yet also held a determined, desperate light. He muttered a line that cut straight to the bone, a mantra that would come to define the entire bloody campaign:

  "For those we have lost. For those we can yet save."

  Soon after, the battle horns sounded, and the stirring, triumphant yet sorrowful chords of "Storm of Blood" kicked in.

  ManMan, now at level 73, was feeling confident. She had mastered specialised Astrologian classes and wielded an arsenal of Tier-9, Tier-10 and even Super-Tier skills and spells: [Fated Denouement], which planted a delayed stellar explosion at a location of her choosing; [Ordained Horoscope], a timed celestial blessing that granted a surge of regenerative stellar energies; and her significantly improved [Astral Realignment] skill, which allowed her aspected abilities to mend even necrotic wounds, pulling anyone she wished back from the very brink of death.

  Yet, for all the miraculous power at her fingertips, the assault on the Pyrekeep's gates had descended into a bloodbath.

  "Storm of Blood"'s driving, relentless percussive rhythm became the soundtrack to a meat grinder. The alliance fighters surged forward against a fortress built into the side of a volcano, its obsidian walls glowing with a vicious internal heat. They were forced to fight tooth and nail across narrow pathways and precarious bridges spanning rivers of molten lava, all while enduring a constant barrage of artillery and spells from the fortified defenders above. This gauntlet of fire and stone— the Bridge of Scorn— was the only way into the heart of the Pyrekeep.

  The slow, painful advance to the bridge was filled with death. Progress was measured in inches and paid for with the lives of entire squads of alliance fighters. The closer they inched toward the bridge itself, the more the terrain conspired against them; the path narrowed drastically, with raging lava flows boxing them in on both sides. Ranged artillery from the keep's defenders maintained a constant, punishing barrage, forcing the alliance casters to focus entirely on defensive barriers rather than supporting the melee vanguard.

  When they finally reached the bridge proper, they were met by the elite Immortal Guard. While her player party engaged and dismantled its elite commanders, the rank-and-file soldiers were left to the alliance troops. The alliance had superior numbers, but the Immortal Guard lived up to their name. The brawl devolved into a brutal war of attrition on the narrow span not unlike a chaotic press of bodies and steel. The music had subtly shifted, its strings now carrying the melancholic weight of the fallen as more and more bodies from both sides fell into the molten rivers below.

  The young humanoid soldier ManMan had seen before the charge somehow ended up fighting right next to her party. Through the corner of her vision, she caught glimpses of his desperate struggle— his shrieks of terror and anguish as his friends fell one by one. Yet, against all odds, they pushed on.

  And as they finally shattered the Immortal Guard's last line of defence, an alliance general's rallying shout echoed over the din, signalling the final, decisive push.

  The mood shifted instantly. The alliance now held the upper hand, a surge of hard-won morale electrifying their ranks. The anthem chorus of "Storm of Blood" erupted in full force as its defiant lyrics became the very sound of the rebellion crashing against the gates of the Muspelheim Empire.

  The young alliance fighter locked eyes with ManMan one last time, the fear in his gaze now burned away by a resolve of desperate finality. And in that shared glance, a silent understanding passed— this was the end, one way or another. Then, with a unified roar, the entire alliance army charged as one, becoming a living tidal wave as they hurled themselves against the Pyrekeep's colossal obsidian gates.

  Consumed by the fervour, ManMan and her party joined the chaotic, glorious, and desperate sprint into the teeth of the defenders. Spells and arrows rained down from the battlements. Her party's DPS unleashed their most devastating cooldowns in a blazing spectacle of light and sound. Alliance soldiers martyred themselves, using their own bodies as battering rams against the unyielding walls.

  The anthem reached its absolute, heart-pounding climax as a deafening crack echoed across the battlefield— they had finally breached the Pyrekeep's gates. The alliance flooded into the opening, a river of vengeance cutting down the remaining defenders.

  Yet, the music had chosen this moment to remove itself from the sounds of war. Its sudden silence was more jarring than any explosion. ManMan's party pushed into the inner courtyard, its air filled with smoke and the smell of ozone and blood. It was there she found him.

  The young soldier was leaning heavily against a soot-stained wall, breathing in ragged, wet gasps. A burning spear was embedded deep in his abdomen, its tip glowing with vicious heat.

  She rushed over and knelt by his side. The boy's gaze, glassy with pain, focused on her. He looked past her shoulder, toward the bridge now littered with the corpses of his comrades, then back to her face. With a shaking but determined hand, he fumbled the handmade Resistance pin from his lapel and pressed the crude object into her palms, closing her avatar's fingers around it.

  "Earn this. Don't… let it be for nothing."

  His hand went slack in hers. The pin— a piece of bent scrap metal that had once symbolised a fragile hope— was now a cold, heavy weight in her palm. The fierce, terrified light in his eyes flickered, dimmed, and died, leaving behind only the hollow sounds of an empty stillness.

  For a brief moment, the cacophony of the breached keep receded from her perception. The clashing steel, the groans of the wounded, the acrid smell of ozone and blood— it all faded into a dull, distant hum. There was only the pin digging into her glove and the face of a boy who would never see the world he had died fighting for.

  ManMan was once again reminded of a bitter truth: for all her new tiers of power, for all her [Fated Denouement]s and [Ordained Horoscope]s, she was ultimately just as powerless as before in the scripted calculus of war. This was a fictional story in a game, yet the thought needled her anyway: Had she been faster? Smarter? A few more levels stronger… could she have saved him?

  Before the thought could fully form, a heavy, gauntleted hand clapped onto her shoulder, firm and steadying. Her tank stood beside her, his own armour scorched and dented.

  "No time for that, Sprout Astro (。?_?。)`," he said, his voice low but clear over the din. "That moment's always hard to swallow, but he bought us the time. Don't let his purchase go to waste. The final confrontation awaits."

  A quick, supportive encouragement flashed from their other healer, "(′? ω ?\)? You got this!"

  His words, blunt as they were, offered a strange clarity. The mission was not over. The architect of all this suffering still awaited. Slipping the bloodied pin safely into her inventory, she took a steadying breath, nodded, and fell in step with her party as they marched toward the throne room.

  ———

  When they breached the throne room, ManMan expected to find the Imperial family mounting a desperate last stand. What greeted them instead were their lifeless bodies and the Immortal Emperor sitting alone upon the throne.

  But the Emperor was… transformed. Gone were the wrinkles and gray hair of a weary ruler. In their place stood a young man, his features sharp and perfect, radiating an aura of ancient, boundless arrogance. He revealed himself as no mere conqueror, but as Emet-Soul, an ancient being from a time before time.

  He laid bare his grand design: their conflict and every war throughout history had been nothing more than fodder for a harvest. He had been cultivating YGGDRASIL's aether, sowing chaos and reaping umbral energies to fuel a single, catastrophic purpose— to generate enough enough chaos and umbral energy, enough change, to prune YGGDRASIL's final nine branches, its last leaves. This act of cosmic arboricide would provide the energy to resurrect his own lost people back into existence, no matter the cost to every other living soul in the Tree.

  And the instrument of this annihilation was to be the recovered Omega Weapon, a construct from beyond YGGDRASIL. According to Emet-Soul, it was a reality-devouring, cosmic superweapon that had traveled the stars, seeking out strong opponents in an endless pursuit of self-perfection. Its arrival in YGGDRASIL several millennia ago was a crash landing that had been a fortunate accident he kept in standby, waiting for the perfect moment.

  With an arrogant smirk, the ancient being masquerading as an old-but-young-again emperor activated the superweapon. The ornate throne room dissolved, its geometry twisting and expanding into a vast, cavernous testing chamber. The air itself hummed with the stolen, concentrated energies of a thousand battles and in its centre, Omega stood.

  It was the ultimate in biomechanical perfection, shifting through configurations before stabilising into a sentient war engine of razor-sharp obsidian metal and blinding, alien energies. It took the form of a colossal, quadrupedal armoured beetle, its face a smooth, featureless obsidian disc. A single, piercing "eye" of blue light ignited upon it, scanning ManMan's party as raw data points to be analysed and overcome.

  Emet-Soul then phased effortlessly to the sidelines, giving ManMan a final condescending and theatrical bow as a smirk played on his lips.

  "Let the final calibration begin."

  The final confrontation with nascent Omega was one of lethal precision and forced adaptation. Upon engagement, it had launched them into a pocket dimension— a clinical, alien arena of pulsating blue and white geometric patterns that formed a sterile laboratory for its cruel testing. Here, ManMan remembered hearing the unsettling, majestic orchestral chords of "From the Heavens" for the first time as the god-machine commenced its analysis. The whiplash was staggering: moments ago, she was in a battle for liberation; now, she had to pass a cold systems test administered by a merciless intelligence with the entirety of YGGDRASIL hanging in the balance.

  Yet, it was also a source of pure, terrifying exhilaration. Omega was, without a doubt, the most mechanically challenging boss encounter she had ever faced. The entire battle was a brutal ballet of light and raw data as piercing lances of condensed energy— Wave Cannons, as the cast bar labeled them— frequently scythed across the arena, forcing the tanks and healers to layer multiple mitigation spells or face instant annihilation.

  Atomic Rays were their next accompaniments, often painting the floor in expanding circles of telegraphed destruction, forcing constant, panicked movement and rendered her powerful Super-Tier magic useless— she simply could not hope to cast them while constantly evading.

  High-Powered Sniper Cannons and Wave Repeaters were next, and they demanded flawless coordination and precise positioning from the entire party, turning the battlefield into a lethal dance floor where every step needed to be carefully measured, lest they become one with the floor.

  Omega was operating on pure logic, processing their capabilities and calibrating its attacks with cold, inhuman efficiency. With every spell Manman cast, she felt the entity's gaze upon her, cataloging her strengths, probing for weaknesses.

  Then, the orchestral symphony surged as Omega's eye flashed. "Analysis complete. Implementing countermeasures."

  The nightmare evolved. It began to weaponise their own abilities against them, hurling a shard of stellar energy ripped from her own Astromancy back at the party. The hateful rage that had carried her to the throne room now met a foe that could not be hated, only understood and outmanoeuvred. This was no longer a fight for freedom, but one to prove that their chaotic, mortal spirit was a worthy evolutionary advantage against perfect, soul-less logic.

  As their clash approached its climax, the pocket dimension screamed in protest as Omega's core reconfigured for a final, cataclysmic blast. A massive energy signature— a Wave Cannon of impossible, world-ending scale— lanced towards the party as a spear of malevolent data, intending to delete their existences clean from the universe's code. There was no outrunning it. No mitigating it. This was the end of the test, and they seemed to have failed it.

  And just then, the very light of the dimension bent beside her.

  A figure of crystalline serenity materialised before them, her form etched in gentle, yet impossibly unwavering light.

  Hydae-Lynn.

  This was the first time ManMan had seen her manifest physically. She had heard the goddess's guiding voice in echoes and dreams throughout the MSQ, but this was their first true, proper encounter.

  Hydae-Lynn raised a hand in protection and a barrier of shimmering, ancient astral energy flared to life. The devastating beam shattered against her shield like glass against diamond.

  For a moment, Omega's single eye flickered, glitching as it tried and failed to process the new, divine variable. Its synthesised voice echoed through the chamber with clinical confusion.

  "Paradigm irreconcilable. Error. Withdrawing for analysis."

  And with that, the god-machine vanished, leaving only a fading afterimage and chilling silence as the sterile dimension dissolved, returning them to the ravaged throne room.

  As ManMan heaved a sigh of relief, her respite was soon shattered by a shadow phasing out of the darkness, one accompanied by a slow and sarcastic clap. Emet-Soul reappeared, his expression a mask of mock admiration barely concealing a deep, ancient spite.

  "Ah… Always the meddling shepherd, Hydae-Lynn," he drawled, his voice dripping with condescension. "So quick to interpose yourself between destiny and your precious, fleeting flock. You would preserve this flawed, half-made reality for an eternity out of sheer sentiment."

  Hydae-Lynn turned to face her ancient counterpart, her voice filled with star-deep sorrow. "I preserve the future, Emet-Soul. Something you chose to sacrifice long ago upon an altar of memory. You are so fixated on what was lost, you have become blind to the true, living cost of what you would destroy to get it back."

  His smirk faded, replaced by a look of weary and infinite contempt.

  "Cost? A pittance. Had it not been for your meddling, we could have restored our paradise aeons ago. This 'cost' you weep over would never have been paid." His form began to dissolve into shadows, but not before he fixed his gaze on ManMan's avatar, delivering a final, venomous spat.

  "The roots of this rotted tree run deep. Seek me in the land of the dishonoured dead, Niflheim, if you still have the stomach for the truth."

  With Emet-Soul gone, Hydae-Lynn's luminous form turned to ManMan. She offered no grand speeches, only the unbearable weight of millennia in her crystalline gaze. She reached out, her touch on ManMan's brow as light as a photon and as heavy as a world.

  A vision seared into ManMan's mind: a world of beautiful, light-ravaged ruins under a stagnant amber sky; a colossal, skeletal machine of impossible design clawing at the heavens; and the haunting, endlessly looping first notes of a familiar melody.

  "The past is a wound he will not let heal," Hydae-Lynn whispered, her voice already beginning to fade, blending with the light. "And now it threatens to poison the very roots of the tree. The journey ahead will be the darkest yet. You must become the light that guides it."

  With that, she too vanished, leaving the party alone in the silent, empty throne chamber. The Trial was complete. The notification flashed in the corner of her vision, but it felt meaningless. The path to the next chapter— and the immense, terrifying burden it carried— was now terrifyingly clear.

  As the memory faded, ManMan's consciousness gradually returned to her present reality in the Alfheim suite. The orchestral fury of the battle was now gone, replaced by the soft, heartbreaking melodies of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow," now drifting from the Orchestrion. And with each note came a fresh sting to her soul.

  Her gaze, heavy with the memory, drifted across her mementos. It landed on the fractured diary, lying beside the bloodied resistance badge. As she looked at it, a flicker of a vision played across its cracked cover: the silhouette of a magnificent, lost city, and within it, the ghostly echo of a man's lone, agonising struggle across the millennia…

  ———

  The Dying Gasp. Aistear-Carcere. Niflheim. YGGDRASIL.

  Shadowed Pasts, Tales of Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

  ManMan's arrival in Niflheim was surprisingly, not cast in shadow but bathed in stagnant "Lightblight". Emet-Soul's millennias-long machinations had twisted the World's natural aether balance to the point only light-aspected aether remained. This chapter had been the most somber journey of them all— a pilgrimage through breathtakingly beautiful ruins. She and a handful of trusted NPC companions traversed cities of crystal and silver, all petrified, frozen in a single, eternal moment by the perfect and unchanging light that had birthed and then consumed them.

  Her quests led her ever deeper, spiralling downwards toward the source of the blight: the Enigma Codex, an immense, incomplete geometric structure that had been under construction for millennia. As she approached the half-finished wonder, Hydae-Lynn appeared once more, her form illuminating a beacon of soft light against the Lightblight's oppressive glare.

  It was here, at the heart of the blight, that ManMan learned the true history of YGGDRASIL and the First Tragedy that led to its inadvertent creation.

  In a beginning before time, there existed a race of immensely powerful beings, the Ancient Progenitors, whose very nature was creation. Yet, their peaceful existence was threatened by a primordial, cosmic force of absolute nihilism: The Endsinger. She was the concept of despair incarnate, a being whose song unmade reality itself, reducing all creation to perfect, final silence. She was their antithesis.

  To save existence, the Progenitors made the ultimate sacrifice. Lacking the power to vanquish the Endsinger, they instead combined their might to banish her to the furthest edge of nothingness, sealing her away within a prison forged from their own collective essence.

  The cost, however, was catastrophic. The act consumed nearly their entire race, their life essences scattering and crystallising to form the Great World Tree, YGGDRASIL, and its World-Containing leaves— each a living memorial to a fallen Progenitor and the reality they died to protect.

  Only two survived, forever scarred by the event, their ideologies hardening into absolutes in their grief.

  One was Hydae-Lynn, the Leader of the Aspect of Stasis and Reality. She was a being of order, stability, and the preservation of beauty in the present. Her symbol was a white, shimmering crystal. She saw the World Tree and its Leaves as Realms born from the sacrifice of their kin, their ultimate legacy— a beautiful, living memorial. She chose to become its fading guardian, binding her essence to its roots, watching over its inhabitants until the day her own strength finally ebbed and returned to the aether.

  The other was Emet-Soul, the Leader of the Aspect of Potentials and Dynamism. He was a being of growth, change, and the endless fever-dream of creation. His symbol was a hungering black sun. Where Hydae-Lynn saw a legacy, Emet-Soul saw only a mausoleum. The World Leaves were a pale, stagnant imitation of the infinite glory that had been lost, and he would not accept this hollow farce. In his towering grief and madness, he resolved to tear it all down to bring his people back, no matter the cost.

  To enact his "Reunion," he committed his ultimate atrocity: he created a primordial horror, a beast designed to devour the Leaves of YGGDRASIL and the fledgling worlds they contained. His twisted logic was impeccable: by gathering all the scattered essence of the new reality, he could use it as a catalyst to rewrite history and resurrect his lost race in his remembered image. Or, failing that, he would simply erase what he saw as a mocking insult to their memory.

  Hydae-Lynn, upon discovering his abomination, intervened at a tremendous cost to herself. In a cataclysmic struggle, she unmade his creation, stopping it just before it could consume the last nine leaves. Yet, even then, she could not bring herself to destroy her last living kin. Instead, she chose to banish him beyond the fabric of reality, weakening her own essence immensely in the process.

  This cosmic schism, this war between the last two gods, would become the shadowy myth known as the "First Calamity" in YGGDRASIL's history— a truth so ancient and terrible that only whispers of it remained.

  Weakened after millennia of shadowy conflict with Emet-Soul, Hydae-Lynn no longer had the strength to stand as his equal. Her form, once radiant, now seemed translucent, flickering with the effort of maintaining her presence. She turned to ManMan and told her that he was no simple villain, but a brother— a brilliant, beautiful soul so utterly broken by grief that it had curdled into a nihilistic rage, mirroring the very despair they had once sacrificed everything to defeat.

  "He clings to the past so tightly he would strangle the future in its crib," she whispered, the goddess's words heavy with the weight of ages. "He cannot see that the leaves he would burn to ash are the very monument to those we lost. He has forgotten their faces, their voices... he remembers only the emptiness they left behind."

  As Emet-Soul emerged from the Codex, she gave ManMan a final plea, "Please… help me, set him free from his torment."

  And the Final Gasp begun.

  ———

  The fight with Emet-Soul was no grand spectacle of mechanics and phases like the trials before. This was a somber, deeply personal and tragic duel. She remembered the music being a subdued, orchestral arrangement of his own leitmotifs, echoing endlessly as haunting memories of a dream that would never be.

  As the final sorcerer from before time stood before his sister in an arena haunted by shimmering echoes of their lost civilisation, he asked, his voice thick with a grief that had festered for millennia.

  "Do you remember our city, sister? The spires that caught the dawn…"

  And with a wave of his hand, the spectral images of those very spires, now towering, broken wreckage, hurtled towards them.

  "Do you remember their laughter? Now there is only silence."

  His words were a catalyst that unleashed waves of devastating, arena-encompassing magic that forced her player party to scatter, stack, and pile on mitigations simply to survive.

  Soon, his intent became agonisingly clear. With each attack, he was using the last dregs of his own fractured memories as fuel, bleeding his will and his pain into reality. ManMan saw Emet-Soul for what he truly was: not some untouchable god, but a man eternally trapped in a prison of his own mourning, fighting a war he had already lost against the ghosts of his past. He was tired. He was still grieving. With each blow he sustained, his strength and the vividness of his memories waned further, until her party, combined with Hydae-Lynn's fading power, shattered the Enigma Codex itself.

  And as it exploded, its core was revealed. Contained within its fading shell was a fractured, broken shard of Emet-Soul's own spirit, his very essence given form. It fell to the ground, hitting the floor with a quiet, final thud. Its obsidian shell crumbled away, revealing what lay at its heart: a simple, crumbled, and broken diary.

  Defeated, Emet-Soul began to fade. All the rage and arrogance was gone, leaving only a bottomless, weary sorrow. He gazed at his sister with a long-lost recognition of the immense loss only they alone would ever share.

  And in that moment of quiet despair, the first gentle, unadorned melodies of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" began. There were no instruments, no percussion. Just a lone, hauntingly clear, and somber female voice, singing a lament that seemed to rise from the very soul of the world:

  For whom weeps the storm

  Her leaves on our skin

  The days of our glory

  Now swallowed by our sins

  Then, his gaze, already growing translucent, turned to ManMan. In his eyes were no demands, but a simple plea— the final, desperate wish of a being who had lived ten thousand years for a cause that had just crumbled to dust.

  "Remember. Remember us, remember that we once lived."

  ManMan nodded. In that moment, she understood completely. His entire, tragic, millennia-long purpose— the wars, the machinations, the unspeakable grief— was now distilled into this one, simple, human request: to not be forgotten.

  With her comprehension, the music shifted. The lone, haunting voice was joined by a gentle, swelling orchestra, its arrival triumphant, solemn, and accepting. ManMan now understood the collective weight of the Progenitors' history— a burden he had carried as a weapon of rage and regret— had now been passed onto her as a duty, as a story to be carried forward.

  Oh, never forget us, your bygone kin

  Where one bough splinters, a new grows in

  And though our souls scatter on time's swift wing

  In you, we live on

  The vocals soared. It was strained, it was heartbreaking, yet so full of resolve. Slowly, she knelt and picked up his fractured diary, its pages now feeling infinitely heavy.

  Stand tall, my friends

  And let the long night deep inside you find dawn again

  Through time, tumbling, turning, we make amends

  Eternal winds through the boughs ascend

  To bear us onward, beyond the end

  Looking at the last fragments of Emet-Soul's fading soul, she gave her silent answer to his plea: she will remember.

  As his form vanished completely, returning to the aether from which it came, the music too began to fade. The orchestra gently receded, leaving only the final, echoing resonance of its haunting vocals as a perfect representation of what remained of the ancient sorcerer: a memory, a song on the eternal wind.

  Then, the universe shattered.

  The sky of swirling memories in the Aistear-Carcere splintered as its melancholic gold and white fragments were violently shoved aside. Reality soon gave way to a rent in the fabric of existence. Through the void, ManMan saw only an infinite and absolute blackness. A new song began to emanate from the abyss, a sound that was the absolute antithesis of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" intent on bringing a cold, dissonant, multi-layered chorus of despair.

  She had immediately readied herself, thinking another enemy was incoming. But as the dirge of oblivion intensified, ManMan realised the song and the incoming entity's very approach was beginning to erode her reality. The edges of the Aistear-Carcere were beginning to pixelate and dissolve into nothingness, unable to resist its annihilating dominion.

  Hydae-Lynn then spoke.

  "He is gone, and the seal is broken. What was held at bay for eons now descends. The Final Song has begun."

  She turned to look at ManMan with an expression of apocalyptic grief. "The hope of all futures now rests on remembering the past. My strength is all but spent. I must go to the roots, to hold the trunk of YGGDRASIL itself for as long as I can. Find me there... at the genesis of all creation."

  With a final, monumental effort, Hydae-Lynn conjured one last spark of her waning power. She condensed it into a single, perfect, shimmering crystal— a Tear of starlight and memory— and pressed it into ManMan's palms.

  "Do not despair. Carry this. Carry our memory. Now, go! Gather your allies, muster your courage. The finale cometh."

  And with those final words, Hydae-Lynn vanished.

  ManMan's vision warped, and she soon found herself back in Midgard.

  But this was not the Midgard she knew.

  A jagged scar was running across the heavens, bleeding a silent, all-consuming void. NPCs ran through the streets in a blind panic, their faces etched with primal terror as they pointed and shrieked at the unraveling firmament. The city's once-bustling, hopeful theme was gone, replaced by an eerie, oppressive nothingness— the same chilling silence that had preceded the end moments ago in Niflheim.

  This was her most recent memory. In the time since, ManMan had spent every waking moment rallying the scattered forces of the nine worlds. She had pleaded, commanded, and inspired, forging their disparate hopes into a single, fragile bastion against the encroaching despair. The stakes had been irrevocably raised; this was no longer about saving a city or a single realm. It was about saving everything.

  Now back in Alfheim, she had completed all but the final Trial. She was ready. Her friends in Nine's Own Goal were assembled and ready. The armies and citizens of YGGDRASIL were poised; on her command, they would channel their combined aether, their collective hope, to transport her and her party to the Final Edge of Fate, the útgarer, where the Endsinger waited to sing her song of oblivion.

  The familiar, gentle chime of a party invite appeared while a simultaneous [Message] call reached her.

  "ManMan-san, everyone who was interested is here." Momonga's voice sounded. "Shall we? The last step of your MSQ journey."

  ManMan took a last look at Hydae-Lynn's Tear and the weight of a hundred thousand years of history it contained. She then gently slipped it back into her inventory.

  "Yeah, Momonga-san. Let's."