Violet’s existence collapsed into itself; first into total blackness, as an endless, abyssal shadow stretched far past where thought could reach, it eclipsed sensation itself; until even the concept of “forever” stopped meaning anything.
Violet "floated" in it; not as a being, but as a notion, stripped of form or coherence. She was rendered merely as a silent consciousness, set adrift in a vacuum stripped of logic, sense, or place — a conceptual ideal if you will; as if she was mere literation in a yet unwritten tale.
There was no thought in the dark. Only registration. A dull, passive awareness. She could perceive the totality — but not focus onto any one thread of it, merely the whole in its conceptless entirety.
— A further "moment" in the void was felt; and the blackness of her world gave way to white.
All-consuming, structureless, conceptless white. A wash so blinding and absolute it erased all sensation, not from overload, but from the sheer inability to comprehend. No pain, or relief. Only conceptual nothing rendered in pure saturation.
And then; it flickered.
Black.
White.
Black.
White.
The flicker went on for some time, remaining in a consistent pattern, until a hastening was felt, and the rhythm accelerated beyond rational scope, as thought itself fractured in the strobing contrast.
But then — an equilibrium between the two was met in the Grey. A slow medium, but a medium none-the-less, as the two extremes collapsed into one.
Not the dull grey of stone or cloud —but a divine equilibrium. A Penumbral balance in which opposites found their truce, blending with uncanny perfection.
It was in that Grey that form returned.
Simple at first, just grey coloration given solidified shape, though it was conceptually sound enough that it began to give her own immediate personhood back to her once more.
First as non-descript line and curves matching the natural oscitations of her figure.
She blinked.
And as she remembered the sensation of sight; her hands reappeared, first floating in the miasma of not-space and not-light.
She flexed her fingers, and began to check her reemergent hands for misalignment or blemish. No pain. No tremble. No fear. She turned them over. Front. Back. No wounds. No changes.
Her checking of her hands done not out of any sense of unease or uncertainty; but more just as a simple fascination of her returning to form.
Upon seeing her hands unchanged, she panned her eyes downwards. She saw her pale-white legs lay bare to the non-existent elements, her unbooted feet resting on the nondescript material floor, and the whole of her naked self on full display.
Unregistering the state of her person, she tilted her gaze upward, her raven hair spilling forward in loose strands over the gentle slope of her bare breasts as she moved.
Above was a further grey. An expanse without anchor or horizon as motion without defined vector; directionless, unformed, perpetual.
Then — all consuming light.
It erupted beneath her. A bright and immense surge of endless immensity.
Color bloomed at her feet, and from it, structures began to form. The floor beneath her became a canvas of spiraling stars and shifting realms, each arc and twist mapping a cosmological design so foreign it defied her instinct.
A tapestry of motion and light, swirling in layers beneath her stood vivid and endless — etched with systems and symbols she could not name, but felt in all its immeasurable glory. It expanded outward until the whole of her vision below was consumed by it, a fluid diagram of existence unknown, its enormity making her seem impossibly small.
With the coming of Light, a sound began to chime as an ethereal hum, though not melodic. More a low, resonant rumble — non-descript oration murmured through some unseen veil. She had but a moment to register the unfolding vision of Creation beneath her feet before the voice reached her.
"Another time..."
"Another choice."
It echoed in her mind — not thought, not hers — but sounding of her voice. As if spoken by some version of her soul long since forgotten.
She turned.
Behind her stood a figure.
Featureless. Veiled in a cloak of obscuring static, its form resisted comprehension. Amanoid, yes — but only loosely. It felt as if it was detached, as if it was actively hovering in the air a foot above the tapestry in which she could see it still stood, fixed in defiance of natural structure.
It radiated a hollow unfamiliarity — unremarkable, and distant.
Yet... somehow; it resonated also with the opposite(?)
Like it was familiar as blood. Vast as the star-drenched night. And more profound than life.
Violet stared at the figure; and it stared back with eyes unseen, unreadable.
Still, Violet didn’t speak. Her face held an open curiosity. Silent intrigue.
And then, the voice again:
"There will be much to do before the work's done."
"But you'll meet demand’s calling... won’t you?"
The tone carried both indifference and awe; the twin extremes drenched in separate — yet equal — cosmic detachment and near sacred reverence. The mundane edge of inevitability, sharpened by the glint of ever-amazing wonder.
She did not answer.
She felt no need to.
Instead, her gaze turned from the figure. And as it spoke again, the words began to write themselves across the sky; each letter blooming into the non-existent air. Each shined in a crimson hue; one she somehow knew to be called:
Amaranth.
The word felt endless in her heart as it was uttered; an intensity and immense pit deeper then any notion she held of infinity.
More words began to write themselves into the grey mass overhead as the voice returned:
"Never you mind about that though; show me your choice."
Oddly casual was its speech; like a simple conversation between two friends.
As it spoke, a single light descended from above like a spotlight —green, vivid and bright, emerald in hue.
Familiar...?
Deeply so.
Warm and friendly. Like it was a lost piece she sought after her whole life.
It illuminated the space in front of her, settling at the center of the tapestry beneath her feet — its glow cast over a strange world painted in detail; one shadowed by sparkling crimson rings.
As she stared at the emerald light, a second glow emerged —this one behind her.
An ominous shimmer of umbral violet bled to life at the tapestry’s far left.
Cold.
Distant.
Demanding.
Waiting...
As if the light felt owed her attention.
She stepped back, slow, positioning herself at the midpoint between the two. The lights pulsed on either side of her — both inviting a further investigating.
"Don't be shy; take your time."
With the figure’s assent, Syx stepped forward —toward the light she still faced.
The dark light.
Each footfall sent ethereal ripples across the tapestry beneath her, the starlit cosmology shimmering in response.
She halted at its threshold.
The violet glow pulsed — oscillated with a slow, deliberate rhythm. It felt powerful. Not just strength, but Power —the very ideal of dominance and force made manifest before her.
And it reached for her.
Not through plea.
Not through invitation.
It commanded.
It told her she would step forward. That she must. That there was no choice.
That she belonged to it.
The arrogance of it lit something in her skull — a heat, sharp and immediate. A burning sting of offense that bloomed with venomous clarity.
Her lips curled into a smirk.
She let out a scoffing chuckle, sharp and audible.
One hand fell to her bare left hip, the other waved her hair with effortless disdain as a crisp "Hmph" cracked from her throat.
With a fluid motion, she turned on her heel — graceful, unimpressed —a nd faced the opposite light.
The emerald glow.
She walked to it and stood at its edge, her body bathed in a warm, green light. It wasn’t just illumination — it felt glad to see her. Like it was asking how she’d been, what she wanted, what she felt like doing.
There was no pressure in it. No desperation to please. Just a quiet, curious offer — an open-ended question, free of judgment. The choice was hers, fully and truly.
It was... nice. Genuinely nice.
It made her smile, soft and real. Like seeing an old friend after an impossibly long absence.
She lingered there, content in the moment, until the figure came to her left.
"Oh, I see(!)... the green light — that's your Jewel of Longing-Eyes?"
Its voice — still mirroring her own — carried a subtle warmth, a quiet pride in her decision. But that final phrase; "Jewel of Longing-Eyes" — that sounded quoted. Not spoken from itself, but repeated from something else. A title borrowed from another place.
Violet opened her mouth to answer —yes, it was — but something tugged at her.
Her head turned.
The umbral light still shimmered behind her.
"Oooh please-please, take your time, Violet!"
No shift in tone. No urgency. The voice stayed perfectly even, as if either choice would've brought it equal satisfaction. As if all it wanted was to see her decision, free and uncoerced.
She stared at the abyss.
It still annoyed her — deeply — but a thought lodged in her mind: if she picked one, the other would be gone forever. Even if it wasn’t the choice she wanted, the idea of not being able to reconsider unsettled her.
She almost asked the figure if the choice was permanent.
But something told her not to.
Better not to know.
So she stood in silence, time stretching between them.
Then — she looked to the figure and gave a quiet nod. The smile returned to her face.
"Alrighty! Green it is."
The figure brightened with delight.
"Wonderful! Please, go ahead."
It gestured with its indistinct hand.
Violet cast one last glance over her shoulder at the violet glow — hesitant, thoughtful.
Then she stepped into the green.
And it filled her world.
The green consumed her everything; sight, sound, scent, touch. A warmth spread through her, deep and absolute, wrapped in a boundless emerald abyss. Then, slowly, the green began to fade.
Her eyes had closed somewhere in the depth of it. As the light receded, she opened them again—slowly—blinking through the residual haze.
She stood now on a shoreline.
White sand, soft as silk, stretched out beneath her feet and rolled outward into a flat, seemingly endless landscape. On one side, land—featureless and still. On the other, water; translucent and clear, so pristine it mirrored the blank and blue cloudless sky above with perfect reflection.
She was no longer bare.
Violet now wore a soft pink, frilly dress. Her long, raven-black hair tied up neatly into a ponytail that swayed as she moved. She stepped forward, the sand warm beneath her feet, and approached the water’s edge—its surface rising and falling in gentle, graceful rhythm.
She saw her reflection.
Her lips shimmered with pink gloss. Her eyes were rimmed with green mascara.
And her face was youthful, having now visibly regressed in age; perhaps twenty years.
She ran her fingers along the curve of her cheek, tracing the smoothness of youth now returned to her. The expression on her face remained one of quiet wonder, soft and unbroken.
Then, slowly, she lifted her gaze from the water and stepped back, turning away from the mirrored surface to face the open stretch of sand behind her.
Chapter 1: A Chance To End It
Violet's world returned to her in a blur; hazy, and disjointed, as the fog of sleep slowly peeled back with each waking blink.
Her mind stirred sluggishly, weighed down by the remnants of a dream left in the night. A strange mix of curiosity and unease clung to her thoughts, the images from her rest lingering like ink on the inside of her skull.
Sleep was rare.
Moments of real rest even rarer.
And now, in one of those fleeting instances, her mind had offered visions she couldn’t make sense of — fragments too strange to hold, and too vivid to forget.
She might’ve stayed there in her bed, buried in blankets and thought, chasing meaning for hours...
Until—
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sound snapped her back, her head darting to the source.
Another three blows crashed against the metallic door, each one shaking her dorm with raw force.
The pounding kept on, and with it came a voice — loud and irritated;
"SYX! WAKE YOUR ASS UP OR WE’LL LEAVE YOU HERE!"
The voice was unmistakable; Number Zero-Seveyn.
A moment later, the pounding ceased. Then came the sound of heavy boots, stomping away, each step echoing down the hall in a huffed-retreat.
She pulled her eyes from the door and pushed herself upright, now seated on the edge of her unmade bed. The sheets were twisted and half-hung, a mess from her tossing in sleep and dream.
Seveyn’s parting words echoed in her mind;
“we’ll leave you here.”
That only meant one thing...
Another mission.
The thought settled in her stomach like a stone.
Another mission... after what happened last time.
But before the weight of it could root too deep, a voice spoke—quiet, steady, familiar:
"You know that still wasn’t your fault, Syx."
It was the voice of Veronica.
The voice that lived within her; always there when things turned dark, when uncertainty crept too close. Her oldest companion. Closer than blood. A personal AI construct housed within her own consciousness; always aware, always present. Reading her thoughts, tracking her emotions, answering before she even needed to ask.
Before Violet could respond, Veronica spoke again—cutting in deliberately, clearly aiming to steer her away from sinking too deep into thought.
"Guessing you didn’t sleep too well... with all the thrashing and mumbling you did."
Violet didn’t mind the shift in topic. She knew it was Veronica’s way of helping.
"Have a bad dream?"
A superfluous question. They both knew it. Veronica usually saw everything Violet dreamed, except on rare occasions. Her asking meant this must’ve been one of them.
"Not bad, exactly," Violet answered inwardly, her tone lined with quiet confusion. "Just... odd."
"You haven’t had one of those — the ones I can’t see — in a while."
That was true.
Not since Domina died.
That dream — that nightmare — about what would happen the next time she faced him without her. How she'd be killed. She didn’t like remembering that.
"Yeah..." she said, somberly, her mind closing off the topic.
Veronica didn’t press; instead, she began to speak once more.
"Welp... let’s get you up then."
A jolt surged through her body — quick and sharp. Veronica’s usual trick: boosting her adrenaline to force her awake faster. It was efficient. It was effective. And if you asked Violet; more than a little irritating.
Regardless; she payed it little mind as she stepped off the foot of her bed, the blanket around her waist slipping free and pooling on the floor, leaving her bare in the stagnant air of her dorm.
The space was as uninspired as any living quarters aboard a ship could be; a plain, metallic alcove tucked into the side of the vessel. Twenty feet from end to end, and a celling that barely held her 9 foot-tall stature. A single bed. No decorations. No furniture.
Just a gray and empty expanse of lifeless metal.
On the far right, an open bathroom; no door, just a toilet she didn't even need, and a small mirror that was nailed on the wall above it.
She let out a sigh — long, drawn-out, and venomously exasperated. The kind that sounded like it came from a place deeper than lungs. Bone-deep irritation. It hissed through clenched teeth, heavy with the agony of obligation. Another mission. Another bullshit and ultimately worthless errand against the Concordant she couldn’t worm her way out of. She wanted to curl back into bed, bury herself in that fleeting, ever-elusive sleep. But the Call didn’t care.
It never did.
The Call demanded, and she — regretfully, bitterly—obliged.
She bent down, her movements groggy and ungraceful. Her fingers clutched the black lace where it lay crumpled like shed skin on the floor, her crumpled underwear left from the night before when she'd stripped bare and collapsed into something barely resembling rest. The panties slid up her pale legs, dragging a sigh from her lips born from resignation. She hugged them to her hips, slowing even more as she went, — straightening the cloth over her crotch — pretending that getting ready took more time then it actually needed.
A bra came next as her shoulders sluggishly slipped through the loops, cups cradling her breasts, and the latch clicked shut behind her back with that cold, indifferent finality she had grown to loathe.
Her pace slowed.
Everything slowed.
Until Veronica snapped in her ear with snark-filled impatience, voice crackling through their shared mind.
“Move your ass, bitch! I know it’s huge, but can’t take you that fucking long!”
The jolt hit her nervous system like an arc-flash.
Syx growled at the chemical rebuke.
"Alright, asshole, I’m fucking moving!"
She barked back; not from actual anger — more a mild teasing at best.
The shock had worked. Her limbs sprang into motion, motor-synapses now moving hotter and faster.
White pants. Yanked up. No ceremony.
Red overcoat. Shrugged into it mid-step, the fabric whipping behind her.
Boots — black and heeled, tactically slammed into place as she spun, as she grabbed her belt, cinching it tight around her waistline
She moved toward the laughable excuse of a "bathroom," they left her.
Didn’t even have a fucking sink, she thought bitterly, eyes locked on the mirror that was left haphazardly nailed to the wall. A faint expression — thin and worn — pulled itself across her pale features. Her hair still draped over half her face in a tangled snarl as a bedheaded crown of disarray. She stared at the reflection. Not really seeing — just... registering. The gleam of her eyes, that sharp, impossible violet — still bright, still too loud against the silence of her skin.
But behind them?
Nothing.
Empty acceptance of a day she'd rather skip.
"C’mon, Vi…"
Veronica said in her mind.
"Let’s make you look as pretty as you are, yeah?"
Veronica. Always knowing when to throw the line. Her voice threaded through the shared space between them—soft, nudging, pulling Violet back from wherever her mind had drifted. She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Just moved.
A hand reached to the top of the toilet where she’d left it — a brush, small, worn, bristles bent from overuse. No shelf in this shit-hole, so the toilet lid would have to do.
She ran it through her hair slowly.
From the crown of her head to the backs of her knees, dragging the black strands into order. Smoothing the storm. Pulling herself together, one pass at a time.
"There we go. There’s that pretty girl."
A smile — small, but still real — returned to Violet’s lips.
She then turned and headed for the door.
Chapter: Hope Born at the End
The world... burned.
Just like it had on her home; Neo-Eden.
Or rather... what used to be her home; Attainment was now suffering the same brutal and bloody end.
The sky above was no longer the blue and endless expanse it had been mere moments before, it instead was now a construct made into molten ruin — a roiling canvas of violet hellfire.
Great beams of radiant death tore down from the heavens, crashing into the earth with cataclysmic force. Each impact shattered the land, reducing stone, steel, and flesh into indistinguishable and equal piles of ashen dust.
The clouds, once gentle veils of atmosphere, collapsed; torn into ribbons of crystalline ruin. They fell like dying titans, splintered and aflame, descending in a hailstorm of annihilation that devoured the landscape beneath.
Where moments before there had been forest; lush, vibrant, teeming with the pulse of life —there was now only flame.
A firestorm of genocide, conjured by the will of the Sanlagosa.
Their madness was not chaos. It was doctrine.
This was the judgment of their divine lord, Absalon, made manifest. Ultimate and perfect in its display of the Concordant's cruelty and brutality
No mercy.
No compromise.
Only the cold, absolute flattening of existence, and all things which they deemed to be evil.
The trees, the soil, the people — all of it — scoured clean in unholy and wicked fire birthed from the beams which descended from on-high, launched from mighty war ships which stood vigil both above the atmosphere in orbit, and across the planet's own skylines. All was flattened into a jagged, broken expanse of molten glass.
What had once been a world, was now an altar of obliteration.
And upon it, life sat as its great sacrifice.
> "Not again..."
The weak protest echoed within her like a shattered prayer. One which stood in her mind's threshold; hollow, defeated, raw.
Veronica’s voice stirred in their shared mindspace, a trembling spark of reason amidst the crashing tide of dread.
"Violet... we still have a chance to get out of here."
She was trying... Desperately.
To speak sense. To anchor them both in reality. To push Violet’s legs into motion, to pull her from the precipice.
But the words...
The words were drowned in Syx's subconscious, Veronica now becoming a dull hum amongst the rising panic, and drowned in the roar of oncoming doom — a pressure so vast it silenced thought, swallowed hope, and reduced reason to a distant murmur.
Violet stood still, rigid, coiled in fear, like a small rabbit sensing her on coming death from the approaching hunter. The fear... the all consuming fear... she was now utterly lost within it.
Her gaze drifted upward to the skies of Attainment, a world once serene, now twisted into a vortex of annihilation.
Above, the heavens churned into an apocalyptic orange, vast clouds coalescing into a spiral of wrath. Grey fragments of sky peeled away like the crumbling wall of a collapsing temple, tumbling earthward with near divine indifference.
A perfect mirror for what she felt inside.
Distraught.
Doomfelt.
Terrified...
...Resigned
She had failed.
Again.
Another Neo-Eden, breaking apart before her very eyes —another world spiraling into the jaws of extinction.
And the pain?
It was all too familiar.
The sting of loss. The gut-wound of helplessness.
The same crushing agony that came when her mother fell.
When her father was taken.
When her sisters vanished in fire and silence.
Her life —her entire life —devoured by that same unstoppable tide.
And now it returned.
To finish its great and terrible work of undoing all that she was, and all she could become.
And now?
She had new love to lose —
New hearts to be torn from her in a second maelstrom of blaze, glass, and death.
Veronica.
And now...
Seven.
It was too much to bear.
Her eyes flicked left, instinctively, to where Seven stood beside her. He, too, was looking skyward —his fists clenched, body tense, poised as if ready to leap into battle against the storm itself.
Her gaze trailed up the line of his form, from trembling fists to broad shoulders, to his face.
A face she had come to know in all its expressions —
Joyful.
Soft...
Understanding.
Or, at times, sculpted in the unbreakable stone of resolve.
But now?
Now it was something else entirely.
It was unreadable.
Alien.
Not fear. Not anger. Not even dread.
Not confusion, which had often danced across his features.
Not sorrow, or resignation, or that quiet, familiar acceptance she now resigned herself to.
It was something she had no name for —
And that made it worse.
The unknown expression chilled her in a way the fire could not.
It carved a second pit in her soul, equal in depth and despair to the devastation laid bare before them.
So she looked away.
Her eyes instead trailed upwards once more.
To the sky of falling fire and impossible light.
To the maelstrom that devoured the heavens.
And in that apocalyptic tempest, she remembered his words.
The words of the Immortal Red Dragon.
Spoken in quiet gravity during their brief time together.
Words she had never forgotten.
She had asked him once:
> “What do you hope to see when the war ends?”
He had gone silent. Looked down. Away.
And answered:
“There is no hope...”
Back then, in the moment of her youth, she hadn’t understood.
Now...
Now, she did.
As great sheets of glassy death, forged in gleaming rivulets of devastation, sparkling in brilliant agony amongst the flashes of destruction and coiling in ever-growing shards,
as brilliant violet beams carved through the air,
tearing apart mountains in violent bursts that shattered miles of terrain —
She watched the literal fall of hope.
Her eyes drifted downward, heavy with sorrow.
Her face followed.
Her body followed.
What had moments ago been taut with panic, was now slumped,
shaped by the slow, crushing realization of inevitable defeat.
Of death.
She began to cry.
Silent, at first.
Then, aloud.
She hadn’t cried since Domina died.
She had willed herself not to.
But this?
This was too much.
Her fate.
Seven’s fate.
The fate of Attainment —
And all remaining Havriel kind beyond.
It was too much for any soul to carry.
And so, beneath the falling sky, as the stars above were seemingly burned from existence —she wept.
“There is no hope...”
She echoed the words of the Dragon in her mind, quoting Mace in the same afectation as he had, as a final surrender slipping from thought like a dying ember.
The fires roared louder. The air grew thinner.
> Then —a feeling.
In her left hand.
Through the veil of her sobs, she gasped —just once —a soft and weak vocalization of a woman now rendered the same scared girl she was decades ago. The heat scorched her lungs as she did, her breath turning to ash in the rising inferno born from the collapsing world around her.
She looked down.
And saw it.
A hand.
His hand.
Seven’s fingers, interlaced with hers, steady and sure. The grip was soft —gentle, even —yet unyielding. Solid. Resolute.
A lifeline in the blaze.
She followed the line of his arm, rising upward until her eyes met his.
His deep and glowing crimson eyes —burning brighter than even the flames which surrounded them, reflecting in the orange bursts of the distant explosions that raged miles in all directions
He looked at her.
Not with pity.
Not with panic.
But with defiance.
With protection.
With an unshakable resolve that spoke, screamed even, words of assurance, even in the man's own silence:
As if he had, simply with his mere gaze, spoke aloud the words "I will not let you fall.." within her mind.
She saw it now.
His expression — once unreadable, now unmistakable.
A warrior’s face, not shaped by hate or vengeance, but by the unbreakable will to shield what mattered.
To shield her.
Not just a friend.
Not just an ally.
But a sister... True and absolute in all sense and meaning.
And in that moment —
In that one heartbeat where flame and sorrow and death clawed all around her —
Her fear began to dissolve.
And in its place, something impossible took root.
Something she had, just moments ago, cast aside as merely myth, fantasy; as nothing but the fairy tale musings of that same scared rabbit she once was, frozen and unable to move.
no... This was the daydream that girl —the brave girl Violet, wished into being. The same gutsy girl who had the gall to tell the Dragon he was wrong, that what he had cast off as false was indeed real...
And now;
with the simple kindness of a soft touch,
a pure touch.
One belonging to the man who, now unmistakably in her mind, stood as her truest and dearest friend.
It was thanks to his grace, his *goodness,* to even *bother* to show her that he cared.
That young girl's dream once more sparked into brilliant, ever defying and demanding life within her.
Hope...
Through the tears, through the fading sobs, and the quivering tremble in her voice, she managed to speak —fragile, yet alive:
"...Are you with me...?"
His reply came like steel drawn in the dark, forged of titanium nerve and unshakable will:
"Until the very End... and far beyond it."
As he spoke, his grip on her hand tightened —not in desperation, but in assurance, anchoring her to him, to now, to something real amid the storm of annihilation.
His voice was not the voice of a mortal man.
It was the voice of resolve incarnate.
And with that —
All fear.
All dread.
All resignation.
Vanished.
Gone like smoke in the wind.
She reached up with her free hand and wiped the tears from her eyes, breath steadying, shoulders straightening.
And when her gaze met his again, the sorrow was still there —but beneath it, something new.
Determination.
Fire.
> "Okay..." she whispered.
Then together —hand in hand —they turned to face the coming storm.
