A few minutes passed. Not a word echoed through the compound. Everything was completely still.
Anamorsia Richinaria sat on the same chair she had taken earlier, one leg crossed over the other, her golden eyes half-lidded as she twirled a lollipop between her fingers. Caelom, still slouched and cuffed, couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Why are you so calm? You... you heard that, right? The blasts outside? They're already here. You think being a Sixth Enlightenment Divine makes you untouchable?"
He was genuinely confused. She should be panicking but instead, she was now looking at her nails like this was a leisure afternoon.
Anamorsia raised a single eyebrow. Then, without answering, she reached into her inventory with a graceful flick of her fingers. A shiny red candy wrapper was torn and the scent of fruit filled the air. She popped the lollipop into her mouth and smiled.
"I was betting on them to come."
The door detonated. Metal shredded, hinges snapped and three Divines burst in wearing heavy crimson knight armor.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to.
Their swords were drawn, their stances were precise and their auras already targeted the Aeterium Royal calmly licking her lollipop. And yet before they could even move...
"STOP!"
Caelom shouted. His chains rattled as he jerked up.
"Don't attack her."
The three knights hesitated, confused, exchanging glances behind their visors.
Anamorsia's entire body slumped with a groan. She tilted her head back like a disappointed teenager.
"Ugh, seriously? I was so ready to erase them with one move. You ruined the fun."
The knights stepped forward anyway, flanking Caelom protectively. One of them, his voice deep and modified through his helmet, spoke.
"The Last Phalanx has summoned us. The Commander ordered immediate extraction. The rest are waiting outside."
At that, Anamorsia's eyes widened with amusement. Her golden irises shimmered as she stood from the chair slowly, twirling the lollipop in her mouth.
"The Last Phalanx, huh... now that's interesting. Finally, someone worth meeting. That must be what the Third Generation of Mopheria call themselves."
The knights moved to block her path. Before they could say anything, he sighed.
"Let her lead you. Just do what she says."
They hesitated but nodded. Anamorsia flashed him a sly look.
She knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to lead her into a trap, which was his group, where he naively believed that she'd be outmatched. She just smiled wider, flicked her hair back, and whispered through the lollipop stick between her lips.
"Perfect."
-------
Not a single soul stirred in the military base. Everyone was dead.
Every soldier, engineer and mechanic was dead. Their bodies littered the interior halls, struck down with such precision and eerie coordination that there hadn't even been time to sound the alarms. A once proud bastion of Dynasty Starisnova's elite mechanized corps was now nothing more than a frozen mausoleum beneath the teeth of the mountains.
Amidst it all, five figures strolled through the mess with barely a sound beneath their boots, save for the faint mechanical whirr of servos and the distant shriek of wind.
Anamorsia walked at the front.
She didn't speak. She didn't even blink at the carnage around her. Her white winter cloak fluttered softly behind her, the hood resting down on her back now. Only the three crimson-armored knights and Caelom walked beside her now.
Caelom had no restraints anymore. His cuffs had been released the moment his allies entered and vaporized everyone. Still, something about how Anamorsia walked ahead casually, her hands in her coat pockets like a civilian sightseeing a battlefield, felt off. Way off.
They entered the winter plain outside. Cold air howled across the wide flat tundra. The sun was a pale disc above the snowy ridge, giving everything an almost dreamlike glow. The knights slowed, forming a loose semicircle behind Anamorsia as she stepped forward.
Anamorsia's arm suddenly blurred.
Before anyone could react, her fingers snapped shut around an arrow. Not just any projectile. It was a thin, crystalline arrow with a coiled rune glowing faintly along the shaft and a serrated tip enchanted to ignore sound barriers. It was a mystic arrow, fired at the speed of sound.
She caught it casually, as if catching a falling snowflake.
All three knights froze. Caelom stared at the arrow in her hand, then at her, then at the distance. No one had even heard the shot. She twirled the arrow between her fingers and looked northeast. Then she smiled.
Without even a breath's hesitation, Anamorsia raised her left palm and summoned a thin beam of condensed Soul Energy from the sky. It came down with a banshee's scream and slammed into the far side of the northern ridge.
A mountain range literally collapsed. Entire snowfields and cliffs broke, avalanches triggering like dominos as thousands of tons of snow and ice were flung into the sky. Caelom flinched, shielding his face from the burst of wind and snow that followed, his ears ringing.
Anamorsia simply shook the snow off her glove.
"The shot came from forty kilometers out," she said, inspecting the ruined arrow before snapping it in half. "Her aim's good but she's not fast enough."
Caelom felt his stomach knot. How did she know it was a woman who fired it?
"Why… how did you catch that?"
Anamorsia didn't look at him. She simply turned her gaze toward the blizzard curtain forming at the edge of the field. Her smile thinned. Her voice, however, was crisp and sweet.
"I know you're out there! And I do want to talk. But if you're here to play dumb little rescue games..."
She moved her fingers slightly.
"I'll kill Caelom before you even get halfway to him. Trust me, not even your archer will stop me. She's already unconscious and buried in snow."
The threat wasn't a bluff.
No response came from the snowy distance. That was until when she saw flashes of glimmering armor just between the hills. Eight, maybe nine. The Last Phalanx. The most fanatical, most elite squad of Divine loyalists Caelom knew, his final safety net. Anamorsia slowly cracked her lollipop between her teeth. Her tongue dragged across the broken sugar. She tilted her head slightly, her eyes glowing faintly wit.
"Oh this is going to be fun."
The snow howled louder and in the distance, crimson banners began to rise.