The vastness of space was a silent, indifferent witness to final preparations. Tanya von Zehrtfeld floated between the cold black of the void and the vibrant, swirling marble that was Earth. Her unit, the elite Vanguard Scarabs, had just completed final synchronization with Zeon's Earth deployment grid. The rhythmic hum of the Musai-class cruiser Iron Serpent was a familiar lullaby. But today, there was a discordant note — a tension beneath the polished surface of military precision.
Across the viewscreen, Earth hung in space — a serene, deceptive orb. Tanya exhaled slowly, her breath misting the edge of her visor. Her eyes, sharp and cold, took in the swirling clouds, ocean blues, and bruised landmasses — old scars from older wars. Scars she had once helped etch into the world.
> "That blue planet…" The thought surfaced unbidden, a whisper across the sterile silence of her mind. "I used to call it hell."
A bitterness stirred in her chest — the taste of cordite, of rations gone cold, of divine mockery. It wasn't just Earth that she called hell. It was what had happened to her on it — in that other life. When she had worn a different name. When she had waged a different war. When she had dared to challenge a god.
Tanya Degurechaff. That was the name she had buried deep. A child soldier sculpted by war, intellect, and sheer will — and tormented by a self-proclaimed god, Being X. She had clawed her way through fire and death, spitting defiance with every breath, and in return, she had been cast down into yet another war in another body. Another battlefield.
Now, Earth loomed again. And with it, the scent of divine mockery returned.
> "I'm falling back into it again."
The irony wasn't lost on her. The girl who once cursed the sky had returned to the dirt, reborn not in peace but in a new theater of war. No longer a refugee of twisted theology, but a Zeon officer, forged and refined into a living weapon. But the echoes of that old life clung to her — not in dreams, but in instincts. In the unrelenting dread that she was still being watched. Still being tested.
And somewhere in that void, she could almost feel Being X's unseen smile.
She flexed her fingers against the restraints of her seat, gloves creaking. Whatever waited for her on Earth, it would be a reckoning. She would descend not as a victim, but as a harbinger. The child soldier had died long ago. Tanya von Zehrtfeld, daughter of Zeon, was what remained.
---
Light-minutes away, in a high-gravity detention facility orbiting Europa, General Revil sat still as stone. The cold durasteel walls reflected nothing of emotion, and neither did the man within them. No pacing. No defiance. Just a folded set of hands and eyes that stared through reality.
The Zeon guards watching him mistook it for resignation. But Lelouch — had he been there — would have recognized it for what it was: control.
---
Back in Side 3, Lelouch von Zehrtfeld was already immersed in the slow unspooling of a nightmare.
He hunched over his holotable, eyes scanning overlapping data feeds. Tanya fought wars with machines; he fought wars with minds. And today, something didn't add up.
Kycilia Zabi's recent troop deployments were masked as standard reinforcement rotations. But Lelouch saw the patterns for what they were: overprecise. Overcalculated. Intentional. A single anomaly set his instincts ablaze — an unmarked shuttle, 'Ghost-9', departed from Kycilia's private manor, bound for Europa. No transponder. No official record. The datapoint shimmered like a ghost in the code.
Lelouch's custom surveillance algorithm caught it only because he had built it to notice exactly this sort of deception. The ghost shuttle's path intersected precisely with Revil's prison.
> "They're not keeping him prisoner…" Lelouch whispered, voice hushed by dread. "…they're setting him free."
And the pieces locked together — the silence about Revil's condition, the ghost transport, the unusual calm reported by the guards.
Revil's release wasn't a mistake.
It was a move.
A manipulation.
And Kycilia was the hand playing both sides.
---
Outside Lelouch's chamber, Zum City prepared for its victory parade. Zeon's banners unfurled over steel spires. Holographic Zakus marched across city squares. The people cheered. Blind.
> "Victory Parade in Three Days!" the broadcasts blared.
But for Lelouch, every countdown second felt like a nail in the coffin.
Tanya, his twin, his anchor, was about to be thrown into the center of a trap. The calm before collapse wasn't poetic — it was prophecy. She would be the spark. Or the victim.
He stared out the window, helpless. The true war was beginning, and only he could see it.
---
Tanya's reentry craft broke through the upper atmosphere like a dagger through silk. The air screamed as her hull superheated, the friction of descent enveloping her like fire.
Inside, strapped into her pilot seat, she felt every vibration as a familiar ache in her bones. Her MS-06F Zaku, waited below — silent, predatory, hungry.
The descent was violent, beautiful, and eerily comforting. Every tremor stirred old ghosts.
The simulations, the battlefields, the Church of Being X, the trenches of another world — all blended into one cascade of memory.
> "It's too quiet," she thought. "Too clean."
She'd known this feeling before. Right before the enemy strikes. Right before the trap is sprung.
> "Hell again," she whispered with a grim smile. "Let's see how hot it can get."
---
As Tanya descended like a meteor toward the battered remains of North America, Lelouch's holotable blinked again. A new image.
Revil.
Free.
Standing in a small, unmarked shuttle. No guards. Only a cloaked figure beside him — face obscured. The strings were being pulled.
Revil had not escaped. He had been released.
> "They're sending him back to reignite the war," Lelouch realized. "To turn our triumph into ashes."
Kycilia's betrayal was unfolding before them — elegant, invisible, devastating.
---
The Iron Serpent banked and accelerated toward its next assignment. Tanya's descent neared its final stage, her Zaku ready to be deployed.
Lelouch, still surrounded by the glow of Zum City's illusion, watched the time tick away:
> "Two Days, Twenty-Three Hours, Forty-Five Minutes..."
His sister was falling into hell.
And this time, hell wasn't metaphor. It was memory.
The calm was absolute.
The collapse, inevitable.