The cold Punishing crystals shattered beneath her feet, releasing a subtle, grating crunch. The damaged mechanical bird, half-buried in a mat of dark red fungal growth, resembled discarded refuse. Its lone remaining wing, twisted at an unnatural angle, pointed helplessly toward the ashen sky. From its flickering core, a faint blue light pulsed like a dying ember, accompanied by fragmented electronic static:
"Cradle… identification code… X-… X-7… requesting… retur… n…"
"Return?"
A hoarse voice rasped from beneath the Yaksha mask, like rusted gears grinding against one another. The word echoed hollowly, dull and jagged, stirring her chaotic sea of thought. It brought with it a wave of nausea, tinged with the scent of oxidized metal. She had long since lost any place to return to.
She crouched—an awkward motion, her Punishing-forged shell still unfamiliar. Dark silver fingertips brushed the bird's cold, broken frame.
Buzz—
The moment of contact triggered a violent reaction.
The dormant Punishing energy within her—her very essence—suddenly surged, boiling like a frenzy of sharks drawn to blood. Dark violet tendrils erupted from her fingers, not in aggression, but in assimilation. They slithered like living vines, viscous and hungry, rapidly enveloping the bird's metallic shell.
The mechanical body convulsed under the Punishing's grasp, emitting a high-pitched, dying shriek. The blue light flared wildly—then vanished, consumed by the dark tide. The metal softened, warped, reshaped. Wings elongated, cloaked in black feathers with a metallic sheen. Slender talons thickened into razor-sharp claws. The beak curved into a cruel hook, gleaming with cold menace. Circular eye sockets narrowed into crimson slits, burning with the same ghostly purple flame that flickered behind the Yaksha's mask.
In seconds, a new entity emerged—not a bird, but a Punishing crow. Entirely black, its feathers shimmered with dark silver luster. Its crimson eyes, lit with purplish-red fire, stared dispassionately at the Yaksha who had given it "life."
But just as the crow took form—
"Ugh—ah!"
She clutched her head—if the metal structure beneath the mask could still be called that—and let out a strangled, inhuman cry. A torrent of corrupted data surged through the Punishing link between her and the crow, crashing into her consciousness like a dam bursting.
Images.
Countless, fragmented, searing.
Cold metal corridors. Endless spirals.
Lucia.
A new silver-white Construct, radiant with purity, her red eyes burning with resolve.
Then—crimson alarms. Screams.
Lucia torn apart by overwhelming force. Armor shattered. Core exposed. Light fading.
"Commander! Run—!"
A cry that pierced time, stabbing into her soul.
Darkness. Then again—Lucia. Whole. Determined.
Then again—shattered.
Again.
And again.
A cycle.
Once. Ten times. Thirty.
Each death vivid, each shattering echoing in her mind.
Each extinguished core a needle driven into her being.
She felt it all—the Commander's helplessness, fury, despair.
Seventy times.
The number etched into her like a brand.
At last, the cycle halted.
Lucia, battered and broken, dragged her failing Construct through the collapsing Babylon Tower. The Commander beside her, equally spent, yet his eyes still burned with unyielding fire.
They made it.
A flicker of hope stirred in the Yaksha's core.
Click. Snap.
The scene shifted.
Outside the tower—no victory.
Lucia's Construct, newly reborn, touched the open air… and withered.
Silver-white armor dulled, rusted, cracked.
The seventy deaths reclaimed in an instant.
She crumbled—old, broken, disintegrating.
A snowfield. A lone tombstone.
The Commander knelt before it, wind tugging at his thin coat.
His back—silent grief, frozen in time.
Was he mourning Vanessa?
Or the possibilities of Lucia lost in those endless loops?
"For… the future."
A voice—familiar, yet distant.
Vanessa, now a Construct, tears streaking her face, radiant with sacred resolve.
She detonated her core.
Blinding white light consumed all.
Then—red.
A suffocating, endless red.
Like a sea of blood. Like a fungal tide.
It surged from the horizon, devouring cities, forests, mountains.
It swallowed Vanessa's light.
It swallowed the Earth.
Silence.
Absolute. Eternal.
"Ho… ho ho…"
The Yaksha collapsed, knees striking the crystallized ground. The purple flames beneath her mask flickered violently, like a candle in a storm. The pain was beyond physical—it was the agony of a soul unraveling. Despair. Rage. Loneliness. A flood of emotion that threatened to drown her fragile consciousness.
Was it memory?
A buried past?
Or prophecy?
Was this Punishing-forged body tethered to echoes of a future yet to come?
No one knew.
But the image of the Red Tide—world-ending, all-consuming—was now seared into her being. Compared to that, her own cursed existence felt small. Insignificant.
The Punishing crow landed silently on her shoulder plate. It tilted its head, crimson eyes watching her spasms with cold detachment. A vessel. Nothing more.
After a long silence, the Yaksha stirred. She raised her head. The mask, in the dim light, looked even more monstrous. She met the crow's gaze—those flickering purplish-red flames.
The crow took flight. It circled once, then soared inland, toward the heart of the wasteland. After a distance, it stopped and turned, watching her.
It was guiding.
To Babylon Tower?
To the snowfield of sorrow?
To the source of the Red Tide?
She didn't know.
But she rose. The numbness in her limbs remained. The echoes of apocalypse still churned in her mind. Beyond the pain of immortality, a greater despair now loomed.
She took a step.
Then another.
Her heavy metal footsteps echoed across the dead land, following the crow that bore the weight of memory and omen. The ghostly purple flames in her mask's slits flickered faintly—catching, perhaps, the first crimson glint of that world-ending tide.