Two years had gone by since the frozen continent, Antarctica fell to the Nightmare creatures, but the catastrophes left by such a disaster were still fresh in the people's minds.It was the kind of loss that time couldn't erase. At least not that easily.
Like America, Antarctica had endured it's fair share of problems. It was by no means a quick fall. The two opposing forces who have been at each other's throats for like a decade now initiated this mess. The clans, Song and Valor unanimously had decided to make Antarctica their battlefield before the frozen wasteland was devastated by several nightmare creatures emerging from the gates.
Two years, and no one had set foot on Antarctica since. No one dared. The continent had become forbidden territory to most, written off as lost, simply mourned by the people, adding it to the list of catastrophes too large to fully comprehend.
Another piece of the world, gone. Another reminder that humanity was losing ground, slowly but surely, to forces that wanted nothing more than their complete annihilation.
The governments had spun it as strategic retreat .A difficult but necessary decision to consolidate forces, protect population centers, focus resources where they could make the most difference. It was a lost cause anyway.
The clans, on the other hands had called it a necessary sacrifice—painful but unavoidable in a war against an enemy that never stopped coming. The civilians had simply added it to the growing list of nightmares they tried not to think about too deeply, because thinking too deeply about how much had been lost, leads to despair, and despair was a luxury no one could afford when survival demanded vigilance.
But something else had happened that day, too.
Something that had, in the eyes of many, balanced the scales of that dark moment in history. Despite the Third Nightmare's ups and down, it had also resulted with the emergence of several powerful saints. Broken Sword's daughter, the princess of the Immortal Flame clan had successfully conquered the Third Nightmare with her cohort. Of course, can't forget about the Prince of Nothing!
The ascensions had been simultaneous—impossible to coordinate, yet happening in the same moment as if synchronized by fate itself. Clan Song and Valor certainly had gained a few more powerful members!
Two great clans—Valor and Song, their ideological war as bitter and personal as any fought against nightmare creatures—had each gained a Saint on the same day. A perfect balance of power that should have triggered another conflict, another chapter in their endless hostilities that had already cost countless lives and resources that humanity could not afford to waste.
Instead, there had been an uneasy peace. Perhaps due to mutual exhaustion and with Antarctica's fall still fresh in humanity's collective memory, with the evidence of their fragility so starkly displayed, internal war was a luxury they couldn't afford.
The clans had returned to their territories. The new Saints had taken up their mantles, shouldering the responsibilities and expectations that came with transcendence. Life had continued because it had to, because survival meant moving forward even when the past still bled, even when the wounds were too fresh to have properly healed.
Everyone had moved on.
Most people had adjusted to the new reality of one less continent, while some were still busy redistributing forces, recalculating strategies for a world that kept shrinking.
Two years was surely enough time for the world to forget, right? Everyone had moved on with their lives. Adapted. Adjusted. Survived.
....Or so it seemed.
Far from the government and the clans, far from the populated territories where humanity clustered together for survival, there existed a place that most people had forgotten. A place that had been quietly abandoned after it served its terrible purpose.
The Third Nightmare's emergence point.
What had once been a settlement—though calling it a city had always been generous, given its size and purpose—now existed as little more than rubble and ruins. Buildings reduced to skeletal frameworks, their walls blown away by impacts that had exceeded their structural tolerances by orders of magnitude. Streets cracked and buckled by forces that had treated the ground like paper, folding and tearing it with casual disregard.
This was where it had ended. The place where several category 3 gates had opened and in turn forced most masters into the Dreamworld.
No one came here anymore.
The place had been abandoned,left to slowly decay under the weight of its own significance. Nature, what little of it remained, had begun to die out as well. The world had moved on, as it always did.
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No one but Nephis.
Lady Changing Star, now a Saint of Clan Valor had been standing still. One of the most powerful beings humanity could claim as their champion, was lost in her thoughts looking anywhere but the spot where she had woken up long ago.
Standing perfectly still,her silver armor gleaming in the pale afternoon sunlight,her white hair moved gently in the wind, she paid no attention to her surroundings. To others, she may have looked like a vision of hope standing in the remains of despair, a symbol of everything humanity still fought for despite all they'd lost.She looked like salvation itself, incarnate and armed.
But her expression told a different story.
Her gray eyes—usually sharp, so focused and so full of the determination that had carried her through impossible trials—stared at a specific spot on the ground with an intensity that bordered on desperate. A patch of scorched earth that looked no different from any other patch of scorched earth in this godforsaken place. But she stared at it as if it held answers to questions she couldn't fathom, secrets that would unlock everything if only she could understand them.
Her face was rather hollow. Not tired—exhaustion was something she'd learned to carry without showing. This was different. This was emptiness. A void that had nothing to do with physical fatigue and everything to do with something broken inside that wouldn't heal, couldn't heal, because she didn't even understand what was broken in the first place.
The armor that should have made her look powerful instead made her look rather fragile, like she was using it to hold herself together physically because she couldn't seem to manage it mentally.
She did not know why she kept coming back. Right at this spot. The spot that seemingly held all the answers to her heart.
Every few weeks, whenever she got free from Valor's demands,she found herself making the journey. Traveling to this forbidden zone that no one else dared visit, that had been marked off-limits for good reason. Standing in this exact spot for hours sometimes, just... staring.
At nothing that anyone else could see.
At everything her heart insisted was there.
At the place where she'd woken up after the Third Nightmare ended. At the place where her heart kept insisting to go back. It kept...pulling her back where it all started. The source of all her recent problems.
Ever since she'd escaped the Tomb of Ariel with her cohort—with Cassie, whose foresight had guided them through impossible times and whose visions had saved them more times than anyone could count; with Kai, whose arrows had found targets even he couldn't see and whose cheerful demeanor had kept them sane; with Effie, whose strength had held the line when everyone else faltered; with Master Jet, who'd been often on her side and believed in her convictions when no one else had dared— ; and Mordret....hm..and Mordret....,something had been wrong.
Not immediately. The wrongness had been subtle at first, easy enough to dismiss as the natural aftermath of trauma and transformation. She'd just become a Saint, after all. Her body and soul had undergone changes that few people ever experienced. Of course she felt strange. Of course the world seemed different. That was normal. Expected, even.
But two years had passed since that day—since Antarctica fell and she rose, since humanity lost a continent and gained a champion. Two years of trying to move on, to embrace her role as Saint, to be the pillar of strength that Clan Valor expected her to be.
But the feeling of emptiness in her heart had only grown worse.
The hollow ache in her chest that never went away, no matter how many victories she claimed or responsibilities she fulfilled, no matter how many battles she won or enemies she defeated. A persistent emptiness that felt like it was slowly consuming her from the inside. It was almost as if she was forgetting something vital, something that mattered more than anything else but remained frustratingly, impossibly out of reach. Like trying to remember a dream that dissolved the moment consciousness returned, leaving only the emotional residue and the certainty that something important had been lost.
The inexplicable habit of turning to speak to empty air, expecting someone to be there who never was. Her mouth opening to share an observation, a question, a moment of dark humor—only to find nothing but silence and her own confusion at why she'd turned in the first place.
The gaps. It had taken her approximately 3 months to realize the truth. Someone had been indeed missing from her life.
Trembling, she carefully pulled a piece of paper out from her armor. The paper was worn, edges soft from being handled too many times, creases suggesting it had been opened and refolded hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. Maybe.
She unfolded it with movements that had become ritual—precise, careful, as if any deviation might cause the paper to crumble to dust or the words to vanish entirely.
It was her ideology. Her view on combat. Murder. She remembers it clearly. Back on forgotten shore, she must have shared her philosophy with someone. Maybe a student?
It was written in her own handwriting.
Combat was murder with justification. Every strike was meant to kill. Every technique designed to end life as efficiently as possible. War stripped away the comfortable pretenses that allowed society to function, and what remained was simple and ugly: survival meant being willing to kill, and kill efficiently, without hesitation or remorse or the luxury of moral ambiguity.
She'd developed this philosophy on the Forgotten Shore, she knew that much with certainty. In that hell where survival meant accepting the brutal reality of what violence truly was, where pretty words like "neutralize" and "eliminate" got you killed and only harsh honesty kept you breathing one more day. Where every fight was life or death, and death was far more common than life, and anyone who couldn't embrace that truth became another corpse for the nightmare creatures to consume.
But the memory of developing it felt... incomplete. She had accidentally stumbled upon this piece of paper when she was preparing to move away from the empty home she had been residing in before the third nightmare.
The residence on the outskirts of the government-controlled zone. Or at least that's what her mind thinks. She knows it wasn't like that. There were several evidences of at least 2 people living together.
Two bedrooms. A kitchen that was larger than strictly necessary, a training area in the back that had clearly seen extensive use. The kind of place where someone could live comfortably without making a statement about wealth or status.
She remembered moving in. The memory was clear, vivid, undeniable in its specificity: it was right after she'd ascended to Master, her body still adjusting to the new rank, power still settling into patterns that wouldn't accidentally destroy everything she touched. A dangerous time, when control was tentative and mistakes could be catastrophic. She'd needed a place to recover, to stabilize, to learn to control strength that could shatter stone with a careless gesture.
And she'd moved into that house.
With someone.
The memory was specific in ways that vague recollection could never be. Two people entering that house together, their voices discussing room arrangements with the comfortable familiarity of people who'd already negotiated countless compromises. Deciding who would take which bedroom based on sleep schedules and preferences. Two people setting up the space—training equipment in the back arranged for complementary styles rather than redundancy, kitchen organized to accommodate two different approaches to cooking, living area arranged for shared comfort rather than individual isolation.
She remembered sharing her thoughts. That memory was clear, undeniable. Teaching it. Speaking these truths to someone who'd listened with the kind of attention that suggested genuine engagement rather than mere politeness. Someone who'd challenged her conclusions, forced her to defend her reasoning, helped refine her understanding even if they didn't entirely agree with her premises.
Had she taken a student on the Forgotten Shore? Someone she'd trained in the art of survival, molding them in her image, passing on her understanding of combat's brutal reality? It would make sense—she'd been stronger than most, more skilled, more determined. Taking a student wouldn't have been unusual for someone with her capabilities.
But she couldn't remember anyone. When she tried to recall the Forgotten Shore, her memories showed her surviving alone, fighting alone, developing these ideas in isolation. A solitary figure carving out survival through strength and will and absolutely refusing to break even when breaking would have been infinitely easier than continuing forward.
Yet the paper felt like evidence of something else entirely. Like a record of conversations that should exist in her memory but didn't.
Except when she'd tried to find records of the other person, there was nothing.
Nephis had searched. Not casually—she'd torn through every database she could access, used her position as Saint to dig through records that should have been not accessible to most people. Utility bills that should have shown usage patterns consistent with two people. Government registration that tracked every Awakened's living situation for security purposes. Any documentation that would prove someone else had lived in that house, that her memory wasn't some elaborate delusion born of isolation and trauma.
Nothing.
The house was listed under her name alone. Had always been under her name alone, from the day she'd moved in until the day she'd left. As if she'd lived there by herself for years, a solitary Saint in a small house, exactly the kind of eccentric behavior people might expect from someone who'd survived the Forgotten Shore's horrors and come out stronger but strange.
But that was wrong. She knew it was wrong.
The layout of the house proved it in ways that official records couldn't contradict. Two bedrooms, both showing clear signs of long-term, consistent use—different sleeping schedules evident in how the spaces were arranged, different preferences in how furniture was positioned and personal items were stored. One bedroom organized with precision, everything in its place. The other more relaxed, comfortable chaos that somehow still felt intentional rather than careless. Two sets of training equipment in the back, designed for fundamentally different fighting styles, worn in patterns that suggested regular, simultaneous use by two people who practiced together. One set focused on direct combat, heavy weapons and defensive stances. The other lighter, more mobile, designed for someone who valued speed and positioning over raw power. She remembers. This was the place where she trained her student, Rain.
Letting out a sigh, she carefully folded the paper with movements that had become automatic through repetition, returning it to her armor where it rested against her heart like a wound that wouldn't close.
Two years since Antarctica fell.
Two years since humanity lost another continent.
Two years since she'd become a Saint.
Two years of standing as one of humanity's champions, a pillar of strength that others leaned on.
Two years since she'd woken up in this exact spot with a hollow ache in her chest that had never healed, never even begun to fade.
Two years of victories that felt incomplete.
Two years of duties fulfilled with mechanical precision rather than genuine satisfaction.
Two years of feeling like half of a whole that used to be complete, like a shadow without the object that cast it.
Two years since something had been taken from her.
✰ The missing piece.