Out there, at a distance, the graceful ship was climbing high into the sky. Its hull was in shambles, with several sections of it shattered by the heavy bolts of the enemy ballistae. The powerful siege engine on its bow was gone, blown away by some terrible strike. There was a massive harpoon lodged in the vessel's side, with a piece of an enemy ship swinging below it on a thick chain.
Barely any Sailor Dolls remained on the deck, most of them broken or destroyed.
Seeing the pitiful state of the once-majestic ship, March couldn't help but squint.
'What is he doing…?'
Unlike Sunny, Dan Heng was still a man in her perspective, even in his current predicament.
Why was he rising into the sky? Out there in the boundless vastness of the night, there was nothing to protect him from the ire of Sun Prince and the enemy ships. The winds were much stronger up there, and the air much thinner. It was very risky…
March absentmindedly fired an arrow at a stray opponent, continuing to fight as she remembered when the whole world seemed to have lit up.
It was as if a tree of plasma suddenly sprouted at a breathtaking speed, branches of light piercing the Ivory Legions's fleets. March and Veliona had been lucky enough to be on the further reaches of the battle, allowing them to survive the mass Destruction. Now, there were only a few surviving ships left for them to pick off.
Retreating was not in there nature, it seemed.
March drew another breath, the air thin and sharp from the acrid smoke.
The ship above kept rising, struggling against the wind, against gravity, against sense itself. The sky swallowed it, piece by piece, until its burning hull looked no bigger than a toy floating through the dark.
She loosed another arrow and watched it pierce through an Ivory soldier's throat. The body fell soundlessly through the mist.
Then she lifted her eyes again.
Far above, in the burning firmament, the Sun Prince clashed with the other flaming giants. Each swing of their weapons tore open the clouds. Their roars echoed across the sea like the grinding of stone. She couldn't tell who was winning, or if winning even mattered anymore.
A moment later, everything turned white.
Her mind went empty — blank.
When her vision returned, she wasn't sure how much time had passed. The fires had gone out. The noise had vanished.
Before her stood a mountain of ice.
It wasn't natural ice. It was red, glowing faintly from within like glass trapping the last breath of a sunset. Frozen inside it were the bodies of the Ivory Legion — thousands, maybe tens of thousands, locked mid-motion, their faces twisted into whatever expression they'd worn at the end.
March stared for a long while, her bow half-lowered.
She didn't think to question it.
Something in her mind refused to care.
She turned her head instead, surveying the field. The air shimmered faintly from the remaining traces of heat, the ground fractured and scorched. Off in the distance, three figures stood still among the wreckage, unmoving.
The first was a towering black horse with two long horns, its mane flowing like a stream of smoke.
The second, a woman of onyx armor, kneeling with her sword driven into the earth.
The third, a serpent large enough to swallow an entire human whole, coiled upon itself in a silent spiral, its scales darker than shadow.
March's eyes lingered on them.
'Aren't they Sunny's?'
She had seen them before, back when Sunny fought beside them at the Temple of Chalice. He'd called one of them Saint before. That was the only name March knew. The others, she could only guess at.
Their forms were drenched in blood, signifying the slaughter that they had taken part in.
But these three didn't move, didn't breathe. They just stood, as if time had stopped for them, too.
March rubbed her arm, uneasy.
The serpent's head was tilted toward the sky, its eyes blank. The horse's hooves were buried deep into the shattered ground, frozen mid-step. Saint knelt in prayer, or exhaustion — March couldn't tell which.
The red ice reflected their silhouettes, casting distorted shadows across the battlefield.
March took a step forward, bow drawn again out of habit.
"Hey, uh… if you can hear me, could you tell me where Sunny is?"
The silence that followed was vast. Wind brushed against the ruins, carrying the smell of burnt metal and salt.
For a moment, March thought she saw Saint's fingers twitch — a trick of light, maybe, or her own wishful thinking. She smiled faintly, bitterly.
"Guess I'm talking to statues now."
Her gaze drifted back to the red mountain. The frozen soldiers gleamed under the dying light, faces blurred behind translucent ice. It looked less like a monument and more like a punishment.
And in the distance, far above, the broken ship continued its slow ascent toward the crimson sky.