The grey ash of Kamaten Island crunched underfoot, a sound too loud in the unnatural quiet. Jannali Bandler hurried to close the distance, her heart thumping a rhythm that felt blasphemous in this silent place. Up ahead, Marya had frozen on the winding path between fields of endlessly spinning, rusted clock gears. The tall, stoic woman was a statue, her hand a white-knuckled grip on the hilt of the sword slung over her shoulder. Perched on her shoulder, the translucent blue form of Jelly Squish had gone unnaturally still, his usual wobble solidified into tense vigilance.
"What the hell…?" Jannali whispered, her accent cutting the thick air. She slid to a halt beside them, the fine ash puffing up around her sandles.
Then she saw it. Her breath hitched.
In a clearing ahead, where the path widened before the sickly yellow flow of the Sanzu River, stood Paula Cupcake Pope. The Emerald Matriarch, arms crossed over her bronze armor, a wide, knowing smirk on her face. Her wild fire-red hair was a violent splash of color against the grey landscape. "Good of you to notice," Paula chuckled, the sound rich and mocking. She lit a long, thin pipe with a casual strike of a match.
Jannali's eyes, sharp and observant, darted. The muffled sound—a strained, humming whimper—drew her gaze to Paula's left. There, bound in heavy sea-stone chains, a gag stuffed in her mouth, was Vesta Lavana. The musician's rainbow hair was dulled with grime, her bright violet eyes wide with a mixture of fear and fury. Flanking her, also bound but standing defiant, were Atlas Acuta and Galit Varuna. The lynx Mink's rust-red fur was matted, a thick wrap of bandages across his chest staining crimson. Galit's long, flexible neck was restrained by a cruel-looking collar, his emerald eyes burning with silent rage.
A cold understanding settled in Jannali's gut. A trap. Of course it was a trap.
Marya's golden eyes, usually so detached, flicked from Vesta to Atlas and Galit. A silent conversation passed in the space of a heartbeat—a raised chin from Marya, a slow, deliberate nod from Atlas, a sharper nod from Galit. Vesta, catching the exchange, swiveled her head between her captors and her friends, a desperate hope cutting through her panic.
Paula blew out a plume of fragrant smoke and shook the match dead. "We can do this the easy way," she said, her voice dropping to a conversational tone that was somehow more threatening than a shout. "Or the real, real hard way."
From the deep shadows cast by the towering, fossilized egg-stones, four more colossal figures emerged. The ground trembled subtly with each step. Jannali's third eye, hidden beneath her headscarf, throbbed as if in warning.
To the left came Stanislav Robben—a mountain of pale, marble-like flesh and cold calculation. His crimson-tinted sunglasses hid eyes that supposedly never blinked. The dark blue of his high-collared uniform shrouding his jaw. Beside him, a contrast in every way, was his brother Dimitri. Broader, a frosted indigo in color, he flashed a shark-toothed grin, his polished horns sweeping back like spoilers. He adjusted the fur-lined trench coat draped over his shoulders with a theatrical flourish.
From the right came Polly Tetsuko, her furnace-orange skin and I-beam horns radiating practical menace. She hefted a wrench the size of a human torso, tapping it against her palm. Beside her, lanky and sparking with static, Benn Roland sneered, his brass goggles reflecting the gloom. He absently adjusted the copper wiring wrapped around his jagged horns.
"Crikey," Jannali breathed, her fingers instinctively tightening the grip on her spear.
On Marya's shoulder, Jelly quivered. "So… big!"
Paula took a long drag from her pipe. "You've decided then," she stated, seeing the resolve harden in Marya's posture.
Marya didn't speak. With a whisper of steel that was deafening in the chiku-taku silence, she drew Nisshoku. The obsidian blade didn't reflect light; it consumed it, leaving a trail of deeper darkness in the air.
"Right," Jannali muttered, shifting her stance, her boomerangs feeling terribly small. "No worries. Just a handful of house-sized ogres. A casual Tuesday."
Marya's voice, when it came, was low and flat, directed at Jannali without her eyes leaving Paula. "I will leave her to you. I will handle the rest."
Jannali blinked. "What?! You'll what?!"
But Marya was already a blur of motion. She didn't run; she flowed forward, her boots barely disturbing the ash, thoughts blank, her action was pure. As she moved, the air around her grew deathly cold and thick. From the leather jacket with its Heart Pirate insignia, a terrible, beautiful transformation erupted.
Her long black hair dissolved into a swirling nebula of starlight and weeping shadow. A tripartite halo of gold, silver, and abyssal black flickered into existence above her. The skin on her arms cracked with glowing veins of blue, red, and black. Her eyes shifted—the left pupil now a window to a peaceful field of drifting souls, the right a gateway to a hellscape of eternal flame.
And then, the sound.
It wasn't a sound you heard with your ears, but felt in your bones and soul. A deep, mournful TOLL, like the bell of a sunken cathedral. It rang out once, twice, shaking the rust from the spinning gears. On the ninth toll, the world fractured.
The grey wasteland around Marya splintered. To her left, a glimpse of golden fields; to her right, burning wastes. At her feet, the ground became a frozen, black-water swamp, skeletal cypresses of ice erupting. The sky above her fractured into a bleeding sun and a cracked, shadow-dripping moon.
From the mist, they emerged. Nine Grim Reapers, towering three meters tall. Three in robes of nebulae with faceless gold masks, wielding scythes of starlight. Three with half-rotted bodies and floating, mirrored scales. Three horned skeletons dragging chains that smoked with phantom heat. They circled Marya, the Key of Thresholds—her tri-split sword—glowing in her hand.
Paula Cupcake Pope's smirk didn't falter; it widened. She slammed the butt of her massive trident, Sharito, into the ground. "Okay then," she said, her voice booming with relish. "Let's make this quick. I got a pipe to finish."
Jannali, caught in the psychic backlash of the transformation, stumbled back, her mind reeling from the voices of the island screaming in tandem with Marya's power. "Aw, bugger me…"
Paula charged. She didn't just run; she flowed, green lotus platforms flashing into existence under her feet, allowing her to cross the distance in a blink—the Emerald Step. Her trident aimed to spear Jannali in one, clean strike.
Jannali's survival instincts, honed in hidden jungles, kicked in. She threw herself into a desperate dive, the trident's wind tearing at her clothes. Rolling to her feet, she yanked Anhur's Whisper up. "Y'know, for a 'Giggling Scourge,' you're not very funny!" Jannali tapped, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her accent sharp. She had to keep this giant, charismatic monster away from Marya's back.
Paula chuckled, swinging her trident in a wide, casual arc that Jannali barely ducked. "Honey, the joke's on you. You brought a spear to a god fight."
The battlefield behind them descended into total chaos. Marya tore through the Ogres like a blur, her weapons moving with deadly silence. Stanislav Robben met her with calm precision. He swung his massive club, Hashira, without any anger—he looked more like a technician finding a weakness than a warrior. "Your summons are flimsy," he said flatly, as a Heaven's Herald shattered against his weapon and exploded into light.
Dimitri laughed uproariously, his own kanabo, Shingiro, sheathed in permafrost. "You hear that, Stan? She brought her own fan club! Let's give 'em a proper welcome!" He charged a Purgatory's Arbiter, his head-crest glowing with cold blue light. "Crest-Slide: Absolute Zero!"
Polly Tetsuko wasn't chasing phantoms. She zeroed in on Marya herself, her sledgehammer Chikatsu whistling through the air. "You're causing a workplace disturbance, kid!" she bellowed. "I can't have you messin' with the Anchor's rhythm!"
Benn Roland hung back, cackling as he discharged arcs of static from his insulated rod, Asu, trying to disrupt the reapers' forms. "Oh, is the 'Ancient God' grumbling? No, that's just your nonsense falling apart!"
Jelly Squish, still on the periphery where Marya had left him, wobbled in distress. "Bloop! Marya! Big fight!" He wanted to help, but the scale was overwhelming. He focused on the bound captives, his gelatinous body morphing into a giant, wobbly hand to try and sneak towards Vesta's chains.
Jannali, meanwhile, was fighting the battle of her life. She was faster, but Paula was stronger, smarter, and had centuries of experience. Jannali's spear was a blur, deflecting thrusts and searching for an opening in Paula's armor. She threw an Echo Boomerang, not at Paula, but at the ground near her feet, kicking up a cloud of ash to blind her.
Paula didn't even flinch. She simply swept her trident through the cloud, the force of it dispersing the ash. "Cute trick," she said, her eyes gleaming with those "Seven Eyes of Wisdom" that saw everything. "You fight like you're listening to a song no one else can hear."
"Maybe I am!" Jannali shot back, ducking under another swing and scoring a shallow line across Paula's armored thigh. "And it's telling me you talk too much!"
Vesta, watching through her gag, strained against her chains, a muffled melody of protest humming in her throat. Atlas and Galit exchanged another look, their bodies tensing, waiting for their moment in the bedlam their friend had unleashed. The death knells echoed, the reapers wailed silently, and the grey cradle of the Hitotsume began to shudder under the weight of a war on its brow.
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