"It's okay my sweet baby girl, your father will be with you in the city while your mother will be back from work. I promise."
"Well be safe soon. Just stay close to me."
"They are inside!"
"Let me go!"
"AHHHHHH!!"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Daddy won't be able to find you. From now on, please protect yourself."
Upon hearing those words from a middle-aged man, the eyes of a young girl were seen slowly opening, feeling weak and tired.
She felt herself lying down on a comfortable surface which was unlike the rough and painful wooden beds she had known while trapped with those terrible men. As her gaze focused, she saw a smooth white ceiling. Slowly, she turned her head to take in her surroundings.
Her dream from the storm, the monsters, the burning city, gone. Instead, she found herself in a small sterile white room. Ahead of her, a large mirror reflected her confused expression. The stillness in the room was unsettling and the silence was almost unnatural. She blinked, feeling disoriented as her head swiveled around. That's when she noticed the white blanket wrapped snugly around her, cocooning her in the softest bed she had ever known.
The bed's fabric was something she had felt a long time ago. It was soft, inviting, and the whiteness was pleasing to her eyes, though the air in the room was cold. Slowly, she freed her hands from the blanket, only to recoil in surprise.
Thin tubes and strange strips of paper were attached to her wrists, though there was no pain. She hesitated, then followed the tubes with her eyes to a silver stand beside the bed, holding bags of clear liquid water.
"Am I in heaven?" she wondered, her innocent mind grasping for answers to how she had ended up here, and what had happened to her.
"What is this place?" she thought, her curiosity now competing with the unexpected comfort of the bed and blanket.
To her right, a white door with a silver handle stood closed.
Suddenly, a thought hit her like a jolt.
"Daddy!" she suddenly felt panic as she realized her father was not there. The rapid beeping of a monitor mirrored her racing heartbeat.
"Calm down, young one." A soft unfamiliar voice echoed through the room.
She froze in place and fear replaced any other reaction she had. She held onto her blanket tightly, looking around the walls to see where the voice was coming from.
"You don't have to fear anything. You are safe where you are," The voice said, assuring the little girl who was quick to trust the strange person talking to her. She was still shivering with a chill going down her spine causing her to flinch slightly.
That is until her eyes landed on someone else in the corner of the room.
It was a beautiful woman with long flowing blonde hair and pointed ears sitting calmly in a chair, watching her with kind yet serious eyes. Her presence felt almost otherworldly, and the girl's breath caught in her throat. The woman's elegance was undeniable, but her ears, sharp and unlike any human's, made her appear strange, almost ethereal.
"You're awake," the woman said softly.
The girl shrank back, feeling her heart pounding with confusion and fear.
"W-Where am I? Who are you?"
The woman offered a gentle smile. "My name is Floria Melian Shelberry. I'm here to help. Don't be afraid, little one." She stood gracefully and moved to the side of the bed with a comforting yet mysterious presence as she stood near the IV stand.
The girl slowly peeked outside, looking at Melian, whose soft smile never wavered as she gazed down at her. The little girl was still scared, unable to let go of her grip on the blanket.
"What's your name, little one?" Melian asked again.
The girl hesitated but slowly peeked out from behind the blanket, revealing her long curly brown hair, a patched-up face, and deep ocean-blue eyes. Melian observed her closely, then reached out gently and patted her head.
The girl flinched but remained silent, unsure of how to respond.
"Can you tell me your name?" Melian repeated the question in a patient and kind tone.
After a brief pause, the girl whispered, "...S-Serena."
"As I thought," Melian said with a soft smile with her eyes closed momentarily. To Serena, it seemed as though a small light glowed around the woman as she smiled as her presence seemed almost magical.
Yet, Serena's small hands still gripped the blanket tightly as her fear hadn't fully released its hold.
"Where's my dad?" she whispered with anxiety.
Melian's expression softened, and she knelt beside the bed, keeping a respectful distance. "I don't know where he is right now, Serena. But I promise we're going to help you. I need you to tell me what you remember."
Tears welled in Serena's eyes as memories flooded back, the burning city, the monsters, the giant tentacles reaching for her.
"It was so scary," she whispered. "The air sirens... the monsters... my dad..."
"I know it's hard," Melian said in a soft and understanding voice. "But we need to understand what happened. Can you try to tell me?"
Serena wiped away her tears and nodded, "We were in the city... everything was fine... then the storm came."
Her hands shook as she recalled the nightmare.
"And then the monsters... they came out of nowhere... and... and my dad... he stayed behind..."
Melian listened carefully as her gaze never left the girl, but a knowing look crossed her frowned face.
'Demons.'
————————————————————————
In a room filled with machines and multiple individuals with white coats busy at their stations surrounding a large metallic box in the center.
Armed guards lined the perimeter, wielding high-caliber guns with one even carrying the new AF-1 Rifle. All eyes, however, were on the metallic box through a large window, where the Elf Queen Melian stood within a containment cell, alongside the young girl brought in by one of the Special Operative Teams.
Outside the cell, the head of the Science Department leaned over a console and reviewed the data feed with furrowed brows. Beside him, the lead researcher nervously tapped a stylus against his tablet.
"The fluctuations are... strange, director," the researcher began. "Her magic doesn't align with anything we've cataloged, but that's not the strangest part. Watch this."
He tapped a command, replaying a segment of footage on the screen. The video showed the young girl, Serena, lying asleep. Then, without warning, her hand twitched, and the space around her warped as though gravity itself had distorted momentarily.
"I know it sounded unscientific to me, but it's as if she bent space, time even, inside the containment spell. We've analyzed the temporal anomaly she caused, and time inside the cell is running 2% faster than outside. If it weren't for the Mana Crystals we installed around the cell, the effect could have spread much further."
The director rubbed his temples, clearly unsettled. "She's completely human, Thorne. Full-blooded and an Austronesian citizen. We even verified her identity," He pulled up Serena's dossier on the console, a picture of the girl, her name, address, and personal details filled the screen. "Her name is Serena Tasilisa. Her father, Antonio Duterte, was a Civil Engineer while her mother, Ludmilla Tasilisa, was a Nurse and a Soviet immigrant. She is born in Davao City-"
"Wait," Dr. Thorne interrupted as his eyes widened. "Davao City? In Mindanao? The same city that was destroyed by the demons before we nuked it? There were no survivors reported."
"Exactly. And yet, here she is," the director said grimly. "Still, how on earth does a child survive against the demons and a nuclear strike, then ending up in the land of this world is beyond me. And with magic?"
Thorne exhaled sharply. "That's the crux of it, isn't it? Humans can't wield mana in this world, not naturally. It's never been possible, not with all the research we've done." He glanced toward Melian, standing mere feet from Serena inside the cell. "But it gets stranger. Melian reported something unusual before the girl woke up. She said her connection to mana was weakening the longer she stayed near her."
The director raised an eyebrow. "Weakening? The Elf Queen herself? She's a Tier-2 Transcendent being."
Thorne nodded grimly. "It's not just a distortion. It's as if Serena's presence is somehow draining the mana around her, or maybe warping it. Melian said she's never experienced anything like it. She's been subjected to Anti-Magic before, but whatever this is, it's something entirely different."
The director crossed his arms and his gaze shifted from the console to the containment cell. "We were besieged from all sides by demons and sea monsters. No human should've made it through alive because of it, let alone adapted to this world's laws."
"And yet here she is," Thorne said quietly.
For a moment, the room fell into silence, broken only by the machines monitoring Serena, until the director's eyes went on the girl before he shifted the conversation.
"And the vial Team Epsilon recovered?"
Dr. Thorne straightened and his fingers tightened around his tablet. "The vial they retrieved with Serena? It's in the lower levels of the facility. According to the words from the auction house leader, it contains a substance that allows manaless species like humans... to wield mana."
The director's eyes widened slightly. "You're not serious?"
"I am. It is unknown how these people were able to get this, but whatever's in that vial and if humans can access mana... the balance of power between worlds could change everything."
The director fell into a pensive silence as his face hardened. "We need answers, and we need them fast."