Outside Jinzhou, the Norfall Barrens.
"So the rain's finally here."
One day after the Rovers and Jinhsi held their secret council, the sky did something impossible. As evening crept in, rain began to fall upward.
Not from the clouds. From the earth.
Countless droplets tore free of the ground and streaked toward the skies, pooling into the vast anomaly overhead: the Etheric Sea. And rising alongside that inverted deluge came the shrieks and howls of Tacet Discords beyond counting, plus a moon that had no business being there.
It burned violet, a lidless eye staring down at the world below, radiating something that felt less like light and more like a warning.
"Retroact Rain. A Tacet Discord Tide. And that lunar phase..." Jinhsi's expression hardened as she watched the sky writhe. "It's exactly what Rover told us. Ovathrax has awakened."
The ancient records were unambiguous.
This was the unmistakable herald of a war-class Threnodian's revival and descent. The greatest trial Jinzhou had ever faced.
Victory meant peace. Defeat meant annihilation.
And yet, standing before the end of everything, Jinhsi let out a long, slow breath of relief. Silver eyes flickered with something close to gratitude.
She'd trusted him without hesitation. The moment Rover had given his warning, she'd issued the highest alert to the Midnight Rangers and every department in Jinzhou, buying them a full ten hours of lead time to deploy every strategic asset they had.
Without that? Faced with Retroact Rain materializing in the blink of an eye, a Threnodian lunar phase forming out of nothing, and a tidal wave of Tacet Discords flooding every sensor at once, the Midnight Rangers might have weathered the first assault through sheer grit alone. But the casualties would have been catastrophic. Activating strategic equipment took time, and that time would have been paid for in blood.
Now, thanks to Rover's warning, everything was different.
The Rangers stood in full formation, armed and ready. Every supply shipment had reached its destination. Every strategic system was online and humming. Every civilian had been evacuated. Jinzhou had no gaps in its armor.
And on top of all that...
"Black Shores, reporting for duty! We're here to support Jinzhou against the Threnodian!"
Men and women in matching black-and-white uniforms, each wearing a distinctive dark flower pinned to their chest, were already moving through Jinzhou's defensive lines. They reinforced positions, handed off supplies, slotted into place like they'd rehearsed this a hundred times.
"Name's Aalto, Consultant for Black Shores." A silver-haired man in oversized sunglasses stepped forward. "We've got data from the Tethys System: projections on Ovathrax, analysis of the Retroact Rain, plus supplies specifically designed to counter it. Hope it helps." Within Black Shores, members who operated abroad were called Consultants, while those stationed at headquarters on the island were known as Bloom Bearers. This man was clearly the former.
"Is this... rainfall range projections for the Retroact Rain? Wave-by-wave detection for the Tacet Discord Tide? Even a projected timeline for Ovathrax's full revival?!"
"Black Shores lives up to every rumor!"
"Thank you," Jinhsi said, her composure cracking for just an instant as she studied the data. "On behalf of Jinzhou, I offer our deepest gratitude for Black Shores' aid. This kindness will not be forgotten."
Across the defensive line, Jinzhou's leadership stared at the precision of that data in quiet awe. Small wonder every civilization and organization on the planet competed for partnerships with Black Shores. They had the goods to back it up.
Jiyan, who'd been fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with a squad of Bloom Bearers to repel a wave of Tacet Discords, felt the same shock ripple through him. Like the Midnight Rangers, Black Shores fielded nothing but Resonators, and every last one of them was a seasoned veteran.
This was exactly the reinforcement they'd dreamed of.
But the admiration ran both ways.
The Bloom Bearers were stunned. They'd deployed to Lament-stricken regions across the globe, and the hardest part was rarely the Tacet Discords or the disasters themselves. It was getting local powers to cooperate. Sometimes the locals outright attacked them.
Working with Jinzhou felt like two gears meshing perfectly, zero friction, zero resistance.
"So this is the gateway city of Huanglong. The coordination here is incredible."
"Right? They opened access without a second thought. If every deployment went this smoothly, imagine how much faster we could work. How many more lives we could save."
"Seconded. Last time I got sent to the New Federation, the Tacet Discords weren't what nearly killed me. It was the local government."
"These Midnight Rangers are no joke either. Discipline this tight, fighters this capable? I've never seen anything like it."
The Black Shores members traded impressions as they worked, voices carrying a warmth that bordered on disbelief. On battlefields against the Lament, incompetent allies could be deadlier than a Threnodian. Jinzhou's unconditional cooperation was enough to move them.
What a rare thing, finding a local force this reliable.
Even against a Threnodian, they liked their odds now.
"Speaking of which, does anyone know where our Leader is?"
The question came from one of the Bloom Bearers, and it landed like a spark in dry grass. Their Leader, that near-mythical figure who'd issued this support order personally, had to be somewhere in Jinzhou.
Not a single Black Shores member could pretend they weren't curious.
Even after all these years away, the shores still echoed with legends about her. Savior. Wanderer of the world. Hope of the prior civilization. Tuner of the stars. The titles went on and on.
And because they were Black Shores, because they understood how noble the organization's mission truly was, every member who'd joined found themselves wondering: what kind of person built all of this?
But while they burned with curiosity, one Bloom Bearer had already found the answer.
On the battlefield of the Norfall Barrens...
"There's so many of them. It's barely been any time and there are already more Tacet Discords than everything we fought over the past few days combined."
"And stronger, too. Way stronger than usual."
While the main force was still fortifying defenses and hadn't yet launched a counteroffensive, both Rovers had already carved a bloody path through the Tacet Discord Tide, plunging in and out of the horde seven times over.
The phrase Tacet Discord slaughter machine found its perfect embodiment.
Both gripped the five-star weapon Emerald of Genesis, and every swing sent gale-force winds ripping forward, launching a dozen Tacet Discords skyward. All the while, they channeled the Temporal Mandate to accelerate themselves. Time alter, quadruple accel. Their bodies became streaks of lightning, and to the Tacet Discords, all that registered was a flash of gold before...
They were Echoes. Shiny, golden Echoes.
Tacet Discords: W-what happened? How did I die?
And the Rovers were having the time of their lives. For once, they didn't need to worry about weapon durability. They could swing with everything they had, no restraint, no holding back. Ten different flavors of catharsis rolled into one glorious rampage.
"Jinzhou's side has their preparations, but syncing up with Black Shores and getting both forces into a seamless rhythm still needs time. So..."
"We buy them that time."
Wiping streaks of purple Tacet Discord blood from their faces, both Rovers flicked the Emerald of Genesis clean. The blade's killing cold radiated outward, dropping the temperature across the entire battlefield. Even the Retroact Rain froze mid-flight for a heartbeat.
After that, the two of them went absolutely feral.
Hundreds of Tacet Discords. An entire tide, cut down to nothing.
As for the Rovers themselves? A bit of dirt on the hems of their coats. That was it.
"Well, well. What a magnificent show!"
"Who's there?!" Both at once.
Riding the high of combat, neither Rover had caught the newcomer's presence. But in the next instant, a certain Camellia was pinned flat on her back with two swords crossed at her throat.
"My, my... how dangerous," she breathed, smiling up at them. "And there's two of you."
The tableau was, to put it mildly, suggestive.
A slender girl in a white dress trimmed with red, skin still pale from her injuries, pressed into the ground by two golden-eyed, dark-haired Rovers. It looked like a wall-pin scene relocated to the dirt. Rougher than romance usually called for, but forceful enough to make a heart race.
That is, if you could ignore the two blades radiating bone-deep cold, planted on either side of the "fragile" girl's neck like twin guillotines pressing downward.
The swords.
Ngh... so much force... can't hold much longer...!
Camellya's smile was starting to crack.
At the last possible second, she'd woven two reinforced vines from her Forte across her throat, and those vines were the only thing standing between her neck and the twin Emerald of Genesis blades bearing down on her.
So, to be clear...
Camellya: If anyone DARES call this flirting, I will personally compost them into fertilizer! Can you not see my vines are taut as bowstrings?! That was genuinely almost the end of me!
Rover / Rover: Phew... almost didn't pull back in time.
The killing momentum had taken over. Both had struck on pure instinct, and even Rover, who knew exactly who Camellya was, had nearly failed to stop. The only thing that saved her was that split-second cry of "Leaders," snapping them both back to their senses.
They'd retracted their force just before the twin blades sheared through those vines. Vines that, in truth, wouldn't have slowed the swords for long.
"You're from Black Shores?" the female Rover asked.
"That's right! See? My Blake Bloom's right here." Camellya pointed to the dark flower tied into one of her twin tails, feeling the cold recede from her throat. A quiet breath of relief slipped out before she could stop it.
Then came the aftershock. In every fight she'd ever been in, she could at least trade a few rounds with her opponent. If she was outmatched, she'd push into a second phase, Overclock herself at the cost of her own life, and keep swinging.
But this...
She'd never encountered opponents who could nearly kill her before she even had time to Overclock. That was terrifying.
If her vines hadn't been strong enough, if she hadn't called out when she did, she'd be dead right now. So this... oh god, is this really the Leader of Black Shores? This is...
"This is absolutely wonderful!!"
She loved everything about this.
The Camellia girl's tongue darted across her lips, her body trembling with barely contained excitement. Staring at the two figures before her, so decisive, so overwhelmingly powerful, so unreasonably beautiful, she felt her heart lurch hard enough to bruise.
And deeper than that, the hollow instinct that had ached inside her for so long, that restless hunger for something she could never name, was now screaming at her. Screaming that these two were what she'd been searching for all along.
So...
"First time meeting you, Leaders. I'm Camellya."