The rain had eased slightly, but the white mist rising from the clash of hot and cold air had only grown thicker.
Which comes first, misfortune or tomorrow — Su Yu couldn't help but think of the old saying.
Clearly, misfortune had arrived first.
His hand was still pressed against that spot on Durandal's breastplate.
The sensation of that cold alloy shell surged up through his fingertips.
Hard, cold, carrying the dense, compact feel unique to high-density materials.
And beneath it, the softness and warmth that belonged to a human body.
Even through a layer of solid armor, he could clearly feel the resistance his palm met.
The nature of the World Barrier had changed the instant the Herrscher of the Void's Authority disrupted it — no longer solid, it had become something like a thin membrane.
That was the direct cause of this humiliating situation.
Durandal's gaze was frozen on Su Yu's face.
Those deep blue eyes were being torn apart by some chaotic storm of emotion.
Her chest rose and fell sharply with her breathing.
The Bright Knight: Excelsis's auto-balance system seemed to sense her heart rate spiraling out of control — as an emergency response, several cooling vents popped open along the breastplate's seams, releasing a low hiss of pressure.
That mechanical clank of metal was what finally snapped Su Yu back to his senses.
He yanked his hand back as if he'd been electrocuted.
The motion was so abrupt it stirred a sharp gust of air.
"Sorry!"
Su Yu took a step back, his right hand hanging in midair, unsure where to put it, until he finally clenched it into a fist and pulled it to his side.
He didn't quite dare look Durandal in the eye.
This was... a hellish opening move.
If he'd done this in front of an ordinary person, he could've called it an accident.
But in front of Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie, famous for her iron discipline... this was, in some sense, a court-martial-level disgrace.
Durandal didn't speak right away.
She held her post-contact posture, body leaning slightly back, gaze still fixed on Su Yu, though her focus kept scattering and reforming.
She was processing.
Fact A: her most trusted friend, Rita — always composed, always perfect — had just kissed a man.
Fact B: that same man, at the instant of touching the space barrier, had pressed his hand against her own chest.
It was a loop guaranteed to overload the Goose's CPU.
She closed her eyes, opened them again, her throat working slightly as though she meant to say something — but in the end only an ambiguous sound came out.
"...Forgive my rudeness."
Durandal straightened herself back up.
Her movements quickly regained that characteristic knightly crispness.
But if one looked closely, an unnatural flush was spreading from the tips of her ears.
That redness even crept down her pale neck, vanishing beneath the fitted protective armor.
She turned to the side, staring fixedly into the void nearby, as though some vital piece of intelligence hung there — something more important, right now, than the man who had just assaulted her.
The silence was broken by another pair of footsteps.
Rita walked over.
Her gait was, as always, light and graceful.
She came to stand beside Su Yu, gave a slight bow, and let her gaze pass over him to the officer still recomposing herself.
"What terrible timing."
Rita's voice was soft, laced with an amusement whose sincerity was impossible to gauge.
"I know Lord Su Yu is usually careless, and I understand what just happened counts as force majeure."
"But to do something so... how should I put it, thoroughly offensive to a young, beautiful, and highly distinguished lady, right in front of me — even I can't cover for you on moral grounds this time."
Su Yu felt a dull ache flare up again in the bridge of his nose.
The aftermath of that earlier bite hadn't even faded yet, and now Rita was needling him about it in front of Durandal. He felt his whole life had taken on a grim, philosophical shade of gray.
"I said it was an accident," he muttered, rubbing his offending hand while trying to salvage some dignity. "You believe me, right?"
Rita lowered her eyes; a flicker of amusement seemed to pass through them before vanishing.
She didn't take the bait, instead turning to offer Durandal an elegant bow.
"It's been too long, Lady Durandal."
"Rita is here to apologize on behalf of her careless master. He meant no harm — it was merely... a deviation of physical momentum, so to speak."
A deviation of physical momentum.
Su Yu heard the excuse and nearly rolled his eyes.
That sounded even more absurd than "I accidentally tripped."
Durandal finally recovered from her near system-crash.
She gave a light cough, her voice coming out a touch lower than usual.
"Rita, I'm glad you're all right."
She turned to look at this friend who felt both familiar and, now, somehow strange, her tone complicated.
"No need to apologize. I understand that was... beyond anyone's control."
She pretended not to have heard the earlier teasing, her eyes drifting between Rita and Su Yu.
"Won't you introduce me? This man beside you. His reflexes... are quite impressive. How did you two meet?"
Rita's smile softened.
Rather than feeling flustered by the pointed question, she took a step forward and settled naturally beside Su Yu.
"Is Lady Durandal concerned about me? Honestly, this sounds less like a battle debrief and more like a Household Registration."
Durandal was momentarily choked speechless.
Why did she care so much? Why was she so fixated, at a time like this, on exactly how these two people had met?
This went against every principle of her knighthood. During a mission, amid such a critical exchange of intelligence, she had no business putting personal feelings on the table.
It left her with a faint, uncomfortable sense of failure.
She didn't understand why she cared so much — cared about this man's relationship with Rita, cared about that... contact just now, cared about the atmosphere this man gave Rita that she herself had never experienced.
"Heh."
Rita gave a light laugh, declining to dwell on the question, and swiftly steered the conversation back to the mission.
"Seeing Lady Durandal still so full of energy puts my mind at ease."
"I know you have a lot of questions, but please, bear with us — Lord Su Yu, how much time do we have left?"
Su Yu glanced at the System countdown flickering across his retina; the Rift's collapse was entering its final stage.
"Fifteen minutes until the Rift collapses."
He tried to make his voice sound as professional as possible, hoping to scrub the "chest-groper" label from Durandal's mind entirely.
"Let's exchange as much intelligence as we can."
Durandal's gaze swept back and forth between the two of them.
She noticed something.
When Rita spoke, there was no preamble, no unnecessary explanation.
As if the two of them had been working together for so long that they no longer needed pleasantries before diving straight into tactical planning.
It left Durandal with a lonely feeling of being shut out.
"Lady Durandal," Rita's voice broke the silence, "I know you have many questions in your heart. But time doesn't allow for small talk — let's get straight to the point."
She stepped aside.
"Lady Fu Hua, if you would."
Fenghuang's translucent red silhouette materialized out of nothing between them.
Durandal's pupils contracted sharply the instant she saw the figure.
"Fu Hua?"
Fenghuang nodded toward her, no trace of pleasantry in her eyes, cutting straight to business.
"Durandal."
She got straight to the point.
"I'll keep this brief."
"I'm going to use Yu Ducheng's power to tell you, as clearly as I can, what kind of crisis this world is facing, and how Rita came to be here."
Time passed.
Piece by piece, Durandal assembled the picture from Fenghuang's words.
Not long ago, in Arc City of the Honkai world, Kiana Kaslana — corroded by the power of the Herrscher of the Void and unwilling to endanger others — had chosen to end her own life.
But she hadn't died. Instead, she'd crossed into the parallel world where Su Yu lived.
That parallel world had its own unique physical laws, one that naturally suppressed Honkai energy. Kiana, who should have already died, survived thanks to Su Yu's power, and with his help learned to control the Herrscher of the Void's power within her.
As for Rita — after being ambushed by Raven in the Honkai world and left near death from grievous wounds, she'd been transported to Su Yu's world, and in a misunderstanding, had nearly killed the very man who saved her life.
Originally, Rita had only wanted to repay Su Yu for her mistake as best she could. But then disaster struck — Honkai would descend upon this peaceful world, six months from now.
And now, less than ninety-five days remained.
Upon learning all this, Su Yu had set aside the past and invited Rita to join his alliance against Honkai.
From then on, he'd worked tirelessly to grow his strength, advance his technology, forge weapons, and train elite humans and mech pilots — all in preparation for the apocalypse that would arrive in ninety-five days.
Durandal occasionally interjected with questions — about Su Yu's agreement with Kevin, and what it meant to be "Su's" heir.
Fenghuang told her it had originally been a bluff.
During one Spatial Rift cleanup operation, Su Yu had unexpectedly run into Kevin Kaslana. If Kevin went all-out, he could shatter the World Barrier, and Honkai would descend prematurely.
Left with no other choice, Su Yu had forcibly mimicked Su's way of thinking to bluff his way through.
He'd claimed to have a method that could let humanity triumph over Honkai, hoping to persuade Kevin to abandon his dangerous Project STIGMA — including the pointless sacrifice at Arc City.
But Kevin said he needed a guarantee of his own — a guarantee that Su Yu and Kiana would indeed come before him — so he refused to stop Jackal from detonating the Honkai energy bomb in Arc City.
He wanted Su Yu to prove that Kiana would truly return with the answer to save that city.
Until then, he would let no one disrupt this stage he'd set.
Fenghuang also mentioned the mismatched flow of time between the two worlds — though from the Honkai world's perspective, Rita had only been missing for less than thirty-six hours, in truth she'd already spent over three months on this side.
With that, Durandal finally understood the full shape of things.
It was, it turned out, a doomed struggle — one fated for sacrifice from the very start, yet fought for regardless, for the sake of a slim hope.
And the man standing before her now.
He could have, like any sensible person, secured himself a comfortable position as the end of the world approached — hidden beneath the umbrella of some wealthy conglomerate, or leveraged his foreknowledge of the future to maximize his own gain.
But he hadn't.
This man named Su Yu was, through means she still didn't fully understand, trying — in this unfamiliar city, amid a Honkai catastrophe destined to sweep over Arc City — to hold up even one small patch of untouched ground where that white-haired girl could live in peace.
Different worlds, different methods, and yet that same impulse to raise one's fists for something worth protecting filled her with awe.
The way she looked at Su Yu began, subtly, to shift.
Once, to save a certain Bubble Realm, she had sealed it within her own body.
And Su Yu, to protect that peaceful world from Honkai's incursion, had poured out such immense effort.
Different worlds, but the same resolve — to protect what mattered, to fight for something worth cherishing.
"Well..."
she murmured under her breath, a note of self-mockery in her tone.
"I was indeed rude earlier."
Durandal lifted her head, those deep blue eyes now filled with solemnity, and gave Su Yu a slight nod. "I always assumed you were some kind of scoundrel trying to drag this world into the Abyss. But now, I take back my prejudice."
She stared into Su Yu's clear eyes — the eyes of someone who carried a crushing weight and had chosen to keep walking anyway.
"You... feel the same way I do."
"A warrior who's willing to wager everything for something worth protecting."
Faced with Durandal's earnest apology, and the trace of soldierly admiration in her eyes, Su Yu found himself, of all things, a little embarrassed.
He laughed awkwardly and scratched the back of his head.
"Er, well... the fault's mine. I honestly don't know why this barrier suddenly thinned out."
"You needn't be so modest."
Rita cut in with a smile, giving him a light chop on the head with the edge of her hand.
"On this point, you truly are an opponent worth respecting."
"Hey, Rita, who says things like that?"
Su Yu grumbled, mildly displeased — Rita's use of the word "opponent" made it sound like she was placing him and Durandal in the same dangerous category.
"Did I say something wrong, Lord Su Yu?"
Rita's smile was the picture of gentle grace.
"And besides — bringing that incident up again and again, even now — could it be you're trying to prove that little accident earlier was actually... a memory worth savoring?"
As Rita's words landed,
the color that had just faded from Durandal's face rushed back, redder than before.
She turned away, staring at the still-churning violet-black vortex, trying to hide her inner turmoil by avoiding their eyes.
"This isn't the time for teasing, Rita."
Rita only laughed more brightly.
"My apologies, Lady Bianka," she said softly, watching Durandal's flushed profile. "It's just been so long since I've seen you like this — please forgive me."
"To you, perhaps we've only been apart a few days. But to me, it's been a full three months... it's only natural to want to tease a dear friend a little, after so long apart, isn't it?"
Durandal coughed twice.
She wasn't truly angry, but the embarrassment was almost more than she could handle.
"Ahem... I understand the situation well enough now." She forced the conversation back on track. "Now that I know the state of things, what do you need from me?"
"But there's something I need to say up front."
"As a Valkyrie of Schicksal, I have my own principles, my own lines I won't cross."
"If you're asking me to betray Schicksal's code, or to act against my knight's oath, then forgive me — I cannot comply."
Though her words insisted on upholding Schicksal's position, the look in her eyes as she watched Su Yu carried an unmistakably deep sense of comradeship.
Su Yu smiled, entirely unsurprised.
"Just what I'd expect from an honorable knight," he said lightly. "Don't worry, I won't ask you to do anything that crosses your own lines."
He paused, his gaze sharpening.
"All I want is this: when Kiana returns to stop the Honkai energy bomb from detonating, help her hold Kevin back."
Durandal blinked, then looked at Su Yu, puzzled.
"That's already my duty. I'd do it even if you hadn't asked."
"But didn't you say... you have a better plan, one that surpasses Kevin's so-called 'Project STIGMA'? Wouldn't that be enough to convince him?"
Su Yu shook his head slightly.
"There is a plan. But the plan hinges entirely on Kiana. Given how extreme and heavy Kevin's temperament is, he'll never simply agree to hand humanity's future to a seventeen-year-old girl."
"The plan for Kiana to become the Final Herrscher, sealing Honkai energy on the moon and rendering it harmless — in the original story, that plan did succeed."
"But Kevin won't change his mind just because I hand him a simple 'spoiler.'"
"Project STIGMA is already the plan Kevin considers to have the greatest chance of letting humanity survive another Honkai. Asking him to abandon it and 'gamble' on Kiana becoming the Final Herrscher instead — that will never be his style."
"So he'll refuse. And when he does, I'm afraid a fight will be unavoidable."
Durandal was quiet for a long while, then fixed Su Yu with a deep look and nodded.
"Understood." she said. "I'll do everything I can to hold Kevin back. After all, containing that bomb's threat falls within our duty as Valkyries too."
Su Yu thanked her.
But before he could say more, Durandal's tone shifted again.
"Su Yu, I want you to understand one thing."
She looked at him, her expression turning cold once more.
"My final orders are to find and bring Kiana back. Once this doomsday crisis has ended, I am bound to carry out that duty."
"In other words, our cooperation extends only to preventing the Honkai energy bomb from detonating. After that... Kiana remains a target of Schicksal."
There was no softness in those words.
But Su Yu just laughed, easy and light.
His gaze flicked, almost carelessly, toward the System's storage inventory.
There, a pocket watch lay quietly — an item he'd received from completing an earlier mission.
It was like some kind of fated key: once it accumulated enough Emotion Points, it could open a hidden "back door" through the barrier between the two worlds.
Kiana would be able to keep her strength intact and return home safely — and she'd also be able to come back here.
As for whether he himself would survive his own so-called fated death by then — that was no longer something Su Yu was willing to factor into his plans.
Do what he could, and leave the rest to fate — that was all he had left to offer.
Durandal nodded. She reached out, pressing her hand gently against the still-faintly-rippling space barrier between them.
"If I use the power of my Holy Blade... perhaps I could bring Rita back from that world."
Rita froze for a moment.
She instinctively lifted her head, looking toward Su Yu, who stood a few steps away.
"Rita, the final decision is yours."
"Whether you choose to return to that world and fulfill your duty as a Schicksal Valkyrie, or stay here and face the coming doomsday with me... I'll respect whatever you decide."
He placed the right to choose, untouched, entirely in her hands.
Su Yu and Fenghuang walked off toward the Rift's core region, as if to confirm their evacuation route.
That man's retreating back looked lonely, yet resolute.
Rita watched that back, an involuntary, helpless smile tugging at her lips.
"...Honestly."
she murmured under her breath.
She should have known this already.
That's just how this man was.
It had been the same, back at the very start, when Su Yu first reached out his hand to her — he'd placed the "right to choose" in her hands, entirely.
In that moment, there had been no coercion, no conditions attached, only a hope that she'd lend him her strength, to protect this beautiful world.
Later, training those new recruits at Starfire Furnace, he'd treated them the same way — always granting them the right to choose.
He only ever laid the path down, then left the decision to you.
This man, unreasonably, extended that same respect to everyone — to every single person he counted as a companion.
Even a raw recruit. Even a maid who'd once tried to kill him.
That respect was the very thing about this Bond that fascinated Rita the most — and also the very thing that left her feeling... lost.
If he'd shown even the faintest hint of that feeling — "I don't want you to leave" —
But he never did.
Just as he never lowered his own principles to keep anyone by his side.
"This is just how you are... Lord Su Yu."
Rita closed her eyes gently, masking the complicated flicker within them.
To her, Su Yu's principles were the very source of her fondness for him — and also, right now, the root of her headache.
Whether she stayed or not, Su Yu would never try to steer her fate.
That was freedom. And it was also the deepest kind of loneliness.
After a long moment, Rita drew a deep breath, lifted her head, and met Durandal's gaze.
"Lady Bianka."
She didn't use Durandal's title — she chose instead the name only the two of them used in private.
"I'm sorry. I can't go back with you."
"As an S-rank Valkyrie of Schicksal, protecting the peace of my original world is my duty."
"But right now, I'm in this world — one not yet trampled under Honkai's iron heel."
She paused, glancing at the white-armored figure clearing Honkai debris in the distance, a smile of unmistakable tenderness rising on her lips.
"In this world, too, there are people still fighting to live their lives."
"Their lives matter just as much to Rita as the lives of the people in our own world."
"You once taught me that a knight protects everyone equally."
"I may only be a former maid, but in this moment, I too have found the resolve to become a knight."
"I beg you." Rita bowed slightly at the waist, offering a proper knight's salute. "Let me stay in this world."
Durandal froze.
She looked at Rita as though seeing, for the first time, another side of her officer hidden beneath that flawless exterior.
Rita didn't stop.
"Lady Bianka, you're strong. Truly strong."
Her voice suddenly carried a tenderness edged with something close to self-mockery.
"As your officer, as your friend, I know better than anyone how much you've sacrificed to protect that power of yours... but in this world, there's this one fool."
She pointed toward the man in the distance, checking the Rift's data.
"He isn't clever, and he isn't cunning."
"He just keeps forcing himself forward, for the sake of other people's dreams and futures — disguising himself as a mature, dependable adult, a chess master who seems to have foreseen every move."
"But I know better. He isn't nearly as strong as everyone else believes him to be. His shoulders aren't broad enough to carry the whole world."
"And yet he always smiles and says it's fine, that he can hold on a little longer."
"I hate fools like that."
"Someone who's more anxious than anyone, who's really still just a child learning to shoulder responsibility, and yet forces himself into a hero's mask to face the end of the world."
"That's exactly why I can't just stand by and watch."
"I've seen him typing away at code deep into the night, falling asleep on his keyboard from exhaustion."
"I've seen him, one hour still fighting for his life, and the very next hour standing calmly in front of everyone as if nothing happened, telling them he's fine."
"If I just let him keep going like this, I think, sooner or later, he'll burn himself down to ash."
"So I'm sorry — please forgive me, I cannot comply."
Rita paused, then offered Durandal a smile.
That smile was resolute, bittersweet, and unshakably firm.
Durandal gazed at Rita for a long time.
"I see..."
Rita seemed to have changed somehow.
Durandal couldn't quite put her finger on it, but — compared to the officer who once shouldered everything alone, who always tried to bear every shadow in silence rather than let anyone see it —
wasn't the Rita standing before her now, in some way, better off?
Durandal felt a wave of emotion — happy for her friend's growth, yet touched, too, by a quiet sense of loss.
How could she not know that Rita had always, willingly, cleared away obstacles in the dark for her own sake?
But some things needed someone to do them, and from Durandal's position, she'd never had any right to lecture Rita about her choices — Rita had always acted out of love for her.
But now, it seemed, Rita had found a different meaning to her life, a wish to see different scenery.
And, finally, that one important person had appeared in her life.
After a long silence,
Durandal let out a long breath, the severity in her eyes slowly fading into a helpless, faintly wistful smile.
"I understand, Rita."
"I respect your choice. But... you know there's still a promise the two of us need to keep together."
"So, in six months — no, three months, by your reckoning — once Honkai's incursion has been stopped, I want you to come back to your world for a time, to finish what we started together."
"After that, whether you want to leave Schicksal, or do whatever else you wish — I'll support you."
Rita, of course, understood exactly what Durandal meant — the mission to save that Bubble Realm.
She nodded and said, "Understood, Bianka."
Rita took a step back and offered Bianka a formal salute.
"Take every care. I know you're strong, but while I'm not by your side, please think things through carefully before every mission. Don't let anything like being fooled so easily by Headmistress Theresa happen again."
The severity on Durandal's face faded into a helpless, wry smile. "You say that like we'll never see each other again."
Their gazes met in the air for a single second.
In that exchange of looks lay far more than words could say.
It was a comrade's reluctance to part, and also respect for each other's decisions.
With their conversation done, Su Yu walked back from the Rift's core region.
"Perfect timing." He glanced around, his eyes sweeping over the now-stabilizing space barrier. "Looks like you've reached a conclusion. Then, Lady Durandal, I'll leave the rest in your hands."
Durandal turned to look at Su Yu.
The pressure radiating from an S-rank Valkyrie hadn't faded, even through the space barrier — if anything, it had grown heavier under the weight of this solemn conversation.
"Su Yu."
"Yes?"
"Can I trust you to look after Rita?"
The moment those words fell, the air around them seemed to freeze.
Su Yu blinked, caught off guard.
Beside him, Rita visibly stiffened too — clearly she hadn't expected her own rigidly proper commander to ask something so much like a parent vetting a suitor's character.
In that instant, Su Yu felt an intense weight of pressure —
the pressure of being scrutinized, being questioned, being treated as someone entrusted with something precious.
He didn't flinch. He didn't look away.
"At the very least," he said, meeting Durandal's gaze, "I promise — I won't let her fall before I do."
It was an arrogant answer, and a heavy one.
But Durandal saw it.
In that man's eyes, she saw the resolve of someone who'd already made peace with dying.
It wasn't fearlessness.
It was a flame — one that knew it would shatter itself to pieces, yet still chose to spread itself wide as a shield for the people behind it. A Kindling named protection.
Durandal studied Su Yu for a long moment, then finally let out a slow, heavy breath.
"...Fine. I'll trust you, for now."
Without another word, she turned sharply, leaving Su Yu with the sight of her resolute back.
"I'll keep my promise to you. Su Yu, and Rita... until we meet again."
"Until we meet again."
As Durandal's figure dissolved into a streak of light and vanished into the sky, Su Yu finally let out the breath he'd been holding.
Without hesitating further, he raised his hand and fired a single blast from his Neutron Star cannon at the already-unstable Rift core nearby.
A thunderous boom—!
The entire space began to shudder violently.
The already-fractured space started collapsing inward under the shockwave of the core's disintegration.
The floating wings on Su Yu's back unfurled, and he reached his hand out toward Rita.
Rita didn't hesitate for even a moment.
She grasped his hand gently, then, swept along by the powerful pull of his body, leapt lightly into the air, letting Su Yu catch her in a princess-carry against his chest.
Naturally, she wrapped both arms around his neck, letting his embrace enclose her completely.
Su Yu carried Rita, racing toward the place where they'd first arrived.
The violet-black abyss ahead reflected Arc City beyond the Rift, thick with the scent of the storm.
The wind roared like a beast in their ears, the sound of space fracturing echoing from every direction, like countless panes of glass shattering at once.
And amid this collapse — one violent enough to destroy the very foundations of reality —
all she could feel was the warmth of his embrace.
Warm enough, it seemed, to melt away every bit of cold.
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