The sky above the Ares Domain was bleeding.

Huge, jagged purple cracks tore through the dark storm clouds, leaking yellow Void energy into the air. The anchors holding the continent together were failing. And because of that, monsters were pouring out like a flood of nightmares.

Right in the middle of the ruined, burning outskirts of District 4, Commander Valeria stood alone.

She didn’t bring her army, as she didn’t need them.

A giant monster stepped forward. It was a High A-Rank Void Goliath, a massive beast made of black bone and rotting flesh. It had six thick arms. It roared at the sky. Thousands of laser mutated beasts ran around its feet, waiting for the order to attack.

The ground shook as the giant beast charged right at the lone woman in golden armor.

Valeria didn’t even draw a weapon. Her golden eyes were dead, devoid of any light or sanity.

She was angry. She was paranoid. Her chest hurt with a terrible, hollow feeling. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she could not feel the warm pulse of her Emperor’s soul inside her. It was just gone.

"Die," Valeria whispered to the horde

She raised one hand, abd a bright, deadly storm of golden Aegis mana burst from her palm.

Thousands of solid, golden spears appeared in the air and rained down like a meteor shower. The smaller monsters did not even have time to scream. The golden spears hit them and turned them instantly into black ash.

But the High A-Rank Goliath kept running towards her. It swung its massive black fists, trying to crush her.

Valeria did not dodge. She simply pulled her arm back and punched forward.

Her small, metal-covered fist hit the monster’s giant arm. The raw power of her S-Rank strength was too much. The Goliath’s thick arm shattered into a million pieces like cheap glass.

Before the beast could even react, Valeria jumped. She launched herself high into the air. She grabbed the Goliath by its dark horns, and with one brutal pull, she ripped its massive head clean off its shoulders. Black blood exploded into the air like a fountain.

The giant body fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

Valeria landed gracefully on top of a mountain of slaughtered corpses, the golden Aegis armour plating shifting and humming as it burnt the monster gore off her body.

Valeria stood in the dead silence of the battlefield. She took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Her mind on its own accord thought about Zen and his last words in the phone call.

"I am perfectly safe. The interference will clear up soon." He had told herein a calm voice.

He had told her that the Spymaster’s digital purge was blocking their connection. But the paranoid, psychotic voices whispering in the back of Valeria’s mind refused to go quiet. She knew Nyx. Nyx was a venomous snake. What if the Spymaster had locked him in a cage? What if she was torturing him? What if she was touching him right now?

Valeria grabbed her golden helmet. Her mana flared wildly around her. The heat was so intense that the ground under her boots started to melt into glass.

But suddenly, she froze.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her golden eyes opened wide in the dark night.

She felt something.

It wasn’t a digital signal, nor was it a text message or notification. It was a physical, spiritual sensation. A faint, beautiful pulse of pure, ancient Imperial Resonance.She knew that feeling better than her own heartbeat. It was the exact, unmistakable magical signature of her beloved Emperor.

And it wasn’t coming from the Omni Domain. It was coming directly from the Vanguard Academy, right inside her own city.

A terrifyingly joyous, utterly psychotic smile slowly spread across Valeria’s blood-stained face. Her heart soared, beating so fast it threatened to break her ribs.

"You lied to her," Valeria whispered to herself as tears of joy prickled the corners of her eyes. "You escaped her digital prison. You came back to me."

She didn’t call for a transport. She completely abandoned her defensive post, leaving the burning sector behind. She bent her knees and launched herself straight into the sky, breaking the sound barrier as she flew toward District 7 like a golden missile.

—

Valeria flew fast. The wind ripped past her face, but she did not care. All she could think about was Zen. He was waiting for her. He had tricked the Spymaster and run away. He chose to come back to his Vanguard. This thought made her feel so warm and happy.

Soon, the Vanguard Academy came into view. Big energy shields protected the school from monsters. But the shields knew who she was. They parted for her automatically, letting the highest-ranking commander inside without a sound.

But as she dropped toward the ground, her fractured mind made a quick calculation.

She couldn’t march into the student dorms radiating the full, world-ending pressure of an S-Rank Goddess of War. It could lead to a whole lot of questioning and panic.

And worse, Zen wouldn’t like it. If he had sneaked back into his dorm room, he was hiding. He wanted to keep a low profile. She needed to be careful.

Instead of flying straight to the Scrap Dorms, Valeria changed direction. She landed softly in the backyard of her private, off-campus townhouse.

She ran inside the dark house, willed her heavy, golden armour to retract into her spatial storage ring, and ran straight to her closet to quickly change. She put on a pair of casual denim shorts and a big, baggy academy sweater.

Finally, she picked up a pair of her signature glasses and put them on.

She became "Val," the clumsy, shy girl.

Without any final look, Valeria ran out the front door of her townhouse and hurried across the street toward the Academy.

She reached the Scrap Dorm courtyard. Two guards were working the night shift. They heard her running and turned around. They reached for their weapons, shining their flashlights at her.

But Val did not stop. She just kept her head down and walked right past them. The two guards froze. They could not sense any magic coming from this strange girl in glasses, but their bodies told them to stay still. They watched her walk into the old dorm building without saying a single word.

Valeria’s heart was beating wildly. She walked up the rusty metal stairs. The smell of old rust and cheap food filled the air, but under it all, she could smell his sweet magic. She followed the pulse of his soul straight to his door.

He is here, she thought, a giddy, obsessive giggle bubbling up in her throat. My Emperor came home.

Without knocking, Valeria grabbed the heavy metal handle and pulled. She didn’t just break the lock; she ripped the entire reinforced steel door clean off its hinges with one hand and tossed it casually into the hallway.

"Zen!" Val cheered, stepping into the room with a wide, obsessive smile.

But the room was empty.

Valeria’s smile instantly vanished. Her happy face turned to cold stone.

There was no Zen in the room. He was not on the bed. He was not by the window.

Instead, sitting cross-legged on the center of the worn carpet was a petite, short brown-haired girl.

Maya gasped, dropping the low-tier healing core she had been practising with. She stared in complete shock at the heavy metal door currently in the hallway wall, and then up at the quirky, clumsy girl with the glasses.

But the girl standing in the doorway wasn’t clumsy at all. She looked terrifying.

"Val?" Maya asked, her voice trembling. "What... what are you doing here? How did you do that to the door?"

Valeria didn’t answer. She did not care about the door. Her golden eyes locked onto Maya, analysing her completely.

The faint, beautiful pulse of the Imperial Resonance wasn’t coming from Zen. It was radiating directly out of Maya’s chest.

Valeria’s mind raced. Her photographic memory snapped back to the dungeon a few weeks ago. She remembered the massive damage Zen had taken. She remembered Maya stepping forward, cutting her own hand, and tying her life force directly to Zen’s to keep him alive.

The Blood Pact. Because Maya’s soul was tethered to Zen’s, her aura mirrored his.

And right now, Maya’s aura was practically glowing with thick, heavy, evolved mana.

The horrifying truth crashed into Valeria’s mind with the force of a falling meteor.

A blood pact only mutated this violently if the dominant partner experienced a massive, explosive surge in power. Zen’s core was broken... the only way he could have spiked in power this dramatically overnight was through a massive influx of ancient, S-Rank energy.

He didn’t escape the Omni Domain.

He had absorbed power. From her.

He had lied. The digital purge was real. He had deleted his records so Valeria couldn’t track him. He was still in the Spymaster’s penthouse, and he was doing things with Nyx that were causing his power to explode.

"You..." Valeria whispered.

The "Val" persona instantly shattered into pieces. The glasses on her face cracked completely down the middle and fell to the floor.

"Val? Are you okay?" Maya whimpered, pressing her back against the wall. The air in the tiny dorm room suddenly grew so heavy that Maya couldn’t breathe. It felt like standing at the bottom of the ocean.

"He lied to me," Valeria snarled.

A terrifying storm of golden Aegis mana erupted from Valeria’s body, completely annihilating the walls of the dorm room. The ceiling cracked, and the windows shattered outward.

Valeria crossed the room in a fraction of a second. She grabbed Maya by the throat, lifting the terrified healer completely off the floor.

"He is with that digital whore!" Valeria screamed, her golden eyes completely devoid of any sanity. "He deleted his records! He thought he could hide from me?!"

"P-Please..." Maya choked out, tears streaming down her face as the Goddess of War’s suffocating killing intent crushed her lungs. "I don’t know... what you’re talking about..."

"I don’t care what you know," Valeria hissed. She tightened her grip just enough to keep Maya conscious, her gaze shifting upward, looking straight through the ruined ceiling toward the distant, neon-lit horizon of the Omni Domain.

Her Yandere obsession had completely snapped. If Zen thought he could play house with the Spymaster and lie to his Vanguard, he was gravely mistaken. She was going to tear Nyx’s entire empire down to the bedrock.

"You carry his signature," Valeria sneered, her golden aura exploding like a miniature sun. "You know what? You are coming with me."