In the distance of the horizon, vast and dark storm clouds could be seen rising in the sky, gradually approaching as they threatened to engulf a city that, in the past, had been a prosperous metropolis full of life. Long before the curse of the world… the genesis… reached it to devour everything with its claws, and so, even after ten years, it was nothing more than a pile of rubble, a sad shadow of what it once was, while its lifeless streets were only traversed by the cold winter wind.
Hidden in one of the many abandoned buildings that plagued the city, a solitary figure, a girl, gazed at the view in complete silence as she leaned against the old frame of a broken window. Her expression might seem calm, but inside her mind was a chaos of emotions, among which fear and worry reigned, far from the tranquility she conveyed on the outside.
After what felt like an eternity, though it was only a few seconds, her eyes shifted from the clouds to the ruined buildings, finally focusing on her hands which, to her own unease, were trembling almost uncontrollably. She was truly scared.
Slowly, almost fearfully, she moved one of her trembling hands to touch her neck, but the instant her fingertips brushed against her skin, a grimace of pain crossed her expression, forcing her to withdraw her hand almost immediately, as if the mere contact had burned her. Her eyes widened in surprise when she checked her fingers and found a thin line of blood staining her white glove. At that moment, the reality of what had just happened hit her like a bucket of cold water.
She looked over her shoulder and focused her eyes on an old mirror she had noticed hanging on the wall on the other side of the room when she first walked in. The glass was cracked and dirty from years of neglect, during which it had accumulated dust and grime. It looked fragile, as if it might crumble into pieces if she stared at it too intensely. Even so, it was still more than capable of serving its purpose.
Giving one last glance at the clouds, she stepped away from the window and stood in front of the mirror.
What stared back at her was the reflection of a girl with a tired expression, whose eyes of different colors, one red like a ruby and the other blue like a sapphire, contrasted completely with her silvery-white hair, which fell freely over her shoulders after her ponytail had come undone in the previous chaos. The name of this girl, something very precious to her, was Scarlet.
She took the moment to adjust a few strands of her hair before tilting her head slightly back to reveal her neck.
The first thing she noticed at that moment was that part of her shirt's collar had almost completely disappeared, and the second was that her white skin was now marked by a fine line of blood that traced the perfect path of a cut in the area where she had felt the itch earlier. She couldn't help but frown as she ran a finger over the wound. Only now was she aware of how dangerously close she had been to dying.
If she hadn't reacted as quickly as she did, or if the attack had had a few more centimeters of reach, she would have lost her head, literally…
"That psychopath…" She let out a venomous murmur as she checked another of the cuts on her body, which was on her right forearm. But fortunately, unlike her neck, the only thing that had been damaged was her clothing, and the skin beneath remained intact, or at least it seemed that way at first glance, since even without a visible wound, it hurt so much it felt as if her bones had shattered. In fact, that's how her whole body felt, as if every part of her body had broken.
Although this time luck had smiled upon her, otherwise, she could be dealing with something much worse than a simple scratch on her neck or a little pain that wasn't really that big of a deal.
On the other hand, she was still a bit confused about what had just happened. Her arcanum levels were far from being in optimal condition after such a long battle, but even with that, they weren't low enough for her shield to start failing. It took a great force to break, or at least penetrate, an arcanum shield under normal conditions, and yet, Scarlet's shield had fallen, shattered by simple cuts that, in any other situation, would have been blocked without having the chance to cause any harm.
"What did she do?" she asked herself quietly.
The woman she had just faced wasn't exactly weak, but based on the attacks she had been able to block, she was quite normal in terms of strength. As normal as one could expect from a psychopathic arcana, who had tried to kill her by any means possible, and had come very close to succeeding. For some reason Scarlet didn't understand, most, if not all, of that woman's attacks managed to penetrate her shield as if it were nothing more than a simple sheet of paper. That was something that definitely shouldn't have happened so easily…
"This is really bad…" That was the only thought running through her mind, over and over again. The situation was completely out of control.
Initially, her squad had been deployed with the simple mission of helping in the efforts to clear the city of all the genesis beasts that infested it. At first, everything had gone relatively normally. Most of the beasts her squad ended up encountering were killed almost immediately, either by Scarlet herself or one of her companions, while the more powerful ones only required a bit of teamwork to share the same fate as the rest.
But suddenly, everything changed in an inexplicable way.
In a matter of a few minutes, the entire area and its surroundings were flooded by an amount of beasts that, to say the least, was enormous. Scarlet's squad was overwhelmed, and they were all forced to retreat while trying to contain the new and surprising threat. But when bloodthirsty monsters were emerging from every little corner of the city, there was little they could really do other than try to survive the endless waves of monsters.
But at least they were holding on, barely, and with the help of other arcanas from different squads who also had the misfortune of getting trapped in that situation. It couldn't be said that they were winning, but at least they were managing to contain the stampede.
Then, as if the situation weren't already bad enough, communications were suddenly cut off in the middle of the battle, causing chaos, confusion, and a bit of panic to spread among many of the arcanas fighting the monsters. Then, a woman appeared in front of one of the squads, turning the already precarious situation into a real hell.
The screams...
She could still hear the horrible screams of pain from her comrades as they were slowly killed by that psychopath, who wore a big smile the entire time, as if killing were the most fun thing in her life. That crazy killer, after a short confrontation, was only a second away from also killing Scarlet, if not for an arcana, possibly the leader of some squad, arriving just in time to save her while shouting for her to run as far as she could, and that was exactly what she did.
Although she could have stayed to help, the order was given with such seriousness that there was no room for disobedience, and anyway, Scarlet was so exhausted and shaken that she would have only been a burden in need of protection. That was more than enough reason to escape, presumably abandoning her savior to a certain death at the hands of that psychopath…
Her reflection in the mirror was suddenly distorted when she shattered the fragile glass with a punch. Her furious eyes at that moment widened slightly in surprise at what she had done. It wasn't like her to lose her composure in that way, so she let out a heavy, trembling sigh as she leaned her back against the wall and slowly slid down until she ended up sitting on the floor. There really was nothing she could have done when she escaped, but still, she felt bad for simply abandoning her like that.
"What do I do now…?" She asked herself in a murmur so low that her words almost got lost in the air. This wasn't what she had planned when she volunteered for the mission. It was supposed to be just a routine task, nothing she hadn't faced before. No one told her about the crazy killer roaming the city.
She lifted her right arm and pulled up the sleeve of her black jacket, revealing a red metallic bracelet that was firmly secured around her wrist, and with a simple movement, she activated it by tapping it twice with a finger consecutively. And immediately, she could feel some of the tension in her body disappear as she watched a small, translucent holographic screen light up.
Her 'command bracelet,' or Beacon as some people called it, had miraculously managed to survive all the hardship its wearer had been subjected to previously.
But as she watched the holographic screen in front of her, something caught her attention and made her frown. It was a red notification that blinked insistently, almost like an alarm standing out among all the other data normally displayed. When she read the message appearing in the center of that notification, she felt a chill run through every part of her body, while the beats of her heart quickened with growing panic.
Warning: Compromised Network.
It was as if the air in her lungs had completely frozen, as her eyes widened upon reading those simple words. Her eyebrows trembled for a moment before she began navigating the holographic interface with the goal of cutting any connection her bracelet might have been maintaining with the Main Network. However, despite having accomplished this in less than a few seconds, the damage had already been done.
It was most likely that her location was already known by whoever was responsible for blocking and interfering with the communications.
Even though her aching body made its silent complaint known, she sprang to her feet, compelled by the mere thought that the psychopath might already be on her way. The adrenaline that this new possibility stirred in her pushed her to ignore any trace of pain she might have felt, while one thought flooded her mind. "I have to get out of here as fast as possible before she finds me..."
But she didn't have time to do so.
She hadn't even taken a step out of the room when something changed in less than a second.
The air around her suddenly turned icy, as a layer of frost began to form on both the walls and the floor of the building. Scarlet could even see the vapor of her own breath condensing in front of her every time she exhaled. The abrupt drop in temperature froze her for a moment, setting off all the alarms in her body and putting her senses on high alert. The danger was already there.
But she didn't have time to process what was happening, as before she even had the chance to move, something cut through the air with a silent whistle. From the corner of her eye, she saw a white flash that barely gave her time to take a step back before it passed inches from her face. It was the blade of a katana that ended up cutting only air after failing to finish its target.
Reacting purely on instinct, Scarlet took several steps back to put distance between herself and her attacker as her mind tried to catch up with what had just happened.
A figure stood in front of her. It was a girl with snow-white hair, loose and lightly swaying with the freezing breeze that seemed to emanate from her very presence. She was staring at her with cold, unrelenting eyes, completely filled with rage, while maintaining a firm grip on the hilt of her katana, ready to strike again. There was no trace of hesitation in her gaze, no sign that she intended to stop.
