One month after the Fall of the Covenant.
The violet scar across the sky has become a permanent fixture of the heavens, a jagged fracture in reality that pulses with the rhythm of a heart that no longer beats. Below it, the world is a landscape of rebuilding, scarred by the residue of the Great War. The Maiju have not ceased their assault; they have simply become more feral, swarming from the shadows of the old world.
THE IRON LEDGER: ZEN SEVERUS FAUST
In the Gothic spires of Orizon, the air is thick with the scent of old parchment and metallic blood. Zen Severus Faust sits upon the throne as the Emperor of Order. He is no longer the pale student from the back of the class; he is the sovereign of a nation built on the regulation of sin.
His Faustian Ledger is no longer a weapon of combat, but a constitution. Zen has become a "Sin-Eater" for his people, using Asamon (Pride) to instill discipline in his legions and Hothos (Sloth) to calm the terror of the war-torn masses. He remains eternally pale, his life force a constant tribute to the demons that maintain the peace.
Zen's eyes are fixed on a set of blueprints sent from the east. He has established a research tandem with Gonaya, combining Orizon's arcane alchemy with the high-tech armaments of the Shogunate. He is a king who rules from a dark hall, ensuring that the ledger of humanity never falls into the red again.
THE PHANTOM SHOGUNATE: WAN & SHOTA
In the East, Gonaya stands as a testament to the "Feudal-Modern" era. It is a city of sliding paper doors and towering wooden pagodas, but beneath the tatami mats lie plasma-conduits and anti-gravity dampeners. Massive stone shrines are topped with high-frequency signal jammers to intercept Maiju echoes.
Wan Harrison Fenris-Valkyr is the acting leader of this realm while Emperor Menardius remains in a deep, mana-induced coma. Wan's leadership style is... chaotic. During a serious military briefing with the Royal Knights, Wan is often nowhere to be found, only for a "pop" sound to echo as he reappears sitting on the ceiling beams, eating a bag of crunchy seaweed snacks.
"Oh, did I miss the part where we talk about the logistics?" Wan chirps, dangling a pair of binoculars. "I was just at the bottom of the ocean taking a photo of a glowing jellyfish for my scrapbook. Anyway, the western flank is clear. I slapped a postcard on the lead Maiju and sent it to a volcano. Carry on!"
Despite his goofiness, Wan is terrifyingly efficient. His "Omnipresent Funhouse" has turned Gonaya into a ghost-state; the Maiju cannot attack what they cannot find.
His right hand, Shota Kizumi, has traded his front-line armor for a lab coat—though he still wears his Jet Drive gauntlets. As the Head of the Technologist Team, Shota is the bridge between Gonaya's tradition and Orizon's arcane. He works tirelessly, his skin often smudged with oil and plasma-burns, upgrading the katanas of the Royal Knights with Plasma-Jet cores. He is the engine that keeps the Shogunate moving, a "Starfall Breaker" who now builds the stars instead of just crashing into them.