Neru's Estate
Auralis Haven, Alpine Confederation Zone
New Geneva, European Federation Zone
United Earth Federation
2435 A.D.
Enzo felt the shift immediately. The tension in the air shifted as Naia's carat output surpassed his own. Her aura expanded, bright and sharp, filling every corner of the chamber. He could feel the weight of her energy pressing against his, suppressing it—an invisible tide rising higher and higher until it began to drown his own flow.
Not only had her carat surpassed his, but her clarity—the refinement of her control over Lumenis—was sharper. Cleaner. The currents of her energy moved in perfect harmony, while his pulsed with uneven rhythm.
And yet what unsettled him most was her focus. The woman had supposedly spent six years buried in the intelligence division, a desk analyst far from the field. But from the way she moved—from the precision of her stance, her timing, her awareness—he could tell: her battle instinct had never dulled.
Enzo clenched his fist. "Fine," he muttered. "Then let's see how far that instinct carries you."
He lifted his left hand, fingers curling in a fluid pattern. The Lumenis in his veins pulsed crimson.
First Cut Facet—Hemostatic Dominion.
His blood answered his thoughts.
Droplets on the floor rose like liquid iron, congealing midair into long, slender spears that hovered with predatory intent. With a single gesture, Enzo sent them flying, each one whistling through the air faster than the human eye could track.
The projectiles split mid-flight, fracturing into dozens of smaller shards that curved toward Naia and Ellira in perfect synchronization.
"Ellira!" Naia shouted.
But Ellira was already moving.
She slammed the butt of her staff against the ground. Lumenis glyphs rippled outward in a circular wave, forming new layers of flux patterns that interlocked with her earlier shields.
"Auric Tessera," Ellira invoked her weave.
A shield plate unfolded before them, expanding and folding over itself like a blooming flower. Dozens of translucent layers clicked into place, forming a compound barrier dense enough to distort the light passing through it. The twin weaves—physical and flux—merged, creating a defensive dome that shimmered gold and red.
The blood spears struck the shield in a thunderous barrage. Each impact sent ripples of force through the barrier, scattering crimson droplets like rain. The floor vibrated from the sheer resonance of colliding energies.
Naia felt the shockwaves travel through her bones—but Ellira's reinforcement held firm. The Crown-tier stability of her weave neutralized the kinetic force, dispersing it harmlessly into threads of light.
Naia's Lumenis flared in response, the amplification Ellira had given her still coursing strongly. She looked over her shoulder, catching Ellira's eye through the shifting glow.
"Keep that barrier steady," she said.
Ellira nodded once. "Just make it count."
Naia's grin was sharp, her prosthetic arm humming with power as she crouched low, golden energy gathering around her fingers.
"Don't blink," she whispered. The barrier shimmered—and Naia vanished. A sonic boom erupted where she had been standing, the residual energy of her departure distorting the air.
Enzo turned instinctively toward the sound—but too late. Naia was already behind him. Her fist, wrapped in spiraling arcs of radiant energy, struck his back with crushing precision. The force launched him forward, smashing him into the barrier Ellira had created. It bent inward under the impact, its runes flaring violently before repelling him outward in a burst of refracted light.
Enzo hit the floor hard, blood scattering from his wounds—blood that immediately lifted into the air again, seeking his command.
He snarled. "You're fast," he spat, wiping crimson from his mouth. "But I bleed faster."
The scattered droplets spun, forming into blades once more. Naia stood ready, her eyes narrowing, Lumenis burning bright through her veins. Behind her, Ellira's aura shimmered—steady, protective, and unyielding.
This fight was no longer between hunter and prey. It was two forces harmonized against one. And Enzo could feel it: he was losing the rhythm.
Enzo snarled and activated his second facet—a defensive technique that hardened his own blood, coating his body in a metallic sheen of crimson armor. The veins across his neck and arms pulsed like molten wires as the energy solidified under his skin.
At the same time, the blood blades hovering above twisted, their edges sharpening before shooting down toward Naia in a storm of red streaks. Naia didn't bother dodging. Defense wasn't her focus—that was Ellira's job.
Their connection pulsed between them like a heartbeat. The compound shield around them shimmered, intercepting the incoming blades and deflecting them with a flash of violet-gold light.
Naia was already moving.
Her fist glowed with concentrated Lumenis, light burning so bright it turned her arm into a radiant white gauntlet tipped with clawed energy. She charged forward, her movements fluid and sharp, each step accompanied by a thunderous crack of displaced air.
Enzo raised his blade, meeting her head-on.
Steel and energy collided. The first impact sent a shockwave tearing through the chamber, scattering shards of debris. Naia's strikes came in rapid succession—heavy, precise, relentless. Enzo countered with practiced speed, his blade flashing in sweeping arcs, parrying every strike that came close.
They moved like mirrored storms, blow for blow, neither yielding. Every time Enzo's blade curved toward her, Ellira's flux weaves rippled through the air, forming brief bursts of defense that turned his attacks aside.
Sparks and light filled the chamber. Their movements blurred into a deadly dance—Naia's raw power meeting Enzo's refined technique, both amplified by the luminous field surrounding them.
Damn it, Enzo thought. Her Lumenis reserve isn't even that great—it's that alien girl amplifying her carat output. I need to get rid of her.
His gaze snapped toward Ellira.
Naia saw it instantly through their shared resonance link—but she didn't move to stop him. She could feel Ellira's thoughts flowing through the connection, calm and steady: Trust me. Keep him busy.
Enzo's blood surged again. Dozens of crimson spears materialized midair and launched toward Ellira at supersonic speed, slicing through the air with an ear-splitting shriek.
But before they reached her, the world itself seemed to slow.
Stellar Lattice.
A violet barrier erupted around Ellira and Neru, its surface rippling like liquid glass. The moment the blood spears entered its radius, they slowed dramatically—as if time itself resisted their motion. The very spatial structure of the chamber warped, freezing them in place mid-flight.
Enzo froze mid-step, eyes wide. Spatial freezing?
The energy radiating from the barrier was unlike any Flux Weave he'd seen. It wasn't manipulation—it was suppression, control. It felt closer to a Facet than any known Luminian technique. Even Naia was momentarily stunned—but she didn't hesitate.
She seized the opening. Her prosthetic arm blazed white, runes along its frame igniting with power. Lumenis gathered at her fist, forming a radiant flare of heat and pressure.
White Blaze.
Naia's strike landed square in Enzo's gut. The detonation that followed shattered the sound barrier. Enzo's hardened blood fractured under the impact, fissures of light spiderwebbing across his chest and arms. The sheer force launched him backward, sending him crashing through the outer wall of the building.
He hit the courtyard outside with a thunderous impact, tearing through marble and soil. Blood spattered across the ground as he coughed violently, cracks spreading through the hardened layer of his defense.
Even with his reinforcement, the damage ran deep. For the first time, Enzo bled in fear.
Enzo staggered to his feet, blood dripping down his chin. The cracks across his hardened armor pulsed with dull red light, leaking energy like fractured glass under pressure. His breathing steadied as he lifted his hand, channeling the fury coursing through his veins.
Third Facet—Resonant Apex.
The Lumenis within his body spun violently, cycling through the eight embedded gems that lined his spine. Each one flared to life in turn, feeding into the next until a vortex of energy ignited around him. The air warped.
Every drop of blood he had ever spilled—on his blade, on the ground, in the air—rose upward, drawn to a single, swirling point above him. The mass of crimson energy condensed into a floating core, humming with lethal resonance.
Around them, the atmosphere dimmed as Enzo began absorbing Lumenis directly from the air, drawing it into the storm. The courtyard trembled, grass searing into ash as the energy density spiked.
Naia watched from the breach in the wall, her prosthetic arm glowing faintly. "He's overloading," she muttered.
Then she closed her eyes, centering her breath. Her pulse synchronized with Ellira's—an echo of harmony through their shared resonance link.
Resonant Atelier – Canvas of the Heart
The command rippled through the air. Circles of light spun into existence around Naia, projecting from her gem socket like expanding halos. Within each circle, constructs of hard light began to form—swords, sleek and angular, forged from pure condensed Lumenis. The radiant weapons floated around her in perfect formation before she seized two of them, her body wreathed in golden flare.
Without hesitation, she leapt through the hole Enzo had torn in the wall.
The world blurred around her as she launched herself downward toward him.
Enzo roared, thrusting a hand upward. The massive blood core above him shattered, unleashing thousands of tendrils that exploded outward like a scarlet storm. Each tendril shrieked through the air at supersonic speed, aimed directly at Naia.
She met them head-on.
Her swords flashed like twin stars as she sliced through the first wave. The air ignited with arcs of white light as Lumenis and blood energy clashed, each impact scattering glowing particles. Naia twisted midair, cutting through tendrils faster than they could reform.
More came—dozens, hundreds—but she didn't slow. She moved like a streak of light through a storm of blades, carving a path toward Enzo.
A tendril lashed from below, but Naia kicked off it, using the momentum to launch herself higher before sliding down its length, her blades extending outward with a shimmer. The hard light stretched seamlessly, the blades elongating like radiant ribbons that sliced through every tendril within reach.
Each motion was deliberate, precise—controlled chaos wrapped in elegance.
Not a single strand of Enzo's attack reached Ellira or Neru; Naia made sure of it.
Enzo's composure faltered. The sheer speed, the precision—it was unreal. How? he thought, struggling to track her movements. How is she keeping up?
Then he saw it—the glimmer of violet light still flickering around her. Ellira's amplification.
She's using the alien's output to match me.
Naia's boots hit the ground with a heavy thud. Dust rose around her as she spun her twin blades in a clean arc, the energy coursing through her arm building to its peak. Her stance lowered, her breath calm.
"Let's end this," she whispered.
The next instant, she swung—an immense horizontal slash, all the power Ellira had given her condensed into one devastating strike.
White Reign.
A blinding wave of white energy exploded outward, expanding across the entire estate in a sweeping crescent. The ground tore open in its wake, the air splitting apart with a deafening roar.
The wave engulfed everything—Enzo, his remaining tendrils, the shattered courtyard—erasing crimson light beneath a tide of radiance.
When the brilliance finally faded, silence reclaimed the world.
****
Enzo reappeared in a distant quarter of Auralis Haven, a ruined silhouette against the alley's dim lights. Blood slicked his armor, plates cracked and bowed; the lower half of his body was torn away, ragged and smoking. He sagged against a rough stone wall, each breath a wet, rasping effort. He had burned through every last reserve of Lumenis to survive the blast and the chase.
Consciousness came and went in ragged waves. He stumbled forward on weakening legs, leaving a smear of crimson along the masonry with every painful step. His footsteps dragged; his balance faltered. The alley swallowed him in deepening shadow as he leaned into the darkness, a red trail marking his retreat.
Rage threaded his delirium. Names—Naia Vasselheim, Ellira Solenne, Neru Veyra—burned behind his eyes like a curse. Those three… he thought, each syllable a broken promise. They'll die for this. I'll be the last thing they see.
The vow tasted of iron in his mouth as he forced himself onward, even as his body threatened to betray him.
****
Ellira stood quietly on the balcony, watching as the restoration weave imbued within Neru's estate shimmered to life.
Threads of light rippled across the courtyard, reweaving shattered glass, sealing cracked marble, and coaxing the charred earth back to its pristine state. The air carried the faint hum of harmony—Luminian resonance returning everything to equilibrium. In moments, the destruction of their battle had become nothing more than a fading memory etched in the air.
Her thoughts, however, refused to settle.
This had been her first real fight—one that wasn't simulated or carefully supervised aboard the mothership. The mock duels of her youth had been structured, safe, almost ceremonial. But this… this was something different. The chaos, the noise, the smell of burning Lumenis and blood—there had been no room for hesitation, no time for mercy.
The Luminia had never been meant for this. Their people were pacifists by nature, philosophers and weavers, not killers. Even the concept of combat felt alien when life itself could be rewritten through the Weave.
Her gaze drifted to the center of the courtyard, where the battle had reached its peak.
She could still see it—the moment Naia had ended them. The speed, the precision, the utter lack of doubt. Ellira had gone to check the bodies afterward, searching for any lingering spark of life she might heal. But Jurgeim and Tia were far beyond saving. Naia hadn't left them a chance.
Neru, efficient as always, had taken care of the aftermath—one simple weave, and the bodies were gone.
Still, Ellira couldn't shake what she had seen.
She remembered what Marienne had told her about the Vasselheim siblings—that both were dangerous, each in their own way. And what Enzo had said before he fell—about Naia's potential, her reputation as a prodigy even among corporate dynasts.
Now she understood how right they had all been.
When Ellira had used her bloodline ability during the fight—when she had reached out and connected her essence to Naia's—something unexpected had happened. Through that temporary resonance link, she had felt everything that Naia was.
Beneath the sharp precision, the discipline, the control… There was kindness. Real kindness. Naia's empathy ran deep, bright, almost Luminian in its purity. She cared. She felt.
But that was where the similarity ended.
When Naia fought—when she killed—it was as if she closed a door inside herself. Ellira had felt it happen: a shift in the rhythm of her soul, the way her energy folded inward and became cold, calculating, utterly still.
Naia didn't lose herself to rage or bloodlust. She didn't revel in violence. She simply… detached.
No hesitation. No guilt. No lingering echo of remorse.
It wasn't cruelty—it was survival honed into instinct, a mental wall built deep within her heart that allowed her to take life with mechanical precision.
Ellira exhaled softly, her golden eyes dimming in the courtyard's returning light. "How can someone feel so much," she whispered, "and still turn it off so completely?"
The weave above shimmered faintly in response, but it offered no answer.
And then there was the thing Ellira had felt pulsing deep within the center of Naia's being—a colossal, sleeping power.
It hadn't been chaotic or wild; it was perfectly contained, compressed like a star behind glass. Naia hadn't even touched it. She fought with precision, skill, and discipline… but not that power. Something was holding her back, some buried scar or memory coiled tight around her core like chains.
A faint sound drew Ellira from her thoughts. She turned.
Naia stood in the doorway, framed by the soft light spilling from the corridor. The calm professionalism had returned—the careful poise of a trained agent. Her eyes had regained their quiet focus, her composure back in place as if the chaos moments ago had never happened.
And yet Ellira couldn't look at her the same way anymore.
Her gaze drifted, unbidden, to Naia's prosthetic arm. The polished alloy shimmered faintly with embedded gem nodes, the faint pulse of Lumenis running like veins beneath the surface. Ellira tried not to stare, but curiosity tugged at her—what had it cost Naia to replace a part of herself? What had she lost before learning to detach so completely?
Naia caught her looking and smiled faintly, though the smile didn't quite reach her eyes."That was something… right?" she said, voice light but tired.
Ellira's throat felt dry. "I… I never thought a real battle would be like that," she admitted softly. "Not like in simulations."
Naia leaned her back against the railing beside her. "It's never the same," she murmured. Then she lifted her left arm, the metal trembling faintly in her grasp. "Look at this."
The trembling was subtle, but it was there.
"It never gets old," Naia said. "The fear. The anxiety. You don't get used to it—you just learn how to move through it." Her voice faltered, almost imperceptibly. "I know what you're thinking, Ellira. I can feel it."
Ellira blinked. "You can?"
Naia nodded slowly. "I think it's from when we connected during the fight. Our souls… overlapped, even if only for a moment. Since then, I can sense your emotions deeply, and now even your thoughts." She looked away, her expression softening. "I know what you think of me. And I want you to understand—it's never easy taking a life. I just… learned the hard way."
Her eyes darkened slightly, her focus slipping somewhere distant. For a moment, Ellira caught a flicker of memory behind her calm exterior— a name, a face, a fragment of a past that still haunted her. Naia forced herself to push it down. It had been six years. That wound had healed… or so she told herself.
"When you step onto a battlefield," Naia continued quietly, "you have to be ready to kill or be killed. My brother taught me that lesson. I didn't believe him at first. By the time I did…" She trailed off, then drew in a steadying breath. "It was too late."
Her gaze met Ellira's, unwavering. "If I hadn't killed them, they would have killed you, Neru, and me. I couldn't let that happen."
"I know," Ellira whispered. She turned toward the railing, her fingers brushing the cold metal. Naia's hand rested near hers—close enough that their fingers almost touched, close enough that Ellira could feel the faint warmth radiating through her prosthetic arm.
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Then Naia broke the silence. "El… I know something's bothering you." Her voice softened. "I saw it in your eyes when we found those files on Project Heliospire. And during the fight—I felt it again." She tilted her head. "You used a Facet, didn't you?"
Ellira froze. Naia's intuition was sharper than she'd expected.
"That technique—the spatial freezing. It wasn't Luminis Weaving. It was a Gem Facet." Naia's tone was calm, not accusing—just quietly certain. "Since I met you, I've felt a resonance in you. Gem lattice energy, socket harmonics… something beyond a natural Luminian field. I thought it was just your core reserves, but now I know it's more than that."
Ellira looked down. "I wish I could tell you the truth," she said quietly. "But I can't."
Naia studied her for a long moment, then nodded. "I understand."
She turned toward the balcony doors, pausing in the threshold. "We should go. It's not safe to stay in the city anymore. Celestex knows someone breached their vault, and they'll send more. We need to regroup with Elias—and tell him what we've learned about Malcolm."
Ellira nodded faintly.
As Naia stepped back inside, Ellira lingered at the railing, her gaze lifting toward the night sky. Above the crystalline domes of Auralis Haven, auroras shimmered—long ribbons of living color curling through the atmosphere. The orbital rings caught the light, reflecting it down upon the city like halos. For a moment, the world looked impossibly beautiful.