Viktoria Aurelis descended from a human bloodline whose roots ran deep into Aeridor's oldest shadows — a lineage most believed long extinguished. For within her lived the dormant legacy of the Lunare, an ancient race that once ruled the continent's battlefields for decades with unmatched ferocity.
The Lunare were feared.
Cold-blooded.
Wild.
Covered in dense, dark-white fur beneath which lay skin so thick that even spears shattered as if striking stone. Their violet eyes glowed in the night, carrying the light of a forgotten moon. Their bodies were made to endure, to hunt, to kill. And their souls — people whispered — knew no fear, only blood, instinct, and power.
But this might earned them not honor,
only the terror of an entire continent.
Aeridor united against them.
Within less than a century, the Lunare were nearly wiped out.
The survivors scattered, hiding in remote villages, founding new families whose descendants carried the diluted blood of a dead race — unseen, unknown… until now.
Until Viktoria Aurelis.
A human.
And yet more than human.
Her body held the dormant echo of a race that should have vanished forever. And the royal family knew. Regina herself had once offered a pact: peace — but with conditions.
No harming the innocent.
No awakening of the old wildness.
And never — under any circumstances — was the inherited Lunare ability to be used.
If a hybrid awakened it, they would lose everything.
Reason.
Control.
Humanity.
Breaking this law meant immediate imprisonment.
For more than sixteen years, no one dared cross that boundary.
Until now.
Sixteen Crowns and fifteen Tiks had passed — a Crown being a traveler's minute, a Tik a heartbeat — since Viktoria had fought, wounded and exhausted, against her clone. She now stood at the edge of collapse. Blood ran down her skin, her lungs burned, and her vision swam.
And then she did the forbidden.
The unforgivable.
The final resort of a Lunare.
She activated the forbidden technique.
In the instant the brutal power surged through her, ripping life directly from her own lifespan, a vision appeared before her eyes: her mother's face — warm, sorrowful, smiling. A silent message formed on her lips, but Viktoria couldn't understand it.
A farewell.
A welcome.
Or the last flicker of memory of a bloodline that had survived millennia.
"Mama… I'm sorry…"
It was one of her final coherent thoughts before the beast inside her awoke.
At Tetra 16, 34 Crowns — a Tetra being an hour — the air in the chamber was thick with dust and grit. The light-rods along the walls flickered, ready to die. Her clone stood with wide eyes, trembling at the knees yet frozen in a cold battle stance.
He waited.
Then Viktoria broke.
A distorted scream tore through the grotto — raw, animalistic, overflowing with pain and rage.
Silence followed.
Heavy. Suffocating. Wrong.
The clone blinked.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
A shadow.
She vanished.
A split second later, she stood beside him, as if the room itself had swallowed and spat her out. Her arm was drawn back, muscles coiled like steel wire. A single strike — a colossal blow — slammed into the clone's face just as his regeneration began.
Root-fragments exploded in every direction.
The clone shot across the room and crashed into the wall hard enough to carve out a crater — large enough to make it seem pure Aether had detonated.
The lights flickered.
Then died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Except for two violet eyes glowing in its center.
A sound escaped Viktoria.
A gasp — not of exhaustion.
Of hunger.
Blood hunger.
The clone, barely holding his terror back, pushed off the ground. Even though he saw nothing but those eyes, he lunged again, blades aimed straight for her. A perfect strike.
But Viktoria moved like someone who had abandoned the rules of reality.
She slid through the blades at inhuman speed, as if they were smoke. Her fist — curled, cold, lethal — struck past his head. The clone's swords shattered into glittering fragments.
Not a scratch touched her.
Her skin — Lunare skin — was as hard as a thousand shields. No ordinary attack could wound her. No blade pierced her. No strike left a mark.
And the clone could neither replicate her combat skill
nor her inherited ability.
A tiny detail — but the difference between victory and death.
But Viktoria wasn't thinking.
She wasn't even present.
She had become something else.
A low growl rumbled from her chest as she launched upward, moving so fast the air warped around her. Her gaze was icy, pupils thin. Drool ran from her lips, her breath heavy. Her claws — fingers extended, sharpened by Aether-madness — pointed at one goal: blood.
Her target hung helpless in the air as she flashed past him and ripped open his torso.
A burst of blood and raw flesh sprayed out.
She pushed off the ceiling, tore downward, peeling off flesh as she dropped. She landed with predatory precision no human could mimic.
Then she sprinted along the wall, vaulted off it, and rose again.
A side slash across the hip.
Another down the back.
Another across the throat.
Blood scattered in wild arcs, painting the air like red rain.
Rotten insides spilled from open wounds, dangling.
The stench of death, old soil, and metallic fear filled the chamber.
But Viktoria didn't stop.
She shredded the clone from above, right, left, below — every angle.
Every strike was precise.
Every strike was lethal.
Every strike was pure beastly force.
The clone's regeneration faltered. His weapons shattered one by one, leaving only a broken hilt. Roots and bones tried to reform, collapsing and regrowing erratically — but they couldn't keep up. Not this time.
When the barrage finally ceased, Viktoria landed, shoulders tense, breath ragged.
And then — like a discarded sack of flesh — the clone fell apart from above.
One arm hung from a thin strip of flesh. Roots poured from ruptured gaps, bones twisted at impossible angles. Blood coated everything, dark and wet across the floor. The entire lower torso was missing. Dozens of holes punctured the corpse.
And in its chest, something pulsed.
A greenish, sickly core — weak, fading, barely alive.
Viktoria stared at it, eyes wide — and in them shimmered pure madness.
Panting with bloodlust, drunk on the stench of spilled guts, she shrieked.
A sound that shook the entire grotto.
She grabbed the clone by the head.
The skin was rough.
Hair fell out in clumps.
The body was barely more than a half-rotted girl.
And when Viktoria met its eyes, she saw something — a faint expression still visible beneath decay.
Fear.
Pleading.
Begging.
The copy of a girl silently asked for mercy.
Viktoria felt nothing.
Nothing but the urge to kill.
She shaped her free hand into a spear.
A living weapon.
At Tetra 16, 45 Crowns, she swung her arm — powerful, precise — and pierced the exposed core.
The body twitched once.
Then went still.
She was young.
Her battle experience modest.
But this fight would change her life forever.
A gentle voice brushed her heart.
Warm… familiar… like a memory.
Slowly, her mind returned.
The defeated clone slipped from her fingers. A single bone cracked as the earth absorbed its essence. Viktoria's muscles shrank, settled. Her teeth dulled. Her claws returned to normal. The animal frenzy faded.
Exhausted, she collapsed to her knees. Before her lay the corpse — now without the copied form. Instead, the true body revealed itself: a young woman in her early twenties, face rotten, skin cracked. A moment later, she crumbled to dust and returned to the earth.
"Finally… it's over."
Viktoria exhaled heavily.
"Alvios… Nouel… Raiiko… please… wait for me… if you're alright…"
She held her bleeding shoulder and staggered forward. Ahead, a tunnel opened, leading deeper into the heart of the grotto. A cold breeze brushed through, playing with her hair.
Her gaze — empty, numb, exhausted — fixed on the darkness ahead.
She didn't know what waited.
Only that she had to keep moving.
And so Viktoria vanished into the dark.
One battle ended — and Nouel's struggle edged toward its climax.
Nouel pulled a Terra-sharpened Cristallum arrow, hardened and precise. He fired directly at the clone. It struck the heart.
No reaction.
Just a twitch.
The clone pulled the arrow out, fitted it onto his own string, and fired it back.
"Not again…"
Nouel understood:
He could not win by normal means.
"Ventus. Tempus."
His body accelerated.
The incoming arrow turned almost invisible — yet Nouel slipped past it. Wind carved cold lines along his skin.
"I hit his heart… there has to be a way…"
He drew three arrows, tossed them upward, and with Volantis stepped onto one mid-air. The clone mirrored him.
Two hunters faced each other — suspended in air.
Tension thickened.
Sweat.
Silence.
Death.
One shot would decide everything.
Nouel pulled the string.
The clone did the same — the bow creaking under immense strain.
"Come on… you bastard…"
They fired at the same time.
Two arrows vanished — blurring through time itself.
Behind Nouel, two arrowheads embedded into the wall.
He stood firm.
Untouched.
Before him:
The clone.
Hit.
In the throat.
"So strengthening the arrow with Cristallum was a good idea…" he thought as he watched his enemy.
His shot had split the incoming arrow cleanly.
"So… a core… but where?"
He sighed internally.
He wanted the fight done.
"If he can move the core… I'll have to pulverize him…"
The clone ripped the arrow from his throat, dry blood spurting.
The wound sealed instantly.
He aimed again.
Nouel exhaled.
"If I have to pulverize him… then only one technique can do it.
But if I use it… I'll be defenseless…
and if I miss… it's over."
Yet his thoughts stayed calm.
No stress.
No panic.
He flowed with the Aether.
"I can't rely on that technique…
I need another way."