Smoke curled from the shattered window of the high-rise, mixing with the pale light of morning. The monkey-helmeted woman–her visor cracked, one side bleeding faintly, staggered back into the shadow of the room. Her breath hissed through the suit's respirator, shallow and irregular.
She reached inside her coat, her gloved hand trembling slightly, and pulled out a slim black phone. Its cracked screen flickered to life, dim light reflecting off the frost still spreading across her gauntlet. She scrolled through her contact list for a moment, thumb hovering, before pressing a name.
The line clicked.
"Yawn~ It's still early," came the voice on the other end, playful and airy. "Why do you call at this time, Monkey?"
The woman's lips curved under the fractured visor. "Meow, it's already eight in the morning. I heard from Mumu that you stayed awake all night coming up with a new song."
There was a delighted hum, followed by the rustle of fabric and the faint sound of something metallic being tuned.
"Oh, it's not something that could compare to the Pianist's performance," the voice said, "but I'm proud of it. Worked on it ever since Doodle-doo, Heehaw, and Woof vanished, and after I appeared randomly inside District 4's forest. But tell me, why call so early in the morning, my dear Monkey?"
"I failed my mission. I used all of my tricks, and it didn't work. Probably going to crash at your place for a while. I missed my rent again."
"Tsk, tsk. A failed act on an early morning," the voice replied with theatrical dismay. "Would you like to join my performance, then?"
"Would you hire me?"
"Oh, of course," came the lilting reply. "I could use someone like you as a part-timer in my band. Let's remember the enchanting tune that echoed through the whole City~"
The call ended with a soft chime. The woman slipped the phone back into her pocket, her gloved fingers brushing over the bullet graze on her head.
Her eyes drifted toward the horizon, where Sophia's shot had come from. Her breath fogged the glass.
The frost was still clinging to the asphalt, thin ribbons of white steam rising where the morning sun finally kissed the ground. The clash had ended in breathless silence, the kind that followed violence too sudden to comprehend.
Kamina stood amid the haze, his chest heaving, the edge of his katana steaming with thawed ice.
The two remaining Krieg-suited men–one reeling from Kamina's blade, the other locking against Shmuel's steel hands–shared a brief glance. Then, without a word, they ignited the valves on their wrists. The ignitors hissed with pressure–chhhh–and burst open, releasing a torrent of freezing mist that swallowed the street in an instant.
The fog rose like a ghost, swallowing shapes, sound, and movement alike. By the time Kamina stepped forward with his blade raised, the silhouettes were gone—just two sets of footprints fading into slush.
Kamina lowered his sword, squinting into the vapor. "Heh. They got away quite fast."
Shmuel brushed frost from his coat, still catching his breath. "We still need to get Imogen to X Cor—"
A voice cut clean through the air.
"I don't think that would be necessary."
They all turned.
Standing at the far end of the street was a man clad in full plate armor, silver polished but dulled at the edges from countless winters. The design of his armor mirrored Pisanio's.
On his gauntleted arm perched a German owl pigeon, feathers grey and soft, its eyes bright with an almost mechanical gleam. It cooed softly as the armored man raised it, the faint hum of small machinery beneath its wings betraying its true nature.
He stopped several paces away and bowed his head.
"Your Highness," he said. "The Queen is calling."
The pigeon extended its neck and emitted a soft click, the faint blue light on its chest flickering as a voice connection established.
Imogen froze where she stood. Her fingers trembled slightly at her side, and her mechanical eyes flickered between white and pale red as though struggling to focus. Her breath caught in her throat.
Shmuel noticed the hesitation immediately. "Imogen…?"
But she didn't move. The air around her seemed to constrict.
Her stepmother. The Queen of Brithelm.
The pigeon tilted its head expectantly, awaiting her touch.
The knight holding the exchange device stepped forward. His armor creaked as he turned toward Imogen.
"You would be able to go to X Corp's nest without anyone hunting you," he said, his tone flat and measured, "but under some conditions so speak with the Queen."
Imogen's brow furrowed, her jaw tight. Sophia, Kamina, Pisanio, and Shmuel shifted, forming a half-circle around the knight, ready to act at the first hint of deceit.
Imogen reached forward, her gloved fingers brushing against the cool feathers of the mechanical pigeon. The device clicked twice, and the pigeon's beak parted slightly before a familiar, aged voice emerged.
"One, two, three–does the mic work? One, two, three…"
"…It does, mother."
"Ah, Imogen," the Queen's voice cooed through the pigeon's tiny speaker. "It has been quite some time since you left the Castle of Maidens. You've made your father worry himself to the ill!"
Imogen's expression darkened. "…I don't think he will. And you've been using his name to get me back."
"Oh, don't worry about that so much, my dear," the Queen replied, her tone shifting to one of soft amusement. "Now–here comes the offer. I will allow you to go to X Corp's nest unscathed… but you must attend a funeral in District 13, the very district you stand in now."
"I do wish I could attend it myself," the Queen added, voice low and unhurried, "but alas… I don't have the time."
Imogen's fingers tightened slightly around the pigeon, her throat working before she spoke.
"…Fine," she said quietly, her eyes lowering to the cracked asphalt beneath her boots. "I'll attend the funeral."
"Splendid," the Queen's voice purred, satisfaction curling through each syllable. "I~ knew~ my~ sweet~ daughter~ would~ understand~ her~ duties~. The address will be provided by my messenger."
The pigeon gave a mechanical coo before its chest compartment opened with a soft click, revealing a folded piece of parchment. The knight took it reverently and stepped forward, handing it to Imogen with a short bow.
"This contains the location."
Imogen unfolded the paper. The ink was still fresh–letters looping gracefully in her stepmother's unmistakable handwriting. District 13. Chapel of Silent Pines. Noon.
She read it once, then twice, committing it to memory before tucking it carefully into her coat. The name of the chapel meant nothing to her–but something about it, a whisper in her blood, felt faintly familiar.
Sophia exhaled softly behind her. "So, ve just… go to zis funeral now, ja?"
Imogen nodded. "If it means I can move through without being hunted… yes."
Kamina gave a shrug. "Well, that's one way to get an invitation."
The knight, mission complete, turned away. Frost mist trailed from the joints of his armor as he disappeared into the thinning fog, leaving behind only the faint echo of steel boots on wet stone.
As the group returned to the car, Pisanio lingered a moment longer beside Imogen. The wind brushed against them, carrying the distant chime of a church bell.
"Milady," he said softly, "you seem… unsettled."
Imogen's gaze drifted toward the faint skyline of District 13. "It's strange," she murmured, her voice almost lost to the hum of the wind. "I don't know why… but something feels close. Like something I've been waiting for."
Her words hung with the innocence of hope.
None of them could know that the bell that tolled in the distance was not for ceremony or prayer.
But for a boy's farewell.
And for a girl's unfulfilling wish.
The armored car rattled like an old beast dragged unwillingly back to life. Its tires shrieked against the cracked concrete as Sophia coaxed it forward, smoke trailing faintly from the ruined hood.
No one spoke for a time–the only sound was the rhythmic clatter of gears, the dull hum of the dying engine, and the faint tapping of Imogen's finger against the folded invitation.
Shmuel's voice broke the silence.
"Let me see that paper for a second."
Imogen blinked, hesitated, then handed it to him. Her hand trembled slightly as it left her grasp. Shmuel smoothed the parchment across his metal thigh, eyes narrowing behind his cracked goggles. "A funeral notice should have a name," he muttered, his tone clipped, methodical. "But this doesn't list one. Either they forgot… or they wanted to hide it."
He twisted a latch at his shoulder. With a soft click, his mechanical arm detached from its socket. The sound echoed oddly in the cramped car. "Let's test a theory."
Pisanio turned slightly, watching as Shmuel's right arm unfolded, exposing the inner mechanism of a bullet ignition chamber. He flicked a switch, and the metal began to glow faintly red. Holding the parchment near the gentle heat.
"Invisible ink. Classic trick."
And then, slowly, ghostly letters began to crawl into existence. Burnt brown lines forming a single name.
Posthumus Leonatus.
The moment the name appeared, something fragile inside the car cracked.
Imogen stared at it, unblinking. "No…" she whispered. "No, that can't be right. That's—no, that's impossible."
Her voice faltered as if the air itself was rejecting the words. "Posthumus is in X Corp's nest. I—I heard from him before I left the castle. He's alive. He promised…" Her voice dwindled into silence, brittle and uneven.
The car rocked slightly as Sophia hit a pothole, but the sound barely registered. The air inside felt suffocating.
Pisanio looked at her with the tenderness of someone who had seen this kind of break before. "Milady," he said quietly, "we must confirm it. The City plays cruel tricks, and words can lie. But if… if it is truly him, you must be ready."
Kamina leaned forward from the backseat, sunglasses reflecting the faint amber glow of the dashboard. His voice was steady but dimmer than usual, a spark struggling beneath the weight of smoke.
"Yeah," he said, eyes flicking toward Imogen. "You should… brace yourself. Losing the one you love–it's damned. You can't prepare for it, but pretending you can't lose them… that's worse."
He smiled faintly–too faintly, as though even his bravado found no place here.
Outside, the rain began again. Slow. Relentless.
Then came the voice.
Soft. Luminous. Like silk pressed against a bruise.
"The noon hour is near."
"Do you feel it, my little princess? The tremor beneath your ribs… the ache that is not quite grief, not yet. Accept it. The selfishness, the longing. It is what makes you alive."
Imogen's breath hitched. Her hands clenched in her lap. The warmth of that unseen voice seeped through her like a fever.
"You seek love, yet deny loss. You chase what you already know is gone. To claim your truth, you must hold both–the love and the ruin."
Her reflection in the cracked rear-view mirror seemed foreign to her–eyes still faintly bloodshot from earlier, lips trembling between fury and disbelief.
"I…" Imogen whispered to no one in particular. "I don't know."
Her voice broke softly, even the syllables were too fragile to carry meaning.
The car rolled onward and toward the Chapel of Silent Pines, toward the truth waiting under noon's white glare.
Imogen's grip around the Barrett-11 trembled as the car bounced over a seam in the road. Her eyes were unfocused–fixed somewhere beyond the wet windshield, beyond the storm, into the silence within her.
Her lips parted, and her voice came out faint, unsteady.
"...You," she whispered to the thing in her mind. "You keep talking to me like you know everything. Then tell me–do you know what happened to him? My promised one? The boy I swore I'd find again?"
Then came a different voice. Not the whispering warmth from before, but something else. Clearer. Younger. A boy's voice, bright with mischief and sunlight.
"Aren't you bored of hide and seek yet?"
Imogen blinked–and suddenly she was small again. Barefoot on the marble floors of the Castle of Maidens, where the light streamed through tall windows and painted the hallways in gold and blue. Her hands were tiny and clean; her rifle was gone.
She turned toward the sound of laughter.
The boy stood near the garden's edge, cheeks flushed, a wreath of white lilies crooked on his head. His grin was the kind that made the whole world seem less cruel.
Imogen laughed softly. "I never get bored of it," she said, brushing dirt from her dress. "I always find you, don't I?"
"That's not fair. You know every secret passage in this place. The castle of... uh, castle of may–"
"Castle of maidens, you dummy."
"And when we play catch, you always climb the trees. You cheat."
"That's because you can't climb them."
"Not everyone's a monkey princess."
"Not everyone's brave enough to try."
They laughed together, and the sound seemed to fill the garden.
Then his voice softened. "Hey... can you promise me something?"
Imogen tilted her head. "What is it?"
"Find me," he said, eyes bright and impossibly certain. "Wherever I end up–no matter how far, or how strange it gets. Find me. And I'll find a way to you too."
Such a childish promise.
So naive. So pure.
The garden faded.
The laughter faded.
And she was older again–standing in the great hall of the Castle of Maidens, before a man whose shadow filled the room.
Her father, the King in Grey.
He sat upon a throne of marble and iron, draped in ash-colored robes, his expression cold, dignified, tired.
Imogen stood before him, fists clenched at her sides.
"Father," she said, trying to steady her voice. "I want to see the outside. The real world."
He exhaled slowly, as if she had asked for a piece of the moon.
"You already have every means to see it," he said, not unkindly, but with a weight that made the words sound final. "Books. Tutors. Music from beyond the walls. What more could you possibly need?"
"I don't want to see it through glass," she said. "I want to walk in it. To breathe its air. To meet the people."
His tone sharpened. "The world outside is chaos, Imogen. Hunger, disease, violence. You are a princess. You are meant to be protected from it, not consumed by it."
"I'm not a fragile thing!" she shouted. "You treat me like a bird in a cage. I just want to know what lies beyond–"
"Enough."
He rose slowly. "Enough, Imogen. You will not set foot beyond the Castle of Maidens. Not while I breathe."
She took a trembling step back. "But–"
His voice thundered now, echoing against the stained glass. "Do not mistake your curiosity for courage, child. You do not yet understand what the world demands from those who wander it."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Imogen's throat tightened, but she refused to cry–not before him. "Then I'll learn," she said finally, barely a whisper. "With or without your blessing."
For a heartbeat, his mask of composure cracked–something almost like fear flickered in his eyes. But then the King in Grey turned away.
"Knights," he said quietly. "Escort her to her chambers."
And as the door shut behind her, the promise of a boy echoed faintly in her mind.
The world shimmered again.
The golden hall, her father's throne, all dissolved into a haze of dust and light until only a small room remained– dimly lit, lined with old wooden shelves and the faint smell of medicine and lilies.
A frail woman lay upon a bed of white sheets, her breath shallow and quiet as a dying candle. Her hand rested in the grasp of a little girl's trembling fingers.
Imogen was no older than four.
Her hair, still a pale gold untouched by blood or grief, hung over her small, tear-stained face. Beside her stood Pisanio, solemn even in youth, his expression the tempered calm of a servant who had learned to bear the sorrow of kings.
Imogen looked up at him, eyes wide with the innocent confusion only a child could carry.
"Where is Father?" she asked softly. "Doesn't he love Mother?"
Pisanio turned toward her and his mouth parted, the words forming…
But they never came.
The world stopped. The colors drained. The candlelight froze mid-flicker.
And then–
"Love burns."
A whisper crawled through the still air, curling around Imogen's ears like smoke.
"Love breaks."
The voice echoed inside her skull.
"Love takes."
Imogen's grip tightened around her mother's lifeless hand.
"Love ends."
Then everything shattered and the child who had asked about love could no longer remember what it had ever meant.
The clock struck noon.
Ol' the noon of today.
Wisp Ol' of the noon
The chime was soft yet it cleaved the world in half.
The sun hung directly above, harsh and unwavering, spilling its light through the cracked glass of the small chapel. The air shimmered with heat, with dust, with something heavier than grief.
Imogen's mind swam back into the living world. Her pupils dilated, her heartbeat slowed. She didn't remember walking, but she was moving. Step by step, she crossed the aisle toward the casket.
Each footfall echoed.
Each second stretched like a century.
And there he was.
Posthumus Leonatus.
The name was etched in silver upon the polished plate.
The face, pale and serene, lay beneath a thin glass veil.
The boy who once promised to find her no matter the distance– now lay still, unreachable.
No priest spoke.
No mourner wept.
Only five stood under the light of noon. Pisanio, Shmuel, Sophia, Kamina… and the girl whose world had been reduced to a single name.
Kamina's voice came.
"Brat… are you alright?"
But Imogen did not answer. She could not.
All those quiet mornings and imagined tomorrows crumbled into dust. Every word, every promise, every whisper shared in childhood now festered into mockery. To love someone that much, to build one's soul around another, was to set fire to the foundation of self and now the fire demanded its due.
Imogen smiled faintly, the kind of smile that does not belong to the living.
Her tears burned before they could fall.
The sun's light sharpened, a blade upon her. Her body trembled — her breath faltered.
And then it began.
A faint ring formed above her brow.
A crown of flame.
The fire flickered and curved until it became a halo, delicate and divine, made of neurons of brains, each alight, burning their own connections away. A halo woven from the very parts of her that once thought, that once felt.
Kamina took a step forward, recognition striking through him like thunder. He had seen this before. The golden coin phenomenon of the sisters.
"Shit," he hissed, lunging forward but too late.
Imogen's skin began to waver, parts of her flickering between flesh and molten flame. Her veins glowed like glass tubes filled with magma. She looked holy and horrific all at once.
Sophia froze, rifle half-raised, her eyes wide with a horror that no battlefield had ever taught her.
Pisanio whispered a prayer like an apology.
Kamina tried to strike– to knock her unconscious before the distortion took hold– but his blade met only light and smoke. His hand burned, the steel of his weapon melting slightly where it touched her aura.
Then came the noise.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CLANG.
Metal grew from her body– the birth of barrels, the groaning of forged steel.
The rifles– dozens of Barrett-11s, her mother's weapon, her inheritance– tore through her back, her arms, her shadow. Their barrels smoked, their bolts clicked, each one an extension of her grief.
And then the world screamed.
The air erupted in thunder as every gun fired without a trigger.
Bullets tore through the chapel walls, through glass, through the sky itself. Each shot was a word unspoken, each casing a piece of her heart collapsing under its own truth.
Shmuel and Kamina dove for cover. Sophia rolled behind the shattered altar, the D-3IS clutched in her hands, eyes wide with disbelief.
Pisanio shielded himself with his blade, but even he staggered beneath the onslaught.
And above it all stood Imogen– no longer Imogen, but a being unbound by grief or mercy.
Her halo burned brighter than the noon sun,
and the voice that once whispered comfort now sang inside her head, warm and terrible.
"You have found him, haven't you?
Now burn for love."