The hemispherical crater of nothingness was a monument to a power Nox could not comprehend. He lay at its edge, his magnificent male form shattered. The unhealing 'X' on his chest pulsed with a dull, gray ache, a constant, agonizing reminder that something could permanently mark a being like him. His divine energy, once a boundless ocean, was now a leaking vessel, and with it, his form began to destabilize.
The broad shoulders narrowed. The sharp, masculine jawline softened. The baritone rasps of pain shifted in pitch, rising into a raw, feminine scream that tore through the ruins.
"No… no, no, NO!" The voice was Nox's, but it was her female voice, stripped of its seductive melody and filled with a childlike, desperate terror. She clutched at her chest, her starlit eyes wide with panic as she felt her power ebb, the mighty male form she relied on for true combat receding against her will. She was being forced back into her base state, vulnerable and broken. "I can't… I can't go back! Not to that! I WON'T BE POWERLESS AGAIN!"
She scrambled backward on the rubble, her movements jerky, uncoordinated, like a wounded animal. The impossible bleeding from the gray scar continued, a slow, relentless seep of iridescence that defied all her innate healing.
"You don't understand!" she shrieked at the unconscious Kenta, her words tumbling out in a frantic, crazed torrent. "You fight for your friends? Your masters? I had a family! A name! Nighshinthal!"
The name was a curse and a prayer on her lips. It unleashed the floodgates of a past she had buried under eons of service and slaughter.
Centuries Ago – The Nighshinthal Estate
She was a child, hiding behind a silk tapestry, watching through a gap. The Nighshinthal Hall, a place of laughter and noble grace, was painted in red. Bodies lay strewn across the polished floor—her mother, her father, her uncles and aunts. They were a lineage bred for a single, impossible purpose: to rival the legendary Naein Clan. But they were pale imitations, their power a flickering candle next to the Naein's inferno. And for their failure, for their perceived audacity, the former Bastard Emperor had sent his butchers.
"Find the child," a cold voice echoed. "The two-faced one. The Emperor desires to see the last of the failed experiment."
She trembled, her unique biology a death sentence. A lowly knight, a loyal retainer who saw her not as a tool but as a child, found her. He smuggled her out, his eyes filled with a pity that burned her more than any hatred.
The Hidden Years
"You must never show your other form," the knight would say, his voice kind but firm. He raised her in secret, the last scion of a slaughtered line. For a few, fleeting years, there was a semblance of peace. It was the only kindness she had ever known.
It didn't last. The Emperor's hounds found them.
"Run, my lady!" the knight had yelled, shoving a small, glowing orb into her hands. She remembered begging, pleading, her tears staining his worn tunic. "Please, don't leave me! Don't make me alone!"
He had given her one last, heartbreaking smile, full of a love she had done nothing to earn. "Live," he whispered.
He turned to face the pursuers, a single blade against a tide of darkness. She activated the orb. The world twisted, and the last thing she saw was a spear of light piercing her protector's chest.
The Wasteland – Sectar of Ahata
The teleportation dumped her into a hellscape. A deserted, sun-scorched expanse of rock and sand with no food, no water. It didn't matter. Her body, even then, was more than human. She wandered for a year, a feral, grieving thing. Anything that crossed her path—beast, man, or monster—she killed. Their deaths were a feeble offering to the ghosts of her family and the knight with the sad smile. Vengeance was the only thing that kept the crushing loneliness at bay.
Then, one day, the shadows themselves deepened. A figure stood before her, his presence so immense it stilled the scorching wind. He was elegance and annihilation given form. Emperor Orion.
Her blood ran cold. Terror, pure and absolute, locked her limbs. This was the power that made emperors, the kind that had destroyed her family.
But Orion did not strike. His eyes, pools of infinite shadow, looked through her, saw her rage, her pain, her unique two-faced nature, and the fledgling mirroring power within her male form.
"Interesting," his voice was a silken shadow, coiling around her soul. "Such wasted potential, rotting in this wasteland."
He extended a hand, not in threat, but in offer. "Join me. Your power… it can be honed. Perfected. Under my wing, you will reach a peak those pathetic Nighshinthal ancestors could never dream of."
His next words were a key that unlocked her entire destiny, a promise that sold her soul.
"You will have the power to destroy every last lineage of the Altaria bloodline and erase their kingdom from history. You will have your vengeance, Nox. True vengeance."
Present Day – The Crater
Back in the present, Nox clawed at the gray scar, her body wracked with sobs that were centuries overdue. "He promised…" she whimpered, her form fully female again, curled pathetically on the stone. "He promised me the peak… the power to destroy them all… I can't… I can't die here… not before I see Altaria burn…"
The majestic, terrifying Devil was gone. All that remained was a broken, weeping girl from a slaughtered house, bleeding impossibly onto the cold, uncaring stone, her dream of vengeance crumbling faster than her dying body.