Dimensional Descent

Aina sat blankly on the platform where her wedding was meant to take place. The carnage around her was still ongoing, she could hear the cries of pain and horror and almost feel the rivers of blood tingling the small hairs on her skin, but she was numb to it all.

Rychard had long since left her side, rushing in an attempt to help the battle. He may have been a lot of things, but a coward wasn't one. And though he was highly intelligent, there was absolutely no way he could have pieced together that the Myghell's goal all along had been to take Aina away, while the destruction of the Viola was just a convenient bonus.

So, Rychard had left Aina alone, knowing full well that if she faced something she couldn't protect herself from, there was nothing he would have been able to do either way.

But, there was no doubt that the fate of the Viola had already been sealed. The guests who had come to take part in the wedding but weren't part of the struggle sat in a daze themselves, realizing that they were witnessing the collapse of an empire that had ruled for thousands of years… And yet, just like that, they were finished?

Aina, though, couldn't be bothered to care. She didn't pay attention to what was happening, she couldn't hear the voices around her anymore, and she just blankly stared at the violet grass before her.

Her tears had long since dried up. The sudden breaking of the dam had snapped her back to reality, a flood of thoughts, emotional compartmentalisations, and slowly grown maturity having come back to her one step at a time.

It wasn't an instantaneous process. In fact, it was quite slow at the beginning. The childish thoughts and immaturity seemed to always want to claw their way back. But, a single step at a time, what was, or at least had been Aina, began to return.

But who was she, anyway?

Aina seemed to realize now that something within her had snapped the first day she met Myghell. And, funnily enough, the day it all snapped back into place was the second time she met him.

As she sat there, her arms wrapped around her legs and her head buried between her thighs, she felt a pain in her chest that she hadn't felt in a very long time. But, almost like a genius of battle who had finally met her match, this pain wasn't something Aina wanted to run from. Instead, she wanted to bask in it, to feel it fill her nerves and take over her mind.

Aina knew she had masochistic tendencies. If it wasn't her ridiculous training regimens, even sometimes going as far as to shatter her own bones just to heal herself, it was always something else. However, this time, she needed this pain not to grow stronger, but to finally feel alive.

In these last several months, Aina felt like she had been standing before a tunnel with an exit of blinding white light. She had been trying her hardest, doing everything she could to run in the other direction… But, as though she was stuck in a dream, her legs didn't move as fast as she wanted them to and her movements felt sluggish.

She pushed herself harder, only to fall and stumble, failing to claw herself back… Until everything suddenly went black and she returned to this world once more.

This pain in her chest right now, the pain she couldn't ignore no matter how hard she tried or how much effort she put in… It was her sign that she was back, that she could finally breathe as herself again, that she could finally be Aina again.

But it hurt… It hurt like hell.

As much as that neutered version of herself wanted to be logical, she knew that wasn't her. She couldn't just bury how she was feeling, and even when she tried, it would always manifest itself in the weirdest of ways. She had too many memories exactly like this… Memories she was often too embarrassed to even recall.

Aina took deep breaths, wiping the last evidence of her tears away. She looked up into the skies, almost as though to affirm herself that Leonel was truly not there.

For the first time in a long while, she stood to her feet. Her body flashed, her wedding dress falling to ashes and her body being adorned by flexible silver and black armor.

She reached for the hairpin that held up her elaborate bun and crushed it in her hands. Then, looking off in a certain direction, she began to walk as though nothing was around her.

Surprisingly, or maybe not very much so, no one bothered her. To the Viola, she was their Crown Heir's soon-to-be wife. And, to the Luxnix, she was on the list of those they weren't meant to touch.

Using her high Blood Force affinity, finding her father's direction was as easy as breathing. Though Myghell took note of Aina's actions, he also didn't nothing to stop her. If Aina believed that they hadn't come for her, that was fine too. He didn't mind.

She was indeed as beautiful as the piece of her face he had seen before told him, but most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but Myghell's pride wasn't something most could understand. He wouldn't chase a woman, even if he wanted her.

How things fell into place in the future, so long as he was the Light mentioned, he didn't care. His goal wasn't women, nor was it fame or wealth… It was to stand at the pinnacle of the Dimensional Verse and he didn't care who he needed to use to get there.

The events of that day would spread like wildfire, setting the Sector ablaze and leaving a shocking amount of territory completely unprotected.

But, what did these matters have to do with the Void Palace? Without even a slight delay in schedule, the second day would begin on the day it was promised.

…

In the skies above, Alienor watched this scene with her arms crossed about her chest, coldly watching Aina's every action before she lightly snorted.

"Consider yourselves lucky."

She seemed to be referring to the Viola, as though their collapse wasn't punishment enough or like she had had something even worse in store for them. But, her next words were even more unabashedly wild.

"And you. Even if my son doesn't want you anymore, you'll still have to spend the rest of your life single."