The Blue Meteor's Descent
The blue meteor plummeted. A horrifying sensation of being sucked into endless darkness. Serian was falling. The tearing roar of wind drilled into her eardrums. Her vision spun wildly, the boundary between sky and earth collapsing. Gravity's massive grip yanked at her as if to crush her completely. If she slammed into the fortress's stone walls or the cold ground like this, there'd be nothing left to scrape off the pavement. 'Am I… really going to die like this?'
Fear tightened around her heart. It felt unfair. This pointlessly? She'd only wanted to slip away quietly. Yet here she was—the one who'd flipped the switch for the empire's downfall—making her exit first, right at the center of the stage. It was almost funny. This wasn't the plan. Her designed farewell had been to fail spectacularly, get shoved into some quiet backwater post, and fade from everyone's memory. That was the exit she'd engineered for herself. But all that desperate flailing to sabotage the project had led to this?
A hollow laugh escaped her. In her spinning vision, the burning fortress's devastation flashed by. And within it, her eyes caught something. The Night Ghosts clinging precariously to the ice wall. They hadn't given up yet. Seizing the brief lull in the cold, they shielded their frozen comrades and fought a desperate, bloody struggle against the pouring attacks.
'If I die here, everything ends.' Their lives, and the slim chance to fix this hell. No. That couldn't happen. She was the commander of this operation. She had to do something. She was the only one who'd pushed them into this inferno—and the only one who could pull them out.
Swallowing her terror, strength flooded back into her stiffening hands. She drew the blade-shaped control grip of the aerial maneuver device she'd kept tucked in her coat. What she wore wasn't the mass-produced version. Right after hearing that damned imperial order about commanding from the sky, she'd hastily modified it just in case. If nothing else, she'd tripled the instantaneous thrust output compared to the standard model.
Even in her shaking vision, she desperately steadied her body and fixed her gaze on the fortress below. The heart of the distant stronghold—the Silver Horn. 'There…!'
One single chance. Miss the timing, and she'd splatter on the ground. Serian held her breath and aimed the anchor at the spire of the Silver Horn.
Whoosh—! A sharp sound split the darkness with wire. Clang! The clear ring of metal striking metal. Success! Even amid the chaotic view, the anchor had embedded perfectly into the horn's structure. The wire pulled taut, gradually braking her freefall acceleration.
'Good! Now I just need to stabilize my posture…!' She gripped the hilt-shaped controller tightly to kill her descent speed. The plan was to release gas for a smooth deceleration.
Huh…? But—an entirely unexpected force seized her body. Shiiiiii—! An unfamiliar gas ejection sound came from one side of her waist. Lucian's ice spear had left a tiny crack not only in the griffin's wing but in the gas vent on her hip. Balance collapsed. The explosive thrust bursting from only one side became a powerful centrifugal force around the anchor, spinning her body wildly.
She began rotating like a top, dizzyingly fast.
“W-why is this spinning—aaaah!”
Serian's desperate scream scattered helplessly into the roaring wind.
Lucian stood atop the fortress spire—the peak of the Silver Horn—gazing down at the battlefield with boredom. His eyes drifted to a tiny speck in the far upper atmosphere, shrinking into a dot. The insolent commander who'd just introduced dissonance into his perfect performance. She was falling helplessly, without any deceleration or resistance.
“Is that all you amount to?”
A languid smirk tugged at his lips. She'd been such a nuisance from the sky that he'd personally dragged her down. And yet she couldn't even handle a simple fall. It seemed her magical capabilities offered no way to survive this situation. Any lingering flicker of anticipation vanished. He clicked his tongue and turned away.
The bugs below were making far too much noise to waste attention on a mere insect like her. Just as he was about to shift his gaze back to the ice wall below, something brushed the corner of his vision.
Blue light. The falling speck carried a faint but unmistakable blue glow. Only then did Lucian realize. This wasn't a freefall without deceleration. Rather than slowing down, she was converting the full force of gravitational pull into kinetic energy. Using the anchor as an axis, she spun like a mad top—charging straight toward him. Precisely toward him.
Lucian's brow furrowed. In his eyes, the girl's trajectory became clear. The most efficient spiral path for charging a target. The shortest route to the enemy commander, accelerating through gravity itself. The corner of his mouth tilted upward.
“—Very well. So you wish to challenge me.”
With a single gesture, dozens of ice shards formed. Sh-sh-sh-shk—! Sharp sounds of air being sliced accompanied the barrage of ice projectiles raining toward the falling girl.
But her movement mocked the magic's targeting, twisting her trajectory at bizarre angles and slipping past. The irregular gas bursts from the malfunctioning thruster created her unpredictable motion. Yet to Lucian's eyes, it looked like divine-level evasive maneuvers impossible for human reflexes to replicate. A viciously beautiful dance that transcended the limits of his calculations.
Yes—this was no mere fall. It was a blue flash that had turned herself into a bullet to slay the enemy commander.
Within the spinning flash, Lucian saw it. A pale face glimpsed between fluttering silver hair. And… eyes locked unwaveringly on this spot alone. The gaze of a predator that had found its prey. It was as if she were saying you were the one being hunted.
A chill ran down Lucian's spine.
“Insolent brat…!”
He couldn't control both the wide-area magic freezing the entire rampart and this anomalous being before him at the same time. If he continued, he'd lose both. He made his decision. Hastily, he released the cold magic he'd cast over the entire fortress.
Crack!Crunch! The ice covering the walls shattered and fell. The killing cold that had bound the Night Ghosts vanished. With the burden of managing such vast magic lifted, his mind cleared and every nerve sharpened to a razor's edge.
Lucian gathered all his mana and focused it on the single person before him. To erase the insolent being that had invaded his domain, he began casting a lethal spell. A piercing blue flash gathered at his fingertips.
“Now it ends—”
But it was already too late. In the instant he completed the magic and looked to aim at her, the blue meteor sliced through his vision.
There was no sensation of cold steel, no pain of bones shattering. It simply brushed past. The last thing captured in his sight was Serian's body grazing him and landing precariously atop the Silver Horn's structure.
Shatter—! Lucian's body disintegrated silently, crumbling into glittering ice fragments like a magnificent ice sculpture.
For a brief moment, the sudden release of cold—thanks to the overall commander's quick thinking—had loosened its grip. But the chill was already tightening around them once more. One by one, the final screams of falling comrades hammered into Kaizen's ears. The proud new blade of the empire, the Night Ghosts project, was hurtling toward a miserable failure.
Clinging precariously to the ice wall, Kaizen looked helplessly up at the sky. Despair flooded his face.
'The overall commander…'
As if grasping at his last hope, he stared upward again. The retreat signal. That red flare was now the only way to save even one more person from this hell. But what entered his eyes was not a retreat signal.
High in the distant sky, a small figure was falling helplessly.
“N-no…”
A despairing groan escaped Kaizen's lips. The overall commander. The brain behind this entire operation, the very embodiment of their convictions—she was falling too. It was truly over. He clenched his teeth. Retreat. Humiliating as it was, it was the only path left to save even one more life.
Just as he reached for the retreat flare in his coat, a frantic shout from his adjutant pierced his ears.
“W-wait! Vice-commander, please wait just a moment!”
“What nonsense is this! Right now we—”
Kaizen spat the words irritably, then looked back at the sky as if spellbound. The falling Serian. The despairing sight remained unchanged. But—something was wrong. A blue light now swirled around her body, which he'd thought was simply plummeting. Soon it began spinning fiercely, sucked toward a single point.
The target—was the fortress summit. That mage, the source of all this calamity.
“S-surely not…!”
He'd clearly thought she'd been struck by magic and was falling. But that wasn't it.
“She jumped down herself… to save us? From that height?”
At the awe-inspiring sight, Kaizen forgot to breathe, staring in utter trance. It was exactly then.
The ice covering the ramparts shattered with a tremendous roar. The murderous cold that had bound them vanished like a lie. When Kaizen snapped back to his senses and looked up, a miracle was unfolding in the sky.
In the instant the commander, transformed into a blue flash, charged the enemy mage, the foe's body was seen shattering into glittering ice fragments. Silence fell.
And the one who broke that silence was Kaizen's cry.
“……The path… has opened…….”
Kaizen's eyes widened. It was unbelievable. An impossible scene was unfolding before him.
“The development supervisor… all by herself…! She opened the way!”
Those words became the spark.
“Waaaaaaaaah—!”
Morale exploded skyward. The insane cheers bursting from people who'd thought they were about to die moments ago were on another level entirely. Kaizen raised his sword high and roared.
“All units, charge the summit! Annihilate the enemy!”
Freed from their bonds, the Night Ghosts surged back onto the ramparts. Nothing could stop them now. The remaining enemies abandoned even resistance, crumbling in terror. The supposedly impregnable Silver Horn Fortress was falling.
Meanwhile, Serian was barely keeping her balance atop the Silver Horn's structure.
“Ugh…”
The aftermath of that insane spinning left her stomach churning. The world still seemed to whirl around her. She staggered and finally collapsed onto the floor.
'I'm alive…'
That was the only thought in her mind. She looked around. Something had brushed past with a loud noise, but her memory was hazy. Before her were only beautifully sparkling ice fragments scattered everywhere.
“…Is this snow?”
She muttered blankly, absentmindedly picking up one of the rapidly cooling ice shards.
At that same moment, hundreds of kilometers from the fortress, in the capital of the Astra Empire—the top floor of the Winter Tower.
The real Lucian, seated in a quiet meditation chamber, suddenly opened his eyes.
“Kuh…!”
A drop of dark red blood fell from his lips onto the floor with a soft plop. The final memory transmitted as his mana clone was destroyed. A silver-haired girl brushing past him. A twisted smile formed on his lips.
“…Found you.”