Chapter 16: 3 Months in Twilight

The world no longer kept time by days.

Once, people counted mornings by the rise of the sun and nights by the fall of the moon.

Now there was only the One Light—an endless, pale fire suspended in a sky clogged with ash. Too dim to call it day, yet too bright to call it night.

While the Order searched ruins in search of the Thirteenth, the AZO sought a different approach- training their ‘Zodiac’ for the war to come.

It had been three months since Luna first touched the training floor in Geneva.

Her room still looked the same—bare walls with a neat bed, a lamp that hummed faintly when the power grid held. But Luna was not the same.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, palms resting open on her knees. Frost curled from her fingertips, not in wild bursts like before, but in steady spirals, each breath coaxing the cold to dance. The air shimmered faintly, her control growing sharper with every session.

“You’ve remembered quickly,” Miloslav had told her earlier that day, watching from the edge of the training dome. He hadn’t said learned. He’d said remembered.

That word haunted her.

Because he was right.

Each technique didn’t feel discovered—it felt recalled, like pages of a book she had once read and forgotten, now being turned again. She was not gaining power. She was returning to it.

And deep down, she feared what that meant.

Because if she kept walking down this path—if she became Cancerian again—what would be left of the girl who laughed at her dad’s dry jokes, or rolled her eyes at Kevin’s terrible anime takes? Would they even recognize her if she found them?

Would she?

Far from Geneva, the new world showed its scars more openly.

Jordan tightened the strap of her pack as she and Richard picked their way through the remains of Cape Town’s southern districts. The buildings were hollow shells now, glass blown out, steel bones creaking in the wind. High above, something enormous wheeled across the smog—wings wide, eyes glinting like lanterns. The hunters called them Carrion Hawks. Survivors never looked up when they passed.

“Stay close,” Richard muttered, his voice low. His left hand brushed the hilt of his blade, the other lifted slightly as if feeling for currents only he could sense.

Jordan nodded, but her gaze lingered on the ruins.

Three months ago, she’d still believed the world could be mended. Now she wasn’t sure there was enough left to mend.

Then, a low growl rumbled through the ruins.

The street ahead cracked as a creature crawled from the shadow of a collapsed parking garage.

It was the size of a truck, with a scaled, jagged body and the head of a lion, mane bristling like molten wire. Heat shimmered from its throat, ember-red.

“Richard…” Jordan’s voice faltered.

“I know.” He slid his blade free, his other hand outstretched, feeling the surge of SE that bled from the beast like smoke. “Stay sharp.”

The monster spewed fire from it’s mouth. Jordan threw herself sideways, concrete exploding where she’d stood. Richard braced himself, hand stretched out. The inferno twisted, shuddered, then collapsed inward as he dragged the SE into himself. For a moment, the fire was gone.

Then the backlash hit. Richard staggered, breath ragged, the glow of heat licking under his skin. “Can’t… hold much more—”

The beast lunged.

Jordan darted forward, spear raised. SE surged through her veins, heightening her reflexes. She ducked the first swipe, thrust upward—and struck its side. The point skidded uselessly, yanking back just as the monster’s claws raked sparks across her side.

“Jordan!” Richard barked. He released some of the absorbed SE in a violent burst, hurling it into the creature’s flank. Fire detonated against fire, sending the beast reeling but not down. Jordan scrambled to her feet, chest heaving. Her spear trembled in her grip. They weren’t fast enough.

Unless—

Her pulse spiked. She shut her eyes, reaching deep. The SE inside her thrummed, answering.

And then it broke. Her body blurred—light exploding from her skin. In an instant she was gone, streaking forward faster than her own thought.

Thirty seconds. That was all she could handle.

 

The beast roared, swinging wildly. To its eyes, she was everywhere at once. Sparks flew as her spear pierced deeper with each strike. The creature shrieked, flames spewing into empty air.

The beast roared, flames building in its throat.

 Richard gritted his teeth, skin shimmering with the heat he’d absorbed. His body trembled—too much, he couldn’t hold it much longer.

 

“Richard—don’t you dare burn out on me!” Jordan’s voice cut through, sharp and fierce.

 

She surged forward, spear flashing. For a heartbeat she blurred, SE sharpening her reflexes until her steps left afterimages across the rubble. She struck again and again—fast, reckless—forcing the monster’s attention on her.

“Now!” she shouted.

Richard planted his feet, raising his hand. The SE he’d stolen boiled out of him in a torrent of light and flame, compressed into a single burst that tore through the monster’s chest.

The beast froze, eyes wide with molten rage—then collapsed in a shower of embers, its body dissolving into ash.

For a long moment, only their ragged breathing filled the street.

Jordan lowered her spear, sweat dripping from her brow. Her grin was tired, but real. “I told you we could do it.”

Richard staggered, catching himself on a ruined wall. His hand still glowed faintly from the release. “Yeah,” he muttered, exhaling hard.

 “But next time… remind me not to take a fireball head-on.”

Jordan laughed once, sharp and short, before the weight of the silence returned.

Around them, Cape Town’s ruins stretched endless and empty. The world wasn’t waiting to be saved—it was daring them to survive it.

While Jordan and Richard bled for survival in Cape Town, Luna fought a different battle — one against the silence of her own thoughts.

Back at the Geneva base, her hand hovered over the journal on her desk. The pages were still blank. She wanted to write—about her father, about Kevin, about the girl she had once been—but each time the pen touched paper, her thoughts scattered into frost.

She took a shaky breath, lowered the pen, and began to write.

“Dad, I miss your awful jokes. The way you’d drop one at the worst possible moment, like the universe was falling apart but you couldn’t resist a pun about traffic or burnt toast. I used to roll my eyes. Now I’d give anything to hear one again.”

 

“And Kevin… I hope you’re still out there. I’d even sit through one of your “Top 10 Anime Betrayals” marathons without complaining. Maybe I’d even pretend to like them this time. Just… don’t let that be the last memory I have of you—your dumb grin and bad taste.”

Her handwriting faltered. She pressed the pen harder, as if forcing the words to exist.

“Are you safe? Any of you? Do you even think about me anymore?”

“Balance isn’t about suppressing what you are,” Miloslav’s voice echoed in her mind.

“It’s about accepting it.”

She curled her fingers into a fist, frost forming in her palm like glass.

Accepting it meant accepting Cancer.

 Accepting that she had once stood on the other side of the veil, her own voice commanding waters and cataclysms that had devoured whole civilizations.

Accepting that if her father still lived, if Kevin still waited for her, somewhere in this broken world, they might not recognize the girl who came back to them.

But she could not stop there.

If she was to carry this name again—Cancerian, a destroyer, calamity- she would not carry it for herself. She would carry it so others wouldn’t have to.

So that when the next Cataclysm came, someone could stand in its ashes and still say: we endured.

She closed the journal gently. The blank page no longer felt heavier than truth. It felt like a promise.

 

And above the clouds, where the One Light bled faintly through the haze, something stirred. The air trembled as if listening.

The survivors below kept their eyes on the ground. In this world, looking up was an invitation not everyone returned from.