Yelena arrived first through her portal.

Her expression shifted from confusion to horror as she took in the scene.

The collapsed hospital, the massive chasm, her sister kneeling at its edge, bloodied and broken.

"Fauna! What happened?!"

"The hospital collapsed." Fauna gasped out. "The ground opened up—there’s a chasm—and Anya and Mika—they fell—I tried to go after them but my blessing—my blessing stopped working—"

"Your blessing stopped working?" Yelena’s voice sharpened. "What do you mean it stopped working?"

"There’s something down there. Some kind of field. The moment I entered the chasm, I became mortal. Completely mortal."

"I couldn’t fly, I couldn’t heal, I couldn’t do anything—"

Nadia appeared next, the ground trembling slightly with her arrival.

"I felt a disturbance in the earth. What’s going—"

She stopped, her eyes going to the chasm.

"No. No, tell me they’re not—"

"The children fell." Yelena said grimly. "Both of them."

The Maiden of War arrived like a thunderclap, her battle aura blazing.

"WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE MY BABIES?"

"Down there." Fauna choked out. "They’re down there, and I can’t reach them—"

The Maiden of Fate materialized last, her expression already grave.

She was already running calculations in her mind, her eyes flickering with barely visible patterns of light as she processed probability and possibility.

"The chasm is filled with anti-mana." Nadia said, her face going pale as she extended her senses. "Not just the chasm itself—the entire area below, for at least fifty kilometers."

"It’s completely saturated."

"Anti-mana?" The Maiden of War’s voice cracked. "That’s—that’s the one thing even we can’t—"

"It neutralizes all blessings." Yelena said flatly. "Makes even a Battle Angel as powerless as a normal mortal. We can’t go down there. If we try, we’ll fall just like they did."

Anti-mana.

The one and only thing that even a Battle Angel had to be wary of.

The substance that could completely neutralize mana and make even the most powerful of the blessed turn into normal mortals.

It was the substance Mika had encountered not too long ago when people had been trapped under an avalanche in a snowy mountain.

But this was much, much worse than what had happened in the future.

Back then, it had been just an avalanche. Snow burying some people.

There was still a large chance of survivability—you could survive an avalanche as long as you followed certain procedures and were rescued in time.

This time, the world itself had cracked apart.

An entire wing of the hospital had been swallowed deep into a chasm so deep no one could even fathom it.

"Then what do we do?!" The Maiden of War was already moving toward the chasm. "We can’t just leave them! I’ll climb down—"

"And do what?" Yelena grabbed her arm. "Even if you make it to the bottom, which is unlikely given that the fall itself would kill you without your blessing, what then?!"

"You’d be just as mortal as they are. You couldn’t fly back up. You couldn’t dig through the rubble. You’d be trapped down there with them."

"Then I’ll be trapped with them! At least they wouldn’t be alone!"

"And then we’d have three family members to rescue instead of two. Think!"

Nadia had been examining the chasm, her expression growing more and more troubled.

"The anti-mana field is dense. Extremely dense."

"Any equipment we send down, anything that relies on mana or energy based technology—it’s going to malfunction."

"Even basic electronics will probably fry."

"What about traditional methods?" Yelena asked quickly. "Ropes. Manual excavation. No technology, no magic."

"We can try." Nadia said. "But Fauna said the chasm is deep. Very deep. And the children fell all the way to the bottom—we don’t even if they..."

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

"...They survived."

The Maiden of Fate said suddenly.

Everyone turned to look at her. Blood was beginning to trickle from her nose, her eyes unfocused as she pushed her blessing to its limits.

"I can see them." She continued, her voice strained. "Faintly. The anti-mana is interfering, but...they’re alive. Both of them. They survived the fall."

Fauna let out a sob of relief. "They’re alive!? They’re really alive!?"

"They’re alive." The Maiden of Fate confirmed. "But..."

She paused, and her expression darkened. More blood began to flow—from her nose, her ears, even the corners of her eyes.

"But I see more. Their futures...their paths..."

"What?" Yelena demanded. "What do you see?"

"A divergence."

The Maiden of Fate’s voice was barely a whisper now, all seven of her orifices bleeding profusely as she pushed herself beyond her limits.

"Two fates intertwined, then splitting."

"One will rise."

"One will...one will break."

"Which one!?" Fauna grabbed her sister’s shoulders desperately. "Which one rises? Which one breaks? Tell me!"

"I...I can’t see clearly. The anti-mana clouds everything. But one of them..."

She shuddered. "One of them will suffer. More than any child should ever suffer. Horrors that would break the strongest of warriors."

"And the other...the other will shed their mortal shell like a phoenix. They will become something new. Something powerful."

"But which is which?!"

"I don’t know." The Maiden of Fate collapsed to her knees, blood dripping onto the ground. "I can’t...I can’t see any more..."

Fauna’s legs gave out beneath her. She crumpled to the ground, staring into the darkness of the chasm, tears streaming down her face.

One of her babies would rise.

One of her babies would break.

And she could do nothing but wait and pray.

—

The rescue efforts began immediately.

The Maiden of Fate, despite her exhaustion and bleeding, took command of the situation with cold efficiency.

"Manual excavation only. Ropes, pulleys, and human labor."

"Send down teams in shifts—no more than two hours at a time, given the anti-mana exposure."

"We don’t know what prolonged contact does to mortals."

"I’m going down." Fauna said immediately.

"Fauna, you’re injured—"

"I don’t care." Fauna’s voice was iron. "Those are my children down there. I’m going."

They couldn’t stop her. They didn’t try.

Rescue workers arrived by the dozens—mortals, all of them, since the blessed would be useless in the anti-mana field.

Massive ropes were anchored to the surface.

Teams began the long, treacherous descent into the darkness.

Fauna was among the first.

She climbed down with one working arm, her shoulder screaming in protest, her body still broken from her earlier fall.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony in her heart.

Every meter she descended felt like a kilometer.

Every shadow in the darkness might have been her children’s bodies.

’Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive.’

The chasm itself was horrifyingly deep.

Three kilometers down—farther than any mining operation had ever reached.

The darkness was absolute, broken only by the weak beams of their non-magical lanterns.

And when they finally reached the bottom, what Fauna saw made her heart stop.

Rubble. Massive piles of stone and debris, the remains of the collapsed hospital wing.

And beneath it all, a second opening, a deeper passage that had been completely sealed off by the collapse.

"They went further down." Fauna whispered. "The collapse...it buried the way to where they actually fell."

"Lady Fauna." One of the rescue workers said gently. "We can’t...We don’t have the equipment to dig through this. Not without blessings, not without proper machinery..."

"Then we dig by hand." Fauna said.

"My lady—"

"WE DIG BY HAND!"

They dug. But the rubble was too thick, too heavy, too unstable.

Every time they cleared one section, another would collapse to take its place.

"We’ll find another way."

Fauna said, her voice hoarse, her hands bloody and raw.

"We’ll find a way to reach them."

"I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care what it costs."

"I will get my children back!"

—

The little ones had arrived now too.

Charlotte, Astrid and the others, brought by their aunts when they heard the news.

They were crying, sobbing, asking about their sister and Mika.

They wanted to jump into the chasm themselves.

They had to be held back by force.

The entire family was in a horrible position.

Torn between hope and despair. Clinging to the knowledge that the children were alive while dreading what that survival might cost them.

Meanwhile, the Maiden of Fate turned her cold gaze toward the members of the hospital board.

Through her calculations, through her reading of fate’s threads, she had discovered something.

This wasn’t just a natural disaster. This wasn’t just bad luck.

This was something that could have been prevented.

And it was all because of the greedy members before her.

"You—" The Maiden of War snarled, grabbing the lead director by his collar. "You did this!"

"Your greed, your corruption, your stolen funds—you built a substandard hospital on unstable ground, and now my babies are trapped underground because of YOU!"

"P-Please! We didn’t know! We had no idea the ground was unstable!"

"You didn’t check!" She shook him like a ragdoll. "You took the money meant for proper surveys and pocketed it!"

"Every corner you cut, every safety measure you ignored—you did this!"

"THEIR BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!"

The Maiden of Fate pulled her sister back.

"Enough. They’ll face justice. But right now, our priority is the rescue."

The board members trembled in a horrified manner.

Calamity was approaching them, and they could do nothing about it.

—

But Fauna didn’t think of any of that. She didn’t care about revenge or punishment.

Instead, the Maiden of Fate’s words echoed in her mind as her fingers as she dug with her broken fingers

One of them will become stronger than ever before.

The other one will become utterly broken.

It was going to happen. The prophecy was true.

The Maiden of Fate had seen it, paid for it in blood, and fate’s visions never lied.

So, if what she said was true—

One of them was going to rise.

And the other was going to fall.

But who would be who?

That decision was left to their own fate.

And all Fauna could do was wait, and hope, and pray to whatever forces might be listening that her children would find their way back to her.

Even if they came back changed.

Even if they came back broken.

Just so long as they came back at all.

—

Deep beneath the earth, in a place where no light had ever reached, two small figures huddled together in the darkness.

The fall had been long. Terrifying. Endless.

But somehow, miraculously, they had survived.

They had tumbled and bounced and crashed, but they had not been killed.

Now they lay in a small cavern, surrounded by darkness, with tons of rock between them and the surface.

Anya was crying. Soft, terrified sobs that echoed in the darkness.

Her body was bruised and battered. Her dress was torn.

But she was alive.

And Mika—

Mika was holding her. His arms wrapped around her protectively, just as they had been when they fell.

He was injured too, he could feel blood trickling from a cut on his forehead.

But his mind was already working. Already calculating. Already trying to find a way out.

"It’s going to be okay." He said, his voice steady despite everything. "We’re going to be okay. I promise."

And in the darkness, Anya clung to him like a lifeline.

The trial had begun.

And neither of them knew what it would cost them.