Lament of the Dark Primarch: All for the Azure to Return - The shattered sky—the rubble and residual thoughts of Aslead.

The sky had not yet begun to weep. It was merely… warped. In the Ashen Garden, a ruin floating at the eastern edge of the Centra Sky Sector, Belial quietly opened his eyes. The island's half-shattered sky-crystal core pulsed with a dull, rhythmic throb. His hair was a deep wine-red. A single lock draped over his left shoulder, now beginning to streak with white—the creeping discoloration of Proto-Bahamut's erosion. His golden pupils were narrow vertical slits, and beneath his left eye, a black fissure crawled across the skin. He stood in the basement of a crumbling training facility. On the walls, the faded crest of the primarchs from Lucifer's era still lingered, faint but legible. "…It's about time." Against his chest, a jet-black crystalline mass—the core of Proto-Bahamut—throbbed. Even through his clothing, its eerie pulse was visible. A forbidden relic left behind by the Astrals. There was no true compatible host for it; it was a weapon that simply destroyed whoever took it in, crumbling them from the inside out. Belial placed a hand over the core. Even through his leather glove, the heat was searing. *(Six hundred years… The days I served him only come back to me now, inside this pain.)* He narrowed his eyes. By now, the pain was his sole comfort. Only this slow disintegration could atone for the guilt of failing to perish alongside Lucifer. The space around him trembled faintly. The core in Belial's chest emitted a vermilion light. A forbidden power that dismantled the structure of matter at the molecular level—spatial decomposition. But what he released now was not destruction. It was an ultra-fine wave. A thin, membrane-like interference pulse, cast far across the sky toward the Seelen Sky Sector. Its target: the central sky-crystal core of the trade city, Asried. He was not destroying it outright. He was interfering with the core's self-resonance frequency, driving it into chaos. A precise, technical intervention. Not immediate annihilation, but the first move in a gradual, spreading collapse. Belial's plan had only just begun. The black fissure on his chest extended a fresh line toward his left shoulder. The erosion was progressing. The time left before his body broke apart had shrunk a little more. He glanced at it, then quietly drew his coat closed. Out of the corner of his eye, he regarded the primarch crest from Lucifer's era still etched into the wall of the Ashen Garden. "Everything… for him." His voice was low and trembling. Whether with rage, or grief—or perhaps both. Slowly, Belial turned to face the direction of the Seelen Sky Sector. His golden pupils narrowed, as if fixing on something unseen. In Asried, there was little time left before the chain reaction of distortion began. --- Seelen Sky Sector. The trade city of Asried. The pre-dawn silence was first broken from beneath the ground. *Rrrrrruuuuumble…* A low, heavy groan of the earth. The cobblestones of Asried's central plaza began to undulate as if alive. Stones over a meter in diameter heaved up one after another, flipping over. "A-An earthquake!?" "No, the ground—it's splitting open!!" Screams. Shouts of fury. The pounding footsteps of people fleeing in panic. The clock tower in the central plaza tilted with a sickening *crack*. From the ground at its base, the sky-crystal core's abnormal pulsations leaked out as a pale light. Structures across the entire city groaned and began to collapse. The Sky's Law—the collective term for this world's physical principles and order—was being locally unhinged. The sky-crystal core could no longer generate stable buoyancy, and the island itself was shuddering. "Mom! Mom's still back at the house—" "Don't go! That area's already—" Before the words could finish, a roar swallowed them. In one corner of the city, several houses collapsed all at once. Dust billowed up, and rubble choked the streets. People shoved each other, scrambling for open ground, falling, clutching crying children as they ran. Into the heart of that chaos, she descended. Her long, pale silver-blue hair swayed in the wind blowing through the crumbling city. Carefully grown to the middle of her back, it shimmered with a rainbow iridescence in the faint pre-dawn light. Her eyes, a deep azure like the depths of the sea, instantly assessed the situation. Gabriel. One of the Four Primarchs. She who governed water and bore responsibility for the localized management of the Sky's Law. And behind her head floated a halo of blue light, as transparent and still as a quiet水面. The moment she landed from the sky, she folded the white wings at her back. Her features were delicate enough to be mistaken for a human's, yet they carried the unmistakable dignity of a primarch. On her left ring finger, the ring of harmony—once gifted by Lucifer to all four of them—glimmered faintly. "…This is no mere runaway reaction." Her voice, gentle as it was, carried strangely well through the rumbling earth. It held a tenderness like a lullaby, mingled with unwavering resolve. Gabriel held her right hand over the ground. Her perception as the primarch of water extended deep beneath Asried. The central sky-crystal core was now resonating abnormally. Its internal waveforms jumped erratically; it had completely lost its normal self-regulating function. But that was not the real problem. *(This quality of distortion… It's not a natural phenomenon.)* Gabriel's azure eyes widened slightly. Etched into the sky-crystal core's interior was an interference pattern, precisely calculated and injected from an external source. Someone had deliberately driven the core's self-resonance frequency into chaos. The texture of that interference was familiar. *(The same—as Belial's wavelength, back then.)* A sharp pain tightened around her heart. *GOOOOONG!* A fresh impact shook the entire island. In the district west of the central plaza, more buildings collapsed. Screams. Dust. Voices crying for help. Gabriel pressed her lips together. This was no time for sentiment. She ran down the stairs leading to the underground waterway. The narrow stone passage was already cracked, water gushing from the fissures. Cold spray dampened Gabriel's long silver hair. "…Stabilization takes priority." The underground chamber. There, a pale blue crystalline mass roughly three meters in diameter—Asried's central sky-crystal core—was pulsating. Normally, the core should have emitted light in a steady, calm rhythm. Now it flickered violently. Countless cracks ran across its surface, and the light leaking through them cast an eerie glow across the entire chamber. Gabriel approached the core and held up both hands. Aqua-colored light overflowed from her palms, touching the surface of the rampaging core. It was cold. But deeper within, a searing heat churned. The moment her consciousness slipped into the depths of the distortion— *—I should have vanished alongside him—* She heard a voice. It was not a sound. It was a fragment of residual thought carved into the core. A trace of Belial's heart, unconsciously left behind when he had performed the remote interference. Gabriel's hands stopped, just for an instant. *(Belial…?)* Six hundred years. Memories of the era when he had served as Lucifer's adjutant, overseeing the Four Primarchs, flashed through her mind like a running lantern. His sharp insight, hidden behind his obsequious manner at council meetings. The sight of his back, remaining alone in the training grounds after missions. The coldness with which he kept others at a distance while smiling—and the childlike fragility he showed only when he heard Lucifer's name. She had known. He was a being who carried a loneliness deeper than anyone else's. Several times, she had tried to call out to him. Had almost said she wanted to understand him. *—But I couldn't.* Gabriel bit her lip. Her thin, white teeth sank into the flesh. "…I mustn't." She shook her head, casting off her agitation. What she had to do now was save this city. Fulfill her duty as a primarch. She gathered all her strength and unfurled her authority over water. The aqua light spilling from Gabriel's hands enveloped the rampaging sky-crystal core. A membrane of water covered the cracked surface, gradually sealing away the distorted resonance. The core's violent flickering slowly subsided. The rhythm of its pulsation gradually returned to normal. The stabilization was a success. However— When Gabriel emerged from the underground chamber and returned to the surface, what awaited her was a city transformed beyond recognition. Dawn was breaking. What rose out of the dim light was a mountain of rubble covering a third of Asried. Homes where people had lived until this morning had collapsed and piled atop one another. Smoke rose, and the smell of charred wood and earth rode the wind. Rescue operations had begun. The surviving residents clawed through the debris with their bare hands, straining their ears for voices calling for help. Tears and sobs. Shouts of anger and prayers. All of it mingled together, trembling in the morning air. Gabriel stood still in the central plaza. Her azure eyes slowly traced the mountain of rubble. From a gap in a collapsed house, a human arm was visible. She could not tell if that motionless hand was still warm, or if it had already been chilled by the pre-dawn cold. A short distance away, a single small shoe lay abandoned. "…Please, tell me the number." She spoke to a man nearby who appeared to be in charge of confirming survivors. His face utterly exhausted, he looked at his notebook. "So far, we've only confirmed 47… They couldn't escape in time, and under the rubble…" His words broke off. Gabriel closed her eyes. Forty-seven. It was not just a number. Each one had a name, a life, people they loved, things they wanted to protect. Someone must have said "I'm off" to their family this morning. Someone must have been thinking about what to make for dinner. Someone must have woken their child and sent them off to school. All of it had ended beneath the rubble. Her shoulders trembled. A being who had lived for four thousand five hundred years as one of the Four Primarchs—one who controlled her emotions and governed the laws of nature—was now, for the first time, on the verge of being pushed beyond that control. *(If only I had come sooner.)* *(If only I had stopped him, back then.)* *(Belial—why…)* She bit down on her lip. Her thin white teeth cut into the lower lip, and the faint taste of blood spread. But she somehow held herself together with that pain. A primarch must not weep. This was no time to sink into sorrow. --- Around that time. Twenty kilometers off the coast of Asried. The airship of the Grandcypher crew sailed through the morning light. Gran leaned against the deck railing, staring intently toward the distant direction of Asried. His short orange hair ruffled carelessly in the wind. In his blazing reddish-brown eyes, a steady light of will resided. "…Something's wrong." "What is it?" "The island looks strange. The air… it's trembling." It was right after he spoke. The airship's communicator picked up an emergency broadcast signal. *'—Asried central sky-crystal core, runaway—urban collapse—requesting aid—'* The fragmented signal, mixed with static, echoed across the deck. The crew's expressions instantly tensed. Gran spun around instantly and shouted toward the bridge. "Change course! Head for Asried at full speed!" "But, Captain… the airship's repairs aren't complete yet, and Siegfried is still recovering from his fracture…" "We're going anyway." Gran's voice was low, but absolutely unwavering. In his eyes burned a resolve that had been smoldering ever since that day—the day they were attacked by the primal beast Zwei. That attack hadn't been a normal rampage. Someone had deliberately manipulated it. If so, this sky-crystal core runaway m

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Episode 2

Name: Lament of the Dark Primarch: All for the Azure to Return
Author: Novelia

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