This Is the Eternal Divine Kingdom

The howling night wind lifted the girl's golden hair. In the silent, desolate little square, she watched the people before her, each clad in Exoskeleton Armor.

Among them were young and old. The youngest looked under twenty, while the oldest had faces etched deeply by the years.

Vili calmly watched the "comrades" before her.

Their uniforms were far from neat, and the ways they held their weapons were not uniform either.

But every one of them was a warrior forged through blood and fire, the Twilight Society's last pillar of support.

The air around them was so quiet that it seemed as though hurried heartbeats could be heard.

Vili was not their commander. She had barely interacted with these frontline warriors at all. She needed a speech, one that could bring her closer to them.

She had thought that when this moment came, she would be nervous and at a loss. Yet when it truly arrived, she felt an unprecedented calm.

Looking at the people before her, she suddenly understood how her father had felt standing at a podium. She took a deep breath, gripped the decorative Short Sword at her waist, recalled the speech draft the boy had revised for her, and slowly began,

"Everyone standing here now, we have all lost family to the Eternal Sect. We have lost the happy lives we once had. We all remember the most tragic moments in our memories, the scenes that have echoed through our dreams countless times.

"Compared to the Eternal Sect, we are merely insignificant ants. We are weak, powerless, as though we cannot shake them in the slightest.

"During all the years the Twilight Society has existed, although we have done everything we could, the Eternal Sect has only continued to grow stronger.

"Now, they have even taken