"Everything we did was for nothing."
Midnight Star stared at the fissure stretching beyond the horizon, frozen in place.
"Sister, can we really leave nothing behind?"
She turned and saw Fire Demon lying in the snow. Dark red ice crystals lay beneath her, her lips were pale and her eyes hollow, and a branch from nowhere had pierced the girl's body.
It kept drawing blood and growing stronger until...
Her body crumbled to dust.
"We came from Him in the first place."
An elderly figure in bronze armor staggered forward. It was Berna, son of the Moon God. The spear slipped from his hand as he knelt at the cliff's edge, then looked back at Midnight Star one last time.
"None of this means anything."
As though all the life had been drained from him, the old man tipped backward into the Dark Abyss.
Midnight Star walked against her will to where he had fallen. Looking down, she saw a tree shimmering with enchanting light, swaying amid the fractured space of the Dark Abyss.
It was neither the Wing-Makers' Sky Mulberry nor the World Tree of the Gods she knew.
And beneath the tree, in a vast desert that resembled a star-filled universe, an enormous black shadow churned like mud.
Midnight Star tried to look more closely. Then her gaze dropped to her chest. A branch had pierced through her heart and was drinking her blood, making the green of its new shoot look unnaturally vivid.
She died.
"Sister!"
"Sister!"
Midnight Star opened her eyes to a somewhat unfamiliar ceiling. She was in her new home.
"Belobog wants you to come over. A commander from the Veles Army Group has come to surrender," Fire Demon called from beside the bed.
Midnight Star looked around in bewilderment. At last, she stared