Night had long since descended over Neo-Earth.
Beyond the towering glass of the classroom, the megacity blazed with relentless neon radiance. Holographic advertisements floated through the sky like colossal ghosts between skyscrapers, while anti-gravity traffic flowed along designated skyways in endless rivers of artificial light. The city was a living, breathing machine that never slept.
Yet Classroom 1-A remained pitch-black. Silent. Still.
Perched atop a back-row desk near the window, Rose continued to stare absentmindedly into the vault of the heavens. The fiery hues of dusk had vanished hours ago, replaced by a dense tapestry of stars—a shimmering blend of natural celestial stars and orbital satellites that reflected in the crimson depth of her eyes.
Her expression was hollow, her thoughts drifting somewhere impossibly far away.
She remembered HIM telling her once, in a rare moment of soft, unvarnished sincerity, that He liked the stars of this world. And so, because He was no longer here to see them, she watched them on His behalf.
-
Suddenly, a sound disrupted her girlish daja vu.
It was minuscule—so faint it existed on the absolute margin of human perception. The barest whisper of a footfall echoing from somewhere down the distant hallway. Under ordinary circumstances, no living human on Earth, not even the planet's most powerful espers, could have picked up the sound.
Yet Rose noticed it instantly.
But She didn't move. She didn't turn. She simply remained anchored to the desk, wrapped in memories of a boy who had vanished from her life like morning mist.
The footsteps grew closer, deliberate and measured. Whoever approached made no effort to mask their presence, knowing full well that attempting to hide from her was a foolish attempt.
The classroom door slid open with a quiet hiss.
A figure stepped into the shadows of the room, draped in a heavy, hooded cloak that seemed to swallow the ambient neon glints. The seamless, obsidian fabric shifted like fluid darkness with every stride. From the breadth of his shoulders and his height, one might assume he was a man in his late twenties, though the cloak left everything else to the imagination.
Beneath the shadowed cowl, his eyes shone with absolute reverence as they landed on Rose's silhouette framed against the star-filled window, her blood-red hair cascading down her back like a waterfall of dying embers.
Without hesitation, he dropped to one knee beside the doorway.
"Queen 'Flame'."
His voice carried a low, resonant gravity that echoed through the dark room.
Rose didn't immediately acknowledge him. She stayed as she was—legs dangling over the edge of the desk, chin resting against her knees, gaze locked on the starry expanse above. To her, the man's arrival held no more significance than a speck of dust settling on the floor.
A full minute of suffocating silence stretched between them.
Only then did Rose slowly turn away from the glass. Unhurriedly, she pivoted atop the desk until she faced the kneeling figure. Her blood-red eyes caught the faint neon glow filtering through the room, revealing a subtle, desperate flicker deep within them.
Hope.
"Uncle Eclipse," her voice cut through the stillness—sharp, expectant, and trembling at the edges with volatile emotion. "Did you find the cause of his disappearance?"
The hooded figure lifted his head slightly to meet her gaze. "Yes, Queen 'Flame'."
Rose's eyes sharpened into crimson needles.
Eclipse paused, choosing his next words with the agonizing precision of a man defusing an explosive. "In sector G-1 of mid-tier, near Pedway-000, we identified residual dimensional interference embedded within the local reality structure. The traces were faint, but once we calibrated our sensors to the correct frequency, they became unmistakable." His expression hardened beneath his hood. "The concentration was densest along {His Eminence Nihility}'s standard residential route. Uncomfortably close to his home."
Rose's fingers dug into the edge of the wooden desk.
"We have concluded," Eclipse continued, "that His Eminence was forcefully subjected to an interdimensional translocation while en route to his residence."
Rose stared at him, motionless.
An absolute, terrible stillness settled over the room.
Then, the atmosphere broke.
"Interdimensionally... translocated?" Her soft whisper held a terrifying, unnatural composure. "Who dared to KIDNAP MY BELOVED?"
The temperature inside the classroom plunged toward absolute zero before violently spiking into blistering heat. A raw crimson aura burst from her skin like the dying breath of a collapsing star. Space-time itself began to warp around her—the air twisted, light bent at unnatural angles, and the structural integrity of reality itself groaned under the weight of her surging emotions.
Cold sweat immediately drenched Eclipse's back beneath his cloak as he stared at the unstable girl.
Please, he prayed silently, his heart hammering against his ribs. Please hold it together. Don't go insane. Don't start destroying things. For the sake of this planet... for the sake of everyone on it.
Yet, even as the crushing atmospheric pressure threatened to cave in his chest, he couldn't help but feel a sudden wave of pity.
Pity for whoever had dared to kidnap His Eminence Nihility.
They had unwittingly invited a 'Blood-Red Ruin' down upon their heads—a force of pure ruination whose depth is even impossible to estimate the 'utter ruin' they would pay as consequence.. The red-haired teenage girl sitting before him was, in every literal sense, an 'Apocalypse' wrapped in a school uniform.
-
Rose gritted her teeth, her breathing heavy as she forcefully suppressed her chaotic emotions back under control. She held on to her sanity by the sheerest thread.
Slowly, the fracturing reality around her stabilized, though the air remained dangerously taut.
Only when she could control her tone did she speak again. "Uncle Eclipse... did you find out who they are?"
Eclipse exhaled a long, quiet breath before answering. "Following a complete diagnostic of the residual nodes executed by the [Universal Cognisphere: NEXUS OverMIND (UC-NO)], we successfully traced the destination vector of the translocation to their terminus." He paused. "The coordinates terminated at the apparent core point of the Cosmology—The Central World Of Elpis."
Rose blinked once. "Central World Of Elpis?"
Her brow furrowed, a silent question mark practically hovering above her head. She reached up and absentmindedly stroked a lock of her smooth blood-red hair—an unconscious, almost adorable gesture that starkly contrasted with the ruination aura she had radiated seconds prior.
"According to compiled archives," Eclipse explained, his tone solemn, "Elpis is primarily recognized as the Heart of Creation—The Primordial Plane of Existence. It is the oldest space-time, the deepest layer, the prime foundation upon which all other realities are layered." He looked her in the eye. "And dwelling within it are the most powerful entities in existence."
Silence blanketed the classroom once more.
Then, a dangerously thrilled smile curved across Rose's lips. "Oh?"
Her blood-red pupils sparkled with unsettling delight. She tilted her head, her voice dripping with an unnatural, breathless elation. "The strongest beings in existence? Intriguing... Doesn't that mean there must be entities in that world that are durable enough to survive my Ruinous Blaze, right?"
Eclipse's blood ran completely cold.
Inwardly, he was sweating buckets, cursing himself a thousand times over for elaborating. He had committed the cardinal sin of dealing with this volatile explosive: he had given her ideas.
"N-not necessarily," he blurted out quickly, desperate to backtrack.
"Humph, Is that so?" Rose's smile vanished, her expression curdling into a frigid, murderous scowl. "Then why," she muttered, her eyes glowing with apocalyptic gleam, "why had that Madman hadn't yet ordered us to launch a full-scale invasion of that atrocious world to retrieve my beloved?"
Her nails bit into the desk's wooden surface. "Maybe I should just invade that world on my own volition," she continued, her voice rising in pitch, "and reunite with my beloved!"
Eclipse felt his scalp go numb. Judging by her erratic pulse and mental instability, she wasn't speaking in hyperbole—she genuinely meant every word.
The dreadful ruinous aura returned, straining against the classroom's reality composition. Nail-sized spatial distortions inflamed along the edges of his vision, forming tiny, weeping wounds in space-time.
"I strongly believe," Eclipse ventured with utmost caution, "that taking independent action without the Deranged Magi-Scientist's explicit clearance would be highly ill-advised—"
"What did you just say, Uncle Eclipse?" Rose's blood-red eyes narrowed into razor-sharp slits. Her apocalyptic gaze locked onto him like a warning laser.
"I-I merely meant to suggest—"
"Is that right?" Rose began tapping her fingernails against the wood in a slow, rhythmic cadence.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Are you underestimating my defiance to go against that Madman, Uncle Eclipse?"
The hooded man's body froze solid.
An infinitesimal fraction of her Superior Godly Framework accidentally leaked into the room. It wasn't intentional, nor was it a conscious attack; it was simply the natural weight of an entity that had long broke through the vulnerabilities of True Existence. Yet that tiny fragment of pressure smashed into Eclipse's own Godly Modification Framework.
"I-I-I..." His voice cracked and shattered into static. "...His Queen... I only meant—"
His very concept of self-animation began to fray. Initially, He was already tethering on edge—just from having to interact with this abominated red-haired girl, just from standing in her presence—and now this oppression threatened to detonate his existentiality entirely.
Dreadful tension choked the room. Just as Eclipse felt his consciousness on the verge of collapsing into absolute non-existence—just as his essence threads began to snap—the pressure withdrew at the last moment.
The man slumped forward, gasping violently for air he didn't strictly need, nearly collapsing onto the floor. As his existence stabilized, he let out an internal sigh so profound it almost brought tears to his eyes, frantically reweaving his frayed essence back together.
"Ahh!" Rose's face suddenly brightened, a pleasant, serene smile wiping away her murderous expression.
"I understand your concern, Uncle Eclipse," she said with a cheerful nod. "And... since you had the grace to address me as 'His Queen'..."
She paused, kicking her feet back and forth. "...I'll overlook your impudence this time."
She swung her legs in a lighthearted, innocent rhythm—a motion so undeniably girlish that it seemed impossible she had almost extinguished a literal being a fraction of a second ago.
Eclipse pulled himself back up into a formal kneeling posture, secretly offering a prayer of gratitude to his own quick thinking.
His Queen. The miraculous phrase. The absolute magic word capable of disarming this Blood-Red Ruination. He etched a mental note into his soul to lead with that title in every future interaction. His life depended on it.
"Ugh... fine," Rose huffed, resting her cheek in her palm as her brief moment of cheer dissolved back into a pout. "Since my beloved has finally stumbled into a rare moment of freedom to do what he wants..." She sighed, her shoulders slumping. "...I'll let him play for a little while."
She turned her eyes back to the kneeling man. "Uncle Eclipse, I do appreciate your willingness to share this information with me, even though that Madman explicitly forbade anyone from informing me."
She offered him a warm, genuinely grateful smile—a stark, jarring contrast to her previous apocalyptic mood.
The hooded figure lowered his head with absolute solemnity. "My loyalty belongs to you and His Eminence, Queen 'Flame'."
Rose beamed, clearly pleased by the response. "Good."
Then, her eyes flicked back to him with a sharp, calculating glint. "Oh, one more thing. You didn't forget to trigger the hidden protocol of the 'False Being Virus' before coming here, did you?"
"Rest assured, 'His' Queen," Eclipse answered, his voice steady. "No third party will ever know this exchange occurred."
"Not the Deranged Magi-Scientist"
"Not the [UC-NO]"
"Nor our fellow 'False-God Experiments'."
He met her gaze beneath his hood. "And ultimately... even this world's 'Time Flow' wouldn't able to record what transpired here... Unless, of course, it is His Eminence who is the third party."
Rose nodded, thoroughly satisfied. "Then we are finished here." She gave a lazy flick of her wrist. "You are dismissed, Uncle Eclipse."
Hearing herself called 'His Queen' a second time had visibly put her in a far better mood.
"Understood," Eclipse replied, rising to his feet and offering a low bow. "Adios, Queen 'Flame'."
With those final words, his outline blurred, turning translucent as his physical form shifted into something non-material. He drifted backward through the solid of the closed door like a cloud of smoke, vanishing without a trace.
Silence reclaimed Classroom 1-A once more.
...
Outside, Neo-Earth glittered under its canopy of real and artificial stars—a breathtaking display of human achievement for anyone looking up from below.
Rose slowly turned back to the window, resuming her posture. She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them while her legs swayed rhythmically above the floor. Below, the neon metropolis blazed in total indifference; above, the cosmos sparkled with promises of eternity.
Even so, the sky felt incomplete.
Tonight marked a lunar phase, meaning the moon was absent from the heavens, leaving only an endless sea of cold, artificial satellites and distant stars. The glittering expanse felt hollow.
Rose bathed in the pale starlight, her voice echoing with absolute obsession.
"My beloved..."
She stared into the dark void.
"Even though going through life without your presence by my side is going to be excruciatingly unbearable..." Her crimson eyes reflected the faint starlight. "...I will begrudgingly endure it. For your sake."
"But my patience isn't infinite... No, it isn't even finite." A slow, infatuated, and borderline lethal smile bloomed across her face. "So hurry back to me... before I lose my mind and accidentally ruin your 'favorite world'."."
The very atmosphere seemed to shudder in response, as though the world itself recognized the implications of being held hostage by this red-haired girl. It will be nothing more than a scapegoat for ruination, to express this girl's extreme infatuation towards a certain boy.
-
Suddenly—without warning—Rose's swinging legs halted.
Spontaneously, A sharp, agonizing spasm tore through her {Soul-Heart}.
Her eyes went wide. An unexplainable, suffocating grief flooded her entire being out of nowhere, cutting her breath short.
W-What is this?!!
She clutched her chest tightly, gasping for air, her mind racing to understand the sudden emotional assault overwhelming her senses. Yet the more she tried to make sense of it, the more the crushing heartache intensified. Her body trembled like a fragile leaf. Her vision blurred into a smear of red and black.
She was so completely consumed by the incomprehensible sorrow that she didn't even notice the warm, bloody tears silently streaming down her rosy cheeks.
-
Unbeknownst to Rose... she was not the only one.
At that exact same second—scattered across countless realms, dimensions, and distant layers of existence—a select few other girls suddenly gasped, freezing in place as an identical, agonizing heartbreak pierced through their Soul-hearts.
The same suffocating grief.
The same tears of blood sliding down their cheeks.
And far away, stranded in a desolate half-world beneath a sky of perpetual, churning darkness, a boy named Null—Nihility, the incomprehensible false being, the cherished beloved of a blood-red ruination—frowned slightly, casting a subtle, knowing glance directly at the camera.