Terra is periodically struck by 'Catastrophes,' and the Originium left in their wake turns people into the Infected. The demon race, the Sarkaz, is the one most vulnerable to that Oripathy.

The Sarkaz, wandering for a thousand years, finally rallied under the banner of Regent Theresis and swallowed Londinium, the capital of Victoria, whole.

This is the story of that war. But it isn't the story of a single hero — it's the story of countless people across a burning Victoria, each asking what 'home' and 'us' really mean.

Even with the capital fallen, the world is indifferent. Kazimierz's newspapers chase a retiring knight's scoop instead of Victoria's tragedy, selling not truth but anxiety and fear. There's simply too much happening across Terra every day.

1. The Flag of the Infected, and Guard

Reunion, which rose up in Ursus, drifted through Columbia and all the way here to Victoria. War keeps pouring out Infected and refugees, and one by one, they take them in.

Guard used to be Rhodes Island medical staff. Now she hands out hastily made suppressants, telling people Oripathy is just a disease — the real enemy is the contempt and discrimination hiding behind it.

Talulah, propped up as Reunion's 'leader,' is really just a banner. Hiding from the Infected the truth that the Chernobog massacre was an Ursus conspiracy, she silently bears the burden of being a symbol of hope.

Talulah waits for judgment day as a sinner. Until then, she asks to be treated as a tool. Guard tells herself Reunion won't get a second chance — that this lie, at least, is for the Infected's sake.

Victorian conscripts fleeing the Sarkaz also drift into the unit. Thrown to the front without proper training, they don't even know they've already been infected. Guard tells them the plain truth: that they, too, are already as good as dead, just like the rest of them.

A question begins to grow in Guard's heart — whether the only people they should join hands with are really just the Infected.

2. The Mother of Steel Falls

Meanwhile, refugees who escaped Old Newport are aboard Duke Windermere's fast warship. The duke's daughter Delphine leads them, along with Siege and her Rhodes Island group.

As the warship passes through a gorge, it starts collapsing from within. The Sarkaz assassin Damastes infiltrated disguised as the duke, and on deck, Vampire Sanguinar, lord of the Bloodline Royal Court, targets Duke Windermere.

Delphine, trying to save a soldier, falls into the vampire's trap. In that single moment's opening, the mother of steel takes a fatal wound.

I thought... you'd have grown a bit taller by now. So the clothes might be a bit big.

— Duke Windermere

Without finishing the story of the gift she'd secretly prepared for her daughter, the duke breathes her last. The council blames Delphine for that death, saying "a hero should not be buried alongside the weak."

Then they abandon Delphine, the heir, on the battlefield and sail off with the fleet — indifferent even to the danger facing the commoners who came out to see off the coffin.

3. The Ghost Unit, the Paragons

Siege reaches out to the abandoned Delphine. Siege and her Rhodes Island Operators, along with the fleeing Infected, refugees, and stragglers, come together as one.

What falls into their hands by chance is the legendary military identification code lost since Gaul. A small box with no mystical power at all — yet its name gives people hope.

They rescue Horn's isolated platoon and the citizens trapped in Chetley County. Holding out for days against a Sarkaz mobile war altar, Siege destroys the weapon even as metal shards pierce her body.

Siege proves that it isn't a divine relic like the national sword 'King's Breath' that matters before a Catastrophe, but people alone. Soldiers, Infected, and civilians who couldn't trust each other slowly tear down the walls between their hearts as they fight side by side.

An old viscount of Windermere comes to persuade Delphine to return to her place among the nobility, but Delphine refuses.

I am my mother's daughter, and a comrade to these soldiers. Beyond that, I am nothing.

— Delphine

Siege declares that running away alone won't end the war. If no one will take them home, then they'll go back themselves. They'll storm Londinium and say: this is our land.

4. The Mercenaries' Homecoming

On another front, Sarkaz mercenaries Hoederer, Ines, and bomb-loving W are on the move. Outwardly serving General Manfred, they're actually chasing the Sarkaz secret, the 'Life Spine.'

What they encounter is Behemoth, a massive skeleton drifting through time and space, spewing out illusions of the past. The Military Council has modified this undying giant to teleport supplies and troops to Londinium.

The skeleton's operator turns out to be their old friend Ursula. Once they frequented the Scarred's shop together, but now, loyal to the Military Council as a major, she turns her blade on them. She says the siblings were the only ones who ever gave a slum girl like her a seat at the strategy table.

What Hoederer truly wants isn't revenge, but to send every Sarkaz back to Kazdel — to break the cycle of grudges so everyone has a home to return to. Even the lich Ermengarde, moved by that resolve, promises to relay the will of the Babel remnants to the liches guarding Kazdel.

On the night before the decisive battle, Hoederer confronts W directly. She still thinks of herself as just a mercenary, he says, but right now she carries the lives of countless Sarkaz on her shoulders. Stop clinging to being Theresa's shadow, he tells her, and stop just trailing behind Amiya.

Hoederer drives home one more point: Theresis must not be killed by Sarkaz hands right now. If he dies, the failed Sarkaz will become targets for slaughter across the whole continent — even that grudge must become a cornerstone of Kazdel. Ines quietly watches to see if young W can bear that weight.

5. One Who Covets the Crown

Meanwhile, Amiya and the Doctor are ambushed by the Confessor's group. A man named Salus tries to steal Amiya's crown but fails, and Amiya loses consciousness, drawn into a nightmare.

The souls whisper that resisting only brings more suffering — to just close her eyes. But Amiya refuses. She says anyone living on this earth can choose their own ending.

I will challenge you. In the name of the Sarkaz King, and in the name of 'Amiya.'

— Amiya

Amiya realizes: Theresa entrusted the crown to her because she, too, never believed in that sorrowful future. The Sarkaz King cannot be a symbol of conquest and revenge. So this power exists not as a curse, but to find one's own path.

Meanwhile, the Confessor targets Rhodes Island's Nightingale. And in a conversation he has with healer Shining, a long-hidden tragedy comes to light.

The name 'Liz' that Nightingale remembers, and the gentle personality that came with it, were actually memories Shining had stitched in to hold together a collapsing vessel. The Confessor tries to use even that love as material to forge the crown.

Even as she's dragged away by the Confessor, Liz opens a path of her own. Don't try to bear it all alone, she says — didn't they promise to face it together? Shining resolves to bring her back.

6. The Broken Greenhouse, Brentwood

Brentwood, a small village near Londinium, was strangely 'peaceful.' Gardener Magdalene and the mayor's daughter Frida bow their heads to the Sarkaz, holding on to protect the villagers.

A royal army officer nicknamed 'Shovel,' who often visited Magdalene's greenhouse, cherished the roses she grew. Believing some things shouldn't be trampled, he quietly tries to keep her alive.

But the truth was cruel. What the villagers had been building day and night was the vampire's massive ritual magic circle, and every resident was a 'key' to open that ritual.

Frida thought peace would be kept if she gave the demons everything they demanded. But the Sarkaz took even Will, the young man she cherished, and in the end every villager was fated to become sacrifices for the ritual. The peace they'd fought so hard to keep had been a lie from the start.

Just then, the self-defense militia and the Paragons burst in. Siege, Delphine, and Horn's tank corps smash the magic circle and pull the citizens free.

7. Who Is 'Us'

Guard visits an old brewery deep in the woods — once where Victorian Reunion made medicine for the Infected, and the very starting point of Reunion itself.

There, Mace, who calls herself Reunion, and Infected and non-Infected with nowhere else to go, all lived tangled together. But some of the Infected there beat a wandering Sarkaz who'd been selling medicine to death, nameless, for no reason but that he was Sarkaz.

The Originium leaking from that corpse builds up and collapses the room. As the collapse begins, Guard evacuates people and stays behind to the very last.

In place of her body, which might turn to ash, Guard leaves behind a recorder — carrying the question of whether the people they should join hands with, the people who truly want to walk the thorny road with them, are really just the Infected.

The people we should join forces with, the people who want to walk this thorny path together... are they really just the Infected? Are they truly... only them?

— Guard

In the unit was also Nowell, a long-lived being hiding his true nature. Unable to die, having wandered for centuries, he leaves for Londinium to find the 'Hand of Fate' that cursed him. Nine doesn't stop him — perhaps, in the end, what they must fight is the same thing.

Standing on Guard's death, Nine settles her answer. Reunion's driving force must no longer be vague revenge, but a clear creed: whether Ursus or Victorian, anyone who resists oppression stands together.

So Nine casts out those who killed a Sarkaz for no reason. Power must be used for a shared goal, not grudges and division — otherwise, that power will tear them apart from within.

8. The Crimson Lord

The decisive battle unfolds atop Behemoth. Vampire Sanguinar awakens a ten-thousand-year-old Originium 'seed' with blood scattered across the battlefield, trying to drag not just Londinium but all of Terra into the abyss.

His madness had roots. Sanguinar despaired that the crown always chose the weak — and in the end, killed his own brother, who had once been the 'Sarkaz King,' with his own hands.

What his dying brother showed him was his own 'peace' as a doctor in a quiet village. But Sanguinar mocked that dream as false and came to crave nothing but the blood of the mighty Tikaz.

Amiya denies everything he stands for. Home isn't a legend from ten thousand years ago, she says, but right here, where the Sarkaz now stand. As long as the present is suppressed by the past, a true future will never come.

Home is right here, where the Sarkaz came from.

— Amiya

Logos plays an elegy, and Ines, W, and Hoederer clear the way.

And here, one man makes his final stand. Leto, a survivor of fallen Gaul, is a man who, out of a weakness to survive, betrayed his own kind and brought about countless deaths. Even the teacher Golding, who tried to awaken him, died in that war.

At the end of his despair, Leto walks toward the vampire who came to bless him. He then 'bestows' his own tainted blood upon the vampire's pure body, saying they'll never again be able to boast of pure blood.

I hereby 'bestow' my blood upon you, you filthy leech!

— Leto

Even as he falls, Sanguinar sneers — that in the end, they too couldn't overcome the instinct running in their blood, that it's always the cowardly who win. This, he says, is the very curse cast upon the Sarkaz.

As he plunges into an unknown land, he leaves one last curse: he has already returned Tikaz's blood to its home, so go to Londinium and see — he'll be waiting behind the curtain of ruin.

Hoederer strikes a bargain with the dying Behemoth's consciousness to send the group back to where they started. He then takes Ursula prisoner, deciding to make this giant skeleton the key to the counterattack on Londinium.

9. The Approaching Disaster

Reunion heads for Londinium once more. But along the way, another red dragon appears before Nine and Talulah — Dublin's Draco, Evlana.

Evlana tries to lure Talulah with bloodline and crown, but Talulah refuses — saying anyone who treats death as a tool of power is nothing but a false tyrant. Evlana withdraws, leaving behind a prophecy that next time, a red dragon will devour another red dragon.

Meanwhile, the archdukes shaken by Windermere's death — Castor, Gododdin, and Wellington — join hands to prepare a counterattack on Londinium. Castor is wary of the old veteran Wellington, who has long hidden his strength — the eyes of that starving beast, once seen facing the Emperor of Ursus and the Lich King in his youth, are awakening once more.

Kal'tsit sees through the true nature of that 'curse' the vampire was obsessed with. It's Originium. Ancient Kazdel touched it before anything else, which is why the Sarkaz became the race most vulnerable to Oripathy — and the oldest Infected of all. This fight won't end with a single city.

And atop The Shard, Theresa looks up at the storm clouds. What's about to happen in Londinium can no longer be undone, she says — once everything is revealed, only then will the true Catastrophe follow.

I hope the light I'm looking at can still shine then, even if I am already deep in the darkness.

— Theresa

Infected, Sarkaz, or Victorian, everyone searched for a way home. Guard asked if they were really just the Infected; Amiya refused a preordained fate; Hoederer tried to break the cycle of grudges. But the whirlwind of ill omen the vampire unleashed is only just beginning to summon the real Catastrophe.