Chernobog, a city swallowed by Catastrophe and left for dead. Reunion has revived that city's heart, the 'Core', and is rolling an entire nomadic city toward Lungmen.

Thirty-two hours remain before the Core collides with Lungmen. A collision would mean war between Ursus and Yan.

And the world will remember only one cold fact — that "the Infected started a war."

1. An Improvised Explosive Suicide Act

At the top of the Core, the Sarkaz mercenary captain W comes to see Reunion's leader Talulah. She approaches under the pretense of gathering intel, but her real goal is to stop the Core's march on Lungmen.

But Talulah reads through W's intentions from the very start — down to the things W thought she'd hidden even from herself.

Talulah is someone who hides herself behind every kind of face. A fighter before Reunion, a business partner before W, a gentle daughter before Patriot. Each mask, once peeled away, is only another mask.

As talk of W's intangible Arts unfolds, the hundred-odd bombs W had planted in the steel base melt away without a trace, entirely consumed by Talulah's heat.

Cornered, W turns her own body into a bomb and detonates, falling into the Core district. Preparing something worse than dying is W's way.

W laughs even as she dies. She thinks she was actually afraid of this dragon-horned woman — not that she disliked her, but that she feared her. In front of a monster steeped in lies, someone who plans ahead always keeps a final move in reserve.

I hope it was a sufficiently painful death, W of Victoria.

— Talulah

Talulah goes on to win over the Sarkaz mercenaries by promising them 'an age where war becomes king', pulling them into her grip. And to Patriot, she entrusts the key that can stop the Core, still playing the role of a gentle leader.

2. A Night of Farewells — The One Who Leapt from the Window

Meanwhile, in Lungmen. In Chief Administrator Wei Yenwu's office, Kal'tsit, Amiya, and Guard Department Captain Ch'en discuss the situation.

The truth comes out. Ursus handed Chernobog over to Reunion in its entirety, letting the Infected flow into Lungmen — the whole scheme laid out to unfold like flowing water.

Wei Yenwu makes his decision. He will accept war and strike the Core preemptively — intending to pay Lungmen's debt with his own death.

Ch'en can't bear that approach. The moment Wei Yenwu calls the Infected of the Slums a 'mistake', Ch'en reveals that she, too, is that 'mistake'.

Because I'm Infected too. If there's no place for the Infected in this city, then I shouldn't be here either.

— Ch'en

Ch'en, Infected since three years ago, returns her Guard Department badge and turns her back on Lungmen. When her mentor and uncle Wei Yenwu blocks her path with black-cloaked soldiers, Ch'en draws Sui and cuts a way through.

Then she breaks a window hundreds of meters up and leaps straight down, leaving Wei Yenwu's pleas behind her.

Ch'en heads to the Core alone for one reason — Reunion's leader Talulah is none other than her older sister.

3. Blade of Betrayal

On the path out of Lungmen, Hoshiguma is waiting for Ch'en. The Guard Department has already put out a warrant for her.

The broken-horned oni trusts Ch'en — and that's exactly why she can't let her go. Standing alone against Reunion, she says, is throwing your life away for nothing.

Hoshiguma is someone who's had precious things taken from her, one by one, by time. She says she's crushed her own comrades' dreams with her own hands before, and that she can't afford to lose Ch'en too.

Even after Ch'en confesses that she's Infected, that her sister is Talulah, Hoshiguma's answer stays the same — that it matters, and that's exactly why she can't let her go.

You're Infected? I couldn't care less.

— Hoshiguma

In the end, the two cross blades. And for the first time, Ch'en's sword leaves a wound on the oni.

Hoshiguma finally steps back, accepting Ch'en's request to keep, in her place, the promise sealed by the teddy bear left behind by the Ursus girl Misha — a promise to the children of the Slums.

4. Leave It to the Real Experts

At the Lungmen residence, Wei Yenwu's wife Fumizuki holds her husband back. Does becoming Infected mean Ch'en and Talulah stop being your nieces, she asks — are you really going to let them die in a foreign land like this?

That's when Kal'tsit steps in. The true experts for handling the Core aren't Lungmen's army, she says — it's Rhodes Island.

Only the Infected can face the Infected.

— Kal'tsit

After also pointing out that Talulah may be Duke Kashchey's heir, Kal'tsit secures two things from Wei Yenwu: a promise not to interfere with Rhodes Island's operation, and the keepsake of Edward Artorius, who died in Lungmen twenty years ago — Talulah's father.

Meanwhile, in the biological processing room of the Rhodes Island vessel, the Feline girl Rosmontis quietly sends someone off — Frost Nova, a Reunion commander who fell in Lungmen.

Sending someone off, she says, is untying the thread that connected you to them. You have to get used to it, or the pain hits you all at once, all of a sudden — and only at the very end does Rosmontis ask the name of an enemy she never even knew.

Frost Nova… what a pretty name. Hello, Frost Nova. …Farewell.

— Rosmontis

5. A Promise Kept Together

Before departure, Amiya broadcasts to the whole ship. Not a speech to raise morale, but a broadcast that lays out the reality as it is.

If they can't stop a war that will be recorded as one the Infected started, everything Rhodes Island has built will vanish. The odds are slim, she says, but defeat is not something they can accept.

Amiya is no longer the girl who only received orders. She says she can now hold back the storm herself, even without the Doctor and Kal'tsit — that she's finally standing shoulder to shoulder with them.

The operation is precise. A sandstorm erases their tracks, and Dobermann lures the enemy's eyes with an aircraft. Five teams have to climb up the underside of the moving Core.

When the sandstorm grows weak enough to risk exposure, Nearl steps in. The Radiant Knight bends the very angle of sunlight to her will, lighting up the whole underside of the Core.

If it will lessen this world's hardship… even the sun's own light will follow my will, if only for a moment.

— Nearl

6. The Girl of a Forgotten Land

Having entered the Core's underground, Rhodes Island witnesses Rosmontis in battle — a chilling display of power, a massive sword floating in midair, shattering enemies to pieces.

This fourteen-year-old girl chose to fight on her own. So that no one else has to live a life like hers, she says, the world is calling her name.

Rosmontis holds Arts that gather up the emotions of the dead in their stead, but she's forgotten where those emotions actually come from. Tears flowing without any memory behind them is what hurts her.

If you don't look back… you forget. I will never forget. Not anyone's death.

— Rosmontis

Kal'tsit calmly explains — Rosmontis has almost never directly killed an enemy; that seemingly brutal power is actually used to disarm foes. It wasn't the lab that broke her, she says — she broke the lab, and so Rhodes Island helped her find the discipline to govern that power together.

Amiya stays by her side. Whatever emotion suddenly bursts out is entirely Rosmontis's own, she says — no one should take it from her — and holds her hand.

7. Reunion in the Warehouse

In the Core's warehouse district, Ursus Infected are barely clinging to life — citizens of Chernobog massacred and abandoned by Reunion.

One Reunion member caring for them turns out to be an old comrade Rhodes Island had planted undercover — an Operator who slipped into Reunion, carrying on the will of a Scout who died protecting them.

The Ursus Infected woman Tatiana curses him as Reunion. Kal'tsit holds Mon3tr's blade to her comrade's throat and asks Tatiana: has this man truly protected you?

Frightened, Tatiana finally admits — this one man has never done wrong by them. That answer alone proves her comrade's innocence — a cold, Kal'tsit-style psychological maneuver.

Through him, Rhodes Island approaches the truth. The Infected of this region are still breathing only because the old warrior Patriot and his guerrillas protect them.

The guerrillas are different from Reunion's rioters. They call the Infected by name instead of number, and stand as a shield for those forced into labor. Her comrade decides to stay in Reunion, believing in that conviction.

But Kal'tsit sees an even more terrifying picture — Talulah is engineering the Infected to kill each other, trying to bring down Reunion from within, in the most dishonorable way possible.

8. The Wrath of the Silent

The central district holds an altar for the Sarkaz's ancient rite of 'cannibalism' — an old ritual, no longer reproducible in the modern age, that tears life apart regardless of friend or foe.

Rhodes Island fights back with an information war. Rosmontis expands the ritual to locate every enemy messenger, Raidian scrambles the signals with her Arts, and Amiya holds Rosmontis's crumbling mind together.

As Rosmontis's mind stumbles and loses its way mid-search, Kal'tsit and Amiya place their hands on her face and bring her back to the deck. We're here beside you, they say — you just have to move forward.

The guerrillas, dependent on primitive megaphones and security directives, fall into chaos as their communication network is torn apart entirely. Rhodes Island's decapitation strike tightens the net.

At the end of that net, he finally appears — a mountain of a giant, deflecting Rosmontis's sword with his bare hand.

9. Death of a Patriot

Patriot. True name Bulldrokarsty. A Wendigo who has lived through long ages — one who left Kazdel to become a warrior of Ursus, and is now the shield of the Infected.

He and Kal'tsit have met before. Remembering Kal'tsit as a 'Knight' of the Kazdel Queen, he raises his sword against Rhodes Island, blaming them for Frost Nova's death.

But it isn't revenge. His daughter's death was a path his daughter chose herself, he says — he believes only in the outcome of war.

War does not ask right from wrong. Step onto the battlefield, and it decides itself who dies, and who was wrong.

— Patriot

As the fight continues, Amiya's Arts reflect his whole life — his wife Helen; his son Grobezijl, who himself requested to be put down while protesting the anti-Infected laws; and his daughter Yelena, raised amid the ice.

In the ice, young Yelena once placed a hand on her weeping father's shoulder and said — good person or bad, whatever I have to become, just let me stay with my family forever. That daughter was Frost Nova.

He has betrayed his convictions three times in his life. He left Kazdel, he opposed Ursus, and now he is about to betray Reunion. Each time he lost something precious, and each time he walked back toward fate all over again.

And yet he doesn't stop walking. If he stops, he says, the deaths of those who died beside him become meaningless — so, his body in ruins, he keeps pressing forward.

The reason he tried to keep Amiya alive was his dead daughter's words coming back to him — that they have no right to kill the Talulah of today, that whatever the future holds, today's me is me and my father is my father, Yelena had said.

Finally stopped by his accumulated wounds, he hands Kal'tsit the key to stop the Core, accepting his defeat as the victor's spoils.

Only I… need to die. I've found a place worth dying in.

— Patriot

But at that moment, an old Sarkaz prophecy comes alive before his eyes — a vision of a 'Demon King' wearing a black crown, enslaving every race.

And that Demon King's face is none other than Amiya's. "The last Wendigo dies by the Demon King's hand." Realizing he is, as prophesied, dying at the Demon King's hand, he reaches out toward Amiya with his last strength.

But the hand never reaches the girl. Death stops the Wendigo's long march before it can — a march that had never once retreated a single step.

Amiya tries to show him one last illusion, but he refuses. However miserable it is, he says, it's the result of how he's lived and struggled, and the ending he rightly deserves.

Young Demon King, everything comes down to action. If this is fate… I refuse to believe it.

— Patriot

10. The Cradle Crumbles

Patriot's death spreads through the whole Core. His guerrillas turn their blades not toward Rhodes Island, who killed him, but toward Talulah, who drove him to this death.

For Patriot!

— Guerrilla shieldbearer

The shieldbearers leave Amiya a warning too — we don't believe in the prophecy, we believe in the Captain; and if you ever become a tyrant like Talulah, we will never forgive you.

Talulah's scheme backfires on her instead. Now that the Infected and the citizens have had time to get to know each other, the facade called Reunion begins to crumble from within.

W, buried under a heap of rubble, is ironically rescued by Kal'tsit's own hand and heads for the command center, declaring that she's coming back to Talulah.

And Ch'en finally reaches the Core, holding onto nothing but an old promise — to stop her sister.

Old wounds surface too. Twenty years ago, Duke Kashchey held out the shackled infant Talulah before Wei Yenwu to test him. What Wei Yenwu cut down that day with his dragon-slaying sword Sui was none other than his own brother, Edward.

A sword meant to slay dragons, in the end used to slay his own kin. That tragedy was the beginning of the sisters Ch'en and Talulah.

Epilogue — Snow, and Someone Already Prepared

As Frost Nova's remains are processed, the cold they release blankets Chernobog's sky in heavy snow. The guerrillas speak of it — is Yelena coming to greet the Captain?

Mephisto hums, clumsily, the lullaby Frost Nova used to sing. Frustrated at how badly he sings it, only an empty song lingers in the falling snow.

And in the darkness, another scheme takes shape. The Sarkaz Regent and the Confessor, chasing clues about the 'Demon King', bring out 'her' — already prepared and waiting.

A dead city rolled toward Lungmen, and inside it people betrayed and were betrayed, losing each other along the way. An old warrior who fought fate for two hundred years turned his back on it for the first time at the very end, entrusting the future to a young Demon King, while one woman walked into the snow-covered Core holding onto nothing but a promise to stop her sister. The key to stop the Core now rests in Rhodes Island's hands — but what this cradle of death will bring forth, no one yet knows.