Victoria is a nation that outpaced the world with steel and capital. But in the shadow of that prosperity live people who called this land home long before the city was ever built.

Victoria calls them the 'Taran people,' handing them low wages, scarce medicine, and worn-out protective gear. Oripathy, strangely enough, spreads only through their alleys.

This story begins in just such a city — Hillock County. Chasing a stash of stolen military-grade Originium goods, a small squad from Londinium sets foot here.

The stolen weapons are enough to arm an entire small town, or blow apart a nomadic city's caterpillar treads. Only a well-trained unit could have pulled off such a flawless heist. People call that ghostlike organization the 'Ghost Legion.'

1. The Thread That Started in a Potato Warehouse

Storm Assault Force commander Horn and her subordinate Bagpipe raid a warehouse on the outskirts. But there are no stolen weapons — only crates of potatoes and carrots. All they catch is one terrified young man, Damien.

Just then, garrison Captain Kelly shows up and demands the suspect be handed over. Jurisdiction belongs to Hillock County, and rules are rules. Horn reluctantly hands Damien over.

The next day, in the interrogation room, the garrison deliberately gives Horn's group the wrong time, then claims the questioning is already over. Then, without a trace of concern, they announce it: Damien resisted during transport and was 'shot dead.'

There was no judgment, no trial. It was simply an execution. Bagpipe explodes with fury, but just like that, another lead turns to ash and disappears.

In truth, Captain Kelly, who handed Damien over, was the boy's own uncle. A man who had watched his nephew grow up ended up pushing him to his death in the face of orders from above. A child screams at him: "Traitor!" The captain turns away, the word echoing over and over in his mind.

To Horn and Bagpipe, Damien and his weeping family looked like nothing more than ordinary people — nothing about them resembled trained soldiers. And that's exactly what unsettles Horn. If ordinary people take up arms, Victoria will face a catastrophe unlike anything it has known in a long time.

2. A Morning With Milk Tea

Meanwhile, a visitor comes to the Rhodes Island Hillock County office every single morning — Jenny, a Victorian honor guard who slips out of camp in secret. She bakes pies, brews milk tea, and hands out smiles to everyone.

Jenny doesn't hesitate to towel-dry the hair of Craig, a boy who lost his father to Oripathy — a child everyone else is too afraid of infection to even touch.

Into that peaceful morning, someone slips in without anyone noticing — Outcast, an Elite Operator of Rhodes Island. A dessert-loving Sankta who eases tension with card tricks.

Outcast notices Taran language cropping back up throughout the newspapers. Someone, he realizes, is using the bond of language to gather a scattered people back around a single spark.

A bond forged through language is stronger than almost anything else. It doesn't thin out over the years like blood ties, and it isn't weighed and traded like self-interest. Outcast senses it coming: the greater the force applied, the more the reaction will exceed all expectation.

3. One City, Two Victorias

Bagpipe digs for leads out on the streets, getting pelted with rotten vegetables for her trouble. Jenny, staying by her side, explains: the residents call themselves 'the Taran people,' the true owners of this land who have lived here for centuries.

Jenny says carefully that Victoria has never once treated everyone equally. Bagpipe, in turn, encourages her — even an honor guard can change what's right in front of her.

At the same time, Horn sits down across from Colonel Hamilton, commander of the garrison. To the colonel, this isn't an incident. It's a 'war' that has raged on for centuries.

If a person refuses to make their name known in the Victorian tongue, then they are no longer Victorian — they are nothing but an enemy threatening the safety of the Empire!

— Colonel Hamilton

The colonel hardens his resolve at the sight of bloodstains on a Taran poet's collection of verse. Horn realizes: the real danger in this city might not be the enemy hiding in the dark, but the ally standing in the light.

4. The Banquet, and Martial Law

A discreet banquet among nobles. On the surface, they praise Taran culture, but underneath, each is quietly calculating the 'technical support of a distant friend' and their own share of the spoils. Amid it all, Horn shares a quiet conversation with the poet Seamus Williams.

The poet says quietly that he has neither the power nor the intent to change this land — he is merely someone who plants feathers. Thought is free, and so the bird that grows in each person's heart is different every time.

Just then, the door is kicked open. Colonel Hamilton storms in with armed troops and places the entire banquet hall under arrest. He tailed Horn's group to find their hideout.

The colonel even moves to lay hands on an innocent servant, and the poet steps forward to protect the others. At that exact moment, a ball rolling in from outside the window starts to make a sound.

5. Dublin's Fire

An explosion. The poet was far too close to the bomb. The courage he showed, throwing himself in harm's way for others, was no less than any soldier's. Horn can only pray his death wasn't in vain.

And out of the darkness, a unit steps forward — an unidentified army led by a Caster, Dublin. The world calls them the 'Ghost Legion' for how ghostlike they seem.

Their 'Leader' can turn an entire street to ash with just a flick of the fingers. No fire is even actually burning, yet every living thing, from statues to the town hall, silently crumbles into ash.

It was the oppressed young Taran men and women who lit this fire. Believing the Leader to be their savior, they fire off the signal flare of rebellion with their own hands. The Leader answers under his breath: "My fire… spread faster."

6. A Poem in the Ashes

A girl is dragged before the Leader — Sielsha, who leaked word of the banquet to the military. She's Damien's cousin, and Jenny's closest friend. The executive Mandragora presses for her execution.

Trembling with fear, Sielsha still asks: will there ever come a day when the Taran people live better lives? The Leader answers, "There will." The girl says she wants to believe those words.

Ah… hah… I wonder, once spring comes next year, will willow shoots sprout even on this land that's been burned to nothing…

— Sielsha

Fire surges from the tip of the Leader's spear. Sielsha turns to ash. Every time an execution ends, the Leader's chest burns with pain, because this girl was not the first of his own people that he had killed.

The Leader picks up a half-scorched poem from the ruins, its lines burned before the ink could even dry, lit by his own fire. The poem speaks quietly: on the other side of the scale, it saw the soul of a person.

That soul was, in truth, also his own — the Leader who hid beneath the shadow using him, wanting nothing more than to run away.

The Leader was 'a shadow pushed onto the stage.' What moved him was someone who shared his own blood. And beneath the dazzling light, he himself was quietly falling apart, counting every person he had killed.

7. The Innocent

The residents, having lost a friend, blame Sielsha's death on Jenny. Jenny is driven out under a hail of stones. Even Craig turns his back on her. "We don't need you!"

Outcast offers a hand to a broken Jenny, and tells her his own story. Decades ago, a village where his mediation failed fell the very next day, and the people, even as they died, still believed he would protect them.

When Jenny says that at least he did his best, Outcast asks her back: could she then just stand by and watch evil repeat itself? Jenny says she couldn't. No matter how many times she's asked, she says, she doesn't regret it.

Saving people isn't something you divide into sides.

— Outcast

8. The Real Thief, and the Black Flower

The stolen weapons never turn up on the battlefield after all. A scout team led by Triangle, tracking their whereabouts, sends back one final transmission: the weapons have been moved to the garrison's artillery camp.

And they've been converted — into 'dirty bombs' that scatter active Originium. With her comrade Snare, an arrow through the heart, lying beside her, Triangle keeps the transmission going. Who exactly is their enemy, she asks — they even use command codes she recognizes, tied to the same weapons.

Horn tells her that doesn't matter right now, and orders her to come back alive, no matter what. Triangle answers with a laugh and cuts the transmission. That team, having uncovered the truth, never makes it back.

This was Hamilton's plan from the very beginning: if the spies can't be sorted out, burn the enemy and the civilians together, all at once. And Oripathy makes for a convenient excuse to clean up afterward.

What sounded like thunder was cannon fire. Shells pour down like rain, blooming black Originium crystals across the streets — like black flowers bursting open in a muddy downpour. Chef, the courier carrying vital information, falls beneath it too.

Bagpipe finds Chef's body in the collapsed rubble. The evidence he had risked his life to protect to the very last moment is still clutched in his arms. Bagpipe makes a quiet promise to this comrade whose name she never even knew: your courage will not have been for nothing.

9. The Flag That Flies

In the middle of the bombardment, Jenny carries the wounded and helps with disease control — for the very same people who drove her out. Just then, Ronan, the man who sold out Damien, appears and tries to chase off even the injured children.

Jenny blocks his way. She doesn't speak Taran, and she isn't infected with Oripathy — but walking these streets for over two years has taught her one thing: we are all, equally, living people.

Jenny tears the Victorian flag apart and binds Craig's wounds with it, saying she has nothing cleaner to use. Then she tells Ronan she'll hold him accountable for Sielsha.

Behind Jenny, ready to fight alone if she has to, the less severely wounded residents begin to gather. It's the moment 'the same side' is born for the first time, outside the bounds of any faction.

10. Just Before Dawn

Outcast saves a dying Infected man. He was the mob's leader, but to Outcast, he's simply one more Infected person collapsing, swept up in a struggle for power.

Leaving the man in Bagpipe's care, Outcast stays behind to wait for their pursuers. Six of Dublin's executives step out of the darkness — the 'Accountant,' the 'Arsonist,' the 'Plunderer'... each one carrying a name as ominous as a catastrophe.

If justice unfolded on its own, would my gun ever need to do anything at all?

— Outcast

Outcast breaks a promise he made to a close friend — a bet that he would never fire all six shots rashly. He loads the last bullet into his revolver and fires all six at once.

All six are reduced to dust in a burst of sacred light. The blinding flash that erupts from the muzzle pierces the clouds and lights up the whole city. And as the price of that judgment, Outcast himself scatters into drifting ash.

People out on the streets who see the light mistake it, for a moment, for daybreak. The rain hasn't stopped, yet the sky has brightened. To the very end, Outcast never managed to follow his own rule — to look after your own safety before saving someone else.

Meanwhile, at the collapsing command center, his subordinates beg him to flee, but Hamilton stays behind alone. He, too, the man who burned an innocent city, dies in his own way in the end — straightening his collar, drawing his cavalry saber, and walking straight into the swelling light.

11. The Final Order

Horn and Bagpipe clash with Mandragora at the communications base. She's powerful with her command of stone, but every time she uses Arts, she leaves an opening. The two of them try to bring her down by targeting that weakness.

Mandragora taunts them — they haven't lost because they lack skill, but because Victoria abandoned them. There are people helping Dublin even among the military's upper ranks, and Hillock County was under surveillance from the very start. Horn edges closer to a chilling truth: the Dublin Leader's true goal might be the throne of Victoria itself.

But at that very moment, a broadcast pours out from communication towers across the city. Dublin declares itself a friend of the oppressed, carving its name into all of Victoria. What's truly frightening is that most of what it says is true.

Horn has always valued Bagpipe's life above everything else. She drove the young recruit especially hard back in the day, worried that a girl who arrived carrying meat pudding and a blanket from home might never let go of the past. But that same stubbornness made Bagpipe into a warrior who surpassed her own commander.

Now there's only one way left to get the truth out — someone has to escape this city alive. Horn shields Bagpipe with her half-shattered shield and gives her final order.

Bagpipe... you have to get out alive! This is our... last chance!

— Horn

Bagpipe cannot refuse an order from the person she trusts most on the battlefield. With reddened eyes, she fires her Castlebreaker and launches herself into the sky, carrying with her the order never to look back.

No matter what happens to this land, dawn always comes. And if it doesn't come on its own, people will burn their own lives to bring the light of dawn into being. Ahead of Bagpipe, the real morning sun was rising.

Epilogue — Rhodes Island on the Eve of the Storm

What Outcast left behind was an urn of ashes and an empty magazine. Misery asks that, just this once, she be the one to send off her comrade. And she makes a decision: Rhodes Island must head to Londinium right now.

Jenny survived and joined Rhodes Island. Her name now is that of an Operator — Saileach. Aboard the ship, she crosses paths, in passing, with the red-scaled dragon Infected she once saved. He doesn't recognize her.

Trapped in thick fog, Rhodes Island receives an email from an old friend, Dijkstra. Along with his greeting, the ship's systems go dead. And then Reunion strikes.

Their target is Talulah, asleep deep within the ship. This is a raid led by commander Nine and Guard, an old comrade who turned her back on Rhodes Island. The Infected want the truth behind the betrayal, and answers from their leader.

Amiya, Kal'tsit, and Mon3tr try to stop them, but Talulah decides to go with Reunion of her own will. There is still a reckoning she has to face, and a reason she has to survive.

It was Closure's old friend Dijkstra who helped with the raid. He apologizes, yet feels no regret. From Columbia to the Sarkaz homeland, he has seen the eyes of Infected everywhere across this earth, burning with anger and conviction. He says that, before anything else, he is a 'rebel.'

In Londinium too, the Sarkaz royal court moves in secret, and factions everywhere angle for the peak of the chaos. The Dublin Leader already stands in the middle of that board. The spark lit in Hillock County has begun to spread across the whole earth.

Months later, Bagpipe wanders the wasteland with her old comrade Ch'en, believing that Commander Horn is still alive, waiting for her, trusting her to come. Officially, the Hillock County incident was covered up as a 'military training accident,' but Bagpipe remembers everything she saw. And she knows that an enemy who caused such an uproar and then vanished into quiet is exactly the shadow of a far greater conspiracy.

The fire sparked by a single stolen weapon didn't end with the one city of Hillock County. On that night when the innocent turned to ash the more people chose sides, some stood beside their fellow human beings, beyond any side at all, and some burned their own bodies to force the dawn into being. And now that spark has begun spreading toward all of Victoria.