We are born of the Blood, made men by the Blood, undone by the Blood.
The tides are rising...
Make no mistake, Ruby... for it has haunted our family for generations.
The night was quiet, save for the occasional hum of airships passing overhead. The streets of Vale were almost deserted, the city's usual hustle and bustle reduced to a calm murmur. In the bright light of "From Dust till Dawn", a small, quaint Dust shop nestled in a quiet corner of the city, a lone hooded figure stood by the counter, eyes curiously scanning the rows of colorful crystals around her.
Her hair, a short wolf cut with a striking silver-white and reddish streaks that seemed to shimmer under the shop's lights, fell around her pale face in soft waves, a stark contrast to the vibrant ruby red of her eyes, glinting like polished gemstones.
She wore a bright red cloak, embroidered with red, grey, and blue roses, which flowed around her as she moved, but her attention wasn't solely on the Dust.
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In her hands was a glossy tabloid titled "Weapons Magazine", which she picked up from a nearby rack; its pages filled with the latest transforming weaponry.
She paused to admire a sleek, high-caliber sniper rifle that morphed into a bladed polearm, muttering to herself, "Hmm, too bulky... the recoil would be a nightmare." Flipping further, she found a pair of revolvers that could combine into a compact shotgun. Her gaze narrowed slightly. "Not bad... but they'd need a better trigger mechanism. Even auntie's pizza cutter or Yang's gauntlet could outpace that."
All the while, a deafening orchestral song played through her headphones, the sharp, haunting notes of a violin beating rhythmically in her knife-like ears. The music drowned out the world around her, creating a bubble of focus and intensity. Each note seemed to synchronize with the flick of the pages, the violent crescendo of strings matching her rising interest in a new schematic-a weapon design she hadn't seen before.
Her thoughts wandered as she turned the pages, imagining the arsenal from her late mother's side of the family. Her clingy aunt's weapon-a giant pizza cutter-like blade rimmed with sharp edges that functioned like a chainsaw circle-was certainly advanced, a marvel of modern engineering from a place called Rim Bilton, wherever that is.
But then there was her great-grandma's weapon—a lot more simple than most in her family, yet in some ways, even more elegant, and undeniably scary. That intricate swordstaff–lance thing had a way of making its wielder seem larger than life, its mere presence enough to send an uneasy shiver down anyone's spine. And considering her great-grandma was already taller, or perhaps the tallest than everyone else in her family; the fact that the swordstaff was taller than her only added to her intimidating aura.
Which made her to shudder at the fleeting memories of her grueling training under her great-grandma, the captain of the second team of the Abyssal Hunters. For a ten years old, those sessions were beyond intense, spanning from rigorous combat drills to the unexpectedly demanding lessons in dancing and singing. Her great-grandma was relentless, always pestering her with reminders that the difference between Ægirians and Land-dwellers lay in their grace, elegance, intellect, and the advancements in technology and philosophy. She’d often proudly compares the differences to that of heaven and earth, a lesson that was drilled into her skull with every moment spent under her tutelage. The memories of those words echoed in her mind as she recalled the exhausting, meticulous training that had shaped her into who she was today.
