Every time exhaustion weighed her down, she cast away a part of herself so that she could continue walking with less burden.
Then, whenever the weight returned, she discarded even more.
Eventually, nothing remained but a featureless ghost.
She had forgotten most of what she was fighting for.
She had forgotten the reason she continued moving forward.
All she knew was that she could not stop.
Her journey lasted for years upon years of endless torment until her strength finally gave out.
She collapsed upon the cold, dark road, no longer capable of continuing.
From that point onward, her only desire became rest.
A rest she believed could only be found through death.
Yet death never came.
She remained alive.
And in place of death came pain.
An unbearable amount of it.
So she suffered in silence, buried within the depths of that cold abyss.
Audrey believed this fate would continue forever.
At some point, she lost hope completely, and considering the countless years she had spent trapped there, that belief did not seem unreasonable.
Then, one day, something changed.
For the first time in eternity, a ray of light appeared.
It illuminated the endless darkness and brought with it a strange warmth Audrey had not felt in a very long time.
The light washed over her body.
Then crimson butterflies appeared, circling around her and urging her to continue moving forward.
When Audrey rose once more, she saw the end of the tunnel nearby.
The butterflies had formed a path leading toward it.
"I have to... go."
Audrey gathered every trace of strength she still possessed and forced herself to stand.
Her green eyes settled upon the path the butterflies had created.
The end was close.
Very close.
In truth, it had never been far away.
It had stood before her eyes from the very beginning.
Audrey had simply been unable to see it, like a blind traveler incapable of finding the road without help from the outside.
That help had finally arrived.
She ran.
No...
She flew like a ghost toward the light, unconsciously clinging to the final thread of hope still within her.
After a long journey, she finally reached the end.
The light was blinding.
It carried every emotion Audrey had lost throughout the countless years.
Its brilliance was too intense to bear, leaving her with no choice but to close her eyes.
In a single moment, her entire world turned upside down.
Her body began glowing.
For the first time in ages, her former features slowly reappeared, replacing the empty specter that had possessed nothing but green eyes.
She did not realize that she was no longer inside the dark tunnel.
Several seconds later, Audrey began hearing violent noise around her.
Thunderous explosions.
Harsh screams.
The sounds of battle.
She slowly opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was a bleak gray sky above her.
Only then did she realize she was lying on her back.
Still unable to understand the world around her, she moved her long fingers and grasped a handful of dark soil.
The ground was damp.
Red grass covered it, stretching as far as the eye could see and forming an endless plain.
Under ordinary circumstances, the strange landscape might have been beautiful enough to captivate anyone who saw it.
But not today.
Audrey struggled to rise and sat where she was.
Then terror seized her the moment she saw what lay ahead.
Mist covered everything.
It was unnaturally dense and heavy, obscuring sight one moment and sound the next, interfering with a different sense each time.
The mist carried an ominous presence that filled Audrey with dread, and that fear only deepened as the explosions and destruction around her grew more violent.
Only then did she realize that she was sitting in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield.
No...
This was a devastating war where giants fell like flies.
In the distance, colossal creatures advanced with heavy steps. Their bodies were blurred by the mist, and each possessed a single glowing yellow eye that shone through the haze.
Around those beings marched an army of pale creatures moving as one with the fog.
They collided with another army entirely unlike them—men and women who looked no different from Audrey herself, yet were every bit as terrifying.
With a mere wave of their hands, they were capable of unleashing catastrophes.
—The Third Aether War between the Creatures of Mist and the Writers of History: Battle of the Crimson Field—
It was an ancient conflict fought in an age long forgotten, on a scale far beyond anything Audrey could comprehend.
Just like the First and Second Aether Wars.
Back then, titans fell dead in every direction like flies, and overwhelmingly powerful beings could be found across every corner of the battlefield.
Audrey had somehow found herself in the middle of that war.
And one of the great mist creatures was already standing before her, on the verge of tearing her apart.
She froze completely beneath its gaze.
That single yellow eye seemed to look through her very soul, leaving her unable to move or resist.
Powerless, Audrey could do nothing but await death in silent terror.
Yet the creature never touched her.
Before it had the chance, it was erased from existence by a strange attack that could neither be blocked nor resisted.
The mist creature vanished completely.
Dozens of the monsters accompanying it disappeared as well.
It was not difficult to understand what had happened.
They had just been annihilated by a force far greater than their own.
"Audrey! What are you doing?! Fall back immediately—you’re inside the enemy’s range!"
She heard her name called by a familiar voice.
Turning around, she saw a young man standing behind her with one hand extended toward the creatures of mist.
Every monster he pointed at was erased from existence.
He was tall and dressed in black garments resembling a formal suit. His long hair was equally dark, while his eyes were deep and shadowed, and the pressure of his aura was terrifying.
Gray energy gathered around his fingers.
That alone was enough to destroy countless creatures of mist at a horrifying speed.
The moment Audrey looked at him, an inexplicable sense of recognition surged through her.
She shouted his name without thinking.
"Frey!"
The instant she spoke it, memories flooded her mind.
At last, she remembered what was happening around her.
’Ah... that’s right. My name is Audrey.’
’I am the First Writer’s attendant, and my duty is to accompany her eldest son during the Third War against the Lords of Mist...’
Audrey quickly rose to her feet.
The aura surrounding her changed completely as a long sword formed in her grasp, forged from both aether and aura.
She wielded it with practiced ease and joined the battle at once, fighting as she retreated toward Frey.
For the moment...
She thought of nothing but the battle before her.
Everything else was cast aside.