Chapter 588: Broken Promise
The building looked normal from the outside.
The walls were intact. The windows were unbroken. There was no sign of forced entry, no indication that anything was amiss.
But the scent that wafted from within told a different story entirely.
Blood...So much blood.
The Maiden of Fate landed first, her face pale. Nadia arrived a moment later, and the Maiden of Fate immediately turned to her.
"Stay here." She said, her voice tight with urgency. "Keep the children here. Don’t let them see."
Nadia nodded, gathering the little ones close.
Even they could smell the blood. Even they knew something terrible had happened.
The remaining Battle Angels entered the police station.
And the moment they crossed the threshold, the horror hit them like a physical blow.
"Gods above..." Yelena whispered, her hand flying to her mouth. "What happened here?"
The Maiden of War, who had waded through rivers of blood and climbed mountains of corpses, looked away.
"It’s a massacre."
Fauna just stood there, her face blank with shock.
"So much blood. So much...how is there this much blood?"
The Maiden of Fate said nothing. She just walked forward, her footsteps echoing in the silence.
Every surface was coated in crimson. The floor was slick with it. The walls were painted with it. The ceiling dripped with it.
Blood, blood, and more blood, as if the entire building had been submerged in a sea of gore and only recently emerged.
And it wasn’t just blood.
Pieces of flesh clung to the walls. Fragments of bone were scattered across the floor like discarded trash.
Organs—hearts, livers, lungs lay where they had fallen, torn from bodies that were no longer here.
Whatever had happened in this building, it had not been a simple killing. It had been an unmaking.
In the corners of the lobby, a handful of survivors huddled together.
Police officers, mostly, their uniforms spattered with gore that was not their own.
Civilians who had been here to file complaints or visit prisoners.
They were trembling, their eyes wide and unfocused, their mouths moving in constant, whispered litanies.
"Demon...Demon..."
"She was smiling...She never stopped smiling..."
"The devil...The devil came for them..."
One of the officers looked up as the Battle Angels entered.
His face was pale, his expression shattered. He had seen something that his mind could not process..
"She went that way." He whispered, pointing toward the cell block. "The little girl with the rainbow hair. She went that way. Please..."
"...Please don’t let her come back."
The Battle Angels exchanged glances. The dread that had been building in their chests was now a cold, solid weight.
Little girl with the rainbow hair.
No. No, it can’t be.
They moved deeper into the station. But the carnage grew worse.
The cells they passed were full of blood.
The bars were bent and twisted, torn apart by some unimaginable force.
And the remaining prisoners who had been held here—murderers, burglars, hardened criminals—were cowering in the corners, their faces buried in their hands, whimpering like frightened children.
"Don’t come in here...please don’t come in here..."
"She’ll come back...she said she’d come back if we made any noise..."
"The demon...The little demon..."
And then, finally, they reached the main interrogation room.
The door was already open—or rather, it had been torn off its hinges and tossed aside like a piece of paper.
The room itself beyond was dark, the lights having been shattered.
But the faint glow of Anya’s rainbow hair provided all the illumination they needed.
She was standing in the center of the room, her back to the door.
Her wings were folded against her spine. Her hair floated around her head like a living thing, the colors shifting and swirling in hypnotic patterns.
And horrifyingly, the floor around her was pooled with blood.
The walls were decorated with everything that had once been inside the bodies of the people who had been held here.
"...Anya?" It was the voice of a mother who was looking at her daughter and seeing a stranger.
Anya turned around...
...and the Battle Angels recoiled!
Her face was covered in blood!
It dripped from her chin, from her cheeks, from her eyebrows.
Small fragments of tissue and bone were also caught in her hair, glinting in the rainbow light.
And her eyes...
Her once beautiful, innocent, timid eyes were glowing with an excitement that bordered on ecstasy.
But it was her smile that was the most terrifying thing of all.
It was a small smile. A gentle smile. A satisfied smile.
The smile of a monster!
"A-Anya?" Fauna’s voice was barely a whisper. "Anya, what...what did you do?"
Anya’s smile widened. She looked around at the scattered remains of the people who had been here and then back at her mother.
"Don’t worry, Mom." She said, and her voice was sweet. Too sweet.
The voice of a child who had just finished her chores and was waiting to be praised.
"All of these people decided to hurt Mika. So I decided to hurt them back."
"I...just did what needed to be done."
"You did this?" Yelena’s voice cracked. "Anya, you...all of this..."
"Of course I did." Anya tilted her head, and for a moment she looked like the innocent little girl she had been before. "Isn’t it nice? The police station needed a paint job anyway."
She gestured at the blood-spattered walls with something that might have been pride.
"Red is such a lovely color, don’t you think?"
No one answered. No one could.
The words stuck in their throats, choked off by horror and grief and the terrible, dawning realization that the girl standing before them was not the girl they had raised.
Something had happened to her in the darkness below.
Something had broken her...or maybe something had awakened.
Anya seemed to sense their hesitation. Her smile flickered, just slightly.
"But I suppose I don’t have permission to do things like this." She said, almost thoughtfully. "Maybe someone might not appreciate it."
Then the smile returned, brighter than ever.
"But it’s alright, Mom. I’ll clean it all up like a good girl!"
She raised her hand.
And the blood began to move.
It lifted from the walls, from the floor, from the ceiling. It dripped upward, defying gravity, flowing toward Anya’s outstretched palm like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
In seconds, the station was clean. Pristine. Not a single fragment of evidence that anything had happened here at all.
Anya held the orb of condensed gore in her palm. It was no larger than a marble now, a perfect sphere of crimson and pink and white.
She examined it for a moment, her expression unreadable, and then slipped it into her pocket.
"See?" She said brightly. "Good as new. Now..."
"I’m going to go check on Mika now." Anya said, walking past them as if nothing had happened.
"I hope he’s feeling better."
She paused at the door and looked back over her shoulder.
"Oh and please don’t tell Mika what happened here. I made a promise not to turn into a monster. But..."
She looked around the room and let out a wry smile.
"...it seems like I’ve already become one."
And then she was gone, walking out of the police station and into the sunlight, leaving her family standing in a room that was impossibly clean and yet somehow still felt like it was drowning in blood.
—
Mika woke up three days later.
His eyes opened to the familiar ceiling of his room.
Sunlight streamed through the windows and the sheets beneath him were soft.
The pillow under his head was cool. And for one blissful, disorienting moment, he thought it had all been a dream.
Then the memories came flooding back.
The cave. The darkness. The adults. The hunger. The axe. His legs. The pain of cutting off his own flesh, over and over and over.
The adults descending on him like wolves. Their teeth in his skin. Their mouths tearing away chunks of his body.
"Haaah—! Haaaah—! Haaaaah—!"
He sat up with a gasp, his heart pounding, his hands flying to his chest, his arms, his face—
But there was nothing. His body was whole.
But before he could understand what had happened or how he had survived, two small arms wrapped around him from behind and pulled him close.
"It’s alright, Mika."
The voice was familiar. It was Anya’s voice.
But there was something different about it, something that hadn’t been there before.
"It’s over." Anya whispered. "It’s all over. You don’t need to worry anymore, Mika. You don’t need to be afraid."
"From now on, I’ll protect you. I’ll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you again. I promise. I swear it."
Mika looked at her. And he saw the change.
It was in her eyes. Those eyes that had once been so timid, so quick to fill with tears.
Now they burned with a fierce, unwavering light as if they belonged to someone who had discovered exactly what they were capable of and had made peace with it.
She was different now. They both were.
But as Mika looked at the girl who had become something new and terrifying and beautiful all at once—he didn’t feel afraid.
He felt safe.
"Anya..." He whispered. And then the tears came in great, heaving sobs that shook his entire body.
"Anyaaaa!"
And then, slowly, Anya’s own tears began to fall.
The terrifying avenger dissolved. In her place was the same Anya who had always been there.
"Mika....Mika.....Mikaaa!"
She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed, all the strength she had shown draining out of her, leaving only the frightened child who had been through too much.
They looked at each other—two children who had seen the very worst of what the world could offer and had somehow, impossibly, survived.
They were broken. They were scarred. They were changed in ways that might never fully heal.
But they were together.
And as they held each other in the warm, golden light of the afternoon sun, that was enough.
That was more than enough.
That was everything.
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