Links beyond time?

The forest of ash, which had been devoured by flames and turned into a graveyard of charcoal and bitter memories, began to throb with supernatural vitality.

(shhh... plic... ploc...)

The chocolate drizzle had not only smothered the fire but had also stimulated the rebirth of the environment.

(¡¡¡GLOOP-BLOOM-SPROUT!!!)

From the once-black earth—which now regained its shimmer of fluctuating colors—licorice stalks began to sprout, coiling with elegance, topped by gummy flowers that opened with a sugary hiss.

(Crrr-ck... cric... ¡shinnn... tilín... tilín!)

The charred trees were covered in a bark of shimmering cinnamon, and from their branches soon hung leaves of crystallized mint that tinkled in the wind.

(Fffft-fffft... zumb...)

In the midst of that rebirth, animal life also returned; tiny blown-sugar hummingbirds appeared, fluttering among the flowers and leaving trails of neon pollen in their wake.

(Crack-paf... scritch...)

At the same time, praline squirrels leaped from branch to branch, playfully chasing one another.

(Squelch... plop...)

Even gummy snails glided across the ground, leaving bright trails of syrup behind them.

(Ffffffhuuuu... ahhh...)

The air, previously heavy and suffocating, was now a symphony of sweet fragrances that invited peace.

{Not this one... Not this one either...}

"......"

However, in the center of that edible haven, time seemed to have frozen for only two beings.

"...."

Shija remained there, a small figure as still as a marble statue, fiercely maintaining his position of apology with his head bowed, ignoring the colors and animals that began to peer curiously around him.

{Where am I failing...?}

On the other hand, a few meters away, the ragdoll lay on the ground, surrounded by shards of light from the broken bubbles.

{Mama has power... Mama has shame... But none of that helps me now!}

Her patched body looked small and defeated against the new green sugar grass.

{Maybe I should give up and run away?}

Her cloth fingers stroked a blade of candy grass while her mind spun in circles.

{But doing that would be wrong...}

She had searched in war, in madness, and in chaos, but the more she searched, the further she felt from understanding why a simple "sorry" from a child could be heavier than a devastating blow.

{Please...}

Finally, not knowing what else to do while sitting on the green sugar grass, the ragdoll tucked in her patched legs and hid her non-existent face in her hands.

{I just want an answer... Tell me what I should do!}

She pleaded in a whisper that made the entire surroundings vibrate and "resonate."

(¡BRRRRRR-RUMMM... CRACK!)

Unexpectedly, in response to her desperate, childish cry, the fissure in the earth released, letting escape a single sphere that ascended with hypnotic elegance.

(Vvvuummm… shhh-iiiii…)

Unlike the previous ones, this one did not have a solid color.

{Never...}

Its surface was an aurora borealis trapped in crystal; threads of violet, emerald, gold, and crimson light danced inside, intertwining in a constant flow that seemed to breathe.

{I have never seen one like this... since I was born, I have never beheld anything so... complete.}

The doll looked up, captivated. Her cloth hands reached out, trembling, and caught the sphere with a delicacy that was almost sacred.

{This feeling... It’s warm...}

Upon contact with her fingers, the bubble did not burst; instead, it expanded gently, releasing a prismatic light so intense that it erased the chocolate-drenched forest.

(¡¡¡SHIIII-PRISM-ROAR!!!)

The light did not just illuminate; it enveloped her, as if each color were a silk thread weaving a new reality around the doll.

{¡¡¿?!!}

In a blink, the doll's consciousness was sucked into the center of the prism.

{T-this is...!!}

In that moment, she was no longer just observing an image from the outside; now, her very essence inhabited the memory.

(¡¡¡KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!!!)

Suddenly manifesting in the middle of a hell of ash and fire.

{¡¡!!}

The doll's astral consciousness floated over an apocalyptic battlefield where the sky was darkened by an endless tide of locust armies.

(¡Vvvrrrrrr-clac-clac! ¡Tump-tump-tump! ¡SKRIIIII-CHHH!)

But these were no ordinary insects; they were aberrations with muscular figures and the proportions of bodybuilders, whose chitinous shells shone like polished obsidian.

"KILL HIM!! FINISH HIM!!"

They advanced like a wave of flesh and exoskeleton, razing everything in their path with a brute force that made the earth tremble.

{Those flames!!}

However, that scene was not what caught the doll's attention...

{It's the epicenter!}

Instead, her astral state launched like a comet toward the heart of the conflict, where gray flames devoured reality and invisible aerial slashes sliced through hundreds of locusts in a heartbeat.

(¡¡SLASH!!)

In the midst of the carnage, an armored vehicle forced its way through with suicidal elegance.

"Don't stop, Sara!!"

At the wheel, an expressionless maid, her eyes fixed on the horizon of destruction, drove through the mass of monsters without flinching, using the car as a steel ram.

(¡¡¡CLANG-SLASH-SMASH!!!)

Meanwhile, having given the order, the figure of a Silver Knight executed a perfect dance of death.

"Yes, Sara will not stop."

Without pausing to hear the reply, the Silver Knight continued blocking the impact of three giant locusts with his shield, forcing the creatures back by the sheer force of the collision. Immediately after, he unleashed a horizontal slash with his sword that triggered a grayish flaming shockwave, decapitating an entire row of enemies.

(¡Fuuut... CRACK-KRRR... ¡BOOM!)

The knight did not limit himself to the sword; with astonishing agility, he threw a side kick that shattered the thorax of a locust trying to climb onto the car, sending it flying against a burning building.

(¡Clang! ¡Ziss-shak! ¡Thud-clack!)

He blocked, slashed, and struck with mechanical precision, protecting the vehicle's progress in the middle of the swarm.

{MAMA~!!}

In the middle of that carnage, the doll recognized the unique energy signature from which she had been "born," spotting Mireya's silhouette at the center of that whirlwind of steel and chitin despite his change in form.

(¡SKREEEEE-CHHH! ¡CLANG-KRAAA-KOOM! ¡¡BOOOOOM-RUMMM!!)

The scene was a symphony of destruction: the screeching of tires on asphalt covered in acid blood, the metallic sound of the silver armor echoing against enemy shells, and the roar of gray fire explosions erasing entire sectors of the map.

"Eh...?"

In the midst of the chaos, the Silver Knight—who had just decapitated two muscular locusts with a single stroke—tensed up.

"Did someone just call me?"

The silver helmet turned slightly, searching for a voice that did not belong to the battlefield.

(¡¡¡SYNC-RESONANCE-SSSHHH!!!)

Mireya, having resonated with Silver to carve a path through the endless horde of locusts by taking the form of the Silver Knight, frantically searched for the cry of a "baby" in the middle of hell.

<"Seriously, partner? In a situation like this, are you talking to yourself again?">

He was questioned sarcastically by the melodic voice of the serpent goddess, Echidna, who inhabited his interior.

<"First, concentrate on the tide of flesh, or they'll drag us to the bottom.">

"I know that, but...! I'm sure I heard..."

Despite the situation, both Mireya and Echidna continued their usual bickering while Silver continued to operate on combat autopilot, giving free rein to his fighting instincts.

(¡¡¡WOOSH-STAB-BURN!!!)

Unaware of the distraction, a colossal locust—believing it saw an opportunity—seized the moment to pounce from a blind spot behind him, its obsidian claws ready to tear through metal. But Silver, who controlled the physical form with perfect precision, ducked just enough for the monster to overshoot. Using it as a fleshy springboard, he leaped into the sky.

(¡Vruuu-shak! ¡KRA-CHAK!)

There in the air, the Silver Knight spun on his own axis, unleashing an upward slash with his sword that split another locust attempting an aerial attack in half.

(¡VHOOOOOM-SHHHHHHH!)

During the fall, the sword was enveloped in gray flames that devoured the oxygen in their path.

(¡¡¡KRA-ASH!!!)

And with the weight of his descent, he impaled the locust he had used as a springboard directly through the thorax.

(¡¡KRA-BOOOM... SSSHHHH... CRRR-USH!!)

The impact didn't just pierce the chitin shell; the fire from the sword expanded from within the creature, turning it into a statue of gray ash that crumbled under the silver boots before the knight stood tall once more on the roof of the car, which kept moving without stopping.

"What if one of my babies got out and is lost?!!"

After the ash explosion, the Silver Knight didn't catch his breath as the tide of locusts closed in on the vehicle from all directions, but unfortunately for them, Silver reacted with absurd speed.

(¡¡¡SHING-SHING-SHING-SLASH!!!)

Maneuvering the sword in a blur of omnidirectional light, Silver executed horizontal and diagonal slashes so fast that the air itself seemed to whistle in pain as the muscular locusts were sliced into thin ribbons before they could even extend their claws.

"I'm sure I heard something...!"

In parallel, the silver shield moved like a living extension of the arm, blocking lateral lunges and crushing chitinous skulls with blunt strikes that echoed like thunder, maintaining an absolute security perimeter around the roof of the car.

<"Didn't you ask me to slap you when you started hallucinating again?">

On the other hand, Echidna, within the shared consciousness, let out a sibilant snort of doubt.

<"Maybe it's just the gaze of the regular readers... That's what you usually say, right?">

In response to those words, Mireya tilted his armored head while Silver blocked a burst of corrosive spikes with the shield.

"Nope... This time I don't think it's the readers..."

In the middle of the bloody frenzy, Mireya fervently kept his eyes moving, trying to find the source of the sound.

"The readers' sound is always full of static, like a poorly tuned radio in the back of my mind. But the voice I heard a moment ago... was clear. Too clear."

At that moment, Silver leaped, spinning in the air to slice through three aerial locusts and landed heavily on the hood of the car, which continued to roar through the gray flames.

"So there are only two options! Either it's an auditory hallucination from the excess adrenaline and resonance... or maybe, just maybe, one of my 'babies' fell out of the car by mistake and is trying to come home."

After posing his hypothesis, Mireya made a sudden decision.

"Silver, dissonance!"

The air around the vehicle grew heavy, saturated with an energetic pressure that made the locusts waver for an instant.

(¡¡¡FLAAASSH!!!)

The silver armor dissolved into a thousand fragments of light that returned to their source as the small suit of silver armor that was Silver. For an instant, Mireya was vulnerable in his normal state, just as a massive swarm of muscular locusts lunged from the sky to swallow the car whole...

(¡¡¡FWOOOOOOOOOM-GOLDEN-NOVA!!!)

A torrent of golden light erupted from the spot where Mireya had previously stood, acting as a blinding beacon that instantly disintegrated the nearest creatures.

"So, to find the source..."

The glow was not static; it vibrated with an aggressive elegance.

"I'm going to have to pulverize all of them!!"

When the light condensed, Mireya's figure had completely changed.

{Gwaaau....}

The resonance with Goldie had triggered a metamorphosis; he now stood at an imposing height with an athletic build, slender yet charged with evident muscular power. He wore a one-piece combat suit, tight and aerodynamic, with a design composed of deep crimson and vibrant gold.

{Mama...?}

The crimson formed the base of the suit, while the gold spread in geometric markings and energy lines that ran along his limbs, chest, and back, glowing with a constant pulse.

"LET'S DANCE!!"

The astral doll watched the scene breathless. Before her was no longer just her mother, but a living incarnation of war about to explode.