Bonus: Silver’s potential

A time ago in the world of Ky'lar, the forest clearing had become a sanctuary of the absurd—a bubble of distorted reality where time seemed to flow at three different speeds.

"Mmm-mmm... I wonder what the correct option would be in this case...?"

At the epicenter, beneath the liquid silver light of the twin moons, Mireya remained in a state of nearly catatonic absorption.

"Where were we? Ah, yes! The seasonal event."

The intermittent glow from his console screen illuminated his delicate features, casting rhythmic shadows across his focused face.

"I must admit, we've leveled up a lot in our collaboration, haven't we, Raina...?"

For him, the universe had been reduced to a grid of pixels and seasonal events; he was oblivious to the fact that his shoulders served as a support for two priestesses whose devotion bordered on madness, and that his feet rested upon the flesh of a fallen princess who found glory in his indifference.

"The best thing would be to gain a little more experience... But... I can't get one idea out of my head..."

He was the eye of the hurricane: an irrational, domestic calm sustained by the sheer power of denial.

("♪♬ ♩~")

On the other hand, behind his back, the stillness of the forest was being devoured by a macabre and efficient industry.

("...")

In that place, Goldie, the little golden straw doll, moved like a weaver of somber destinies.

("... Next.")

As she worked, a silent army grew one by one with the sound of zippers closing over skin suits and the hiss of air filling the new conscious bodies, creating an inaudible symphony of transmutation.

("... I will help... everyone... please... wait...")

In this way, those who were once objects of pleasure whose fates had been overturned now stood as a phalanx of living figures and awakening eyes—a legion of souls rescued from oblivion and reassembled into a new form, ready for a war that the world of Ky'lar could not yet understand.

(CLICK-CLACK-KRR-STCH!)

In parallel, meanwhile, within the depths of the structure that appeared to be nothing more than a simple inn, Brownie was at work.

(Klang-CHHH... Klang-CHHH...)

As a result, the heartbeat of the living inn had become deeper and more metallic.

(KLANG-drrr... KLANG-drrr...)

In this way, the resonance of optimizing gears and the creaking of expanding bronze silently continued their preparation for the conflict to come.

("Must neutralize gently...")

However, in parallel to all of that, Silver, the tiny silver armor, stood before the two stone statues, concentrating every ounce of her being on a task that required surgical precision while her small metallic hands, wrapped in the spectral veil of the Grey Flames, sought not to destroy, but to unravel.

("... Complicated.")

With slow and rhythmic movements, Silver caressed the cold and porous surface of the cursed marble, sending faint pulses of fire that filtered through the microscopic cracks in the stone.

(Fssssss...)

It was not a violent release, but a controlled erosion, undoing the petrification millimeter by millimeter.

(Vrrrrrr-shhhhh!)

Thus, the flames spread over the surface of the statues like a translucent and subtle membrane, a film of ashen energy vibrating with a terrifying intensity.

(Vrrrrrr—shhhhh—nnnnnn!)

Within the composition of existence, where every entity, object, and being was a "phenomenon" sustained by energy and causality, the Grey Flames operated as an absolute eraser.

Those flames did not burn matter; instead, they simply negated the "affirmation" that something was there. Because of that, if normal fire consumed wood to turn it into ash, the grey flame, on the other hand, negated the property of "being wood," leaving behind nothing more than the ash itself as a hole in reality.

(Ssssss-shuuu!)

This property is what made them infinitely lethal in their use, since for beings composed of energy or merely formed by concepts, contact with them was fatal.

("Not like this... Nor like that... Mmmgh...")

However, in the current scenario, given the situation, such a property proved to be counterproductive.

("Something like this...?")

Silver was not facing an "enemy" or something she wished to "cut"; instead, she was dealing with Divinity.

(Fuff-shhhhhh!)

Goddesses are, in essence, massive condensations of concepts and divine energy, so for a god, contact with the grey flame was equivalent to the disintegration of their metaphysical identity.

(Sshhhhhh-huuuuu!)

Because of this, unlike something Silver could easily negate, it turned out to be far more complex in contrast.

(Clink... crack... shhh!)

If a spark of that ashen color penetrated too deeply, it would negate the phenomenon of the sisters' "divine existence," erasing them not only from the present but from future existence, creating irreversible damage.

("... Too tightly bound.")

Nevertheless, despite this, the greatest complication of the release from the curse of the Demon Lady of Lust lay in the Ontological Settlement.

Although in the outside world only a hundred years had passed since their fall, the Demon Queen's curse was not a simple shell of rock, but a transmutation of essence.

During that century, reality itself had "accepted" the new definition of these beings; this, combined with their recent discovery and categorization by the Adventurers' Guild, the merchants of Argol, and collectors as "statues of incalculable value," allowed the concept of "Inanimate Object" to settle over them like a metaphysical scab.

Because of this, external perception acted as an ontological cement.

For the universe of Ky'lar, they were no longer goddesses on pause; they were statues that, by design, possessed a "history of goddesses."

("I feel the root... If I press wrong, everything breaks... but my hand knows where to caress.")

The stone no longer covered the skin; the stone had become the skin.

(Vrr-vrr-vrr!)

The sisters' divinity, in its state of defenselessness, had retreated and fused with the molecular structure of the cursed marble until both phenomena became indistinguishable.

("Steady... like that... Slowly... a little more...")

Therefore, Silver had to exercise a control that defied logic.

("... I cannot eliminate this... But...")

Her metallic hands trembled imperceptibly, adjusting the flow of the flames on a nanometric scale.

("If I do this... and then this...")

The grey membrane had to be dense enough to negate the phenomenon of "Petrification," but subtle enough to stop right at the border of the permissible.

("... It's not working.")

It was a paradox: Silver had to negate the stone, but since the stone now "was" the goddess according to the world's perception, any excess of power would erase the very foundation upon which her soul rested.

("It's frustrating!")

It was like trying to disintegrate a shadow without touching the wall that projects it, when the shadow and the wall have begun to occupy the same atomic space.

(Vrrrrrr—clink!)

However, contrary to all odds, beneath the visor of the tiny silver armor, the data processing was a storm of absolute precision that contrasted...

("It's too hard!")

... with the core of her consciousness.

("Bad stone!")

Silver clenched her small gauntlets, making the grey flames vibrate with an even sharper frequency.

("It won't come off! Buaaa!")

To any expert in metaphysics, what she was attempting was an aberration.

("I hate this!")

Achieving the separation of a concept that had fused at an atomic and ontological level during a century of external perception should be impossible.

("I want to play with Mama!")

Yet, the existence known as Silver was anything but normal.

("Dumb stone, go away now!")

Despite her internal tantrum and her mentality of a girl barely eight years old, her body and her essence remembered a truth the world had forgotten.

("Heavy! Heavy! Heavy!")

Before her rebirth as the armor that protected Mireya, before her soul was fragmented and returned in this form, she was known as the Valkyrie.

("Stubborn! Agh!")

She was an "error" that should not have been born in her world of origin where, despite her young biological age, Silver possessed a talent that bordered on the blasphemous.

("GIVE UP ALREADY!!")

She was an entity beloved by every weapon; any weapon that touched her hands not only reached its maximum potential but exceeded the limits for which it was created, as if the objects themselves sought to please her.

("... Fuff")

Added to that, her learning capacity was a statistical anomaly in which what took a martial arts master a lifetime of meditation, sweat, and blood to perfect, she absorbed in weeks.

("... Inhale... Exhale...")

Her brain and her soul processed technique, trajectory, and energy flow with a speed that rendered human effort irrelevant.

("....")

Only the fragility of her infant bones, the limits of her biology, and her father's efforts to grant her "humanity" had been able to contain that monster born for war.

("... I can do it")

And in that instant, in the World of Ky'lar, now in her new form free from her previous limitations... That supreme combat instinct, that "eye" that saw the weaknesses in the very structure of creation... Finally began to awaken.

"I can do it."

(Zing! — Fwoooo!)

In this way, Silver changed her tactics, choosing to discard the "reasoning" of negation; instead, she applied her overwhelming talent to "fight" against the Demon Queen's curse as if it were a physical opponent.

(Vrrrrrr—ssssss—hhhhh!)

Thus, wrapped in light, Silver silently adopted her human form...

"..."

And like a master conversing with the steel of their sword in the heat of a duel, Silver began to engage in a tactile dialogue with the essence of the goddesses.

(Fwooooosh!)

Her flame-wrapped hands began to move fluidly with a hypnotic rhythm.

"If I cannot negate the state..."

At that moment, the figure of a young girl with long silver hair cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall of lunar silk, floating lightly in the wind with electric blue eyes, shone in the middle of the forest as she skillfully guided her fingers along the rough stone of both statues.

"... Then I must only alter it."

And under Silver's expert touch, reality fragmented in a way that defied every logical law of the world.

(Vrrrr—shhhhh~!)

Her hands did not seek to reverse the curse or break the stone shell to release an organic form.

(Clink! — Sssss!)

In her place, the Valkyrie's "duel" focused on a phenomenological dissection of terrifying precision.

"Found it."

At that moment, Silver used her Grey Flames to identify and negate only the "Property of Inertia" and the "Stasis" of the marble.

(Fwoosh!!)

The result was an ontological anomaly.

(Krak... k-srack...)

The goddesses were still statues; their bodies maintained the cold texture, the overwhelming weight, and the molecular composition of high-density marble.

(Trrrk... trrr-ak...)

However, under Silver's massage of negation, the absolute rigidity that defines stone vanished.

(Cric... crac...)

The phenomenon of "being a statue" remained, but the phenomenon of "being immobile" had been erased from their existence.

(Ggrrr-shhhhh... Sssrrrh-t— Ahhh~!!)

Thanks to that, suddenly, the statue of the elder sister, the "Goddess on the verge of climax," let out a sigh that sounded like wind brushing against a crystal cave.

(Flash~)

It was not the sound of lungs and air, but the vibration of the stone itself resonating with a recovered consciousness.

("I did it!!")

Her marble eyelids, once sealed in eternal stasis, slid upward with the softness of silk, revealing eyes that were still made of polished stone but now shone with the spark of an awakened divinity.

(... Krrrr-uh... Vvrr-mmm...)

In turn, the younger sister, the "Goddess of eternal desire," also began her kinetic awakening.

("You can move now...!!")

That night, returning to her form as a tiny silver armor, Silver celebrated, giving a glimpse of her true potential.