Castorice

Aidonia, the snowy land that respects and worships death, has already sunken into sweet slumber.

O Castorice, daughter of the River of Souls, the Chrysos Heir in search of the Coreflame of "Death," set forth! Guard the lament of the souls in this world, and embrace the solitude of destiny.

— Life and death is a journey. When a butterfly rests on that dead branch, the withered will be reborn again.

Aidonia's snow had always been there for as long as she could remember. It was as if time had been frozen in this forlorn white ground.

When she was a child, she once asked Amunet what snow was. Amunet said snow is all the emotions of the mortal world.

She was always in a trance as she stared at the people in the city.

The short knight came for training in front of the temple doors every day. The middle-aged priest occasionally dozed off under her high tower. The ascetic scholars distributed Antila flower biscuits to the children.

The children pushed and shoved as they engaged in a snowball fight in the distance, their laughter falling to her heart like ripe fruits.

From the tower, she tried but failed to differentiate their faces.

Holy Maiden — Yet everyone called her that when she appeared before the people, and nobody dared to look her in the eye.

She mustered the courage to move closer, but they stepped back, lowering their eyes even more. She still couldn't see any of their faces.

Until they were standing at death's door — the short knight suffered grievous wounds in battle, the middle-aged priest suffered from years of illness, and the ascetic scholar was infected by the patients they treated. At that moment, she was the closest to them.

Life was no longer an agonizing struggle, but turning at her fingertips into flower petals in the wind.

When she finally had the chance to look at their faces, she turned away instead, for she could not bear to look.

"Some hands were born to sow plants, some were born to govern... Yours carrying out the fated duty of parting."

Amunet's words echoed in her ears. She once wondered what her hands could possibly leave behind.

When she came to her senses, she was looking at an incomplete ice sculpture in her hands — Young warriors wielding their weapons, mothers embracing their children who were going to war, couples cradling each other's faces with longing...

Those people are no longer around.

But this sort of thing will still happen again and again in the land covered by the snowstorm... and lands beyond the snowstorm.

She finally understood that even the snow in Aidonia will melt, just as everything must walk into Death's embrace.

"Nikolaos who loved to smile, the kind Ilana

And Crito, who was as silent as the wind...

At night, I held up those

Forgotten names and forlorn memories,

And turned the sorrows of the day

into the boiling heat immersed in snow.

<align="right">— A poem titled "Aidonia" written by the girl</align>

The day she left Aidonia, she embarked on a journey to meet Thanatos, a journey with an unknown destination.

She repelled the creations of the black tide, and saved declining villages. She was no longer the Maiden of War from Aidonia, but she still kept her distance from others deliberately, hiding her own hands. Yet, she was no match for the children's sparkling eyes. When she first picked up the needle and thread, she fulfilled a child's final wish to touch a plush toy.

In the battlefield engulfed by death, she wrote letters back to the grieving families of the warriors who could not return home. She even learned from a prideful poet, and used poems to see off the dead...

"Death is an unavoidable inevitability," "Death is a warrior's honor," "Death is merely a walk out of time." On that arduous journey, she heard plenty of discussions, some direct, some poetic. Yet, these answers were like a breeze that blew over the water surface, never reaching the depths of her heart.

"Then... someone said, that dawn enveloped the holy city's overflowing hope, perhaps there, I can also..."

The girl hesitated.

"Don't worry, it's fine if you don't want to talk about it now. Okhema welcomes you!"The red-haired girl served her a cup of hot tea.

The golden-haired lady examined the girl's gloves with interest—

"Such aesthetically designed accessory, did you also learn to make it during your travels?"

She shyly interlocked her fingers.

"Yes, I wanted... farewells to be more formal."

The sunlight in Okhema was parching and radiant, the unending announcement from the Dawn Device promised endless tomorrows.

Starting from that small cabin, she carefully began her second life.

The originally empty room was decorated with bits and pieces of her daily life, felt plush toys, chimera pillows, and thick collections of poems. They were no longer symbols of tragedies, but gifts, memorials, and blessings—

The habits she once had for the dead were able to give birth to warmth and strength for the first time, under Okhema's sunlight.

"The scenery outside this window

always looks the same.

Brilliant sunlight, gentle ripples.

I blew off the snow on my hands,

so that they wouldn't be too cold, for spring was far too near.

<align="right">— Written by a girl, a poem titled "Spring"</align>

She knew her destination was not the same as her Flame-Chase companions, but she gradually began to find her own fleeting moments of warmth.

As the golden thread gently guided her, she clumsily danced with others for the first time. In that garden teeming with life, she made fresh dried flowers together with Hyacine. And on the day she graduated from the Grove, sunlight draped over her dress, casting scattered shadows that resembled butterfly wings...

Those moments that may seem insignificant to others were already firewood for her to live through her lonely and cold years.

She craved warmth so much, but also contained her anticipation. Perhaps it was because the Flame-Chase Journey is filled with continuous loss, or perhaps because she didn't want to experience cruel misery... Just like that nightmare that had clung to her for the longest time, repeating itself again and again—

The sun set in Kephale's palm, the blood-colored dusk engulfed the dawn of the holy city.

The black tide surged, and in the dead silent bath, the Weaver of Gold embraced her for the first time. Only the weaver's tired sigh remained in the sea of flowers.

"My 'love' will not vanish because of death."

"See you tomorrow, Cas~" The shabby messenger turned into a plush toy and collapsed in her arms, barely breathing.

She tried to grasp those scattering petals, but that agile thief caught her hand, giving her the last reward.

"Do me a favor, just this once. So what if we cheat death?"

The sky priest lowered her eyes and disappeared as she leaned on the girl's shoulder. The blood-soaked crown prince closed his eyes and awaited her execution. The warrior wept tears of blood, his armor broken. The sage from the Grove smiled and invited her to be the final witness.

At the end of the dream, she saw an interstellar visitor kneel and fall over under the starry sky, proving her most terrifying assumption...

"Cassie, get a bit more rest."

In the Twilight Courtyard's hypnosis treatment room, the doctor's eyes were filled with concern.

She wiped off the sweat on her forehead as if she had made a determined decision.

"No. I'll do everything I can, so that nightmare won't ever come true..."

"The Flame-Chasing heroes initially walked different paths

We were attracted to each other because of our weak lights.

Like moths that endured searing pain

We do not fly forth because we see hope

But because we only see hope when we flew

<align="right">— A poem titled "Flame-Chase" written by the girl</align>

"Maybe... this will be my last day in Okhema."

At the end of a bitter journey, she finally found the clues about the nether realm. Before she headed to the place of no return, she wanted to look carefully at the world again.

That was the Chrysos Heir's bath.

She remembered how Aglaea once, in the thick steam, gave her a pair of gloves that she had carefully fixed.

"Cas, you've changed quite a lot, compared to the first time we met."

She touched the beautiful patterns on the gloves in surprise, and the usually indifferent leader smiled as she winked at her.

"Even the present me can see your scorching heart beneath the frigid cold..."

That was the serene garden behind the house, shaped like how it looked in her dreams.

In that chaotic dream, she often met her other self. They tilled and nurtured the garden together, until the barren soil transformed into a lush ocean of flowers.

"I wish that I can still sow seeds of hope like this in the future."

That was the monument she erected for the lives once lost at her fingertips.

From the deceased in Aidonia, to the Chrysos Heirs in the Flame-Chase Journey... Over a thousand years, she tried to remember everyone's name and past.

"If someone still remembers, they are not truly dead."

That was where she first met Trailblazer.

Encounters are such miraculous things, she thought. The streets that she was so familiar with in the past had gained a special meaning because of someone else.

"Mister/Miss, with my own hands, I will definitely bring you..."

As the Entry Hour draws near, the time for the promised departure is also nigh.

Under the blazing sunlight, she made her first and last wish: With the freezing and arduous life as a beginning, she will write with him/her—

A poem titled "Castorice," which ends with a true embrace.