“You know, Wu,” Icy said, creating a slope of ice under Wu’s feet as his boots skid along with it and he scraped his finger along the surface to maintain balance while the slope itself took him on a curvilinear trajectory towards Alina, “After what you guys pulled off at the Summer Selections, I wondered what it would be like fighting alongside you.”

“To be fair, we did have to use our numbers advantage against you guys,” Wu said, blasting off from his feet as Alina’s claws slammed through the slope under his feet and crushed it into a mountain of ice powder.

“Perhaps.” Icy added, “Though, it was a wake-up call for us. We thought we were untouchable back there. Back in that comfortable little bubble where no one dared challenge us, but you fools.”

Alina growled, kicking back with the back legs of the Great Northern Wolf when Icy entered her Perfect Synchrony mode before condensing all of the coldness of her Ice Age into a single armor of ice around her body.

“As inspired by Ver and Lily…” Icy murmured, “Something I am still practicing, trading range for power.”

Then, she cocked her fist back as her Wave swirled around her hands, creating a blinding white light before she shot it forward, the massively concentrated blast tearing a hole through the Great Northern Wolf’s outline before the coldness could be used to enhance Alina’s own manifest.

“That’s fucking cool!” Wu shouted, activating his own Void Domain Laser as his dark beam penetrated through Alina’s armor too, and both of them launched themselves forward, charging straight at Alina who’s floating in the middle of the Great Northern Wolf.

“You are ours!” Icy shouted, creating a concentrated ice blade with snowflakes swirling around it. Condensing her Nifelheim Devastation and getting ready to knock Alina down when Alina turned and stared directly into her soul.

Her mouth twitched hauntingly, though her eyes with the crimson glow locked onto Icy and nearly locked her in place with the pressure alone.

Suddenly, the outline of the Great Northern Wolf shrank from the sights of both Icy and Wu that were on either side of Alina just prior, and she also concentrated her power, silencing her presence in the Wave briefly before fully vanishing from where she was.

“WHAT?!” Wu and Icy shared the shock as Wu struggled to keep up with Alina’s movements when Icy spotted her through her Wave sensing first. With a column of ice shooting up from the ground up, she sent Wu flying straight through the air, knocking him out of the way of Alina’s next devastating attack before the latter carried her momentum and slammed Icy to the ground like an asteroid.

“Argh!” Icy grunted before she shielded her face as Alina repeatedly slammed her fist into her body. Initially, the layers of ice forming over her face were hardened enough to withstand Alina’s onslaught,though both fighters could tell that Icy's strenght was being siphoned away with every hit of Alina's attacks.

“I…I need to contain the two of them…” Wu reoriented himself in space, and despite vertigo from being thrown around so violently like a helpless passenger on a roller coaster, he forced himself to breathe and focus. The rest of his vision was temporarily blurry from the blood rush, but he could still focus on the fight in front of him.

With both of his hands reached forward, Wu leaped off the column of ice that’s starting to topple thanks to Alina who crashed straight through it moments ago. Feeling the warmth of the Wave rushing through the circuits tattooed into his skin, he enveloped both Icy and Alina within the Void Domain.

At the same instance, the white glow over Alina’s skin dissipated as she became frozen in place. The ice armor around Icy’s body started to stiffen as the Wave supporting it became halted completely.

“Now!” Wu said, his body ramming into Alina’s and tackling her off Icy as he also slammed his blade into Icy’s frozen armor that’s transitioned into normal ice without the strengthening from her Wave. It cracked and allow Icy to break through, preventing any suffocation.

Then, he placed one hand over Alina’s head and palmed it like a basketball, directing all of the Void Domain in his suit into a single pulse before he reached another handover and activated his anti-Void domain, forming a circular opening, “Now! Shadow!”

“ARGH! ARGH!” Alina yelled and screamed, trying to break free like a wounded wild beast, but Wu held on with everything he had as his legs tried their hardest to cling onto Alina’s body. She had learned immediately that by retracting all of the Wave back into her body and using only her base-level physical strength, she could break free from Wu's attack.

Elbowing Wu in the ribs and folding him over, Alina then looped her hands through Wu’s grasp and slammed him into the ground while Shadow surged from the ground with her blades at the ready.

“Co…cough cough…” Wu watched his hands became bruised and jammed into the ground as he tried to maintain the Void Domain projection, but Alina’s brutal attacks had left him nearly knocked out. Sensing her powers return, Alina created a sharp white claw around her hand before it clashed against Shadow’s own dark blades.

“Alina! Wake up!” Shadow leaned her head forward, her purple eyes welling with tears, “Wake up! You idiot!”

Hearing Shadow’s cry, Alina’s body shook slightly before the red glows in her eyes flickered slightly. However, the darkness returned quickly as Alina cycled her feet and pressed into the ground, moving Shadow back before she lunged forward and sent the claws straight through Shadow’s stomach.

“NO!” Icy and Wu both shouted when Shadow bit into her lips to distract the pain and reached for Alina's shoulders , joining their Wave together. Then...everything started to feel so incredibly strange.

When Shadow first uncovered her ability to hide in the darkness, she felt her body drawn towards it. A certain attraction that she couldn’t explain, and when she entered, she felt surrounded by a soothing coolness.

When she placed her hands around Alina’s shoulders and joined with her Wave, she felt the same kind of attraction. The same kind of darkness inside her Wave that draws Shaow to it.

She wondered what’s really hiding in there.

“Here…I come.” With blood rushing out of her gut and mouth, Shadow followed through with her sensations, allowing that strange attraction to take her all the way through, as the Wave wills it.

Suddenly, she felt herself surrounded by the same cool again. She was standing in the middle of a corridor that looked vaguely familiar with the dark colors of the stones, the cool harsh white from the lighting Casts, and the occasional strange sounds that echoed through maze-like twists and turns.

This…this was the Valkyrie’s training facility. But why is it here? Where is she even?

She rubbed her fingers along the wall and felt for its roughness. Then, she walked pasta window with bars installed within to prevent anyone from escaping.

She looked outside, and there was nothing but darkness, and when she reached out and pushed, the darkness pushed back against her.

“I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU!”

A heart-wrenching scream exploded from the end of the corridor, and Shadow instinctively sought out the closest Shadow. However, there was none. In fact, the reason behind the uneasy feeling in her head ever since she got here was that there was no shadow anywhere in the corridor.

Well, no shadow beside her.

With her hastened footsteps, Shadow ran towards the end of the corridor, but there was only a single layered wall.

“LET GO OF ME!”

The same familiar scream came from beyond the walls, yet it sounded as clear as words spoken next to her ear, and Shadow slammed her fist straight into it. There was a loud crunch of the bones of her hands, but there was no pain.

How intriguing. Shadow scratched her stomach, but there was nothing there. She looked down, and a bloodless hole simply existed around her stomach where Alina had just tore through.

“Damn it, Alina.” Shadow murmured when the screams returned. With her hands raised, Shadow bashed it repeatedly into the wall until one of the rocks suddenly came loose, and she mushed her fingers in, sliding that brick back and creating a small hole to look through.

On the other side was an even brighter lit room with a group of men wearing white robes standidng around a shiny metallic table, and they all shared the same appearance with a white veil covering their faces. Then, in the middle of it all was Alina.

“ALINA!” Shadow shouted, digging through the rocks before forcing herself through when all of the men in the room turned to look at her, and red glows around their eyes pierced through the white veil and became the only facial features that she coudl see.

“HELP ME! HELP ME! I…I CAN’T SEE!” Alina shouted when Shadow slipped into the room. The men all rushed towards Shadow, and she tore off the broken bits of her hand, using the sharp edges of her bone as a weapon before she stabbed each and every one of those men to death while swinging her dark blades with the other hand

They looked like Caligo, but they don’t fight like him. With every one of them killed, the red glows in their eyes gradually weakened one after another.

Then, shoving back the last figure of Caligo as he dissolved into white fluids that slowly drained through the floor and disappeared from Alina’s mindscape, Shadow then walked towards the girl tied to a table.

She was young and skinny, and her eyes were covered by a bandage while her arms and legs were tied to the corners of the table. She had bruises all over her naked body, and she was shaking with fear.

“Who could have known that bones make such great weapons…” Shadow chuckled before slicing up the ropes tying down the young Alina and hugged her useful arm around Alina, “Everything is fine now, Alina.”

“Who…who are you?” The young Alina asked.

“My name is Shadow, and I am a…shit Valkyrie, ready to save you.” Shadow smiled, as Alina rested her weight in her arms.

“How are you here?” Alina asked, but her voice slowly lowered and thickened until it sounded like the mature Alina that Shadow hated so much. At the same time, the weight in Shadow's arms gradually became greater and greater.

“I…don’t know what is happening, I don’t know how I have done this…But throughout my entire existence, I had always been attracted to darkness, and I simply found it in you…A place of darkness.”

“I…don’t understand.” Alina looked around as the outline of the room started to fade away slowly, “W…how am I here…how is all of this happening?”

“You idiot.” Shadow sighed, “For all of the good you tried to do for the Valkyries, you really couldn’t say no to Caligo, right?”

“Shit...I…suppose you are right.” Alina held onto her face, “But…thisis something different, it felt like…he’s no longer here.”

“Well, you are welcome, you idiot.” Shadow glanced around as the whiteness of the lights started to swallow everything around her, “I suppose when the darkness inside of you clears away, I can no longer stay here.”

"What..do you mean...? What..."

Alina found herself sitting down on the cold surface of the stage as her eyes were unfocused.

“Shadow!” Wu’s shout ripped her away from her dazed state, and she blinked a few times before sensing the watery fluids around her fingers.

She turned her head slowly, and she saw Shadow lying in a pool of blood next to her.

“Finally…you are back…you big...skinny...overly tall...idiot…” Shadow grumbled, her voice weak and barely audible through the air escaping her mouth.

“Shadow…your..What happened?!” Alina looked up at her bloody hands as she slowly started to back away and shake her head, "No...no..."

“Cough…you weren’t the strongest Valkyrie for nothing…” Shadow chuckled and coughed at the same time when Wu tried to cover the hole in her stomach, but she pushed him aside before reaching towards Alina.

However, Alina had no words.

Once again, she let Caligo took advantage of her and take control of her body, and once again, she let that weakness of hers lead to people she cared about being hurt.

Alina bit onto her lips, hoping that the pain will serve as her punishment, but instead, her sins will stay with her soul for far longer.

“You said…you will be content with just being a Valkyrie general…you said, you will be content being told what you should do…” Shadow murmured, “Is that still true?”

Alina shook her head so hard that her tears detached themselves from her eyes, and she leaned into Shadow as the later grasped onto her fingers.

“You said you will protect me…but I guess I get to save you in the end…” Shadow smiled, “Wu…remember my wish for helping you?”

“Yes.” Wu said, his body slouched over as he held onto Shadow’s shoulders.

“I…I wanted to kill Alina for my wish…” Shadow said, “But…she’s just so helpless without me…you see…beat her up for me if she gets controlled again, okay?”

“Yes. I will.” Wu swallowed hard when Shadow smiled as the light slowly faded from her purple eyes.

Icy and Wu knelt beside Shadow’s body while Alina fell into a deathly silence while holding Shadow's body.

Then, Icy felt a surge of power from besides her as Alina rose to her feet with Wave flooding out from her body in all directions.

“Let’s finish this.” Alina said, drawing a pair of bloody red lines over her eyes that followed the same scars that Shadow had from that night, “I will not be blinded ever again.”