Chapter 1: The Day I Lost My Power ①

— This is the story of three years ago. The day I lost everything.

The sky was crying. That was what I thought.

Every time the black rain struck my cheeks, something inside me made a sound like cracking.

A century ago, a disaster had half-destroyed the world. Now it was falling again — localized, but falling. They said the Black Rain stopped after a hundred days. We didn’t have a hundred days to spare.

My name is Zerovalt. Twelve years old, assigned to Academia’s lower school, and a Xenograph mage.

Xenograph. The name for those descended from survivors of the Black Rain — people who carried Magia Transistors inside their bodies and used them to cast Magiacraft. Our purpose was to fight the magic beasts that crawled out of the Pillars of Hell and hold the line of what remained of human territory.

Not that I was anything special. Middle of the pack, if I were being generous.

And yet there I was, standing on a battlefield.

“Zero. You don’t have time to space out.”

I turned. A girl stood there — silver hair streaked with red.

Lunamiris. Luna, for short. My childhood friend is the team captain for this operation. Her hair was soaked through, and her eyes held a resolve that had no business being in a twelve-year-old’s face.

“I know.”

“Then move. Our target is 《Babel Thirteen》. Take down that pillar, and we cut off the source of every beast in this sector.”

Where she pointed, a massive structure reared up through the black sky — a Pillar of Hell, one of the largest. Red light pulsed across its obsidian surface like a heartbeat, radiating an obscenely alive energy.

Lower school students had no business being out here. But the Black Rain — a phenomenon that came every few decades at best — had ground every rule like that into nothing. They sent the promising ones first. More than a few of my classmates hadn’t come back.

“Zero-kun… you’re okay, right…?”

A small voice at my back. I turned to find a tall girl watching me with anxious eyes, her black hair gleaming even through the rain.

Nephiliza. Nephi. She towered over everyone our age — a full two heads taller than me. For all her size, she was a coward. Genuinely, deeply timid.

She’d been in the same dropout class as me when we first enrolled. Not anymore. All those hours of training together had made her someone I trusted at my back without thinking about it.

“Yeah. Fine, Nephi.”

“…Okay. If you say so… I believe you.”

She nodded like that actually helped, then immediately pressed herself against my back and stayed there. Luna always called her a big small animal. I thought that summed it up.

“Zerovalt-sama.”

A flat, even voice. A girl stepped forward — soft pink hair tied in half-twintails.

Rizeletta. Rize. Soft droopy eyes, the whole laid-back gyaru aesthetic — except her eyes never held anything in them. Not then, not ever.

“Final confirmation. Vanguard: myself and Zerovalt-sama. Skirmisher: Luna-sama. Rear guard: Nephi-sama. Is this arrangement acceptable?”

“Yeah, works for me. Luna?”

“No objections.”

Rize looked even blanker than she sounded. People called her cold all the time, and she never corrected them. But it wasn’t that she didn’t feel things — she just couldn’t get them to the surface. I knew better than anyone how much she actually cared about the people around her.

The four of us, Xenographs all. Luna raised her bow.

“Move out. Everyone comes back alive. That’s an order.”

We ran into the black rain.

I didn’t yet know what that day would cost me.

The closer we got to Babel Thirteen, the more beasts there were.

“Three on the left!”

Rize’s blade was already moving before Luna finished.

“Going in — 《Red Flash》!”

The incantation came out as flat as her voice. A cherry-blossom slash cut two of them in half. The third took Luna’s arrow through the chest.

“Mine — 《Argent Arrow》!”

The coordination was flawless. We’d been through enough close calls together that we didn’t need words for it.

“Zero-kun, behind you—!”

I spun on Nephi’s warning, channeled mana into my saber, and released it in the same motion.

“— 《Azurite Saber》!”

A spell I’d once struggled to aim at all cut straight through exactly where I needed it to.

“Nice, Zero-kun…!”

“That’s your training. We worked for that.”

“T-That’s not… ehehe…”

She went red and looked away. Compliments still hadn’t gotten easier for her.

We fought our way forward and reached the base of Babel Thirteen. Up close, the pillar was worse than I’d imagined. Every pulse of that red light made the air itself feel wrong.

“Destroy this, and we’re done. Rize, ready?”

“Yes. Whenever you are.”

Rize raised both hands and began weaving the Magiacraft that would bring the pillar down. Almost there. Just a little more, and this would be over.

That was when it happened.

Something crawled out of the pillar.

White wings. A human shape. Beautiful in a way that felt like a violation of the word. It wore the form of an angel, but something fundamental had broken in the making.

“A beast — an Angelus-type—!?”

Luna’s voice cracked on the word. This was nothing like anything we’d been fighting. Something like this was supposed to be handled by upper-rank Xenographs.

“Stay calm! Don’t break formation!”

Luna nocked an arrow. Nephi and Rize fanned out on either side.

“Nephi, take the front!”

“Got it—!”

Nephi was a coward right up until the fighting started. Then something clicked. She gripped her weighted staff and charged first.

“— 《Noir Hammer》…!”

The blow from her height dug into the Angelus’s footing. Luna didn’t miss the half-second it took to stagger.

“— 《Selene Pierce》!”

A silver-coated arrow punched through its left wing. White feathers scattered. The Angelus made a sound like pain.

“It’s working—!”

“Press it!”

Rize’s blade took the right wing. Nephi’s staff hammered the body. The Angelus dropped to one knee. Something that should have looked divine was coming apart right before our eyes.

“We’ve got it—!”

I channeled mana into my saber and assembled the follow-up. Four of us, coordination intact — we could finish this. I was sure of it.

“Zero, now!”

Luna’s signal. I let everything I had go.

“— 《Azurite Vulture》!”

Blue light punched through the Angelus’s chest.

“We got it—!”

Nephi started to cheer.

The Angelus smiled.

“—!?”

That human-shaped mouth curved into a crescent. Light poured from its ruined body — brilliant and enormous.

“Get back — !”

Luna’s warning didn’t make it.

Light. Pure and lethal. It burst outward in every direction, and it swallowed everyone but me.

“Kyah—!”

“Ngh—!”

“Wha — what is—!”

When it cleared, all three of them were nailed to the ground. Spikes of light — Magiacraft that drove through limbs and pinned them there like insects.

I thought we had it cornered. I thought we’d won. And all of it had been exactly what the Angelus wanted.

“Luna! Nephi! Rize!”

I started toward them and stopped. The Angelus’s eyes were locked on me. One wrong move and I was dead.

“Zerovalt. Do you copy?”

The comm in my ear. Headquarters.

“The Angelus-type is depleted. We can finish it with an aerial support strike — coordinates are already locked in. You are to retreat immediately. I repeat, retreat.”

Translation: run. Leave the three of them behind.

“A partial loss is better than a total one. This is an order, Zerovalt.”

The line went dead.

I looked at them. Pinned through with light, faces twisted in pain — and they’d heard every word.

“Zero. Run. Please.”

“Luna…”

“Don’t worry about me. Just — live.”

She said my name with blood on her lips. My childhood friend. The person who’d been beside me longer than anyone. Telling me to run.

“…Zero-kun, I… being with you… It made me so happy…”

“Nephi…”

“So please… run…”

She was crying and still trying to smile through it. The same girl who was scared of everything, holding herself together for my sake.

“Zerovalt-sama. Please go.”

“Rize…”

“This life was already forfeit the moment I stepped onto the battlefield. If it can be spent so that Zerovalt-sama survives — that is an honor.”

Her voice was steady. Like her own life was just a line item she was crossing off.

All three of them. Saying the same thing.

Run. Live. Just you, at least.

Their voices cut through the rain. Desperate. Real. I felt how much they meant every word of it, and it hurt.

And that was exactly why I couldn’t nod.

Luna. You were always the one closest to me.

Nephi. You faced your own weakness right alongside mine and came out stronger for it.

Rize. You trusted me. You let me in.

Leave them behind? Just survive?

Not a chance.

I drew a slow breath. Cold rain filled my lungs. My legs were shaking, and I held them still by force of will.

“…Sorry.”

I walked forward. Toward the Angelus. One step, then another.

“That’s not something I can do.”

“Zero! You idiot — what are you doing?!”

Luna screamed at my back. I kept walking.

“I’m a coward, you know.”

Something deep inside me was grinding and screaming — every Magia Transistor in my body protesting what I was about to do. Didn’t matter.

“There are a lot of things that scare me. Pain. Dying. Those both make the list.”

The Angelus raised its arm. Light gathered at its center. That next strike might kill me.

“But a world without the three of you in it? That scares me a hell of a lot more.”

If I were dying anyway, I might as well go down swinging.

“《Over Limit — Dead Mare Raise》…!”

Every Magia Transistor in my body fired at once. A forbidden Magiacraft — one that ripped through a load no one should ever be able to carry and converted it to mana by brute force. Blinding light poured off me from everywhere.

“■■■■■■!”

The Angelus roared and fired. Too slow. I was faster.

I drove every last drop of mana into my left arm and thrust it forward. The surge of lightning that tore out of me punched through the Angelus and obliterated it from the inside.

We won.

That was the last thought I had before the pain hit.

When I could think again, my left arm was gone from the elbow down, burned away as if it had never been there.

My left eye — where it should have been — was just heat. Searing, relentless heat.

Something hot ran down my cheek.

My knees gave out.

“Zero!”

The light-spikes were gone. All three of them came running. Their footsteps sounded very far away.

“No… no, no — Zero, Zero — no—!”

Luna collapsed beside me. Her voice had none of its sharpness. Just shaking, raw, unrecognizable.

“Z-Zero-kun… Zero-kun—!”

Nephi was sobbing. Her huge frame looked very small.

“Zerovalt-sama… why… why would you—!”

Rize was shouting. Rize, who never raised her voice, was falling apart.

I tried to smile. Tried to say I was fine.

My voice wouldn’t come. Consciousness was going.

The last thing I saw, through half the vision I had left, was the three of them crying.