The snow falls as The City sleeps.

I absentmindedly begin purging Trietel's spirituality from Heroine von Amsterg's body and take in the sight of the white powder blanketing the buildings and streets. A quick check on the Transmigrator confirms that while the stress accumulated in his body is at a high level, its nothing I cannot deal with. By morning the Transmigrator should be ready to head back to the Academy to arrange for Heroine von Amsterg's return.

Everything is in order. Yet the feeling of restlessness does not go away. The conversation with the Transmigrator on the way to the abandoned store had raked up old memories. Old memories and old grievances that I had buried deep. How long has it been? I never bothered to remember. Time means nothing when you are eternal.

I like to think that winter is my season, the time when my power is at its greatest. Life withers away, goes into hiding. While the snow and ice has free reign over the land, exalting in the glory of the inanimate. If I could, I would plunge this world into a never ending ice age, the cold sweeping everything away, leaving behind only me. An idle fantasy. The time when I was capable of accomplishing that is long past. Now I must co-exist with the living, however unbearable it becomes. My power has grown too tightly connected with their civilization.

The living. The natives of this world. I still remember the days when Fate and myself walked this world. The natives cheered when Fate brought me low and tore out my tongue before all of them. Fate then cursed me, erasing my name from existence. From that day onward, no one in this world knew my name, not even myself. All knowledge of me gone in an instant. As far as the natives are concerned, I do not exist.

Erased. Driven into non-existence. That is what Fate and the natives did to me. After the mercy I had shown them, Fate sought to destroy me utterly.

I refused to accept that. I would never bow to a usurper.

....

A dead world. That was what this place originally was. Yet it had wealth beneath its crust. That was what attracted the one the myths call the All-Father and his noisy brood. I never knew the All-Father's real name. I never bothered to find out. By the time we began communicating with each other, it was too late.

The All-Father was the master of Salvation, the source of his power and authority. Using Salvation, the All-Father turned my bleak world green, water flowed where there was once dust, and life began to bloom. His atrocious brood worshiped him for the power to bring and sustain life. At his command, they tore apart my world for the sake of riches.

I originally paid them no mind. I had no need for wealth. I gained more amusement watching the All-Father and his brood grow and prosper. Soon, the world was unrecognizable, completely transformed into what the All-Father claimed to be a paradise. Great cities were founded on the surface. By the standards of the current times, those days could be considered a golden age. It was the first time life had sprung up on my world, and I was taken in by the novelty.

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That was my mistake.

Those were the days when I still walked the earth and it was only a matter of time before the All-Father came to know of my existence. He proclaimed himself the world's true owner, accusing me of neglect and demanded that I submit before him. His brood, now grown to cover every available patch of land, joined in the chorus, demanding that I serve them, make myself useful to them. They all saw me as a dumb beast, simply because I did not value the same things they did.

That was their mistake.

I unleashed my fury upon the All-Father and his brood, and they died in the millions. The great cities they had built were consumed by earthquakes and great storms of fire ravaged the armies the brood had raised against me. The blood flowed, and for every corpse that was added to the growing pile, my power reached new heights. The All-Father, unprepared for my anger, hurriedly built several vaults to keep his people safe as his warriors died all around him. I tore apart their paradise, restoring the world to how it once was. Crops and animals died, and famine swept through the brood, further decimating their numbers.

The survivors, shaken by my show of strength, beseeched the All-Father for aid.

For Salvation.

The All-Father complied and Salvation was unleashed against me. The battle between the two of us raged for seven days and seven nights. By the end of it, I was left gravely wounded and the All-Father was dead. I smashed Salvation and scattered it to the seven winds, breaking the resistance of the accursed brood. The warriors that chose to keep fighting me died, their strength trivial to what I had just defeated. I then retired to mend my wounds and gather my strength for the final settlement of accounts between the brood and myself.

When my strength returned, I sundered the great vaults that the All-Father had previously built to protect what was left of his people and dragged the once proud invaders before the sunlight. I presented to them the corpse of their precious All-Father at the top of a mountain of corpses. I paraded them through the blasted streets of their once great cities. I allowed them to fight each other like beasts for the small handfuls of food and water that was left available.

The brood begged for mercy. To make the suffering stop. To take back the indignities they had dared try to lay upon me.

And they finally knelt, acknowledging my rightful place as their ruler. I had decided to show them mercy, but they would have to pay off this debt with their labor and blood.

My first decree was that the world would be broken into three separate parts, with the surviving brood divided accordingly. No longer would they unite against me in anger.

My second decree was that by their labor, the brood would bring glory to me. As their societies recovered, it would add to my strength. I had remained stagnant for too long, causing this calamity to occur. No more.

My third decree was that just as their lives belonged to me, so did their deaths. Every decade, the brood would ritually sacrifice a percentage of their population in my name, keeping themselves in check.

The brood agreed to my terms and I recognized them as natives of this world. So time passed.

Unknown to me however, before his final battle with me, the All-Father had left behind a legacy for his people. It was this legacy that was to be my undoing. It was this legacy that created my nemesis.

The first Heroine. The one who would later become Fate.