The Christmas lights still twinkled, cheerful music drifted from the shops, yet chaos reigned in the streets of the southwest district.
Car alarms blared, people screamed, and behind them, a building, practically sheared in half, tilted precariously before collapsing to the ground.
The falling debris cast a long shadow, and several children, clutching Christmas presents, stood frozen in fear, unable to move as the collapsing wall loomed over them.
The children closed their eyes, bracing for the inevitable, when a figure flashed past.
"Run!" a girl's voice shouted, followed by a deafening crash.
A cloud of snow and dust erupted from the collapsing building, obscuring everything.
When the dust settled, the children's cries echoed through the streets, but the girl who had saved them was nowhere to be seen.
The casualties on this festive Christmas day were unimaginable, the streets filled with the cries of the injured and dying.
Worse, as people attempted to rescue the fallen, the seemingly lifeless bodies began to rise. The corpses, their movements jerky and unnatural, attacked their would-be rescuers.
Ren, arriving at the scene, immediately recognized the signs of zombification. The illusion's assimilation had only overwritten his memories of reality, not his knowledge of Honkai.
"But how can there be zombies here? The First Eruption isn't supposed to happen yet."
In his fragmented memories, the eruption wasn't due for another week.
Although this wasn't on the scale of the First Eruption, it was undoubtedly a Honkai incident.
Fueled by the Honkai energy, more and more zombies emerged from the debris, attacking the survivors. People abandoned their rescue efforts, fleeing the area in terror.
What disturbed Ren even more was that the epicenter of the eruption seemed to be where Kiana had been.
The first-aid kit fell from his grasp, scattering its contents across the ground. Ren kicked through a shop window, grabbing a ribbon-wrapped baseball bat from beneath a Christmas tree, pushing his way against the tide of fleeing people towards the disaster zone.
"Kiana," he muttered, a flicker of panic in his eyes. The illusion's assimilation had deepened, and he was instinctively treating this world as reality.
If Kiana died here, it was something he couldn't accept.
Driven by this thought, Ren swung the bat mercilessly, shoving aside anyone who blocked his path.
Finally, breaking through the crowd, he saw only a horde of zombies.
"Kiana!" he shouted, hoping for a response, but only the zombies' groans echoed through the streets.
"Get out of my way!" He smashed a zombie's head with the bat, quickly recalling the map of the southwest district. This was the outer edge of the eruption; Kiana had been a block away.
But the eruption had spread across several blocks, and their safehouse was practically at the center.
Without hesitation, Ren climbed over the debris, heading towards the epicenter.
The closer he got, the more zombies he encountered, the ground littered with corpses.
Seeing this, Ren's heart sank. Fortunately, he didn't see Kiana among the dead, a flicker of hope remaining.
Kiana was just an ordinary girl now, her resistance to Honkai energy no different from any other human.
Please be safe.
But fate was cruel. Just as Ren reached the epicenter, a surge of energy erupted like a volcano.
The terrifying Honkai energy flattened the entire block. Ren's vision went black, and he lost consciousness.
He didn't know how long he was out, but when he finally woke up, struggling to sit up, he saw only a massive crater and the shredded remains of countless zombies.
Ren stared blankly, his mind a void.
Crack.
It felt like an invisible chain had snapped.
Within his mindscape, Ren's consciousness, jolted awake, broke through the shackles of the 300,000 wills. The illusion's influence began to recede.
Memories of reality, suppressed for more than ten days, flooded back, restoring his sense of self.
"This is… an illusion."
…
Realizing he had been influenced by the illusion, Ren quickly regained his composure. "No, she's a smart girl. She wouldn't die so easily."
Perhaps his concern had clouded his judgment, making him forget that both the Kiana of his memories and the real Kiana possessed far greater knowledge of Honkai than ordinary people. Even without her Valkyrie powers, she would know how to survive.
She couldn't have died so easily.
Driven by this belief, Ren used the bat to support himself as he stood, ignoring the lingering Honkai radiation, and slowly made his way towards the center of the eruption.
The ground was a crater, but strangely, something remained in the center, untouched by the blast.
"Is that… the snow globe?"
Looking at the two miniature figures inside, Ren froze. He remembered placing the gift in Kiana's hand; he couldn't be mistaken.
But why?
Setting aside how the snow globe had survived the eruption, if it was here, where was Kiana?
He gently touched the glass, a sharp pain stinging his fingertip.
He pulled back his hand, his finger now covered in fine cracks.
Honkai fractures.
The snow globe was radiating Honkai energy…
Perhaps it was this energy that had shielded it from the blast.
But what if the eruption itself had been caused by the snow globe?
The moment the thought surfaced, it spread through his mind like wildfire.
Ren stared at the snow globe, a hazy memory flashing through his mind.
The night of the attack, when Istvan had set fire to the cabin…
The energy he had sensed while unconscious… was it Honkai energy?
If the Honkai energy on the snow globe came from Kiana, then the culprit behind this eruption was obvious.
"Kiana…" For the first time, doubt clouded Ren's mind.