Then, even nothingness was not, nor existence.

There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.

What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?

Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?

- The Rig Veda

Homura fell from heaven, screaming an unheard plea to a fool about to make a deal with the devil.

Her vision clouded, dazed from the Walpurgis's blast, but she could still make out a saccharine-pink sparkle in the distance, that sick color of damnation that haunted her thoughts and her dreams. Once again she failed Madoka. Once again, her wish went unfulfilled – Homura couldn't protect her… friend from the predations of that monstrous rat, couldn't save her from the grim fate assigned by a cold, dying universe. Wind whipping through her black locks, Homura composed herself as she descended. Despair was death. Despair was the first step towards oblivion without Madoka. She fought the bubbling curses that churned in her heart, felt cracks in her exhausted soul-diamond mend through sheer force of will. Iron walls of unbreakable resolve smothered the beast clawing for release from her phylactery - and as the moment passed, she turned to matters at hand.

The embryonic witch grit her teeth and shut her eyes as she prepared another leap to the sixteenth of March. Another chance to find redemption and honor her promise. As always, the gears embedded into her time-targe spun and – ground to a shuddering halt.

Something was desperately wrong.

Homura continued to fall, plunging into the sea. She struggled to surface from the pitch-black waters, yet her body refused to obey the commands of her mind. Water flooded her nostrils, her lungs, her eardrums, and the corners of her sight grew hazy, before the lich-body finally lost consciousness beneath turbulent waves.

"So much to do, so little time…" whispered a voice from the darkness.

Homura's eyelids fluttered open. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.

This wasn't the hospital.

"W-wha…"

The Puella Magi took stock of her surroundings.

All around was empty void, but she lay on top of an odd surface that had the texture and color of stained glass. Homura blinked as she peered across the edge of a round platform. She stretched out, rising to her feet. Everything was in order. The pillar she stood upon had a rather curious mosaic design embedded into the floor – an image of Mami Tomoe having a cup of tea met Homura's violet gaze. She swallowed as Homura recalled the final moments before she awoke in this place. "Am-Am I dead?" wondered the girl aloud. Curiosity quickly devolved to anger for a split second, but the Puella Magi caught herself in time. "No. No, I can't be dead. That would break the contract-"

"Take your time," interrupted the voice. It had an alien, detached quality to it, Homura thought-

Oh no.

"Incubator," roared Homura, "where am I? Show yourself, rat."

Homura tried to call forth her arsenal, reflexively drawing a nine-millimeter semi-automatic. But the magic would not obey and her she grasped dead air between her fingers. In horror, the girl realized her middle fingernail no longer bore the mark of the beast, that she no longer had the gift of the Puella Magi.

That she was, in all likelihood, dead.

Or worse.

Homura sniffed the air. She couldn't discern the wrong – for want of a better phrase – scent of twisted magic, so it seemed unlikely that this place was a witch barrier.

"I suppose I'm dreaming, then?"

The voice was silent for a moment, before it continued, this time with a subtle tone of command.

"Don't be afraid. The door is still shut. Now, step forward."

Homura stood in obstinate defiance. "Not until I learn what's going on. You're not Kyubey. Who are you? Where am I? I want answers."

"Ah," soothed the disembodied voice cryptically, "All will be explained in time. For now… know that your journey has yet to begin. And that Kaname Madoka may yet be saved."

Homura glared into the infinite darkness, before slapping herself mentally for the pointless gesture. She rose to her feet and took a step forward. Three stone pedestals emerged from the crystal floor, shattering thousands of delicate tiles. Above these materialized weapons. Antiquated weapons at first glance – a gnarled quarterstaff, a dented targe, and a sword with a tarnished silver blade lay abandoned beneath blankets of ageless dust.

"If you give it form… It will give you strength. Choose well."

Homura approached the collection and tested the brassy shield. In dimensions and weight it was identical to her weapon as a Puella Magi. Etched across the front were golden witch-runes that gave off a frozen glow in the formless void.

"The power of the guardian. Kindness to aid friends. A shield to repel all."

Homura tied the bronze targe to her left arm. Better to take what was familiar in this strange and sinister place.

"Your path is set," said the voice, "Now, what will you give up in exchange?"

"What?"

"Power has its price," was the only response.

She examined the remaining pedestals carefully. Always practical, the girl was drawn first to the sword. The edge was almost obsidian in color from an advanced degree of corrosion. Emblazoned into the pommel was an inscription: "The power of the warrior. Invincible courage. A sword of terrible destruction."

Homura's mind wandered to thoughts of Sayaka Miki, the naïve girl's steel and valor that conquered monstrous evil – even as her despair warped her soul into one of the abyssal things she vowed to destroy.

She hesitated to discard the blade, and so chose to inspect the staff. It was even less impressive than the sword; time had eaten away what was probably once a handsome finish, and carved into the shaft were faint letters.

"The power of the mystic. Inner strength. A staff of wonder and ruin."

Homura clenched a fist subconsciously. Miracles and magic were the reason she blundered about in the space-time continuum, grasping desperately for an exit from an endless labyrinth with grotesque horrors lurking in every corner. Even before unraveling the dark conspiracy that fueled the Soul Gems, Homura cared little for the "gift" of magic; cold lead and high explosives provided much more firepower than her meager spirit-bolts.

The moment she touched the staff, purple flames devoured the wood and left a residue of grey ash. The pedestals now vanished into a haze of white fog, before they vaporized and left gaping wounds in the mosaic. Tomoe Mami was now bereft of her head.

And then, a familiar… familiar leapt out of the floor, a squat, round minion whose "head" seemed to be composed of alternating concentric blue and white rings. It waddled towards Homura, who broke out into cold sweat. Familiars were spawned by witches, and she recalled this one was the child of Charlotte.

Suddenly, she stumbled as the fingers of her right hand wrapped around the hilt of a shining, golden sword. The weight of the weapon threw her off balance briefly. The sight of the yellow blade threw the Pyotr into a frenzy, and it leapt at the not-so-magical girl; Homura reflexively raised her shield to deflect the strike, as she did with so many other familiars across so many other time-lines. The force of the impact caused the familiar to bounce off and hit the floor with a dull thud, its spindly legs flailing helplessly about. Homura rushed six paces forward and ran the fallen monster through its bulls-eye.

"Well done, Akemi Homura," said the voice.

"You still haven't introduced yourself," grumbled Homura as she tested the balance of her new saber. Curiously, the pommel seemed to expand or shrink in response to her thoughts.

"You'll find out soon enough."

At that, the entire floor shattered, and once more Homura found herself falling into a bottomless void… which swiftly reorganized itself into a rather good approximation of the hospital ward Homura left every March 16th.

Gravity reversed its orientation.

Homura found herself somehow falling up and landing on a linoleum floor. She staggered to her feet, nauseous. Her weapons were gone.

She looked up. A hospital orderly in algae-green scrubs was waiting, clipboard and questionnaire in hand. The man handed off the package to a rather confused Homura, before retreating through the door in eerie silence.

Sterile ceiling lights flickered, then dimmed slightly.

"But first things first," spoke the voice. "The door won't open just yet. I need to know more about you."

So she was still dreaming. Or dead. Or something went wrong with space-time and she was in Hell.

Drat.

Homura looked at the paper in front of her. On it was a single question: What are you afraid of? She penned in a single word – "Nothing."

The letters vanished. Another question began to write itself on the blank sheet.

What do you want out of life? "To protect Madoka as she protected me."

This time, a response: Is that all? Truly? You're lying to yourself, you know.

Homura winced. "I'll be content if I can just have that wish fulfilled."

Fair enough. Last question – What's most important to you?

She scribbled in the kanji for Kaname Madoka.

The formless phantom whispered in her ears again. "You're not afraid of anything. You want to protect Kaname Madoka, the most precious thing in your heart. Your quest begins at midnight. Though your road will be fraught with peril, be true to yourself and you will see the light of the sun by the journey's end."

Homura snorted. "As if I expected anything less."

"The day you will open the door is both far off, and very near."

After a blink, the hospital disappeared. Homura found herself once more in the unreal dreamscape, standing atop another pillar, this one capped by a mosaic of Miki Sayaka. This design was more than a little twisted – her bottom half had been replaced by Oktavia von Seckendorff's ichthyoidal tail, and it was evident the blue-haired mermaid was… crying.

A swarm of Pyotrs clawed their way through the floor tiling, surrounding a defenseless Homura. They danced around her in a menacing gait, but did not move for the kill. The golden sword and brass shield now returned to Homura's side – she willed them into existence, much as she would her old arsenal – and once more the rotund beasts were upon her.

Homura fought with an inhuman precision tempered by thousands of years of hopeless war. She mastered the use of every mundane weapon in her endless repeats of time, from the crude .357 revolver favored by lowly street thugs, to laser-guided missiles that could dispense hundreds of explosive submunitions across a city block. She hadn't overlooked the use of melee weapons, either; the longsword beneath her fingertips behaved exactly like the katana she trained with to 4th-dan proficiency.

She butchered the familiars without pity or quarter, tearing a swath of destruction through the faceless horde. The golden blade was an instrument of her peerless physical form, itself an extension of her iron will and frozen heart. In the violence she found catharsis. Every slash, every thrust, every vicious cut expelled long suppressed hatred, overwhelming agony from seeing her friends die over and over and over. The sheer joy she took in slaughtering the hapless Pyotrs – no different than wheat beneath the sickle – gave her a chance to forget the despair that bubbled in her soul, to bury the memories of cradling a fallen Madoka in the twilight moments before the end of the world.

And then, all too soon, it was over.

She was alone on the platform, sweat trickling down her scalp and chest. Homura flipped her hair nonchalantly, reasserting her control over the black rage. All around her, the floor collapsed, their fragments levitating into the inky darkness. These rearranged themselves into a staircase of sorts. The bluish crystal shards began to shift color to an uncomfortably familiar pink.

Homura ascended them nonetheless.

Now she found herself on yet another circular platform, this one larger than the others. The floor design was patterned in the shape of Mahou Shoujo Kaname Madoka, her eyes closed and cradling a black cat.

Homura faltered for a moment.

"The closer you get to the light," said the voice quietly, "the darker your shadow will become."

Homura's superhuman senses detected a distant rumble, and she turned around. Her shadow on the tiles suddenly began to twist and scream, rising off the floor. Hideous floral patterns now dotted the terrifying shade, which assumed an unwelcome form.

Charlotte – the dessert witch – was manifest.

"But don't be afraid. Don't forget."

Homura sharpened her focus and brought her blade up to fighting position. She'd killed the monstrosity more times than she cared to count. In fact, she lost track somewhere around the forty-eighth. The only weakness of the witch was, if she recalled correctly –

The serpentine clown descended upon Homura, maw gaping wide. She threw herself to the side a split second before the teeth of the beast clamped shut, and stabbed hard at the flank of the abomination. The strike did no appreciable damage; it cut through misty fabric that gave no resistance to the sword and mended itself immediately after the incision was withdrawn. Homura needed to go for the head of the snake.

But the distraction was good enough. Homura shifted her weight and crouched down, while Charlotte unhinged her jaw once more and surged towards what she – it – thought was delicious cheese.

Homura had only one chance, one blow to decapitate the witch. She charged forward and struck high into the roof of Charlotte's mouth, the unconquered force of a human soul on fire behind the desperate thrust.

Time stopped.

"Don't forget. Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone.

But you are the one who will open the door…"

Homura's eyelids fluttered open.