Nagisa stood at the edge of the hole, looking down into the abyss below her. She didn't know how deep it was or what was down there, and she didn't care. All she cared about right now was that it had taken with it almost forty square feet of the field, and all the crops that were growing there. It wasn't by any means a large area of the field, but it was an annoyance. Worse, she couldn't run the harvester near it. A major annoyance.

Kicking some dirt over the edge, she stormed back to the house she'd lived in now for almost fifteen years. She would have to call someone to help repair the hole, but she didn't even know where to start looking for someone to fix this. Stomping through the door, several small children scampered out of her way as she made her way to the communication line. She'd always called it a phone, and while Erman hadn't quite picked up on it yet, the kids had. She stopped in front of the phone, glancing back across the living room where five children were in various states of play.

The oldest noticed her and walked over. "Mama, is something wrong?"

She shook her head, quickly ruffling the ten-year-old's hair. "No, Saya, it's okay. Just stay inside for now."

As Nagisa watched the girl head back to the others, she briefly remembered someone else. A little girl much like this one. Her first daughter, way back... she shook her head. She couldn't even comprehend how long it must have been since her little Mami died, hopefully old and happy. Nagisa had no way to know how she'd lived once her mother was taken from her, taken across the universe for billions of years. Doubtless, if humanity was even still around, they'd changed to be unrecognizable. But now, in some way, there was a future for Humanity.

Nagisa had always thought that, after naming her firstborn Mami, she would name any other children after her other friends. Saya, Kyo, Madoka... after that, she hadn't really been sure. Her third and fourth being boys kept her from having to decide on another girl name for now, but she didn't think it would be long before another was on the way. She'd have to just make it up next time. Perhaps a name like Hitomi, or Homura. She couldn't reuse Mami, she couldn't just give that name to another child. She only had one daughter with that name, and that would never change. This was all things she'd had plenty of time to come to terms with by now.

Erman walked down from upstairs, slowing to a stop on the bottom step when he saw her. "Nagisa." She looked up at him, and he smiled. "You look like you were far away for a moment."

She found herself suddenly staring at the floor. "Yeah... I kinda was."

Putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a little squeeze, he stepped to her side and lowered his voice. "If you need to, you can tell me where you were."

She wasn't entirely sure they were operating on the same understanding of being 'far away', but she shook her head either way. "No..." Snapping back, she picked up the phone. "I need to see if I can find someone who can fix that hole in the field. It's a hazard for the children, and the harvester can't get past it safely." After saying that, she just stood there doing nothing for several seconds.

Erman felt prompted to ask, when he realized she wasn't actually moving to follow through on her claim. "Who are you going to contact?"

"Yeah, I don't... I don't even know. It's pretty deep, do we just put a plate over it and cover it with more soil? Do we need to do more than that? Who even fixes this kind of thing?"

He put his hand on the phone, not yet taking it from her, but showing that it was his intention. "Let me take care of it. There are some people who might be able to help, but it could take a few days to get them out here. You just focus on keeping the children away from it."

"Okay..." She relented, letting him take the phone away from her.

Leaving him to make the calls, she went back into the room where the children were playing. Her children. She let out a deep breath, calming herself. This was normal now. It took her five years at first to come to terms with the fact that the others must have left her behind somehow. She couldn't blame them. The amount of hell and high water they would go through to find her was hard to measure, so if they weren't here yet then she must be trapped in a place they could not find. After she'd come to that realization, there wasn't anything left for her to do. If they couldn't get to her, then she couldn't get to them any better. There was no use falling into depression over it.

And so she'd turned to a new life. For the past ten years, she'd lived as though there was no way to return to the others. It had served her well to think that she wouldn't see them ever again, making it easier to live this life. Every year without a single sign of them gave her more confidence that her life in this strange world was going to last. She couldn't imagine any way that it could end now. She was stuck here, but she was okay with that. It was a good place to be stuck. For however long she would live.

There came a point, somewhere along the line. A point where Nagisa had started to wonder how long she would live. She wasn't entirely sure when it happened, but it was some point after her oldest daughter had gotten married, and before Erman started being unable to tend the farm himself. All this was normal, but something she had noticed was not normal was that she was not aging. She understood why, but it left her wondering when she would, if she would at all. Was she destined to stay here forever, watching generations pass before her? She wasn't so fond of that future.

Occasionally, she would wander into the city, such as it was, to see what records she could find of this world's creation. All she had ever found were theories, and a few old religions that postulated there had once been a universe outside the world. Those had all fallen out of favor countless generations ago. But there was one thing that stood out from all the others. A single passage in a translation of an ancient religious text that mentioned something outside. She'd seen the outside universe mentioned a few times before, but this was unique in the mention of something in particular that was outside. Unfortunately, it did not sound like any of the others, as it was described as a red mass that tirelessly strove to break into the world and steal all its life. A ravenous evil. That didn't do much to encourage her attempts at escaping.

Years had turned to decades. Nagisa now spent days at a time sitting out in the field, her mind wandering across everything she knew about this place, trying to find anything she'd missed. She was vaguely aware that Saya's granddaughter was getting married in a few days. She would be there, of course, but it wasn't like anyone would recognize who she was. Her family lived across the world now, and many of her grandchildren hadn't seen her since they were very young. Most of their children probably didn't realize she was alive. Of course, Erman had grown very old, as Nagisa counted down the few remaining years before she'd spent a century here. She wasn't at the point of wishing she would die, but she certainly wished she wasn't immortal. She hoped so.

"Mama?"

Nagisa looked over her shoulder. It always sent a pain through her to see her child look so old. Kyo's husband had died several years ago, and her children were all grown up, so she'd moved back with her parents. Mostly, she was the one who cared for Erman in his advanced age. The poor girl was nearly eighty, and it showed. Nagisa didn't want to know what Kyo was thinking when she saw her own mother appearing just as young as she did when Kyo was born.

"Yes?"

"He... he's gone."

So that was it, then. "I... I understand."

As Kyo went back into the house to prepare, Nagisa took her time to grieve. It had been a very long time, and she'd been grateful for it. But this time was bound to come. Kyo would be leaving to go live with Saya now, which they'd agreed on, and Nagisa would be left here in the same old farm house she'd lived in for almost a hundred years. There would be someone by later in the day to clean up, but that was all. Then she'd be alone, and she didn't know for how long. She waited until Kyo had left before standing up and walking out of the field to stand in the driveway that led up to her house. One hundred and fourteen years was a long life for anyone, but it would always end. For her, however, she saw that it would be far too long before she could finally rest for good.

She didn't want to go back in there while he was still there, but she knew it would be worse to go into an empty house with no one else in it. She didn't want to be alone. Several hours were spent standing, or sitting, in the driveway, trying to work up the courage to go back inside now that there was nothing left in the house. She had just managed to convince herself it was time to go in, and had walked up to the front porch, placing her foot on the first step, when the ground started shaking.

Nagisa took a step back. She wobbled a bit, trying to keep her footing as the world around her began to shake violently. The hole in the field fell open again, for the first time in eighty years. Roof tiles tumbled off the house, and she could hear things inside hitting the floor and shattering. She'd felt these four or five times since she'd awakened in this world, but this one was already the worst. And it was growing stronger.

Her eyes went wide as she watched the hole in the field start to grow, collapsing into a cavernous ravine. The house listed to the side, breaking in half and tumbling into the abyss. Far beyond the house, she could see a tear growing along the sky as the entire dome fell apart. Debris crashed to the ground in the distance, giant metal frames that held the world together smashing their way through to the hollow spaces below the fields.

This couldn't be happening. "No..." Why now of all times? "No, no, please." Everything was crumbling away. "Please no!"

"Yes!"

The voice was like a thousand screams of pain. One blood-red tentacle squirmed its way into sight from under where the house had been a moment before, squirming its way over and flattening the crops that were still standing. A bulbous mass pushed its way into the open air, teeth and eyes dripping with horrific ooze. It towered over her, reaching up and tearing more of the sky down with its tendrils, bathing in the chaos and destruction it was causing. Then its many eyes turned and fixed on Nagisa.

"A snack for Uvhash." A tentacle began to reach out towards her. "Come here, morsel."

Mere inches from grabbing hold of her, the tentacle stopped moving, severed from its master by an enormous steel blade. Chipped and marred, broken from countless battles lost, the sword held strong in this moment. And Oktavia von Seckendorff floated in the air between Nagisa and the Blood Mad God of the Void.

"YOU HAVEN'T KILLED ME YET, MONSTER!"