"Daddy! No!"
Kiana ignored the myriad of warped screams that assaulted her from all angles as she walked down the pitch-black nothing. An array of different lights decorated her surroundings, each one shining like stars, and the closer she got to one, the more she was able to discern their shape.
Fragments.
Pieces.
They floated like iridescent gems in the nothing. Her only source of light but the source of her current annoyance. Each one carried a whisper, a voice that would get stronger the closer she came.
Some of them contained scenes she recognized, while others did not. Her boots clacked against this space as she continued moving forward. It was forward as far as she knew. There was no landmark to tell whether or not she had been moving forward, in a circle, or if she was simply walking in space.
"Mmm?" Kiana noticed a fragment floating before her. It made no noise yet she felt herself resonate with it strongly unlike the other fragments
"..." she gingerly reached out to touch it. As soon as her finger made contact with it, she suddenly found herself standing in a dark room.
Her eyes widened as she looked around. She took a step back, almost jumping when she heard the sound of her boots hitting tile. The lights overhead flickered and the numerous screens around her were all security feed. Dead bodies were in every shot.
"This is…"
"You… A child? They sent a child?"
Kiana turned to see an older man in a military uniform pressed against the wall. He had his hand on his side, putting pressure on an actively bleeding wound. His blood stained the floor, going all the way to his knocked-over computer chair, indicating that he had dragged himself to the wall.
Her eyes flitted to the small hooded figure standing before him. It did not take a genius for her to realize who this was and where she was.
"Yuri Glastovia…"
"Yuri Glastovia."
Her words synchronized perfectly with her younger self. But unlike her younger self, her voice did not contain the slight tremble that she knew her quarry had heard.
"You… have never done this before," the man said.
She watched as her younger self aimed Shamash at the man's head, trembling slightly as she did.
Kiana remembered that day. The first day she took that step into the darkness.
"Shut up!" her younger self said.
"To think they would employ a child to get rid of me… the current regime is weak," Yuri spat. He grunted with effort as he pushed himself off the floor. "I'll correct this… and after the reinforcements arrive and I kill you, I will find out who you are and kill everyone you love."
Her younger self stiffened and Kiana visibly watched her pull the trigger without hesitation. The aim was perfect. It struck him through the abdomen, tearing through his liver.
Yuri screamed and fell down once more, blood flowing profusely from his torso. "Gaahhk! You… little bitch! Do you think this is the end? Do you think you'll be safe from this just because I'm dead? My comrades will track you down. They will take everything from you before your eyes! And all for what… a few rubles? You better sleep with one eye open-"
He never finished his next sentence. A shot echoed through the empty hallway and he fell dead on the floor. A bullet hole was on his forehead, smoking from where Shamash's bullet had struck him.
"Haah… haah…" the younger Kiana stumbled. Her hood fell off, revealing her haggard face. There were a few bruises on her face but there was nothing too serious. Sweat poured down her forehead. She suddenly threw Shamash to the side and stumbled back, eyeing the corpse before her and all the other corpses on the camera.
The younger Kiana looked down at her shaky, bloodied hands. "No… I…"
Kiana watched as her younger self shook her head before vomiting onto the floor.
"Another memory…"
Kiana turned around, leaving her younger self and the corpse behind. She walked toward the door but stopped short of grabbing the handle when she heard flames.
"I have to…" her younger self said as she raised the blade.
Kiana closed her eyes and opened the door, stepping through it. That's right… that night… my first ever job…, she thought as she found herself in the black void once more.
"What else do you have to show me? Where the hell am I even going?" she muttered to herself as she kept walking forward.
"Hey, Master Inventor…!"
Kiana turned to see a fragment floating by her. The images inside it were laid bare for her to see.
A young boy with blonde hair and green eyes stood below a wall where a white-haired girl sat. She gave a bright smile that reminded Kiana of Cecilia.
"Do you want to join me on a quest?" she said.
The boy hesitated to reply and chose to stare at her in shock.
"Let's go save the world and make it a better place!"
Kiana smiled at the memory before moving past it.
"Witch!"
"Traitor!"
Another fragment flew by her, allowing her to see what was inside. The same girl she had seen not even a minute ago was now standing in the gallows. A look of resignation was etched on her face as several masked nuns tied a noose around her neck.
Kiana chose to ignore the memory and pressed forward. She ignored the horrible screams and the eldritch roars that came from the fragment. As she did so, Kiana failed to see a fragment in front of her and she walked into it.
"What the…?"
The sky was dark. Snow fell softly from the sky and coated the ground in a pure and pristine carpet of white fluff. The area was bathed in the soft amber glow of the street lamp that lined the pathway leading up to a massive set of white oak doors.
Kiana knew which memory this was. She knew where she was the moment she laid eyes upon the insignia of a sword with wings. This was the main manor of the House of Kaslana located in Germany. The House had relocated to Germany following the relocation of Schicksal Headquarters to the country.
"Please… I'll do anything…"
Kiana slowly turned her head, almost losing herself in the emotion of the memory, and turned to see herself.
She was kneeling in the snow, holding the Judgement of Shamash before her. It was stabbed into the ground. Behind her, she noticed a younger Ceci, wrapped in blankets.
Kiana watched silently and her eyes flitted over to the old man standing before her. He was unbearably ancient, even more so than Theresa. His long white hair cascaded down his back and was tied neatly at the very end. He wore a dark blue coat and a suit underneath. On his left hand were several rings, one of which bore the insignia for House Kaslana and he held a black cane. His ice-blue eyes looked down apathetically at her.
Her gaze turned to the young white-haired girl standing next to the man. Unlike the man, the girl looked at them with a mix of annoyance and curiosity. She wore a white coat with a black shirt underneath.
"Help you?" the old man said.
"Please! You're our family! Please help my sister!" the younger Kiana begged.
"That girl. Siegfried never told us of her and you claim to be of blood? Cecilia Schariac has been dead for a long time and you claim that she is her daughter. Give me a reason why I should save someone who is clearly not of my own blood?" the Kaslana Patriarch said.
"For two reasons, she is of our blood and because I am the current owner of the Judgement of Shamash. The Divine Key will not obey any of you but me and none of you can hope to survive its flames. You know that. I will offer my life to you," the younger Kiana said. "So please save my sister!"
Kiana knew what his answer was going to be. And she realized at that moment that she never knew she could love someone that much. Cecilia was all she had after their father died. She was her only color in Kiana's slowly darkening world.
And then, that same child grew up to become Kiana's whole world. She had to protect Cecilia.
Cecilia's violent coughing caught both of their attention. The smaller Kiana got up and sprinted to her, cradling her gently in her arms. Her eyes widened in horror when she noticed Cecilia burning up and coughing up small amounts of blood.
Kiana knew what was happening, however, her younger self did not. After their father had died, Cecilia had been stable in the few years they traveled to their family. Even with no response after numerous attempts to contact her family, Kiana had held out hope that at least Cecilia would be safe with them. However, what Kiana failed to account for was how Cecilia's body suffered a backlash from the abrupt awakening of the Herrscher inside her body.
The partially slumbering core had been devouring Cecilia alive from the inside out.
"Please, grandfather! Cousin! Save her! I promise I'll be useful to all of you! I've fought countless Honkai beasts and know all of their weaknesses! I can serve the house as the White Death if you want me to!
"I'll kill whoever you tell me to kill! If you want me to be the house slave, then I'll gladly crawl like a dog for all of you!" the younger Kiana begged as tears began to stream down her face.
She gently placed Cecilia on the ground and bowed deeply, touching her forehead to the cold, unforgiving pavement.
"Even if you tell me to kill myself right here and now, I'll do it! Just please… help us!" she frantically begged.
"Very well, I will help you," the old man said.
Kiana looked up, eyes wide with hope.
"But I will not help a bastard with unconfirmed lineage. That child will be nothing more than a stain to the prestige of our House and we will lose face in front of the Overseer and House Schariac. Therefore, Kiana Kaslana, as the possessor of the Judgement of Shamash, if you want me to save you, kill that girl right now," her grandfather said.
The young Kiana's eyes widened at his request.
"W- What? NO! This wasn't what I asked!" the young Kiana said, getting in front of Cecilia and glaring ferally at them.
"Your unsightly attachment to this bastard abomination you claim is your father and mother's cannot be tolerated. You are the daughter of the heir and therefore, my heir. That thing's existence cannot be tolerated. Do you think I cannot feel it? That child… is radiating Honkai energy. She will not last long even if I do decide to save her or worse yet, she will cascade so end her now.
"This is the mercy I will afford to the thing you call your sister," her grandfather said.
"I won't do it," her younger self said, grabbing Shamash. She pointed it at her grandfather, who stood there, unfazed by its flames.
"Very well then. However, I cannot allow you to leave with the Divine Key. Edelweiss, take the Divine Key from her," her grandfather said.
"Yes, grandfather," Edelweiss said.
She stepped forward, hand hovering over her sheathed blade.
"I'm sorry, Cousin Kiana but-"
"I won't let you take this from me. Dad left it to me… to protect her. And I won't let any of you touch her!" the younger Kiana's feral eyes glowed blue and she swung Shamash, engulfing the world in a brilliant orange light.
Kiana blinked when she found herself standing in the darkness once more.
After that moment, Kiana had taken Cecilia and Shamash and ran. They ran for days, avoiding the patrols of the Kaslana House and it was only by sheer luck that they ran into Doctor Einstein.
"Do I really only have bad memories?" she muttered to herself.
Kiana slapped her cheeks and shook her head.
"Hey! Voice! Where am I supposed to go? All I've been doing is wandering around this dark space!"Kiana yelled.
She received no response from the infinite blackness. Her jaw tightened and a look of anger and frustration appeared on her face. "Are you going to just let me wander around the void forever? Am I supposed to just look through my memories and the memories of people I don't know? What do you even want from me?"
Again, she received no response.
"Fine… then. I'll keep going. I'll find my way out," Kiana said.
Steeling her resolve, Kiana moved forward, walking past the countless floating crystals as she did.
"..."
It watched her as she moved. This girl was the fourth person to have made it this far down this space. Her progenitor was the first to have done so, followed by her father and her aunt, and finally her. In the thousands of years, since this family's line was established, it had watched countless of his line sacrifice themselves meaninglessly.
The girl that Kiana had seen in a certain fragment.
She had been scheduled to be executed by the people but ended up sacrificing herself to protect them after a Honkai beast had showed up at the execution grounds.
Then, Kiana's father and aunt. The two had ventured deep into the Stigmata unwillingly in search of a way to vanquish a Herrscher. However, in the end, only the father managed to reach deeper, unlocking the resolve to save the clone of his daughter.
All of them had repeated a pattern that had gone on for thousands of years.
Self-sacrifice.
Martyrdom.
Yet, even through all of this, she remained in the distance and watched, not even communicating with her descendants aside from when Siegfried reached the near-depths.
"Are you going to be different from the others? She has taken an interest in you… maybe because you remind her of him," it said.
As it watched her run through the memories, it made up its mind. Its body glowed and it vanished.
One way or another, it was going to guide her where she needed to go. The depths of this space. The only place where that woman could meet her.
Kiana exited the hundredth or so memory fragment she had come across. All of them showed memories, most of which were not her own.
"So this is what that voice meant by mental space. The memories of every Kaslana are here. How far back does our line even go?" Kiana muttered to herself.
The most confusing thing she had thought of so far regarding the memories was that the fragments of memories were presented to her anachronically. One moment, she would touch a fragment and see a happy memory, then the next fragment would be that of their childhood. It was a confusing and disorienting sea of fractured consciousness.
And she noticed something else. Every time she exited a memory, she would be in a different location. She did not know how this was possible but she instinctively knew that she was moving to different areas.
And how did she know this? The cold. The air around her was slowly becoming colder and the memories she encountered were far more powerful than the others. Each fragment carried an emotional weight to it that dragged her down. Her movements felt sluggish as she trekked forward.
"I wish I got one of those newer-generation battlesuits instead of wearing this old uniform," Kiana muttered.
And despite saying this, Kiana felt no different than she would if she was in a room temperature setting. The cold was not physical but rather it was metaphysical, chilling her all the way down to her soul.
"Another one. These fragments are getting fewer and fewer," she muttered.
Kiana reached her hand out and placed a finger on the sphere. In an instant, she found herself in a different place.
"Did you hear that, baby? Daddy can't decide which doll to get you for your crib~."
She froze when she heard the voice. No… No, no, no, is that…?
"Mom?" Kiana turned to see her mother sitting in a rocking chair. She had a soft, gentle smile on her face and wore a white maternity dress. Her father sat on the floor, staring at an array of dolls he had bought.
"Cecilia, come on. Help me pick the doll for our baby. Should I give him the Arahato plushie or the Homu doll?" Siegfried said, holding up two different plushies.
"I think we should give her the Homu one," she said.
"There you go again. How do you even know it's a girl? We haven't been to the clinic yet to get the gender," Siegfried said, holding the Homu doll up.
"I just know. Moms know these things you know," Cecilia said, stroking her belly.
"Mmm? Well, I think our baby is going to be a boy. I already got some names picked out for him. How about… Kevin?" Siegfried said.
Cecilia shot him a deadpan look. "How about we make a bet then? If the ultrasound shows a girl tomorrow, you have to do all of the laundry and do all of my mission reports for the next six months."
"And if I win?" Siegfried asked, grimacing at the thought of writing up Cecilia's mission reports.
Cecilia smiled slyly. "After our little girl is born…" she leaned in and whispered into his ear.
Her words caused Kiana and Siegfried's faces to go red.
M- MOM!? Kiana thought.
A perverted smile spread across his face. "R- Really?" he asked.
Cecilia nodded.
"O- Okay then! I bet it's a boy then!" Siegfried said vigorously.
"Mmm. You're so easy to read, Dear. Now that I think about it, Kiana will probably like the Arahato plushie better if she's anything like her dear father," Cecilia said.
"Don't you mean Kevin will like the Arahato plushie?" Siegfried said.
"But, I don't think we should stop there!"
Kiana perked up when she heard her mother talk.
"Kiana is going to be a lonely child so… let's try to give her a little brother or sister too!" Cecilia said.
"You really want a big family, don't you, Cecilia? Your sisters aren't enough for you?" Siegfried asked.
"Elder Sister Maria and Angela… we're not so close anymore ever since I became the S-Rank and married you but I have you and Theresa now. And we have little Kiana coming along," Cecilia said.
"Mmm. Well, then. After Kevin is born, let's make another bet. I bet that Kevin's gonna get a little sister," Siegfried said, smiling cheekily at his wife.
"Heh? Another one? Alright then, I'm game. Kiana's going to get a little brother," Cecilia said.
Kiana smiled at the two. A flash of light suddenly engulfed her body and she found herself standing in front of the fragment once more.
"So… Kevin, huh? I was going to be named Kevin," she said. "Welp! Good thing I was born a girl! But Mom, Dad won that next bet. I did get a little sister."
Kiana smiled softly as she thought of Cecilia. However, a pang of worry struck her chest. That girl. She must be worried out of her mind. She needed to get back. "Ceci, wait for me," Kiana muttered to herself, clenching her fist.
However, now was not the time to reminisce. "Where… am I?" Kiana said to herself.
The darkness was not as pronounced as it once was and the pressure and cold here were far different from where she was earlier. A series of blue lights raced across the sky, all traveling in one direction and Kiana felt an immensely powerful pull in that direction.
"I'm almost there… finally, I can end this," Kiana said, taking a step forward.
As soon as she stepped forward, Kiana was sucked in the direction of the lights. She flew through the endless space, feeling the frigid breeze against her face. She narrowed her eyes, protecting herself from the increasing amount of frost being blown in her direction. As she flew, Kiana saw a pinprick of light slowly growing larger and larger until its brightness rivaled that of the Sun's.
And she was hurtling straight into it. Kiana raised her arms and shielded her face for what was about to come, however, nothing came of it.
"...?" Kiana slowly opened her eyes and lowered her arms.
No longer was she in the black abyss of memories. Instead, Kiana found herself standing in the middle of a field. It was in a place she did not recognize. There was nothing but mountains in the distance and to her left was nothing but the ocean stretching onto the horizon.
"Another memory…? I'm getting sick and tired of running through memories!" Kiana yelled. "How many more memories do I have to go through? Was me facing my own memories not enough for you? Answer me!"
She panted, feeling frustration and anger coursing through her body. Frost formed at the tips of her fingers and her eyes began to glow slightly in response to her rage. As Kiana was about to hurl more expletives at the voice that had no source, she was interrupted when she heard the voice of a child screaming joyously.
"Mom! Come on! I think I can see the sea!"
Kiana slowly turned her head and saw a boy with white hair running toward her. She almost stumbled back as she felt the boy pass through her as if she were a ghost.
"Uwaaahh! Uncle Su told me about the ocean but he said we were too far from it to go take a look," the boy said, looking out over the sea.
"Adam… I told you not to run too fast."
Kiana turned around to the source of the voice and froze.
C- Ceci…? Kiana's mind almost went blank when she saw her.
The girl was the spitting image of her younger sister only a couple of years older. By her estimate, this woman was what Ceci would have looked like if she were four years older. The only difference between her sister and this woman was that her hair was shorter, going down to her shoulder.
"Adam…," the woman said.
"But Mom! The sea! The sea! Look!" Adam said, pointing incessantly at the water.
The woman smiled softly and placed her hand on his head, ruffling his hair.
"Your dad… would have loved to see the sea again," she said. The woman had a forlorn smile adorning her face.
"Dad?" he asked.
"You look more and more like him day by day. Of course, you only look like him. You got your mother's brain from the looks of it," she said.
Kiana listened on, fixated on the woman who resembled her sister.
"What was… What was Dad like?" Adam asked.
The woman froze as if contemplating what to say to the young boy.
"Your father?" she asked.
"Mmm!" he nodded his head fervently. "I asked Uncle Su and then he started to look sad and said to ask you! Aunt Fuxi and Nuwa said the same thing and Auntie Hua… well… Auntie Hua is Auntie Hua!"
The woman clicked her tongue, whispering something only Kiana could hear. "Goddamnit, Su, Hua."
"No one wants to tell me anything about Dad… or Mom. Not even you, Mama," Adam said, looking at her with begging eyes.
"Kgh… well… you look like him," she said.
"Come on, Mama! Tell me more! What was he like? And… where is he?" he asked.
The woman stiffened at the last question.
"Kevin… he was…" she began.
Kiana could see and feel the raw pain in the woman's voice. It was as if speaking of this Kevin person brought back horrid, agonizing memories. And she was familiar with the emotion that accompanied her pain. Guilt. The woman's mouth opened and closed, attempting to gather the words she would say to this young child. She did that for a few seconds before the woman turned her head to face her.
Kiana instinctively took a step back.
"You have made it to the final space," she said.
"You… can see me?" Kiana asked.
The woman stepped forward, leaving a still image of herself behind. It was only then that Kiana noticed that the world had stopped moving. It was as if someone had been reading a book and stopped flipping the pages.
The woman snapped her fingers and the world cracked around them until the sound of shattering glass and a blinding blue light filled her vision. It would be the hundredth time she would be blinded in a single day.
Kiana gripped her head as the dizzying spin of the world stabilized. What greeted her was the sight of an endless field of ice. Tall spires of black ice rose endlessly into the starry black sky above. Around her, spikes of ice littered the snow field.
The sky above was filled with violet lines that traced themselves across the endless night sky. All of them converged upon a single dark hole in the space that glowed with a myriad of colors, similar to that of a nebula. Underneath the hole was a large floating structure. It resembled a tower that was sandwiched on all angles by hedrons made of black ice. At the lower portion of one of the hedrons, what appeared to be a burst of black ice poked through the wall.
Kiana shivered unconsciously as she felt a cold breeze pass over her.
"Where… are we?" she asked.
"This is the endpoint of the Stigmata. No, rather, this is the beginning, what is referred to as the Stigmata's Zero Coordinate. The deepest part of the space," a male voice said from behind her.
Kiana whirled around to face the source of the voice.
Behind her stood a man. He wore a white, high-collared military uniform with a chest window. Over his uniform was a long black coat with a high collar with blue and white splashed across his coat in various places. On his left shoulder was a black and white shoulder pauldron and he wore black gloves with blue palms. He wore black pants with armored black boots and a black strap going across his left leg. His white hair blew slightly in the breeze.
His stature radiated an oppressive and commanding presence that would have made any other person want to back away in fear. Even his blue eyes held a deep dark gaze that would trigger the fight or flight response of any living organism, even that of a Herrscher.
Yet for Kiana, she felt no fear. All she felt was deja-vu. This appearance. It resonated with her somehow. She could not explain it but she felt a sense of familiarity gazing at his form.
"Who are you?" Kiana finally asked after a few seconds of silence.
"I am their shadow. An artificial consciousness that was placed in the Stigmata of every one of the Kaslana bloodline. This appearance is merely the appearance I took due to her will," he said.
"Shadow? Her? Them?" Kiana asked.
He ignored her question and continued on with his introduction.
"After you've crossed the sevenfold dream, you've found yourself at the final gate of consciousness. The primeval memories of your progenitors that surround the central space of the Stigmata. A shadow cast by those two long ago," he said.
"You haven't answered my question," Kiana said. She took a step forward, keeping her pointed gaze fixed directly on the man before her.
"Who the hell are you?" she demanded.
"For convenience's sake," he said, shifting forms. His form briefly glitched and became that of the woman from earlier before morphing back to the man.
"You may refer to me as the Will of Stigmata."
Well, there's a lot to unpack in this chapter. How the Kaslanas abandoned Kiana and Cecilia. How Kiana got her first job and first kills as the White Death trying to protect herself and Ceci after Siegfried died. This chapter just really shows how shitty their life was after Siegfried died.
Also, I did pull the GGZ gag on Kevin and Kiana. Kiana was going to be named Kevin if she was born a he just like how Kevin was Kiana's male alternate universe counterpart in GGZ. I thought it would be a nice little detail to add in and... will actually later play a role in the story. I won't say what that is but I'll let you all guess what I'm talking about, ehe. Anyway, if you noticed another thing, Kevin is referred to in the past tense by the woman, Adam, Su, and Hua. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened to him so me saying what happened isn't really a spoiler. Hehehehe.
I'm gonna add some things to the Kaslana Stigmata especially with that revelation that Kevin's Metamorph Surgery gave him like 100+ Honkai Beasts in addition to Parvati like Garuda, which he uses to contain the Authority of Finality, and I think Vishnu too since he could absorb Chiyou's corpse and the Dream projections of the Chimera. Kiana will get it first and after that, Ceci will get it too. I am currently cooking up an AHR + HoV Fusion counterpart to HoF so stay tuned sometime in the future for that... anyway, before I spoil more of my plans for the future, I'll leave the theorizing up to you guys.
Specifically, who you think that woman is? (Should be pretty easy right?)
PS: The first chapter has been edited to reflect this change in the fanfic lore.
PPS: Don't worry. Ceci will get a power-up soon and then it's all downhill for her mental health from there.