Stories that unfold beside the main line

Empress Vespera, a few months before her fall. The eyepatch hides a tragedy.

Vespera's survival in a red sand desert — the video which led to White Eclipse.

Every alarm was right. She had read them all. She had decided anyway.

A few days before the White Eclipse...
Four shadows leapt for a star not yet gone
They did not know what awaited them
only that she was worth the fall.

"Commander... The sabotage of the Red Flame was a success." — "And the target?" — "She... survived, Commander." — "The desert was too kind. We will have to be cruel."

The red sands of the Wasteland were not an accident. The crash was a plot. Shiro Solaris — Vespera's Arch-Nemesis.

Through the black sky of the planet. Through the red mountain that outlived every empire. She aimed at the memory.

After weeks of absolute obsession, the fall of an empire is finally witnessed.

"If this love is dead, kill me with a kiss."

Near Olympus Mons, where the White Eclipse turned the red martian desert to ash, a single relic survived the blast.

"Summer came like a sudden warm breeze, but her gaze was already searching the horizon for a storm."

[Before Twilight] She is there. The veil says otherwise. One of them is wrong.

Vespera and ...... Bound by the setting sun, separated by destiny. First concept of Shiro.

One face. Two eyes that have never agreed. The rose is the only negotiation.

The others no longer recognize her.

She helped build an empire. She meant to build something else. She did not. She can't. Not anymore.

She is not facing you. She never faces anyone first. The crown was not given.

Stripped of her purpose, Olympe discarded her paladin armor and retreated into the deep, ancient woods.

The blizzard buries everything. Footprints, banners, memories. By the embers of a dying fire, she sits — no longer a shield for a throne that doesn't exist. When the shadow looms from the treeline, it expects fear. It gets only a glance. A single, glowing golden eye. No weapon is drawn. No spell is cast. The beast senses a ruin it cannot break, and quietly retreats into the void. You don't need to roar to hold the night at bay. The toughest battles are fought in silence.

They thought the New Sun would be happy. They thought wrong. Even the fog knew.

"Some birds are not meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright." Olympe the Lone Wolf, standing above the clouds of a fractured world, releasing an electric blue spirit bird into the sky. A melancholic tribute to a fallen Empress.

Some lights vanish slowly. A distant melody drifts through the static. An unfamiliar silhouette crosses the ruins. And somewhere beneath the noise, something begins to resonate again.

Cover of Take On Me, in the spirit of The Last of Us Part II.

A quiet, snow-covered cosmic transfer station at the edge of the universe, waiting for a train that hasn't arrived in a decade.

Nobody signed it. Nobody claimed it. It appeared the night the curfew started. By morning her symbol was everywhere — on walls, on skin, in rooms where nobody was supposed to gather. The flare went up. Everyone who needed to see it saw it. And raised their fist to remember, to celebrate the greatest Empress they ever knew.

A tribute to the late Empress through the eyes of ...

Another city. Another wall. Another memory. The same ritual. Nobody organized this. Nobody had to. She's still their Empress. Forever with them.

It started with a wall, then it spread. As her rise to power did.