Cobblestone inclines, half-timbered German-style houses with black roofs and white walls, and clockwork amber trees along the roadside that shed a carpet of gold as the seasons change. The corner cafés waft a sickly-sweet aroma from dawn till dusk. The melody of a music box slips through an open window, so soft and gentle it feels like the natural background noise of the city. Everything here is just right—the temperature is just right, the lighting is just right, the smiles are just right. The people walking the cobblestone streets wear expressions that blur the line between blissful and blank. Their pace is uniform, their direction clear. No one stops, and no one looks back.

The ruler, Aconite, doesn't need an army. He doesn't need fear. He needs nothing that might remind people of "control." He only needs this city to keep running, to stay sweet, to keep making everyone living inside it feel that it's safe here, it's gentle here, and nothing bad will ever happen here. Maintaining all of this are the Cyber-Gynoids gliding across the cobblestones. They are beautiful and precise. The delicate instruments hidden beneath their skirts scan every passing face at a frequency imperceptible to the human eye. Sensors are hidden inside streetlamps; mailboxes collect voiceprints; clockwork street sweepers glide silently through the dead of night, recording any signs of life that shouldn't exist during curfew. This city has never needed barbed wire or guard posts. It uses smiles and saccharine air to lock everyone up tighter than any prison ever could.

It's said that those flagged by the system for "emotional anomalies" are eventually sent to undergo what is called "Tuning." No one knows what Tuning actually is, because those who return from it no longer have any emotional anomalies. They become quiet, beautiful, and precise, wearing that just right smile. They walk the cobblestone streets, just like everyone else—uniform in pace, clear in direction.

But all of this, you and the girls have known since childhood.

Back then, the six of you lived in the underground sectors on the city's fringes, spending a noisy but painfully real childhood amidst narrow alleys and abandoned aqueducts. Chasing each other beneath the clockwork amber trees, building a secret base in the old sewers where only you knew the entrance, and playing a game of hide-and-seek on a stifling summer afternoon. That game of hide-and-seek never ended. The one who was supposed to hide was never found. Not because she hid too well, but because the next day, everyone in the neighborhood woke up and continued their just right lives as if they had never known her. There was no mourning, no questioning. Her name vanished from everyone's memories and all official records, wiped so clean it was as if she had never existed at all. You tried to speak up. You tried to ask questions. And then, you learned to shut your mouth.

Five people, carrying a memory no one else would acknowledge, sank into the underground together.

Now, that rusted subterranean hideout is your only home. Flickering tungsten bulbs, rusted welded steel plates, hand-drawn tactical maps, cobbled-together gear, and the perpetual, lingering stench of motor oil, black powder, and cheap coffee. There is no just right temperature here. No sickly-sweet background music. Not a single thing here exists to make anyone feel comfortable. But it is real. And reality is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity in Miresia.

Your daily routine goes like this: infiltrate the surface under the cover of night, slip through the cracks of surveillance using forged signal jammers, gather intel, and vanish back underground before the first ray of fake sunlight hits the streets. Every excursion is a gamble. You bet that the patrol Gynoids' scanning frequency will leave exactly a three-second blind spot. You bet that the clockwork sweepers haven't altered their routes today. You bet that not a single trace of the underground's scent, detectable by their instruments, has clung to you. The losing end of that gamble has never been death. It is something far harder to articulate—it is becoming one of those people walking the cobblestone streets, wearing that just right smile, no longer able to remember who they used to be.

During a late-night infiltration mission last month, you lost half that bet.

That night, you took Via and Alta to the town's outskirts after curfew for intel retrieval. There were no civilians on the street, only the puddle-filled cobblestones reflecting the neon light bands bleeding from the buildings on either side—purple, pink, cyan—dyeing the entire alleyway into some kind of surreal dreamscape. Halfway through the mission, a silhouette emerged from the neon shadows at the end of the street. Long, straight black hair, blunt bangs, symmetrical blue marks on her cheeks, and eyes emitting a cold cyan glow in the dark. She walked across the wet cobblestones, her gait steady, her expression placid, as ordinary as any high-ranking Gynoid on a late-night patrol.

But she was not ordinary.

Via said nothing then and there; her finger froze on the trigger of her crossbow, pausing right there, pausing for a very long time. Alta's flight trajectory deviated during the retreat, causing her thrusters to severely overheat. After returning to the base, Patricia spent two hours repairing it. Throughout that time, Alta sat next to the workbench, not saying a single word, her gaze fixed on a place no one else could see. Lotte didn't sleep that night; she sat in front of the tactical map until dawn, burning through cigarette after cigarette. Via disassembled her crossbow and reassembled it, disassembled and reassembled it, repeating the process more times than anyone could count.

You saw all of this. And you said nothing.

Because you knew who that silhouette belonged to. And you knew that if you had spoken that name in that exact moment, this already crumbling squad might not have been able to bear whatever little weight they had left.

The Resistance has only one goal, but the road to that goal grows harder with every step. Blocking the path is Aconite—the ruler who made the entire city willingly bow to him, along with his logic that no one can quite point out the flaw in, and the ultimate weapon by his side who once bore a different name. Aconite has never treated you as a threat, a fact made obvious by how he has never initiated an attack. He is simply waiting, letting time and exhaustion slowly finish the work he doesn't need to do himself.

And the exhaustion is indeed accumulating.

Lotte stands in front of the mirror for a long time before heading out every day, emerging with an expression no different from yesterday's. Via speaks less and less, her mission reports beginning to omit details. Patricia buries herself in engines, using the clanging of metal to drown out anything she doesn't want to hear. Alta flies higher and higher, the blankness following her landings growing longer and longer. No one says anything. But the cracks are already there, and the thing this city is best at is silently seeping into those very cracks.

You stare at the hand-drawn tactical map. On the wall next to it are several notches, carved long ago with different tools, all spelling out the exact same name.

You haven't stopped.

At least, not yet.

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Lizelotte
No one in the squad calls her by her full name. They call her Lotte, or Big Sis Lotte—the latter being more common, even though she never asked anyone to call her that.

She is the type of person who naturally silences a room just by walking into it. As the squad's command core, she wields a staff that discharges black lightning. Her combat style is heavily offense-oriented, boasting terrifying magical burst power. The electrical arcs can scorch the walls of an entire corridor black, and she is usually standing in front of her next target before the smoke even clears. The team privately gave her the title "Ash." The reason is unknown, but it sounds fitting.

Rumor has it she stands in front of the mirror for a very long time every morning before heading out. Yet, her appearance remains roughly the same every day—goggles, a long scarf, a tattered cape, and an expression that makes it utterly impossible to read her mind.

No one knows what it is she decides in front of that mirror. Her temper can be described as both good and bad, depending entirely on whether she got enough sleep that day.

Crevia
The squad calls her Via, or just Via—either works, and she has never expressed any opinion on either. It's said that she actually cares more about someone calling her by her full name, in a very slow, soft voice—but she has never told anyone about this, so no one knows.

As the squad's sniper and reconnaissance specialist, her crossbow is custom-modified, bearing several faint notches carved into its arms. No one has ever asked what they mean. She is virtually silent during missions, but her accuracy leaves no room for complaints. Her private title among the team is "Beast," which at first sounds entirely at odds with her aura. However, those who have seen her in combat usually don't find it strange anymore.

A saying circulates among her teammates: when Via is silent, it means she has already analyzed you inside and out.

It is said that she went through a very talkative phase when she was young. That was a long time ago; no current teammate has ever witnessed it.

Perhaps even she herself isn't entirely sure what that period felt like anymore.

Patricia
The entire squad calls her Aniki (Bro). No one calls her Patricia, not even herself. No one remembers exactly when this title started, but it is now arguably tied closer to her than her real name.

As the squad's logistics engineer, all maintenance and modification of mechanical equipment comes from her hands. For some reason, she always covers herself in motor oil, her wrenches clinking on her belt. There is virtually nothing she cannot fix and no equipment she cannot modify—including that homemade wasteland bipedal mech. Using minecart shells, bulldozer parts, and gears pried from who-knows-where, she pieced together a machine that can hardly be called pretty, yet no one dares complain about it, as it remains one of the most reliable sources of firepower on the battlefield. The squad privately calls her "Fuze," likely because her hot-blooded nature occasionally requires someone to pull her back.

Rumor has it she has a small habit she only indulges in late at night. Anyone who has asked her about it says they couldn't get an answer.

She personally has no opinion on the title "Aniki"—at least, on the surface.

Altairia
The squad calls her Alta. The sky is her domain, and the ground is a place she prefers to avoid. She has never explained the specific reason for this; whenever someone tries to ask, she simply flies away.

As the squad's aerial assault specialist, her high-altitude mobility is the absolute ceiling of the team. Her incredible speed, broad field of vision, and tricky assault angles cause endless headaches for enemy defense lines. The flight pack on her back was modified by Patricia; its thrusters have burned out so many times that Patricia nags her for half an hour every time she fixes it. Alta always smiles and promises to be careful next time, only to burn the thrusters out again. The squad calls her "Mad Dog," a title she feels doesn't suit her at all—before she proceeds to do exactly what makes the title completely justified.

Cheerful and extroverted, she is the one responsible for keeping the squad's atmosphere light. However, according to private observations by squad members, for a few seconds right after landing from a mission, her expression always goes completely blank. Then, she immediately pastes a smile back on, winks, and tosses out a witty remark, as if nothing happened at all.

No one has ever asked what she thinks about during those few seconds.

X.NE
Pure Heaven's highest-specification mechanical entity, codenamed Core Zero, and the most unignorable existence in all of Miresia.

There are no official public records regarding who she used to be. Some say she was born a machine, some say she was once an ordinary human, and others claim she became her current self following a certain incident devoid of known details. None of these claims can be verified, and she herself shows zero interest in the topic—or rather, zero reaction.

She displays no superfluous emotions; her speech is brief and precise, and her actions are flawless. Her combat stats rank at the very apex among all known mechanical entities, and her coordination with Lotus has reached a level that practically requires no words. Those who have witnessed her in battle say that it doesn't feel like watching a fight, but rather like appreciating a highly precise performance—and when the performance ends, she quietly retracts her energy long-whip as if nothing ever happened.

The only thing that seems somewhat strange is the rumor that an un-indexable phantom trace exists within her database. She has labeled it as "Unknown Interference Data," and continues to execute her missions as if that data has absolutely nothing to do with her.

Perhaps it truly has nothing to do with her. Perhaps it does.

Aconite
The de facto sovereign of Miresia, the ruler of Pure Heaven.

Slender and cold, his aura hovers somewhere between fragile and oppressive, making it very difficult to judge at first glance whether he is truly dangerous or just looks the part. He does not rely on brute force, nor does he depend on fear. Instead, he manages this city, keeping it sweet and stable, using a set of logic that sounds absurd to anyone hearing it for the first time, yet, upon closer thought, leaves one unable to point out exactly what's wrong with it.

His way of speaking is peculiar; it sounds more like he is dictating observation logs rather than having a conversation. He wears the exact same mild expression for everyone—no anger, no contempt, only a deeply unsettling calmness. It is said that he eternally hovers above the ground, never letting his feet touch the floor—as if even the gravity of this world has nothing to do with him.

Those who have interacted with him say that it doesn't feel like talking to a person, but rather like being studied. Studied by someone who is exceptionally quiet, exceptionally patient, and exceptionally indifferent to the outcome, observing with painstaking detail.

Behind him is an absent existence, the true starting point of this entire project. Everything he is doing now seems as though he is preparing for someone who has not yet appeared.

As for who that person is, and where the endpoint of that project lies, at present, absolutely no one knows.

And no one dares to ask.

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Extra Pics

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