May 5th, 2012, Dragon Apples' Grove, Night Time.
The Dragon Mountains rose like the petrified spines of ancient behemoths, their jagged peaks clawing at the Underworld's eternal twilight sky.
These stone titans had stood since before the first devil drew breath, before the first fallen angel spread its wings, before the first human learned to fear the dark. Their flanks were scarred by volcanic eruptions and dragon fire, their valleys haunted by the echoes of battles older than memory.
Between these monoliths, veiled by perpetual volcanic haze and the circling shadows of winged predators, lay a safe haven—a sanctuary so sacred that even the Underworld's harshest winds and deadliest snowstorms dared not violate its borders.
The Dragon Apples' Grove.
An impossibility of green nestled within the Himalayan climate that surrounded it, a pocket of life where the air was thick with the scent of blooming flowers and the hum of hidden creatures. The colossal trees stretched skyward, their trunks wider than castle keeps, their bark etched with runes that predated devilkind's written language.
Leaves shimmered with a bioluminescent glow that bathed the grove in perpetual twilight, casting everything in shades of emerald and gold.
Dragon Apples dangled from the branches like tiny stars, each fruit a pulsating orb of gold and crimson, their surfaces gleaming with light. Their nectar was said to crystallize the essence of life itself—a substance potent enough to sustain the hungry, demanding bodies of dragons through centuries of slumber, through wounds that would kill any lesser creature.
The fruit was why this place existed. The fruit was why dragons from across the Underworld made pilgrimage here, leaving offerings and oaths in exchange for a single bite.
Winged serpents coiled around branches, their scales reflecting the bioluminescent glow. Parasitic fungi grew in careful patterns on the trees' bark, pruning dead growth and recycling nutrients. Moss entities sang to the roots in voices too low for human ears, their songs weaving through the soil like prayer.
Luminescent beetles wove through the canopy like living constellations, their tiny lights tracing patterns that had meaning only to themselves.
Yet now, the Grove screamed.
The Hero Faction had descended like locusts upon a harvest, like a plague upon a paradise. Georg's Dimension Lost had split the mountain's heart like rotten fruit, its Balance Breaker warping reality into a labyrinth of shimmering, fractal walls made of thick, impenetrable mist.
Within this prison of kaleidoscopic fog, lesser dragons—the former Dragon King Tannin's subjects, his loyal brood—cowered behind shattered trees and crumbling rocks.
Their molten breath, capable of melting steel and stone, proved useless against barriers that refracted light into blades. Every attack came back at them, amplified, transformed into weapons that tore through scales and flesh.
And when the barriers weren't enough, there were the monsters, twisted amalgamations of fang and flame and too many limbs, spawned from Leonardo's Annihilation Maker.
At the Grove's core, Ophis sat confused.
The Infinite Dragon God huddled against the roots of the oldest tree, her arms wrapped around her knees, her once-infinite eyes narrowed to slits of bewilderment.
She could barely understand what was happening around her. The sounds of battle reached her as muffled echoes, the screams of dying dragons as distant cries. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
But her mind, stripped of its infinity by Nyarlathotep's cruel theft, could not grasp the shape of the disaster.
Cao Cao's gambit was a crime against the natural order that would have horrified even the most jaded devil. The Grove, a hymn to the Underworld's rare capacity for beauty, now reeked of scorched bark and spilled dragon blood.
Trees that had withstood eons now splintered under the weight of collapsing portals, their ancient wood groaning as they fell. Roots writhed above ground, twisting like wounded serpents, as if sensing their doom.
Here, where life defied hell itself, the Hero Faction sowed a rot that no dragon fire could cleanse.
Cao Cao perched atop a rocky spire, the volcanic winds of the Underworld lashing at his body, tugging at his robes, whipping his hair across his face.
He surveyed the grove below through narrowed eyes, a previously lush Eden now fractured by Georg's labyrinthine barriers, its beauty replaced by the ugliness of war.
Beside him, Georg adjusted his cracked glasses, the lenses fractured from the strain of sustaining Dimension Lost's Balance Breaker for so long. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his hands trembled slightly.
"They'll come," Georg muttered, his fingers twitching as another portal collapsed in the distance, the sound like shattering glass. "Tannin, the Satans... the entire Devil Army. We're on borrowed time, Cao Cao. Borrowed and running out."
Cao Cao's grip tightened on the Spear of Destiny, its blade humming with restless energy, with hunger, with anticipation. The weapon pulsed in his hand like a second heartbeat, its corruption seeping through his gloves, through his skin, into his blood.
"Leonardo's beasts will flush out Ophis before the devils scent us. Do not worry."
His voice was calm, measured, the voice of a man who had calculated every variable, or believed he had. His eyes, glacial and unblinking, scanned the grove below like a raptor circling wounded prey.
"Unless you doubt your own gear, Georg?"
A tremor shook the pillar beneath them.
Cao Cao was sure of his move. The plan was sound. The execution was flawless. And yet, something flickered in his mind.
Few days prior. A chamber drowned in the scent of scorched cherry blossoms inside Izanami's Castle. Shalba Beelzebub had leaned across a table cluttered with cursed maps and forbidden texts, his expressionless face lit by a single flickering candle.
"Sirzechs Gremory will come to you if you follow this plan of yours," Shalba had hissed, the firelight dancing across his pale features. "You are a scalpel, brother—sharp against Persona Users, blunt against everyone else. And he..."
"...he is the Universe's Devil. His Confidant. If you do something to him, if you harm him, Father will be beyond furious. Be quick. Be clean."
Cao Cao had smirked at the warning, masking the sting of truth with a sip of bitter tea. "Afraid I will embarrass Father, Shalba? Afraid I will prove unworthy of his gifts?"
"Afraid I will mourn you." Shalba's gaze had softened. "Play your games. Do what you want with Ophis. Father could not care less if she dies tomorrow or in a thousand years. But finish before a Confidant of the Universe finds you. Before he finds you. Because if he does—if Makoto Yuki arrives while you are still there—not even Father's favor will save you."
Now, in the Grove's choking haze, Cao Cao's jaw clenched. A scalpel. The insult lingered in his mind, burrowing like a worm, gnawing at the edges of his confidence. He knew Shalba was right, about the risks, about the consequences, about the fury of a Father disappointed. The last thing he wanted was to cause Nyarlathotep's rage. The last thing he wanted was to fail.
The air crackled as a magic communication circle near Georg ignited, its arcane symbols flaring white before Heracles' roar shattered the silence.
"Cao Cao! I found the snake!" The giant's laughter boomed through the circle, manic and unhinged, a sound of pure, savage joy. "Whatever happened to her—you were right! She's weak! She's nothing!"
A loud explosion reverberated through the grove, shaking the ground, rattling the trees. Trees splintered. The earth heaved. Heracles' Sacred Gear had detonated, carving a crater where Ophis' hiding spot should have been, sending soil and stone and shattered roots raining down.
Cao Cao coiled, his muscles taut, ready to leap, but the sky screamed.
The Egyptian God of the Sky did not approve of such blasphemy. The heavens themselves seemed to recoil, the clouds to part in protest.
A bright light erupted. The Shadow Hero staggered, his spear raised in instinctual defiance, as the radiance coalesced into a figure of sun-forged grandeur.
Horus descended.
Wings of gilded flame spanned the horizon, each feather a blade of incandescent judgment, each pinion a promise of purification. The halo around his head burned like a second sun, a corona of molten gold that caressed allies with dawn's warmth while scouring foes with the fury of a thousand suns.
The Grove's surviving dragons sighed in relief. They approached the light of Horus like ships lost at sea sailing toward lighthouses in the darkest nights, their wounds forgotten, their fear dissolved. Here was hope. Here was salvation.
"What in the hells!?" Georg shielded his eyes, his glasses fracturing further under the glare, the lenses spiderwebbing with cracks.
But Cao Cao did not flinch. His Shadow-black blood churned in his veins, recoiling at the Persona's sanctity even as his mind recognized what stood before him. Horus. Persona of the Sun Arcana.
The Spear of Destiny thrummed in his grip, its corrupted edge hissing against the divine aura, as if recognizing a worthy opponent.
"A Persona..." Cao Cao snarled, the words bitter as ash on his tongue. "Here to play hero? There is only room for one hero in this story. And that hero is me."
Above, Horus tilted his beak skyward, and a cry split the air: resonant, authoritative, a challenge and a decree and a hymn older than empires all woven into a single, piercing note. The very ground quaked beneath them, not in fear, but in reverence for this unexpected ally, this bringer of light in the darkness.
Heracles' voice crackled through the circle again, tinged with gleeful disbelief. "You seeing this, Cao Cao!? Looks like our snake has got herself a guard bird! A pretty one, too!"
The world narrowed to a razor's edge. Cao Cao's breath stilled in his chest. His Shadow essence coiled like a viper in his veins, waiting, watching, ready to strike.
The Spear of Destiny—fused with the True Longinus, holy and corrupt, divine and damned—thrummed in his grasp, its golden yet dark shaft slick with condensation from his grip.
Across the ravaged grove, Horus loomed, but in those divine eyes, Cao Cao caught the flicker. The recognition.
Horus had recognized the Spear of Destiny.
One strike. One chance.
Muscles corded with cursed power tensed, fibers screaming as he pivoted, his heel grinding into the charred earth. The spear's weight shifted in his palm then ignited, ichor-black energy crackling down its length like lightning in a bottle.
Horus reared, a screech tearing from his beak, his wings beating, gales of holy flame erupting to intercept, but it was too late.
Cao Cao unleashed his attack.
The spear hurtled forth as a comet of annihilation. A sentence for each and every Persona in its path, written in blood and shadow. The air shredded in its wake, reality itself peeling back to reveal the yawning void beneath—the Dimensional Gap, hungry and patient, waiting for its due.
Horus's wings beat, gales of holy flame erupting to intercept, to deflect, to destroy. Yet the spear twisted, evading the inferno with sentient malice, as if guided by a will separate from Cao Cao's own.
For a heartbeat, their eyes locked again. Shadow and Persona. Predator and prey.
Then was impact.
The spear pierced Horus's chest with a sound like shattering glass, the same sound an evoker made when its trigger was pulled, when a Persona was called forth. The same sound, reversed.
Horus's form wavered. The edges frayed into luminous threads, unraveling like a tapestry pulled from its frame. His roar faded to a hollow echo, to a whisper, to silence.
Cao Cao's arm dropped, trembling from the exertion, from the backlash, from the weight of what he had just done. The spear quivered mid-air, victorious, before dissolving back into his shadow and with it, the Persona's light vanished too.
The grove dimmed. The surviving dragons cried out in despair.
Cao Cao smirked, savoring his win like fine wine, and proceeded to walk toward Ophis' location toward his prize, his purpose, his proof of worth.
"Quick, Georg," he ordered, not looking back. "Start the teleportation magic circles. We are almost done."
Georg nodded, recomposing himself, his hands already moving through the familiar gestures.
Ophis's existence had once been a tapestry woven from the endless threads of the Dimensional Gap—a realm of silence and solitude where hunger was a phantom, pain a stranger, and time a meaningless ripple.
She had been birthed from that chaos, that void, that nothing, and for eons, she had been content. Detached from mundane needs. Floating above mortal concerns.
Now, stripped of her infinity by Nyarlathotep's cruel irony, she wandered a world that scraped against her like jagged glass.
Every breath was a labor, her lungs burning with the effort of drawing air. Every heartbeat was a drumbeat of dread, each pulse reminding her that she was alive, that she could die.
Hunger gnawed at her stomach like a rabid thing, clawing at her insides, demanding satisfaction. Thirst parched her throat into cracked stone, each swallow an agony. Fatigue dragged at her limbs, heavy and foreign, whispering promises of rest that felt too much like death.
She itched, ached, burned: a symphony of mortal frailties conducted by a maestro of malice.
Horus's voice had been her compass in the storm. Elizabeth's parting gift before she left the Velvet Room—the Persona's golden timbre had guided her through the labyrinth of her unraveling body, through the terror of her new frailty.
"This is hunger, Ophis," he had murmured as she crumpled in a nameless forest, trembling, confused, afraid. "This is thirst. This is the pain of a body that needs."
"This is fear," he had said another time, when the shadows had seemed too long, the dark too deep. "This is the knowledge that you can be hurt. That you can be ended. It is not weakness to feel it. It is only... human."
His presence had taught her to walk, to breathe, to survive. Without him, she would have dissolved into the void like an unnamed insect, ignorant even of her own starvation, her own suffering, her own slow death.
The Dragon Apples' Grove had offered scant mercy. The fruit soothed her flesh, quieted the gnawing hunger, but only for a time. In the quiet between pains, Ophis grappled with truths sharper than any blade: gratitude, fragile and bewildering, for the ones who refused to let her fade; terror, cold and coiled, of the Crawling Chaos who had unmade her; and beneath it all, a haunting question that echoed in the hollows of her stolen infinity.
How do mortals endure this?
The Grove's sanctuary was a cage of contradictions. Its fruits soothed her flesh, but its noises of life echoed with the Dimensional Gap's absence in her soul. A home that no longer knew her name. A self that no longer fit its own skin.
Horus's light warded the shadows, but in its glow, Ophis saw clearly the fragility of her new self: finite, fallible, frightened.
Then, suddenly, chaos erupted in a single, suffocating breath.
Monsters spewed into the grove like a plague, their howls shredding the sanctuary's tranquility. The dragons living in that little haven, Tannin's loyal brood, rose in defiance, their molten breath clashing against unnatural flesh.
Once, Ophis would have flicked a finger and reduced the horde to ash. To her infinite power, they would have been a bored afterthought, a nuisance dismissed with a thought.
Now, she cowered behind a gnarled root, her borrowed mortality a cage. Pride burned like bile in her throat. She, the Infinite Dragon God, had been reduced to trembling. To hiding. To praying.
Like a mouse.
The explosion came without warning.
A shockwave tore through the grove, splintering ancient trees into shrapnel, sending chunks of wood and stone flying through the air. Ophis staggered, her ears ringing, her vision blurring, as smoke coiled upward like serpents seeking prey.
Through the haze, a figure emerged—a human, his face half-remembered, a ghost clawing at the edges of Nyarlathotep's sealed scars.
The Hero Faction. Only this she could remember from Nyarlathotep's theft. Only this remained.
Then she saw it.
The spear.
It was different from the one she rememberd, but it was it. It was that accursed spear. Its jagged silhouette pierced the smoke, a blade forged from her nightmares, her trauma, her undoing. The same corrupted edge that had flayed her infinity now buried in Horus's radiant chest.
The Persona flickered, his golden light draining into the weapon's hungry void. A sound escaped her, raw and fractured, as Horus dissolved into motes of dying starlight, into memories of warmth, into nothing.
Air rasped into her lungs. She could swear she heard Nyarlathotep's laughter echoing in her skull, phantom tendrils coiling around her spine, squeezing, crushing.
Weak. Finite. Frightened.
Her hands clawed at her arms, nails drawing blood she could not afford to lose, did not have to spare.
Ophis cried.
She cried loudly, openly, without shame for she had no shame left, no pride, no infinity to shield her from the weight of her own feelings.