The realm was quiet. Too quiet. Rebecca stood alone on the jagged cliffs of a shattered dimension, where rivers of silver mist flowed like veins across the ground. She had just crushed the core of another beast, yet the silence weighed heavier than victory.
Sometimes, in the quiet between battles, memories clawed their way back. Memories she never asked for, memories she thought buried.
The scent of ash faded. The air shifted, warming. She blinked, and the wasteland was gone.
She stood instead in the green hills of Earth.
---
Flashback – Years Ago
Rebecca had followed her older sister, Silvanna, into the Earth realm. She was younger then, brash, eager to test the limits of the impossible gifts she carried.
"Stay close," Silvanna had told her. "Earth isn't ready for someone like you."
Rebecca only smirked. "They weren't ready for you either. And yet—here you are."
Their journey took them to the shadow of a steel bridge on the outskirts of a small European town. That was where Rebecca first encountered him.
The Juggernaut.
He was colossal, a walking fortress of muscle and crimson armor. The earth trembled under each step he took, his eyes burning with challenge. He didn't ask questions. He didn't wait. He charged.
Rebecca met him head-on.
Their clash was cataclysmic. Stone shattered, steel bent, and the ground quaked under their blows. Juggernaut was unstoppable, a mountain of raw power—but Rebecca was different. For every ounce of force he had, she had more. For every strike he landed, she healed, countered, and struck harder.
He barreled through walls, she sent him flying through the air. Their fight tore the countryside apart until finally, Rebecca caught him mid-charge, her hands bracing against his chest. For the first time, Cain Marko—the Juggernaut—slowed.
Her strength pressed him back, inch by inch, until with a roar she slammed him into the dirt.
Silvanna watched from a distance, arms crossed, shaking her head. "Show-off," she muttered.
Rebecca stood over Juggernaut, breathing steady, her fists clenched. "Unstoppable?" she teased. "Looks like you just stopped."
But Juggernaut didn't hate her for it. No—he laughed, a booming, honest laugh that echoed across the valley.
"You're stronger than you look," he said, pulling himself up. "Stronger than me."
From that day on, they were not enemies. They were something else. Something complicated.
---
The Bond
Days bled into weeks, and Juggernaut became a constant presence in Rebecca's life. He was crude, stubborn, often infuriating—but he was real. With him, she didn't have to pretend to be less than she was. He could take her strength, her fury, her hunger for battle—and return it with his own.
It was a strange, fiery bond. One that grew closer with each passing night until, eventually, they stopped pretending it was just rivalry.
And in the quiet warmth of one stolen evening, Rebecca allowed herself to be vulnerable—not as a warrior, but as a woman.
From that night, a new life began to grow within her.
---
Liechtenstein
Rebecca and Silvanna settled in Liechtenstein, choosing anonymity in a small house tucked in the mountains. Silvanna guarded her sister fiercely, though she rarely spoke of why she had brought Rebecca there.
But one morning, as the first snow fell, Silvanna was gone. She left without a word, without an explanation—leaving Rebecca alone, carrying the child she had never planned to have.
Forty weeks passed in silence.
And then, with the cry of a newborn, silence broke.
Rebecca cradled the tiny child in her arms, her heart trembling in a way no battle had ever shaken her. The baby's skin was soft, her breath delicate, her golden eyes filled with a light that seemed to pierce through every wall Rebecca had built.
"My little one," Rebecca whispered, tears stinging her eyes. "My Vanessa."
The name came unbidden, but it was right.
She pressed her forehead against her daughter's, swearing silently that no matter how far she had to go, no matter what she had to face—Vanessa would live.
Rebecca smiled through her tears, holding her tighter. "I'll keep you safe. Always."
---
The memory began to blur. The warmth of the baby in her arms, the sound of her first cry—all of it dissolved into light.
Rebecca gasped, finding herself once more in the wasteland of the present. The cliffs, the mist, the silence.
Her hands were empty.
---
The Present
The air shifted again. The ground quaked. A shadow moved across the broken landscape.
A monster emerged from the mist, larger than any she had seen before. Its wings stretched wide like storm clouds, its claws glistening with venom. Its fangs dripped with acid, and its eyes glowed red like dying suns.
It locked eyes with Rebecca.
And then—it froze.
For one heartbeat, the beast studied her. Recognition flickered. Fear followed.
With a guttural screech, the creature turned on its heels and ran.
Rebecca tilted her head, her lips curving into a cold smile.
"Even monsters know better," she murmured.
The earth split as the beast fled into the void, its massive body trembling with desperation to escape her presence.
Rebecca stood unmoving, her hands loose at her sides, the weight of her memories heavy in her chest.
She had been many things: a sister, a lover, a mother, a hunter. But above all, she was something far greater. Something even monsters feared.
And as the silence returned to the realm, Rebecca whispered into the wind, almost as if to her daughter's memory:
"I'll see you again, Vanessa. One day."
Her eyes hardened, storm-grey and unyielding. She turned toward the void, ready for the next hunt.