In a secluded, warded chamber deep within the Scarlet Devil Mansion, the air was thick with the scent of old books and potent magic. Nowa Beckitzer lay unconscious on a large bed, his body cleaned of blood and gore and dressed in simple, borrowed clothes. He looked peaceful, a stark contrast to the force of annihilation he had been hours before.
The mansion's librarian, a master magician, held a hand over his chest, intricate magical runes spiraling from her fingertips as they analyzed the space where a soul should be.
"How is he, Patchouli?" Reimu's voice was low, tight with a worry she no longer bothered to hide. She stood at the edge of the bed, her arms crossed tightly.
"Yeah, what's the read on Old-timer?" Marisa asked, perched on the edge of a plush chair, her usual bravado subdued.
Patchouli slowly lowered her hand, the diagnostic runes fading. "He is…" she began, her voice a murmur. "Nearly depleted of his soul. The energy patterns suggest he has been using this 'soul exchange' ability as a fuel source for a very, very long time… He is operating on the dregs. By all accounts, he shouldn't be alive."
A heavy silence fell over the room.
Reimu's eyes widened slightly. "I see it now," she muttered, "That is why I never got a proper spiritual reading from him… There was almost nothing to read then…"
"...So what do we do?" Marisa stood up, her expression urgent. "Do we… I dunno, put a soul in him or something?"
"No," Patchouli stated firmly, meeting Marisa's gaze. "I do not believe that would help. It would likely be destroyed. His very nature seems to reject external conceptual interference. It is… fascinating." Her curiosity broke through her concern as she picked up Nowa's rune revolver from a nearby table, turning it over in her hands. "Framework Rune. Soul Exchange. Reality Rewriting. These are not just spells; they are absolute, forbidden principles. And they all exist within him."
"Indeed," a voice interjected. The Vampire lady, the mistress of the mansion, stood in the doorway. She walked into the room, her crimson eyes fixed on Nowa. "Plus his fate is a tangled knot. There are no threads to pull, no connections I can easily grasp or manipulate, no designated future lay before him. I cannot interfere with his story. Almost as if he gave up his future." A rare flicker of unease crossed her features sensing something profoundly wrong, which then masked by an intrigued smile. "He is an absolute, true outsider."
The door opened again, and Sakuya Izayoi entered with her signature silent grace, carrying two trays of steaming tea. "Tea is ready, Everyone." she announced. She placed one tray on a central table for the others, then approached her mistress with the second, presenting a delicate cup with a deep bow and a soft smile, a smile that can only be shown to her mistress.
"Here is your tea, Lady Remilia."
Remilia accepted the cup, her gaze never leaving Nowa's still form. She took a slow, deliberate sip.
"The question is not how to fill him," she said, a steam rose from her tea. "The question is, what happens when something that is already empty is pushed past its limit?" She looked at Reimu, her smile gone, replaced by a look of genuine solemnity. "Your shield, Hakurei Miko, is also a bomb. And its fuse is shorter than any of us realized."
Reimu looked down, her nails digging into her own elbows. 'He… he is willing to throw himself away for the sake of others... I.. I don't understand him… I can't hate him either. Not after he saved me.'
She let out a short, weary sigh and met their gazes once more. "I don't know. This is beyond my paycheck." Her focus returned to Nowa's still form. "But he is our only option against the upcoming invasion. Like it or not… we need him. I can feel that this isn't the biggest yet. I can feel it in my gut."
Her gaze swept over them. "Our enemies fight like untouchable ghosts, they disregard our rules of conflict, heck, It wasn't even a fight with bullets. It was just... survival." A pause. "Yukari told me Zero is the strongest among them by far, and she barely escaped with her life."
The silence that followed was heavier than any of Patchouli's tomes. Remilia took another sip of tea, her expression unreadable. Patchouli's fingers tightening on her grimoire, her eyes flicking toward Nowa, her lips pressing into a thin line. Marisa shifted uncomfortably, the reality of their situation dampening even her boundless energy.
Sakuya broke the silence.
"Then our objective shifts from mere recovery to preservation. We cannot afford to let him break before the war has truly begun." She looked at Patchouli. "If we cannot refill his soul, can we... at least, reinforce his vessel? Like, slow the leaking?"
Patchouli's eyes gleamed with a fresh spark of challenge. "A containment protocol. Not a healing spell, but a structural reinforcement. Using the ambient magic of Gensokyo itself as a supportive scaffold... The theory is unorthodox, but given from what you informed me about his runes, operating on a symbiotic principle, it might work out with his nature."
"A bandage on a dam leak," Reimu muttered, but she nodded. It was something. It was a plan. They were no longer just waiting for him to wake up; they were now actively trying to patch together their only hope before he came apart at the seams.
Meanwhile, in the fragments of Nowa's memories… He was fourteen years old, his eyes filled with tears as two men held him back, forcing him to watch as Amy was brutalized on the sideline. He screamed.
"GOD, PLEASE HELP HER! I BEG OF YOU! PLEASE, ANYONE! SAVE HER!" His voice cracked into a shriek, dissolving into sobs. "PLEASE STOP! I BEG OF YOU PEOPLE!"
The screaming continued, more broken than the last. His hope faded. His hatred peaked.
"Please… Anyone…" He lowered his head. Something took over—
"I… I will…" A stray wisp of black fire manifested for the first time behind him. The men turned, noticing the flame. Then—
"I WILL MURDER ALL OF YOU!"
The flame erupted uncontrollably, burning, erasing a huge chunk of space in an instant. It consumed the men. It consumed the ruined alley. And… it consumed Amy.
A week later, he lay broken at the bottom of a pit. It wasn't a natural formation; the earth had been erased, the edges unnervingly smooth. The air smelled of blood, of his. Beneath him, a bed of black feathers lay scattered.
He was starving for days. Tears ran down his cheeks as he hesitantly, painfully, ate a piece of his own arm to fill his stomach a little bit. Later, he forced himself to stand, his body fragile and shaking.
"Amy…" he shrieked. Then he began to climb, fingers scrabbling at the smooth, hard earth. He did not make it halfway before his strength gave out and he fell back onto the feathers. This time, he didn't get up. He just curled, hugging his knees, his whole world reduced to the pit and his guilt.
"...I'm sorry, Mama… I'm sorry," he wept, his voice a broken whisper. "I didn't mean to.. It just appeared... I couldn't control it... I'm… I'm so sorry." The tears came in a torrent of helpless despair. "Help me…" The plea was a ghost of a sound, meant for no one.
A shadow fell over him. "HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN DA PIT, YOU GOSH DARN UGLY MUT? THE WORLD IS FUCKING DYING!"
Nowa flinched, using all his strength to look up. A boy same of his own age was peering over the edge. And in the center of his chest, a crystal heart glowed with a steady, blue light. Before Nowa could process it, the boy jumped down, landing with a solid thud that sent the black feathers swirling.
The boy—Chris—reached out a hand. Nowa crawled back, staring at the offered hand, then at the boy's face, searching for mockery or malice. He found only a fierce, impatient energy.
Seeing the absolute despair in Nowa's eyes, Chris didn't wait. He grabbed Nowa's wrist. "Hey, don't cry. We all have a rough experience. But we need to flee this planet. My friend's waiting. Let's go." Nowa, sobbing, could only nod.
Chris yanked him up. The blood veins on Chris's arms, neck and legs suddenly glowed with the same fierce blue as his heart. Then he leapt, his feet spitting out concussive bursts of energy that propelled them straight up and out of the pit. He let go of Nowa's hand as they landed, and a hiss of steam erupted from his joints like a cooling engine.
"Alright, let's go," Chris said, already turning.
"...Wait." Nowa's voice was small. He looked back at the erased ground, his personal apocalypse. "Please. Let me bury my mother."
He found a broken stick and crafted a crude cross, stabbing it into the unmarked earth. He crouched, hands clasped in a prayer.
"Please. Forgive me, Amy. I… I'm sorry. I will atone for what I did... I'm… I'm so sorry."
His shoulders shook with silent sobs for a long moment before he stood. He spotted a crowbar nearby and picked it up. A weapon. A tool. He turned back to Chris.
"I'm ready."
Chris nodded, a glint of approval in his eye. "Sure. I'm Chris. The underrated madman." He thrust his hand out again. Nowa slowly took the handshake.
"I'm… Nowa. Nowa Beckitzer."
Chris pointed a thumb over his shoulder at a lanky boy with a hand-held paintbrush. "And that bastard is Lancer."
Lancer shot them an annoyed look. "Hey! At least I'm not the one yelling into holes!"
Chris let go of the handshake and laughed. "Alright, alright. Welcome to the crew, Ugly Mut."
"I didn't agree to that," Nowa muttered.
"Don't care, don't give a shit," Chris said, slinging an arm around Nowa's shoulders. "Let's go now. Let's save people."
And with that, a legend was forged. Not in a moment of triumph, but in the shared ashes of a dying world, a bond welded from trauma and a desperate, newfound purpose: to ensure that no one else would ever feel as alone as they did in that moment.
Three years later, Chris, Lancer, and Nowa stood atop a crumbling skyscraper, watching the last color bleed out of their world. The city below was a wound that had never stopped burning, even after all this time, and the sky was a ceiling of smoke.
"Who knew everybody getting powers all at once would turn into this," Chris muttered, his voice hollow. He wasn't looking at either of them. He was watching a distant tower collapse into dust.
Lancer shifted his gaze between them, Chris with his jaw set in stubborn disbelief, Nowa with that hollow sadness that had become his default expression ever since the pit.
"How 'bout we go to other worlds instead?" Lancer said.
Both of them turned.
Chris raised an eyebrow. "Is that even possible?"
"With my ability to draw things into reality." Lancer lifted his paintbrush. He looked out at the ruined horizon. "I think I can create a door."
"What if we land in the wrong world and suffocate?" Nowa's voice was quiet, hesitant. He was seventeen now. "Like, what if there's nothing out there? Just… void. And we step through and—"
"Then we die." Lancer's gaze was firm, unblinking. "Or we stay here and die anyway. Let's gamble." He looked at each of them in turn. "Unless you guys want to keep living in a dead world full of chaos where the only rule is kill or be killed. Your choice."
The silence that fell over them was heavy, pressing down like the smoke-choked sky. Every other path they could have taken, staying, rebuilding, fighting for scraps in the ruins, becoming warlords or victims or ghosts, hung in the air between them, waiting to be rejected.
Chris broke first, a sharp "Tsk" escaping his lips. "Fuck it. Not like there's anything left for us here."
Nowa was silent a moment longer. Then he nodded, slow, uncertain, but a nod nonetheless.
Lancer grinned, the first real grin any of them had managed in months, and swung his paintbrush. "Alright then. Let's see what kind of anime bullshit we get into."
An ink portal tore open in the air. The three of them hesitated on its threshold. Then, with nothing left to lose, they stepped through together.
A month later, they stood in a world of colossal mushrooms, drenched in insect ichor. Chris carved a path through the swarm with a searing beam of blue energy, eviscerating insectoids in a wide arc.
"This way, mushcap peps!" he bellowed.
Mushroom folk stumbled after him in panic, their tiny forms trembling. Three iron golems modeled after Minecraft's iron golem, drawn into being by Lancer's brush before the fight, marched alongside them, their heavy footsteps shaking the fungal earth.
"Go! I got you covered!" Lancer yelled from atop one of the golems, and the mushroom folk fled toward safety while the golems formed a living wall behind them.
Chris signaled to Nowa with a thumbs up. "Ugly mutt! The path's clear! Use your flame and wipe 'em out!"
Nowa stood frozen. His hand tightened around his crowbar, slick with alien blood. The black fire inside him coiled, waiting. He remembered Amy. He remembered the pit. He remembered the smell of blood and screaming feathers.
He closed his eyes. Then he opened them, clenched the crowbar one last time, and sprinted toward the swarm.
Weeks later, the black fire had consumed the entire cave system where the insectoid hive had nested. Silence fell over the three crowned Heroes of the Mushroom Kingdom.
"We… We win!" Chris punched the air.
Lancer collapsed onto his back, utterly spent from drawing sentient ink for hours. He just offered a lazy thumbs up.
Nowa stood apart, watching the last flicker of black flame recede into his skin. His clothes had been erased in the process, but he didn't care. He stared at his palm, at the faint, fading embers with quiet awe. Then, for the first time in a long time, a small smile touched his lips.
A world had been saved.
Later, parades of mushroom people filled the wooden city. Nowa wore borrowed clothes, soft and strange against his skin. Chris strutted with his nose in the air, chest puffed with pride. Lancer floated on a flying ink carpet, a satisfied smirk on his face.
A week later, they stood before a new portal, a rift that belonged to the Mushroom Kingdom. Dozens of mushroom folk gathered to see them off. The Mushroom God and a weeping Mushroom Princess stood at the front.
Chris shook the princess's hand. "Don't fuckin' worry, Mishory. We'll never forget our first encounter in the forest."
Lancer shrugged. "If you keep crying like that, you'll flood the city again."
Mishory nodded through her sobs, clinging to Chris's hand. When she finally let go, she looked at each of them. "You really have to go? You could stay in our world, you know…"
Her voice was small, fragile.
The three of them were silent for a moment. Then Chris broke it. "Sorry. But we made a promise to each other, we're gonna save people. And that extends to everything out there, beyond this world."
He turned to the Mushroom God. "Oldcap, thanks for blessing us with that auto-translation at the start, too!"
Nowa nodded, then stepped forward. "Here." He held out his crowbar. "I know you guys don't have this kind of technology yet. But think of it as a keepsake. For sheltering us."
Mishory took the crowbar, her hands trembling. "How are you going to fight, Nowa?"
Nowa raised his fist. "With these. And my flames." He paused, then added, quieter, "I'm getting comfortable using them now."
Chris turned toward the portal. "We'll be going now!"
"Wait!" the crowd called. They turned back.
"If you're really leaving, what will your group's name be? That rift connects to other worlds where we trade once a year. We want to hear your names spread, so we can say it with pride!"
The trio exchanged thoughtful glances.
"Crusaders…" Lancer murmured.
"Of what?" Nowa asked.
"LIBERATION!" Chris shouted, his voice rising with excitement.
The crowd gasped. Then they took up the cry. "Crusaders of Liberation! Good luck!"
The name had been given. The first world they had liberated would remember them forever.
Two years passed. The Crusaders of Liberation traveled from world to world, and their name spread throughout the multiverse. They became heroes, vigilantes, liberators. They saved worlds. They fought for the helpless. No single text could capture every venture they've gone through, every hardship they endured, every life they reached. Their group became legends, so did their individual names.
Chris, the Blue Crystal Hero. He built machines from scratch, using his own energy as a power source to forge weapons and engines that defied imagination from scrap.
Lancer, the Dream Time Weaver. He drew sentient beings into existence, gave hope to the doomed, and developed an increasingly terrible arsenal of puns.
Nowa, the Flamenoah. Few ever saw him use the black fire. He reserved it for when it was truly needed. He still hesitated. But the hesitation was no longer crippling.
Now, back to the fragments of his memory. Nowa stood beneath a collapsing giant landmass, holding it above his head with every fiber of his strength. Dozens of children huddled beneath him, crying.
"Flamenoah! You can do this!" they cheered.
Nowa forced a wobbly smile. "Don't worry. I'm here."
A rumble shook the earth. Then the weight above him suddenly lifted. A massive dragon drawn by Lancer had seized the landmass in its colossal jaws.
"Oi! Who builds a museum underground? A mole?" Lancer's voice boomed from behind the dragon.
Chris groaned from below, his scrap armor humming with blue energy. "Awful pun, man. Awful." He flew up and clapped Nowa on the back. "Good job holding on, Ugly Mutt."
Days later, the three of them walked through a city of magic in the middle of nowhere.
"How's your control on your flame?" Chris asked.
Nowa examined his palm as he walked. "It's still uncontrollable… but manageable. If I keep it in ball form, it's fine."
"Heeeehhh?" Lancer folded his hands behind his head. "Still, our powers are so different. Yours doesn't seem to have any negative side effects. Chris and I, though, mine burns stamina and mental stability with every drawing, and Chris is basically a living engine that needs a cooler head."
"Hey! Not funny," Chris retorted.
"Well, aside from being uncontrollable and erasing things," Lancer continued, "you really were born differently from us, Nowa."
Then they heard shouting.
They ran toward the source. A crowd had gathered, voices overlapping in panic.
"The south land, it's been engulfed by that lavamancer!"
"The south? That land is peaceful! How evil!"
But to the trio, the south land was where the children lived—the ones they had saved from the recent collapse.
No words were needed. Lancer drew a colossal dragon in an instant. It swept them into the sky and hurtled toward the south.
When they arrived, there were only burnt skeletons and smoldering ruins. The lava was still fresh on the ground.
Nowa fell to his knees. His eyes filled with tears. "NO!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Chris stood rigid, fury burning in his chest. Lancer watched in grim silence.
Months later, they followed a lead into a realm of gods. They knew what they were walking into, the map they had acquired in previous months had warned them. Still, nothing could have prepared them.
The battle was already raging when they arrived. One man fought alone, his body wreathed in explosive power, trading blows with beings who manipulated reality itself. One of the gods bent light until it flickered out, wounding the man with pure darkness. Another twisted perception, and the world became a spinning, incomprehensible scream. The trio's senses shattered. They vomited. They collapsed. Just witnessing the battle was enough to break a mortal mind.
The man noticed them.
"Watch out!"
A surge of rune energy burst out of the man and propelled towards them, yanking them out of the realm, dragging them through reality itself until they collapsed in an unfamiliar room.
Later, when they woke—
"What the hell was that?!" Chris bolted upright.
Nowa and Lancer groaned beside him.
From the corner of the room, a voice answered. "That is what you mortals call fighting with reality authority."
They turned.
"Who are you?" the three said in unison.
"Bion. I'm glad you're alive. But first—"
A flash of light. Bion explosive blitzed forward and smacked all three of them on the head.
"Do you understand the concept of mortal boundaries?! You were digging your own graves!"
Chris rubbed his skull. "We're here for a reason. We've been looking for answers."
Nowa nodded. "About why our world suddenly manifested powers. About the chaos."
"And why our world died in the process," Lancer finished.
Bion paused. His expression shifted. "Oh? You're here for that too? Then let me tell you what I know."
The cause of Lancer and Chris's power awakening, of their entire world's population gaining abilities, was the work of corrupted gods serving the Equilibrium. The event was called the God Chaos Event. Every affected life form was blessed with random powers and suffered severe mental destabilization. Chaos erupted. No one knew why the gods had done it, or what they hoped to achieve.
"So I'm here fighting those gods off. To find answers." Bion said.
The trio were silent. Rage? Disbelief? A grief too deep for words?
Then Nowa spoke. "If I wasn't one of the affected… why do I have this?" He cast a small ember of black flame in his palm.
Bion watched it closely. "That's… not magic. Not even fire. What is it? It's erasing existence and non-existence alike…" He stepped closer. "Right. You three, come with me. I'll train you to fight gods. You want answers? Let's squeeze them out of those bastards together."
The Anti-God Fighters program began. They learned that Bion was the last member of an ancient race that predated the Big Bang. His title, passed down through his lineage, was the Big-bang Demi-God, capable of wielding expansive space, compressing it, and detonating it in a manner that echoed the birth of the universe itself.
Chris invited Bion to join the Crusaders of Liberation. Bion laughed. Then he joined.
Under Bion's guidance, the trio began learning the Framework Rune Arts, runes capable of dueling reality itself. The knowledge had been scattered across the multiverse, its last living practitioner an old man Bion vouched for. Chris absorbed the art faster than Lancer and Nowa, fusing his blue crystal energy with the runes to create sci-fi builds, including a goddamn mecha that could transform between combat mode and spacecraft. Nowa forged the Rune Revolver, his first true creation. Lancer upgraded his paintbrush, strapping it behind his back, and began drawing sentient beings of far greater complexity and strength.
But Nowa was trained separately. Bion took him aside, away from the others, and taught him to master his emotions, the volatile fuel of the black flame. It took years. When they finally understood it enough to name it, they called it the VoidFlame.
During their training, they stumbled across a cambion prince named Shin in a dying world.
"Please, save my sister!" Shin pressed his forehead to the ground. "She's all I have left. Our world was overrun by gods… and they took her."
The Crusaders exchanged glances.
Nowa stepped forward. "Let's save her. This counts as anti-god training, doesn't it? Perfect timing."
Bion smirked. "Good. Let's go."
They tore through the domain of the gods. Bion was their strongest member, a walking cataclysm. Nowa held the enemy at bay with the threat of his erasure. Kai, the Lust Demon Cambion, fled with Shin, Chris, and Lancer.
"Beatstick!" Bion called to Nowa. Nowa turned. "Come here—I'll throw you straight into their planet. Use the VoidFlame. Let's send them a message."
Nowa nodded. He leaped onto Bion's arm. Bion wound up and hurled him with explosive expansion, propelling him at near-light-speed. Nowa sheathed himself in black fire. The Voidflame carved clean through the planet's core. In an instant, the entire world was destroyed.
The Crusaders of Liberation had new members.
For three years, the training continued. The banter continued. The growth continued. They grew stronger together, and Nowa's heart, scarred and hesitant, began to change.
During this time, they met Veilhestrias, Nowa's lookalike.
"Look at you, Nowa! You've gotten way too strong!" Veil said, swinging his feet on the bench as they watched the horizon together.
"It's all thanks to Bion." Nowa opened his palm and cast a controlled flame, a tiny black figure shaped like a woman. He smiled at it. "Partner… Let's keep up the good pace." Then he dismissed the flame.
"I'm jealous, man… My powers can't grow. I can only steal them." Veil flicked his hand, and a burst of lightning struck a poor flower by the bench. "But still, I'm grateful you brought me with you guys! I can't wait to join the Crusades for real!"
Nowa was silent. He understood the darkness of their mission. He didn't want Veil to be consumed by it. "Veil, remember— too much hate isn't good control—"
"I know!" Veil jumped off the bench and faced Nowa with blazing hope. "But emotions don't control me. My goal does! I want a peaceful world. I want to be like you!"
Nowa laughed. He rose to his full height and placed a hand on Veil's shoulder. "I will bring peace. I promise you that."
Veil grinned. "I believe you, my hero!"
The legend had begun. The boy who fell into the pit had risen, surrounded by brothers and sisters, fighting for a future none of them could yet see.