Far across the ocean, on a sprawling green estate.
Inside a study where classical and modern aesthetics had been blended with deliberate care.
The room's owner sat in a comfortable armchair by the window.
He had soft golden hair and features so handsome they bordered on perfection, carrying the kind of effortless composure and quiet elegance that only years of living could produce. His emerald eyes seemed capable of catching the subtlest shifts in human emotion.
He wore a well-tailored dark suit, an antique family crest pinned at the collar.
Otto Apocalypse.
At this moment, he was working through the post that Sirin had forwarded to him.
The account known as Void Archives had been created, at its inception, simply as a way for him to keep tabs on his granddaughter Theresa's interests.
And also as a way to slip her things he thought she might enjoy, through a channel she couldn't immediately trace back to him and shut down.
"Sirin..."
Otto read through the repost from the account labeled "Sirin (Troublemaker Streamer)" and let the corner of his mouth curve upward.
He knew perfectly well who Sirin was and how she fit into Kiana's life. He had watched that girl grow up, even if from a considerable distance.
His gaze moved to the link and brief commentary attached to the repost. He tapped it open without much thought.
The comic that loaded made him raise an eyebrow.
The art style was mature, the linework confident, the paneling cinematic. This was no shoddy, rushed production.
What caught his attention more, however, was the name listed beneath the title: Under the Stellar Sky Studio.
The name rang a faint bell.
Theresa had mentioned it in passing at some point. Something about Kiana's deadbeat childhood friend running a studio on the verge of collapse, which was how Kiana, who spent her days doing nothing but gaming and watching anime, had been packed off there to "experience what real work felt like."
At the time, he had written it off as kids playing around. He hadn't given it another thought.
And yet this supposedly dying studio had managed to put something like this together.
He skimmed through the contents.
"The disaster setting... 'Honkai.' Interesting name. The character work... this 'Kiana Kaslana.' Her personality is a dead ringer for that loud, reckless girl in real life. They've even captured that headstrong, impulsive energy quite faithfully."
He murmured his observations in a low voice, the way someone might appraise an unusual curiosity.
"Bronya Zaychik? Well now. The girl Welt took an interest in has been pulled into this too? With a mechanical construct on top of it? Interesting."
A glint of amusement passed through his eyes.
Having given the prologue a quick read, Otto made his assessment: the visual quality, the paneling, the pacing of the narrative were all solid, maybe a notch above average, with some real potential underneath.
But what genuinely intrigued him was the shape of the world the story was building, and beneath it, the faint trace of something that felt both familiar and strange.
Grand themes, barely sketched: the death of civilizations, resistance, sacrifice, the act of holding onto something that mattered.
Wrapped up in anime girls doing battle, but the core of it was not simple.
Otto closed the comic and tapped his fingers lightly against the edge of his desk.
His granddaughter Theresa had seemed restless lately, growing dissatisfied with her current responsibilities, and had started talking again about the kinds of heroic stories and bright-eyed ideals she had been so consumed by when she was younger.
He had been at something of a loss for how to give her a little lift without coming across as an overbearing old man sticking his nose where it didn't belong.
This comic, "Honkai Impact 3rd," seemed like it might make a rather nice small gift.
The content was wholesome enough, at least on the surface. The artwork was polished. The protagonist was Kiana, a girl Theresa had watched grow up, even if their reunions tended to end in chaos. And perhaps most fittingly, it came from a scrappy little independent studio fighting to stay afloat, which carried with it a certain quality that would appeal to Theresa's more romantic side.
Otto himself regarded it as nothing more than ordinary entertainment.
He turned his attention back to the Void Archives interface. He copied Sirin's repost and made a few small edits, trimming her personal jabs at Kiana in the interest of keeping the account's reputation for measured, impartial commentary intact.
Then he reposted it, and applied a quiet, carefully calibrated nudge of influence to make sure it would surface naturally in the feeds Theresa habitually browsed, with tags that read as entirely organic: *a promising debut worth your time, fighting for a better world,* and others in that vein.
With that done, Otto lifted his cup of tea and took a quiet sip.
He gazed out the window at the carefully tended grounds of the estate, a faint gleam behind those green eyes.
"Fighting for a better world," he repeated the comic's rallying cry under his breath, his tone perfectly even, carrying neither warmth nor contempt.
"The sparks of idealism are always so brilliantly bright. And so very fragile."
"Still, there is something to be said for watching a spark like that. Seeing whether it catches and lights something bigger. Or whether it struggles, flickers, and goes out in the wind. Either way, in its own fashion, that's a kind of entertainment."
Having wrapped it all up as though it were the most inconsequential errand imaginable, Otto rose from his chair and straightened his jacket. Something else came to mind.
"Isn't Kallen out at a concert with someone today?"
He murmured to himself, reaching for the coat draped over the nearby rack.
"I should probably go pick her up. Otherwise she'll spend the rest of the week complaining that I never pay her any attention."
At the thought of his wife, the cool severity in his expression softened without him seeming to notice.
Coat in hand, he cast one last glance at the desk, then turned and walked out of the room.
The door closed without a sound behind him, shutting away the afternoon light and that brief, quiet flicker of interest.
For Otto Apocalypse, at the point in life he had reached, there was rarely any need to concern himself with how things worked beneath the surface.
All that mattered was whether the outcome proved interesting.
And in a corner of the world where no one was watching, a butterfly had beaten its wings.
Setting the very first ripple of information about "Honkai Impact 3" drifting outward, toward the edges of more and more potential readers' worlds.