Kiana Kaslana awakens from a bizarre dream…
Note: For now, this chapter is heavily incomplete. Open DevTools/Inspect Element to see some left behind notes and comments.
Progress: probably about 85%-ish.
…enjoy whatever this is, I guess? (Also…please forgive me in advance if I mischaracterize Kiana…and also call me out on it so I know I messed up…)
…I am so going to regret writing this series later.
Hey, uh, just FYI: I barely managed to avoid flunking my Literature classes at school. Like as in, all of them. Seriously.
“Don’t expect good prose” is all I’m sayin’. I’ll still try, but uh, don’t expect too much.
— future UnsetVariable— UnsetVariable
Additional proofreading and feedback by: CopperSlab07, totallynobody, myangelcelia.
“We thirst for the seven wailings.”
…eh?
“We bear the koan of Jericho.” The same mysterious voice continued.
…what…was that voice?
“Password accepted. Welcome to the Shittim Chest, Kiana Kaslana.” A different voice announced.
…“Shittim Chest”? Why can’t I recognize that…?
…mechanical train noises then started to…fade in. From…somewhere.
“…it was all my fault. My decisions…and everything they led to.” Another, younger voice like that of a girl’s suddenly spoke out. “It had to come to this for me to realize that you were right all along…”
My eyes snapped open to a blinding light…which faded away to reveal an unnaturally empty train car, a blue sky in the distance…and the only other passenger onboard. A probably high school girl in some kind of white administrative uniform…and a trail of red from her chest.
Are you…okay? Is there…? I tried to ask…but found no words coming out of my mouth. I tried moving my arm, or rather my limbs…but I couldn’t feel anything either.
“…I know this is very shamelss of me, but I must ask for your help…Sensei. You’ll forget these words, but it won’t matter. You’ll likely make the same choices under the same circumstances, even without your memories…” She turned to me and continued, completely ignoring her wound.
Without my memories…? What does she mean? What did she…do to me…?! Why did she…? What about your wound—
“What matters are the choices we make…not our past experiences. And…there are choices only you can make, Sensei.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ve spoken of responsibility before. I didn’t truly understand it back then, but I do now. Adulthood, responsibility, obligation…the choices you make beyond those ideals…even the meaning behind them…”
Responsibility… A word I’m more than familiar with, but…
The train car falls into almost silence, with only the wheel and engine’s noises filling the space.
“Sensei…you’re the one I trust.” She said, her voice beginning to slowly fade away. “Only you can free us from this twisted, distorted fate…and find the choices…that will lead us to a new reality…”
Wait… Hold on, I still have questions—
“…sei? Sen…ake up…” And yet another sharper voice started calling out to me from…somewhere beyond?
“So, Sensei, please…” The girl pleaded…before disappearing.
I still need to-
“—Kiana Kaslana, please wake up!”
She jolted awake, the presumably sunlight from outside blinding her in an instant before fading away gradually to reveal a strange office and…an elf eared woman with a glowing blue halo, standing right in front of her.
Both of them briefly stayed silent.
“…you must have been very exhausted. I didn’t expect you to fall asleep while waiting…let alone struggle to wake up. You must have been having a dream… Either way, please gather yourself and focus — I’ll explain the current situation again.”
The white haired adult turned to the woman in front of her, subtly nodding as if to signal it’s okay.
“My name is Nanagami Rin. I’m the Chief Officer of the General Student Council in the Academy City of Kivotos—” Rin introduced herself— “—and you’re the teacher that we have summoned here…or so it seems.”
She tilted her head in confusion, hand still clutching on in disorientation. “…please excuse my uncertainty — I only say that because we don’t fully understand how you arrived here in the first place…”
An explosion far away goes off cutting right in the middle of Rin’s words, and Kiana rushes over to the window by instinct.
Multiple columns of smoke and fire still rising in the distance. Buildings big and small destroyed and heavily damaged, if not already ransacked through. Cars, supply crates, and whatever else scattered around as makeshift cover.
And most worrying of all…the civilians running in the distance from the thugs, gangsters and criminals wrecking havoc as they please, harassing and shaking down people along their reign of terror…
“…Miss Nanagami…what’s going on here?” Sensei asked.
…the Chief Officer took a deep breath and readjusted her glasses. “…Kivotos is…falling apart as we speak. The General Student Council has lost control over its authority. We’ve been trying to regain it but to no avail…until you arrived, that is—”
Another explosion — this time closer and bigger — goes off, more smoke and fire rising from the ruins and rubble falling down in its wake, the bombers responsible seemingly cheering and celebrating their “handiwork”.
“Please follow me for now. There’s something we need you to do…something only you can…that could determine the fate of Kivotos.” She goes over to the elevators, and before long, an elevator car arrives. “Please follow me when you’re ready.”
Sensei takes one last look at the chaos unfolding just beyond the windows. At the rampage in the distance…and the ever so faint pleas of civilians making their way to her.
“…I’m ready. Let’s go.” The elevator shortly closes after, and the two begin descending towards ground floor.
At the Sanctum Tower’s reception room. Four girls representatives from three of Kivotos’s leading academies — Millennium, Trinity and Gehenna — currently waiting at the lobby.
“How long is this going to take?! We’ve been waiting here for 30 minutes already!” One of the four of them — with dark blue hair tied into two side pigtails — complained, repeatedly tapping her shoes increasingly impatiently on the floor.
“Yuuka, please calm down for now. Being impatient won’t force everything to go faster.” The Gehenna girl with blonde hair and a “Prefect Team” armband tried to pacify—
“Sure, you say that, but what could it even be that’s delaying her this much?!” Yuuka cut off the other girl, unconsciously holding a white knuckle grip on her guns from all the anger. “Aren’t you here for basically the same reasons too?!”
“Yes, we are here for similar reasons, but—”
“Then why are you just sitting idly there?! Isn’t there something you can do to make this faster?!”
The elevator’s arrival tone chimes, and out came the General Student Council’s Acting President…and one unfamiliar woman.
“There you finally are, Acting President! We’ve been waiting for ages, you know!” Yuuka rushed over to the Acting President and complained at her. “And who’s that strange woman beside you?”
Hasumi and Chinatsu approached the Chief Administrator, both taking their turns to state their intent. “I’ve been waiting to see you, Chief Officer.” “I’m here to meet with the General Student Council President. The Head Prefect is demanding answers.”
“This is inconvenient…” Rin turned away and briefly grinded her teeth, before taking a sharp breath and turning back to the guests.
“Hello, guests representing neighboring academies’ student councils, disciplinary boards, and those who otherwise have too much time on their hands. I am well aware why you idle wand— important representatives have come here today — to hold us responsible for the fuss happening in Kivotos, correct?”
This only served to anger Yuuka even further. “If you’re already well aware, then why don’t you actually do something already?! Thousands of academy districts have fallen into panic, not to mention our academy’s wind generator shutting down just a few days ago! And that is just scraping the surface!”
Chinatsu followed after. “We have also received intel that a few suspended students have escaped from the Correction Bureau’s custody just this week and have broken many others out as well. Several severe incidents have already occurred in Gehenna and most likely will continue to happen.”
“There has been significantly more thugs attacking Trinity students on their way to school. Public safety is not being properly enforced.” Suzumi added on…
“Illegal distribution of armed vehicles and other weapons have risen by over 2000 percent, and continuing to rise as we speak. Ordinary school life in Kivotos at this rate will quickly become just something of the past.” …followed by Hasumi.
Rin fell silent at their words— “And what’s the President doing while everything is just uncontrollably falling apart like this?! I demand to see her this instant—”
“She’s missing!” The Acting President loudly stated something nobody else knew, the whole room going silent in shock and atmosphere freezing in an instant.
“…I’ll cut to the chase — the General Student Council lost control over its authority because the Sanctum Tower’s administrator has gone missing. We had been searching for a way to bypass authentication procedures, but to no avail…until now.”
“Do you mean you’ve found a way?” Hasumi asked.
“That is correct.” Rin turns to the white haired woman and takes a deep breath, everyone else in the room following her gaze. “She’s Kiana Kaslana — the Sensei of Schale, personally chosen by the General Student Council President…and I believe she may hold the answer to our problems.”
…that was a pain in the ass to write. Hi, UnsetVariable here. First things first…I gotta admit this chapter…took a whole ass year to write. I know. I’m very not proud of that weird fact. If anything, UnsetVariable, the fuck, was the Prologue that complicated?!
…but hey, what else is new in Kivotos, am I right?
Oh, also, about “Miss Yuuka” and such: I am adhering to a strict zero-honorific rule for this fic, mostly as my own stylistic preference and to see how far I can push a work like this without relying on honorifics to do the heavy lifting for me. Miss Yuuka here is the closest analogue to Yuuka-san (which I would otherwise use) I have.
(fun fact: linguistic stuff like that has already shot me in the foot in this chapter alone, so you might as well just put your wild guess out for how long I’d last trying to maintain this style…)
Anyway, yeah, have fun!
— UnsetVariable, 2026