Type-Moon: Does even a sneak peek make it official?

Western Roman Empire — Gaul — at the heart of the Bagaudae movement.

At noon, gentle sunlight poured across the vast land. The air was thick, still heavy with drowsiness.

Suspended in midair above the city stood a white-haired man with vibrant bronze skin — Zagreus — a god who had fallen from the Texture into the mortal realm, summoned under contract with the Wandering Sea's Hidden Principle by Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, as part of the Submarine Alexandria Library Project.

Prince of the Underworld, Zagreus — the former aspect of the Greek god of wine — was born of Zeus and the underworld queen Persephone.

Originally, this was meant to be the stage for Byron Long, one of the protagonists of the Second Great Adventure a thousand years hence.

Beside him towered a great black tree. Its boughs unfurled in the clear sky, containing shadow and darkness, while its roots, coiled like black serpents, spread across the ground. This was the divine body of the Eastern god Ōkuninushi, the dragon-bull hybrid ruler among the Kunitsu.

It was thanks to the covert aid of these two gods that the Western Roman Empire's elite Praetorian Guard had been unable to end the Bagaudae movement.

But today… something had come.

The Prince of the Underworld sensed a power like nothing he had felt before — strange, even unnatural — manifesting ahead of them.

"So this is the power even Zelretch finds terrifying… indeed."

Zagreus murmured. As a Greek god, he truly regarded the protection of humankind as his duty.

But one must remember — the divine and mortal perspectives differ utterly. In the eyes of gods, humans are flat, two-dimensional beings.

The hero Heracles had been driven mad and twisted into a vengeful form by the Black Mud because the gulf between mortal and divine values had driven him to the brink.

"Humans… why do you do this? You shouldn't — you should know better than anyone."

"How foolish. Precisely because you seek salvation, you feel all the more sharply the inevitable end.

I once prayed — to know everything, to understand all within this ever-expanding world. And so, what I sought was not personal strength or happiness, but the enduring self that would remain until the day of the world's judgment — the true human."

There was no mockery or malice in the woman's voice — only pure, untainted goodwill.

Her figure seemed that of a true savior.

And yet, Zagreus knew — or rather, in these few minutes, the knowledge had been forcibly driven into him.

Her goodwill was nothing but goodwill — without the slightest trace of warmth or compassion.

It was merely the prelude to erasing them from existence.

Though the sunlight still bathed the land in gentle warmth, the sky above now shimmered with silver starlight, tilting downward at a speed no mortal could match, as if transforming this place into an ocean beneath moonlight.

Yet it was no true sea — but an environment woven of countless silver-white points of light.

Zagreus not only saw it, but heard and felt it — an anomaly beyond anything in the past. The very breath of the world had vanished. Magic flooded the place, accompanied by a familiar trace of… madness.

"You… no, this— this is far too much like Ate's scent. How could you—?"

As a Greek god, Zagreus recognized what lay in the depths of Mabel Kiara's magical power. Though laced with the rot of an unknown curse, its essence was madness.

That madness had come from afar — the god of order born from chaos, wandering Olympus without flesh or steel frame, its true form an incorporeal program drifting through the sea of information by wisdom alone. Designation: Ate.

Ate — master of unbalancing reason, bringing madness to mortals, gods, and the world alike — was not born of malfunction or malice, but like a ship's ballast stone, set in place to stabilize and revise the principles and integrity of the world.

But in an age when he still had a physical form, Zeus judged Ate unnecessary, freezing and casting her out into the mortal realm. Thus was born the legend of Zeus seizing Ate by the hair and exiling her.

The goddess of folly landed in Troy — and there, the seeds of madness took root.

Back then, when humans acted foolishly, they would claim they had been swayed by Ate. But in truth, folly, madness, and ruin were of humankind's own making. The goddess of temptation bore the blame for what was already theirs.

Ate bore no hatred toward the gods, nor lamented her own helplessness. Rather, she praised both the world and humanity: clever and foolish, honor and ruin contained within them from the start. In her eyes, humanity was already complete.

Because Ate had no physical form, even if Olympus fell, she could remain — a dream, a phantasm, the embodiment of madness coexisting with humankind.

Merging with the world, Ate became waves of information. Among those waves, a single crest over centuries took shape, gained awareness, and became something apart from Ate — a human form of "folly."

In the year 400 AD, this independent being bore a name—

Francesca.

"After a hundred years… again."

Mabel Kiara's voice was calm.

"Prince of the Underworld, Ōkuninushi of the Far East… not far off from the time of the Marshal of Sorcery and the King of the Moon. Which means—"

The sea of silver light erupted with terrifying magical force. Behind her, an infinite Aether Cannon took shape, and high above, a phantom moon appeared.

The silver-white realm centered on her began to shatter. Through the rifts, Zagreus glimpsed stars.

The cannon lived up to its name — countless shells spat forth, like a black hole born upon the earth. Color and sound vanished, leaving only void… and the lingering scent of myth.

Then came the massive lunar phantom, matter forged of faith itself, rending all and bringing collapse.

No mystery, no resilience could stand before this holy scripture. Like the death of a great star, it consumed the very air and even a portion of the world, the void expanding still—

And before long, the land returned to its most primordial state.

All that remained was ruin.

"The gods have long turned to dust. What has the world to do with you?"

A day later, the Bagaudae movement that had lasted a year in the Western Roman Empire was crushed.

The Holy Church said this:

The city of the unrighteous had been destroyed like the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah — no grass remained, no life survived.