Anna Croft

Anna Croft is Asgard's prophet and the leader of Zarathustra. Her forecasts, international organization, and willingness to sacrifice individuals for humanity's survival make her both a formidable rival to Kim Dokja and a necessary ally when their larger objectives overlap.

Biography

The distant prophet and the Korean anomaly

Before Anna appears in person, Yoo Joonghyuk knows her as the only person in the original future with the legendary Prophet attribute. Its passive resistance to detection makes Dokja's claimed foresight seem possible to him, but it also marks Dokja as an anomaly Anna must investigate. When the Fourth Wall briefly weakens, she projects her consciousness into Dokja, tests his statements with Lie Detection, and learns that he supplied the Angler Dragon nucleus used to implant her Great Demon's Eye. The restored wall blurs her perception and expels her before she can control the exchange. (Chapters 11, 32, and 38)

The failed inspection does not send Anna charging into Korea. She instead responds at the scale where she is strongest: recruiting exceptional incarnations, consolidating Zarathustra, and contacting dangerous or powerful figures whose survival may change the global route. Nirvana Moebius describes her as one of the few people able to resist his thought influence and as someone willing to bargain with a devil if that would save the world. That motive is sincere, but it already contains the conflict that will define her relationship with Dokja—she evaluates lives as variables in a survivable future, while he refuses to accept an optimal route purchased with a companion. (Chapters 38 and 137)

An absent leader at the Constellation Banquet

Anna does not attend the Constellation Banquet herself, yet Zarathustra is not absent. She sends Selena Kim, an American representative and one of the strongest incarnations associated with her organization, giving Zarathustra access to Story Succession and the gathering's international negotiations. Selena says Anna wanted to come and would have done so had she known Dokja would be present. The delegation shows that Anna's influence does not depend on standing in every room: she can place trusted members inside major political events while preserving her own freedom to act elsewhere. (Chapter 148)

Her reason for staying away is Yoo Joonghyuk. In the prior regression known to both of them, Anna betrayed him, and her foresight means she has already seen what her other-world-line self did. Joonghyuk's warning to Selena—telling Anna to guard her neck—makes that inherited violence part of the present before Anna and Joonghyuk even meet. Avoidance prevents the Banquet from becoming a personal battle, but it does not repair the relationship. The episode demonstrates a limit that no higher skill level solves: seeing a disastrous choice in another future may let Anna route around its immediate repetition, but it cannot erase the anger, fear, and political mistrust produced by it. (Chapter 148)

Zarathustra at the Gourmet Association

Anna finally meets Dokja face to face as a blond woman with a yellow demonic eye floating over her hair, formally identifying herself as Asgard's Prophet and Zarathustra's leader. Their carriage conversation exposes the gulf between them. She recommends cooperation for the world's survival, but can discuss Shin Yoosung dying “accidentally” as a usable branch; Dokja answers by releasing enough Status to turn the suggestion into a threat against everything she protects. Anna does not abandon her argument, because her direct contract with all of Asgard and the network she has built make large-scale survival, rather than one party's safety, the standard by which she judges a plan. (Chapters 236–237)

At the Gourmet Association, Anna converts that strategic outlook into story economics. She reads the constellations' appetite, invokes the nostalgia of first-generation Stories, and presents the Bracelet Expedition as an opportunity for them to act through participating incarnations. The scenario can improve a participant's intended sponsor and earns Anna the audience's favor, but it also exposes Iris and the others to a game designed around constellation pleasure. Dokja disrupts her staging because he rejects that cost. Even so, Anna's later concern for Iris is not feigned: the narration stresses that, brutal as she is, she does not willingly lose people she considers her own. Her contradiction is therefore not kindness versus secret cruelty, but narrow loyalty operating inside an uncompromising global calculus. (Chapters 239–246)

Gigantomachia and conditional cooperation

Zarathustra enters Gigantomachia as an independent international force rather than an appendage of Dokja's company. Anna uses Future Sight to identify valuable materials for her own giant soldier and bargains hard when Dokja asks for one, while Selena's objection proves that Anna cannot simply command every member after Selena's pledge is released. Joonghyuk remains on the edge of attacking her, and Anna cannot treat his grudge as an obsolete detail from another regression. Nevertheless, both sides postpone a reckoning because the war requires resources and fighters neither can replace. The resulting cooperation is transactional, but it is also a meaningful advance from avoidance: Anna accepts negotiation with people whose future she cannot safely dictate. (Chapter 337)

During Archangel Hunting, Anna and Dokja move together against the corrupted Michael. Her Precognition supplies warnings about short-term changes, while Dokja contributes information and decisions that lie outside the routes she can read. Neither suddenly trusts the other, and the hunt is resolved through several actors rather than one prophet declaring the correct ending. That division of labor matters to Anna's development. She begins to use competing future knowledge as a complement to her own instead of treating every unseen variable as an error to eliminate. By the Great War, her Great Demon's Eye continues to provide future information, but Zarathustra retains its separate interests and her forecasts remain advice that must be combined with other Stories, powers, and choices. (Chapters 366–369 and 409)

Perfect Night aboard the Final Ark

The Final Scenario reveals the positive end hidden beneath Anna's severity. With America destroyed and Zarathustra among the surviving human forces, she turns against the Asgard that sponsored her because her conclusion, Perfect Night, is a world without constellation starlight where humanity can live freely. She conceals Dokja and Han Sooyoung, lends them Precognition, and raises Phantom Barrier against her own Nebula. The contract's backlash leaves blood flowing from her mouth and ears, yet she still orders Selena and Iris to lead their allies onward. Sooyoung carries her when she can no longer run. Her alliance is therefore neither a trick nor forgiveness: she genuinely risks herself for a shared route until their incompatible endings force another conflict. (Chapter 497)

Anna's foresight remains powerful but visibly incomplete. She sees four people crossing a bridge without seeing what kind of bridge it will be, helps the party navigate Yggdrasil, and uses Way of the Storm Winds while fighting lower constellations. After Zarathustra takes the Ark's core, she restrains Dokja and proposes Perfect Night as the ending that preserves the absolute majority; she even offers him a place as its single star. Her fully awakened Great Demon's Eye still cannot see the conclusion beyond his Final Wall. When his Demon King form and Chaos aura convince her that ordinary humanity is no longer discernible in him, she attacks, and Loki stops her. This is not a sudden betrayal for private gain—it is the consistent limit of cooperation between her humanity-wide righteousness and Dokja's unknowable, companion-centered choice. (Chapters 498–504)

Prophecy after the scenarios

Anna survives the Final Scenario and remains in the world-line that comes closest to the conclusion she wanted. Over the following decades, the system weakens and the old authority of skills, constellations, and transcendence begins to fade, yet she is still regarded as one of the strongest surviving incarnations. She does not attempt to restore her role as an infallible prophet. Instead, she contributes to the practical work of building a replica Final Ark and planning a voyage through world-lines, applying the same caution that once produced ruthless scenarios to a rescue whose odds she openly describes as terrible. (Chapters 512, 528, and 542–545)

Her final major contribution is preparing Joonghyuk to carry the manuscript across the Dark Stratum. Anna explains that weak system support, storms of aftermath, and hundreds of thousands or millions of possible world-lines could destroy a traveler or turn one into an Outer God. She identifies Joonghyuk as the only candidate with the mental endurance to continue, insists that the former regressor wear a protective spacesuit, and signals the Ark's launch. The equipment later slows the disintegration of his body during weeks of drift. Their old hostility is not sentimentalized, but the prophet once associated with repeated betrayal now equips her sworn enemy to return alive, while he accepts that care as necessary. (Chapters 547–548)

Appearance and personality

Anna is blond and usually presents a calm gaze, a relaxed voice, and a polished smile suited to negotiation with both incarnations and constellations. Great Demon's Eye may appear as a rotating yellow eye floating above her hair, while intense use makes her own irises swirl crimson. Missing information breaks her composure: her lips tighten, her expression hardens, and genuine surprise appears when Dokja or another future-reader introduces a branch she did not see. In the Final Scenario, bloodshot eyes and blood from her mouth and ears make the cost of defying Asgard physically visible. (Chapters 236–237 and 497)

She is persuasive, controlled, and capable of treating frightening sacrifices as questions of arithmetic. That severity is joined to real protective loyalty toward Selena, Iris, and the people she calls her own. Her cause is also more idealistic than her manner suggests: Perfect Night seeks a human world free of constellation domination, and Dokja considers her righteousness founded on realistic causes rather than rage. What makes Anna dangerous is not the absence of conscience, but a conscience aimed at the greatest survivable population. In the epilogue, her style becomes more practical than theatrical—risk estimates, safety equipment, and mission design replace any claim that one forecast can guarantee the future. (Chapters 240, 246, 497, and 547)

Abilities, attributes, and stories

Prophet, Future Sight, and Precognition

Anna's legendary Prophet attribute includes resistance to ordinary detection and supports a temporal skill suite containing Future Sight and Past Sight. Future Sight identifies prospective routes, while the later-named Precognition checks immediate outcomes and dangers. She uses it to evaluate agents, recruit assets, obtain future-critical materials, warn allies, and choose paths through hostile terrain. The ability grows from global preparation into live support during myth-scale battles and the Final Ark journey. (Chapters 11, 32, 38, 337, 366–369, and 497–499)

Precognition does not reveal one guaranteed future. Changed scenarios, competing future-readers, unknown Stories, and unavailable information produce blind spots or partial images. Anna can foresee four people crossing but miss the bridge's nature, and her fully awakened eye cannot see what Dokja will find beyond the Final Wall. Her predictions are therefore strongest when combined with another person's hidden knowledge. After the Star Stream weakens, she still reasons from risk and likelihood, but the system that validates skill-based prophecy is fading. (Chapters 498, 501, and 545–547)

Great Demon's Eye

Anna receives the costly Great Demon's Eye item from her sponsor and implants it using the magic power of the Angler Dragon nucleus Dokja supplied. The information or technique behind the eye is traced to the Great Demons of the Horizon, whose own eyes perform the same kind of inspection. It can project her consciousness across distance, inspect information, and support observation of past and future. During their first contact, she pairs it with Mental Barrier and Lie Detection, but Dokja's Character List penetrates her protection and the Fourth Wall blurs and ejects the projection. That exchange establishes a specific counter rather than merely showing that Dokja has “stronger” information. (Chapters 32 and 191)

The eye's visible presentation changes with use: it may hover as a yellow demonic eye or turn Anna's irises crimson. By the struggle for the Ark it is described as fully awakened and helps her release a Status comparable to a respectable narrative-grade constellation. Awakening does not remove its informational limits, however. It cannot read Dokja's conclusion beyond the Final Wall, and the system's later decline means that even Anna's signature perception cannot remain independent of the world that produced it. (Chapters 236, 497, 501, and 545)

Analytical skills and Phantom Barrier

Anna's early profile includes Insight, Clairvoyance, Lie Detection, Mental Barrier, advanced magical training, and related information skills. Together they let her test claims, protect her cognition, and turn glimpsed futures into decisions. None is absolute: Dokja's unusual information access overrides Mental Barrier, the Fourth Wall rejects her intrusion, and another skilled future-reader can contest the interpretation of a route. Their value lies in integration, not a universal ability to know whether every person is truthful or what every scenario contains. (Chapter 32)

Phantom Barrier is her most clearly demonstrated defensive field. It removes or distorts the visible terrain around her, causes pursuing constellations to lose their way in darkness, and gives allies time to reposition. When Anna deploys it against Asgard, her direct contract converts rebellion into severe probability backlash: her eyes become bloodshot, she bleeds from her mouth and ears, and the barrier begins releasing enemies before she can recover. It is therefore a temporary concealment tool bought with personal endurance, not an invulnerable wall. (Chapter 497)

Magic, movement, Status, and combat

Although best known for prophecy, Anna can fight directly. Advanced magical training supports her battlefield skills, while Way of the Storm Winds provides rapid aerial movement through the Ark's mythic terrain. She releases Status to pressure negotiators, battles lower-ranked constellations, helps seize the Ark's core, and uses a dagger against Dokja after his Demon King form and Chaos aura convince her that his ordinary humanity is no longer discernible. By that stage her incarnation Status approaches narrative-grade scale, a large progression from the distant observer first seen inside his consciousness. (Chapters 32, 237, and 499–504)

Her combat strength has practical limits. She is not the party's foremost duelist, Phantom Barrier's backlash can leave her unable to run, and peer constellations or unexpected Stories can stop an attack that a forecast recommended. Loki ends her final charge, while Dokja and Sooyoung repeatedly combine hidden knowledge and combat power to contest her. Twenty years later she is still counted among the strongest surviving incarnations, but both her power and Joonghyuk's transcendence are expected to weaken as the system disappears. (Chapters 497, 502, 544, and 547)

Zarathustra and story economics

Anna's most consequential “ability” is organizational. She leads Zarathustra, recruits across national borders, assigns or negotiates constellation relationships, buys materials before their value becomes obvious, and designs scenarios that turn an audience's narrative appetite into favor and resources. The Bracelet Expedition demonstrates the complete mechanism: recognize nostalgia, package a familiar Story, let constellations participate, and offer incarnations better sponsorship prospects in exchange for risk. (Chapters 137, 148, and 239–241)

Leadership does not make her followers mindless extensions. Selena can oppose her once a binding pledge is removed, and Anna's direct contract with Asgard both empowers her and punishes disobedience. Zarathustra's development is therefore institutional rather than magical domination: members survive because Anna plans for them, but they retain interests and agency she must negotiate. The organization advances from a global scenario network to one of humanity's last forces, helps seize the Ark, and later contributes technical expertise to world-line travel. (Chapters 246, 337, 497–500, and 547)

Relationships

• Kim Dokja: An unreadable anomaly becomes Anna's strategic rival, reluctant collaborator, reliable temporary ally, and final ideological opponent. She respects his ability to create unseen routes but never accepts his companion-first choices as a safe policy for humanity.
• Yoo Joonghyuk: Prior-world-line betrayals leave Joonghyuk with a murderous grudge. Their relationship develops from avoidance and barely restrained conflict to functional trust when Anna equips and launches him on the epilogue voyage.
• Selena Kim and Iris: Anna exposes both to dangerous plans while treating their survival as a personal responsibility. Selena's later ability to oppose her proves that Zarathustra's loyalty is more complex than coercion.
• Han Sooyoung: Predictive Plagiarism makes Sooyoung a competing future-reader. Their hostile comparison becomes genuine cooperation aboard the Ark when Sooyoung carries the injured Anna through the route Anna helped reveal.
• Asgard: Its whole-Nebula contract provides status, reach, and resources, but Anna ultimately rebels because Perfect Night requires an end to constellation rule; the same contract makes that rebellion physically costly.
• Wenny King: The Great Demons of the Horizon are tied to the origin and information network of Great Demon's Eye, without reducing Anna's human political program to their command.

Items

• Anna's strategic leverage comes from precognition, contracts, and Zarathustra's organization rather than a separately catalogued personal item.