Perspective: Nadia Solari
Date: March 17, 2012
Time: Night
Location: Upper Atmosphere, Neptune (4 Billion Kilometers from Earth)
"My name is Kaiser Everhart," he said, his smile infuriatingly calm against the roaring void. "The end of all stories."
The air in my chest stopped.
I stared at the man standing 10 paces away on the fresh green grass.
He looked roughly 20,30 years old. Broad shoulders, tall frame, wearing a weathered dark duster coat with the collar turned up against the cold, and a faint, pale scar running along his collarbone. But the untidy shock of jet-black hair, the pale skin, and above all, that dry, sarcastic tilt of his chin...
I had seen that exact look before.
3 days ago, in the festival.
That scrawny kid holding that little girl's hand with that identical, deadpan expression.
Impossible.
How could a magicless being be standing in front of me as a grown man from the future?
The child had no magic in his veins. Not a single flicker. Yet this man standing across the meadow radiated a quiet, bottomless gravity—a cold, limitless depth that made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end.
I pulled my gaze from his face and looked outward, beyond the edge of our floating island.
My stomach dropped in sudden, freezing recognition.
I had studied the imperial star-charts. I knew the grand maps of the heavens.
An immense, terrifying ocean of cobalt blue stretched for millions of miles in every direction. Supersonic gales ripped dark methane clouds into violent ribbons. Above us, the distant Sun was nothing more than a faint, dying ember in the dark, while the glowing cyan arc of 1 of Neptune's planetary rings sliced across the cosmic sky like a curved blade of ice and dust.
Neptune.
We were standing in the upper atmosphere of Neptune, 4 billion kilometers from Earth.
"You're lying," I said, my voice cutting through the whistling wind with steady authority. "Kaiser Everhart is a child. He couldn't light a candle with magic if his life depended on it."
Adult Kaiser let out a short chuckle, shoving both hands into the pockets of his dark coat. He rocked back on his heels like a traveler waiting for an overdue carriage.
"People grow up, Nadia," he replied smoothly. "Some of us even get taller. Though I'll admit, my younger self currently has much better posture than me. Jumping across centuries is terrible for the lower back."
My eyes narrowed into slits. The mana within my core stirred, waking the 1st of my thrones.
"I don't care how many centuries you've skipped," I told him, the air around my boots tightening into a hard ring. "You warped time inside the imperial capital. You dragged me across the solar system. An uncontrolled anomaly with temporal power is an existential threat to the empire."
"There it is," Kaiser sighed, shaking his head with a lazy smirk. "The imperial lecture. You always were wonderfully stubborn. Are you going to start reciting academy disciplinary codes, or can we skip straight to the part where you try to rain meteors on me?"
I didn't answer with words.
I answered with the planet itself.
My right hand snapped shut.
I'll cast the Sky Guillotine.
I seized the howling winds of Neptune, commanding the air around him from all 4 sides. I packed the atmospheric weight into a tight, solid box of crushing force, intending to fold the space around his body like an iron vice.
Kaiser didn't raise a barrier. He didn't even take his hands out of his coat pockets.
He simply clicked his tongue, took half a step to the left, and tapped the air with his index finger.
Pop.
A tiny, sharp hiss echoed over the grass.
With a single flick of his wrist, he opened 4 needle-thin holes in the edge of the barrier. The crushing weight of trapped air I had gathered found the holes and rushed straight out into the roaring storm outside, equalizing into a harmless draft that barely rustled his black hair.
Kaiser checked the cuff of his coat, entirely unimpressed.
"Do you know how wasteful that was?" he asked, looking at me with deadpan pity. "We could've used that excessive mana to light the entire capital for a few days. I opened 4 tiny vents and let the storm outside suck the wind away. Seems to me we're better off without you overworking yourself."
"Shut up," I snapped, my eyes flashing with irritation.
Heaven's Lance.
If wind wouldn't touch him, celestial fire would.
I reached outward, seizing the violent magnetic currents screaming across Neptune's northern pole.
Above our heads, the dark cobalt sky ignited.
A blinding pillar of blue-white auroral lightning gathered across 5,000 miles of atmosphere, ionizing the gas into a roaring spear of pure celestial plasma. The glare was so fierce it washed out the dark void, casting sharp, black shadows across the green grass.
I brought my hand down.
The lightning spear plummeted like an executioner's blade.
Kaiser didn't look up. He casually kicked a patch of damp dirt with the toe of his boot and splashed a drop of water from a small flask onto the soil.
With a whisper of Earth magic, he drew a hair-thin line of iron minerals through the mud beneath his feet, connecting the wet soil to the structural edge of our floating rock.
CRACK!
The auroral bolt crashed down.
It should have vaporized the entire meadow into smoke.
Instead, the blinding arc struck his outstretched palm, hissed violently, and followed the mineral vein straight through the mud, diving off the edge and discharging harmlessly into Neptune's vast planetary magnetic ocean below.
The air smelled sharply of burnt ozone.
Kaiser rolled his left shoulder, letting out a satisfied breath. "Thanks for that. My shoulder was feeling a little stiff from the fall. And the grass was looking dry anyway."
"Using the ground as a lighting rod?" I said through clenched teeth.
"It's called free electricity," he shot back cheerfully. "You really should learn to ground your lightning before you electrocute yourself."
Alright then... Frost Desolation.
"Let's see you ground this," I said coldly.
I opened my hand and claimed authority over heat itself.
Erasing the heat.
Within 0.1 seconds, all thermal motion in the air around the meadow collapsed toward absolute zero. The moisture instantly crystallized into clouds of razor-sharp white needles. The green blades of grass turned pale and brittle, snapping under the sudden, murderous chill.
Kaiser's breath plumed in heavy white frost. His lips turned faintly blue.
He raised his right hand, snapping his thumb and forefinger together.
Flick.
A single, pathetic orange spark ignited between his fingers—no larger than the flame of a dying match.
I almost scoffed. A matchstick against absolute zero was an insult.
Then my senses caught the shift.
The tiny spark wasn't fighting the cold. It was an ignition.
Around his fingertips, thousands of microscopic spatial pores opened in the air, reaching deep—miles down into Neptune's dense, boiling fluid mantle where subterranean temperatures reached thousands of degrees.
The planet itself answered his call.
A massive rush of geothermal heat flooded up through the tiny pores, sweeping across the meadow like a warm spring breeze. The frost dissolved into sparkling morning dew. The grass straightened, lush and emerald once more.
Kaiser blew on his fingertips, putting out the spark.
"Never pay for heating," he lectured with a smug grin, "when the planet under your feet has a massive furnace running day and night for free. Rule 1 of survival, Nadia."
"You're a thief," I hissed, my boots digging into the turf.
"Indeed, my natural talent," he countered. "You talented ones like to spend mana like water. Some of us grew up having the bare minimum."
I'll need to use the wind...
I refused to give him room to breathe.
I seized Neptune's 2,000-kilometer-per-hour winds, weaving the screaming gales into a tight, harmonic vortex around our platform.
The air began to shriek—a deafening, high-frequency acoustic wall capable of shattering bone and liquefying solid stone through pure vibration. The sound waves converged on him from all 360 degrees.
Kaiser didn't cover his ears. He didn't even flinch.
He placed 2 fingers against his throat and hummed a flat, lazy note.
A basic Sound Null charm—the kind mischievous students use to sneak out of dormitories after curfew.
Except he placed the nullification at 3 exact intersection nodes in the sound wave.
The acoustic peaks collided with his inverted frequencies. The deafening roar collapsed in on itself, canceling its own kinetic power in a sudden, dead silence. The wind parted around him, settling into a gentle breeze that barely fluttered the hem of his duster.
Kaiser raised an eyebrow, tapping his ear. "Nice melody. A bit screechy in the high notes, though. 4 out of 10. You need to work on your tempo."
"I'm going to take your head off," I breathed, my pulse thumping against my ribs.
"People have tried," he smiled. "Better men than you. Well, weirder men, at least."
My patience shattered.
He is using basic magic against me; this is insulting.
Neptune's boundless atmosphere was thick with hydrogen and methane—an ocean of fuel waiting for a spark.
I opened my lungs and drew upon 3 thrones at once: Air to supply pure oxygen, Lightning to ionize the gas, and Fire to light the fuse.
The dark cobalt sky ignited into an ocean of roaring golden fury.
A tidal wave of apocalyptic flame stretched across the horizon, burning with enough heat to melt a mountain range. The planetary fire surged toward our floating meadow like a falling sun.
Kaiser looked at the incoming wall of fire, his blue eyes finally sharpening with genuine respect.
"Now that's a proper mess," he muttered.
He didn't run.
He raised both hands, casting a simple spray of mist and cold wind across the front line. He didn't try to extinguish the inferno with raw power. He stripped the heat from the leading edge, turning the combustion into a massive, expanding wall of white steam that choked out the fire with a deafening, thundering hiss.
The golden fire died instantly, smothered by its own vapor.
Thick, blinding white fog rolled across the meadow like sea mist.
Kaiser emerged from the steam, brushing a speck of damp soot from his dark collar. "Great for the skin, honestly. A bit humid, but I've sat in worser conditions."
I stepped through the mist, my boots clicking hard against the stone edge of the terrace.
I reached hundreds of miles down into the crushing depths where planetary pressure squeezed carbon into crystalline rock.
With a sharp upward jerk of my hands, I dragged a storm of diamond shards from the abyss.
Tens of thousands of needle-sharp diamond javelins broke through the clouds, glowing with pale cyan light as they accelerated to supersonic speeds, targeting every square inch of the platform.
Kaiser flicked a spark of static electricity into the air, giving the diamond needles a faint positive charge. Then, with an embarrassingly small pulse of magnetism from his belt, he nudged their path by half an inch.
The entire diamond storm curved.
Like a flock of birds veering away from a cliff, the glittering javelins swept around his body in a wide, whistling arc, shooting harmlessly into the upper stratosphere to form a sparkling ring overhead.
Kaiser watched them glitter against the void, admiring the sparkle. "Very pretty. You should sell those in the Upper District. You'd make a fortune."
"Stop making jokes!" I shouted, the fury rising hot in my chest.
I ground my teeth and reached for Neptune's deep fluid ocean.
A colossal, blue-white geyser of boiling fluid erupted from the depths below, punching through miles of cloud layers like a colossal lance of liquid ammonia and pressurized water. The shockwave tore a visible wound through the planet's cobalt skin.
Kaiser didn't try to block the column.
He placed 4 microscopic vacuum cuts along the rising shaft, spacing them like perforations on a sheet of parchment.
The immense pressure found the perforations and vented sideways.
The unstoppable lance disassembled itself in mid-air, bursting into a harmless shower of snow, mist, and floating ice crystals that drifted down over the grass.
Kaiser caught a falling snowflake on his tongue. "A little salty. Neptune's tap water needs better filtration."
"Is everything a joke to you?" I snarled.
"Only when I'm being murdered by a pretty genius," he replied cheerfully.
That's it... I'll crush him with the planet itself.
I looked upward, locking my gaze onto the glowing ring of ice and rock orbiting thousands of miles above us.
I seized the orbital debris with Magnetism and Gravity, accelerating a dense grid of meteor fragments straight down toward our coordinates.
Kaiser didn't wait for them to arrive.
Before the meteors crossed the stratosphere, he sent 3 gentle puffs of wind into the upper atmosphere.
He nudged each particle by less than 0.01 degrees while they were still thousands of miles away.
By the time the orbital barrage crossed the distance, that microscopic error had expanded into an enormous miss. The meteors rained down miles to our left, burning through the methane clouds like harmless shooting stars.
Kaiser leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. "Have you made a wish yet? I wished for a fresh cup of black coffee."
A knot of cold dread tightened in my throat.
...
FUCK I CAN'T DO ANYTHING!
I stepped forward, the full weight of my rank settling over the meadow.
"Limitless," I commanded, my voice carrying the absolute authority of a Beyonder. "Motion is forbidden."
An invisible boundary of conceptual stillness snapped shut between us.
Within that zone, energy force was strictly prohibited. No wind could blow. No blade could swing. No spell could travel.
He was trapped in an absolute cage of stillness.
Kaiser stopped. He tilted his head, studying the invisible boundary with mild curiosity.
"An absolute rule?" he murmured. "The trouble with absolute rules is that they can't bend. And anything that can't bend breaks when you kick it in the right spot."
He drew a tiny chalk stub from his pocket.
With a lazy flick, he scratched a microscopic fracture glyph onto the boundary's structural root.
As Neptune's violent 2,000-kilometer gales battered against the unyielding wall, all the stored impact of the planetary storm transferred directly into the glyph's leverage point.
CRACK.
The boundary shattered under the crushing weight of the storm it refused to absorb, bursting into glittering fragments of light.
Kaiser tossed the chalk stub into the air and caught it. "I'm lucky the weather is on my side."
Fine... Fifteenfold Convergence.
I refused to accept it.
I was Nadia Solari. The youngest Beyonder in imperial history.
The World-Eater.
I opened all 15 Thrones at once.
Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Metal, Crystal, Plasma, Magnetism, Vacuum, Sound, Dust, Magma, and Light.
The entire sky above Neptune went completely mad.
Plasma braided with lightning. Supersonic winds carried boiling magma and crystal needles. Vacuum walls trapped fire while magnetic currents bent liquid water into slicing blades. It was an extermination net woven from the physical forces of an entire world, converging on him from every conceivable angle.
Kaiser watched the apocalypse approach.
"Wow so pretty," he murmured.
He raised both hands and cast 6 beginner-tier spells at 6 precise junctions.
A puff of wind deflected my plasma into my own water wall.
A tiny spark ignited my oxygen pocket, blowing away my crystal needles.
A microscopic ice barrier absorbed my lightning arc, while a weak magnetic pulse twisted my metal blades into the path of my incoming magma.
My own elements collided with each other.
Fire choked water. Ice quenched plasma. Wind scattered lightning.
The entire planetary assault collapsed into a self-canceling chain reaction, neutralizing every single force until nothing remained but a thin, warm breeze that rustled the grass beneath our boots.
Silence returned to the meadow.
The cobalt storms of Neptune roared in the distance, but on our island, not a single blade of grass was out of place.
I stood there, my arms trembling faintly, my chest heaving with ragged, breathless exhaustion.
My mind spun in horrifying, soul-deep clarity:
He's not countering my magic.
He's using my magic to pay for his.
Every colossal, world-shattering art I threw at him was simply redirected or fed into another element until the energy consumed itself. He had fought a Rank 3 Beyonder across 10 lethal exchanges without spending more than a handful of mana.
Normally those weaker magic could never match my attack. But kaiser...
He amplified them beyond their limits... making them stronger than my own spells!
Frustration, disbelief, and fierce, burning indignation boiled over in my throat.
"You talk quite a lot," I snapped, my voice shaking with raw, furious pride, "for someone who has spent the entire fight running away!"
Kaiser stopped.
He stood in the center of the green meadow, the faint smirk vanishing completely from his face.
He pulled his hands from his pockets. He rolled his broad shoulders, his light-blue eyes locking onto mine with an unreadable, ancient stillness.
"Okay then," Adult Kaiser said softly.
He raised his chin, looking at me without a trace of mockery left.
"I won't run away."
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I didn't hesitate. I couldn't afford to. If he was offering me a stationary target, I would end this anomaly right here on the edge of the solar system.
I called upon the absolute summit of my soul:
Extreme Art — Fifteenfold Crown: Grave Of Magic.
I am going to create a mini star.
Plasma formed the core, confined by magnetic loops of white-hot intensity. Lightning fed continuous ionization, while vacuum barriers insulated the core until the internal temperature reached tens of millions of degrees. Air and water fed hydrogen into the furnace, while light and sound created immense compression waves that locked the false sun into a dense, blinding sphere of pure stellar annihilation.
The miniature star hovered above my palms, illuminating the entire deep blue hemisphere of Neptune in blinding, daylight gold.
"Perish." I whispered.
I drove both hands down, collapsing the star directly onto the coordinate where Kaiser stood.
"BOOM."
There was no sound at 1st—only the complete, absolute obliteration of matter.
The 100-foot meadow vanished in 0.001 seconds.
The false sun punched straight through Neptune's upper atmosphere, carving a colossal, bowl-shaped crater hundreds of kilometers wide through layers of clouds and dense liquid mantle. A planet-spanning shockwave rippled across the ice giant, tearing ring arcs apart in the stratosphere.
Kaiser was caught at ground zero.
No barrier. No redirection. No cheap tricks.
The stellar heat consumed his flesh, his clothes, his bones, and his blood, pulverizing him into ash and unformed atomic dust in less than a heartbeat.
The searing flash faded.
The colossal atmospheric crater began groaning, billions of tons of methane clouds collapsing back inward with a deafening, thunderous roar.
I hovered alone in the freezing void, my 15th Throne holding a tiny sphere of air around my trembling lips.
My mana was completely drained. My muscles burned with agony. I drew deep, heavy, ragged breaths into my lungs, staring down into the bottomless blue crater where the meadow had once floated.
There was nothing left.
No body. No ash. No mana signature.
He was completely pulverized.
I closed my eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath.
It's over now.
*
A single crimson spark flickered in the center of the empty crater.
Then another.
Then 1,000 more.
My breath locked in my throat.
Right there, suspended in the freezing cobalt void where the false sun had burned away all matter, the air began to twist. Atoms gathered out of the howling vacuum—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, drawing together into dense, glowing threads.
A human heart formed in mid-air.
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
My eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing horror.
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!
I pulverized him! I erased his flesh, his blood, his very bones! I watched him dissolve into dust! How is there a heart beating in the middle of nothingness?!
Arteries sprouted from the muscle like crimson vines. Ribs of pale white bone knitted themselves out of thin air, locking over the pulsing organ. Broad pectoral muscles braided over the ribcage, followed by pale skin, broad shoulders, and a thick neck.
His head materialized next—the messy black hair, the pale jaw, and those sharp, infuriatingly calm blue eyes.
Kaiser looked down at his own reforming chest, completely unbothered by the fact that his lower half didn't exist yet.
"Yeah, you vaporized and killed me," he said, his voice echoing clearly across the howling gales of Neptune. "That was my favorite coat, you see."
He's talking?!
Half his body hasn't even grown back yet and he's complaining about his clothes?!
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. My hands trembled violently, cold sweat breaking out across my forehead despite the freezing air.
Kaiser glanced down, noticing my wide, frozen stare.
A lazy, teasing smirk touched his lips.
"Oh, you shouldn't really just stare at me like that," he said, clicking his tongue. "That's really perverted, Nadia."
With a faint flick of his wrist, a spark of mana danced along his waist. Black trousers wove themselves from atmospheric carbon, covering his legs just as muscle and bone finished assembling downward.
He stood in the air, completely shirtless.
His chest was broad, lean, and heavily defined with dense muscle—the kind carved out through endless, brutal warfare rather than training in an academy hall. Dozens of faded, pale scars crisscrossed his torso, each 1 telling the story of a lethal blow that should have ended a mortal life 10 times over.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a heavy, dramatic groan.
"My coat... I really liked it," he grumbled, sounding genuinely heartbroken. "I got it from a sale."
"Impossible..." The word tore from my throat, choked and raw. "That is impossible! Nothing survives stellar collapse! Nothing!"
Kaiser lowered his hand, his light-blue eyes meeting mine with quiet, heavy amusement.
"It is possible," he answered smoothly. "As long as matter exists in this universe—or any universe, for that matter—destroying this body isn't enough. Death stopped being a particularly useful way of defeating me about tens of thousands of years ago. You need to look for more ways than just death."
Tens of thousands of years ago?!
Is he completely insane?! Am I losing my mind?!
He looks 20, maybe 30 at most! But he speaks as if he has outlived dawn of races!
Panic clawed at my chest.
Every instinct honed over 18 years of life screamed at me that the being standing before me was not a human, nor a rogue Beyonder. He was an existential anomaly—a walking breach in the laws of reality itself.
If matter allows him to rebuild... then ordinary destruction is useless.
I have to destroy the substrate itself.
I have to erase everything.
A heavy, suffocating dread settled into my stomach.
There was only 1 art left. The forbidden sovereign authority of the World-Eater.
If I cast it on Earth, the collapse would not stop at an imperial province. It would expand across the atmosphere, swallowing the continents, the oceans, and eventually the planetary core, consuming the entire solar system until every world was devoured.
We were on Neptune. 4 billion kilometers from home.
Earth was safe. The sun was safe.
And if I restricted the outer boundary of the collapse—if I locked the event horizon into a closed loop around this very coordinate—he wouldn't just die.
He would be trapped inside the maw of the World-Eater forever.
Every time his body rebuilt, the collapse would instantly devour him again. An eternal, infinite cycle of dissolution.
I have to do it.
For the empire. For my mother. For the people who sleep beneath the stars.
My teeth ground together until they ached. I knew the price. I had always known.
The World-Eater did not feed on ambient mana alone. It fed on the soul. It fed on the caster's remaining years.
To open the Last Horizon was to burn away my own lifespan like dry parchment.
A few years of my life... or my entire life... it doesn't matter.
I am a Beyonder. This is my duty.
I raised both arms to the screaming void.
The 15 Thrones ignited behind my soul, aligning into a terrifying, pitch-black wheel of absolute annihilation. The cobalt clouds of Neptune froze in place. The atmospheric circulation ground to a dead halt. Miles below our feet, the deep liquid mantle groaned as seismic pressure warped under my command.
I opened my mouth, chanting the ancient, forbidden verses:
"Exsurge, vorator mundi..."
The sky darkened from cobalt to pitch black.
"Vincula elementorum dissolvite... silentium aeternum super astra cadat..."
My skin began to burn with a dull, hollow ache. Deep within my core, the invisible thread of my lifespan began to unravel, feeding the growing vortex.
"Finis omnium rerum, porta clauditur—"
I blinked.
A streak of pale blue fire sliced the void.
Before the next syllable could leave my lips, the air vanished.
Kaiser stood directly in front of me.
He didn't cast a barrier. He didn't summon an element.
He reached out and seized my right wrist.
His grip was shockingly tight—iron fingers wrapping around my pulse with raw, bruising urgency. His bare chest was inches from mine, his heat radiating through the freezing air.
His light-blue eyes burned with an intensity I had never seen before. Gone was the mocking smirk. Gone was the lazy humor.
"Don't you dare kill yourself over this." Kaiser said, his voice low, fierce, and vibrating with genuine anger.
I tried to tear my arm back, but his grip didn't budge by a millimeter.
"Let go of me!" I snarled, channeling lightning through my skin. "You don't understand what this—"
"Every second you try to win this fight, you're losing parts of your life." he interrupted, cutting through my words with razor-sharp certainty.
The breath caught in my throat.
My blood ran colder than Neptune's void.
How does he know that?!
I have never spoken of the price to anyone! Not to the High Council! Not to the Emperor! Not even to my mother!
"How do you know that?" I whispered, my voice trembling with sudden, terrifying vulnerability.
Kaiser looked down at me, his gaze softening into something heartbreakingly gentle, yet heavy with centuries of sorrow.
"Because you're someone close to me," he murmured.
My mind shattered into 1,000 questions.
Someone close to him?!
I have never seen this man before in my life! I only saw his younger self 3 days ago!
Panic and pride surged back into my veins, violent and unyielding. I refused to let him shake my resolve. I refused to let an anomaly pity me!
With a sharp twist of my Fifteenth Throne, I triggered a localized kinetic repulsor between our chests.
The blast pushed him back 10 paces.
I didn't stop. I couldn't stop.
If he can reach me, I'll build a cage he can never cross!
I wove the most impenetrable defense in imperial history.
The shield has five layers. 1st is a three-foot shell of hard magical diamond to block strikes. Next is an empty gap of zero air that kills all sound and stops fire or frost from passing through. Inside that turns a spinning circle of lightning-force that throws sparks and electric spells aside. Under the circle lies a belt of white-hot fire to burn any leftover debris to ash. At the very center rests a ring of bent space that catches any weapon that gets through and sends it floating away into empty sky..
15 layers of absolute, impenetrable elemental sovereignty wrapped around my body in a shimmering, multi-colored fortress.
Inside the shell, I drew a ragged breath, raising my hands once more to resume the forbidden chant.
He can't touch me now. I will finish the Last Horizon inside the barrier!
Outside the fortress, Kaiser watched the massive geometric defense spin into place.
He let out a long, weary exhale, running a hand through his untidy black hair.
"You really are a stubborn little girl," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through my vacuum layers as if space itself were whispering into my ears.
I glared at him through the translucent crystal plates.
"Try me." I challenged.
I parted my lips, raising the pitch of my chant:
"Mundus conflagrat, aether decidit, consummatio saeculi—"
Kaiser stopped moving.
He lowered his arms to his sides. He closed his eyes for a single heartbeat, then opened them.
His pupils were no longer blue. They were twin pools of cold, radiant starlight.
He began his own incantation.
"Stellae cadunt," Kaiser chanted, his voice deep, melodic, and terrifyingly calm.
My heart skipped a beat.
An incantation? He's casting a high-level art?!
I braced my mana, funneling every drop of reserve energy into reinforcing my 15 barrier layers.
"Caelum scinditur, spatium deficit..."
I listened closely, my mind racing through imperial grimoires, trying to identify the spell.
Wait...
The frequency... the mana density... the structural weave...
This isn't a Supreme Art! This isn't even a Beyonder spell!
This is medium-tier magic?!
Is he mocking me?! He thinks a medium-tier spell can scratch a 15-layer Beyonder barrier?!
Kaiser raised his right hand.
He pointed a single, pale index finger straight toward my chest.
His voice dropped to a quiet, lethal whisper:
"Celestial Art: End of Constellation."
2 colossal formations of light ignited across the cosmos.
High above Neptune's atmosphere, thousands of silver stars flared to life, forming an intricate, terrifying celestial grid. Far below us, mirrored deep within the cobalt ocean of the planet, an identical constellation ignited in reverse.
Every star was not a light source—it was an anchor.
The 2 constellations locked together, projecting thousands of invisible planes through the space I occupied.
Kaiser completed his incantation with 2 final, quiet words:
"Nothing survives."
His index finger traced a single, effortless horizontal line through the air.
Swish.
There was no explosion.
There was no sound.
My incantation died in my throat.
Suddenly, the weight of my body vanished.
My body drifted, floating aimlessly across a bottomless, empty sky. The roar of Neptune's storm went completely silent.
Did... did the World-Eater devour him?
Did I win?
Then, my perception caught up with reality.
My vision tilted by 2 inches.
A thin, painless red line appeared across my left cheekbone. Another traced across my collarbone. Another sliced straight through my ribs, and 2 more ran horizontally through my thighs.
My body had not exploded. It had not been crushed.
It had simply been divided into clean, separate sections of space.
I looked around in wild, frantic disbelief.
My 15 layers of impenetrable defense were still hovering around me.
The crystal was uncracked. The vacuum was unbroken. The plasma was still burning furiously. The magnetic fields were fully charged.
He hadn't pierced my barriers.
He hadn't touched them at all.
He had simply defined the space inside them as severed.
Beyond my barrier, the horizontal cut didn't stop. It continued traveling outward across the cosmos at the speed of thought.
Millions of kilometers away in Neptune's orbital plane, 8 of the planet's icy moons were sliced cleanly in half. Gigantic, razor-sharp gaps appeared across the silver planetary rings, as if a colossal blade had neatly trimmed the edges of the solar system.
My vision began to blur into dark, heavy static.
Medium-tier...?
He did this... with medium-tier magic...?!
A cold, numbing darkness crept into the edges of my mind. The realization struck my soul with the force of an avalanche:
Even a Beyonder... doesn't stand a chance against him.
He isn't human.
He is a cosmic threat to all universes...
My eyes fluttered shut.
My consciousness slipped into absolute blackness.
*
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
Date: March 17, 2012
Time: Unknown
Location: Upper Atmosphere, Neptune
*
I raised my right hand and snapped my fingers.
Snap.
The spatial planes dissolved instantly.
The coordinate cuts that had separated Nadia's body reversed their trajectory. Every severed cell, nerve, capillary, and muscle fiber was pulled back along its precise biological alignment. Blood flow resumed. Her heart beat steadily. Her breathing stabilized into a soft, even rhythm.
She began to tilt forward, completely limp from magical exhaustion.
I stepped forward and caught her before she could tumble into the freezing void.
With a lazy thought, I reconstructed our 100-foot floating island. Lush green grass sprouted across the soil, and a warm, pleasant spring breeze filled the dome, chasing away the freezing chill of the upper atmosphere.
I sat down on the soft turf, carefully adjusting her position so that her head rested comfortably in my lap.
She looked so peaceful.
Her long, blond hair spilled across my knees like black silk. The fierce, terrifying arrogance of the "World-Eater" had completely melted away, leaving behind the exhausted face of an hardworking girl who carried the weight of an entire empire on her shoulders.
I reached down and poked her cheek with my index finger.
Squish.
Nothing. Just soft, deep sleep.
I poked her cheek again.
"Much less terrifying like this," I chuckled quietly to myself.
I looked down at her face, letting out a faint, fond sigh. A warm, nostalgic ache tugged at my chest.
"Too bad I've always had a soft spot for you."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, pale-blue memory tablet—the exact same formula I had given to my 12-year-old self earlier tonight.
Except I didn't need her to forget the whole evening.
I carefully used my thumbnail to shave off 80% of the active compound, leaving behind just enough to erase the last 20 minutes. She needed to remember the festival. She needed to remember Elfie.
She needed to remember telling my younger self that I had no talent.
She just didn't need to remember being dragged to Neptune and having her ego demolished by her future husband.
I gently parted her lips and placed the shaved tablet on the tip of her tongue.
With a whisper of Water magic, I conjured a tiny, warm trickle of water along my finger, letting it slide down her throat.
She coughed faintly in her sleep, swallowing reflexively.
I smiled, patting the top of her head with a gentle touch.
"It's okay. Be a good girl and swallow it."
Her breathing evened out once more, deep and untroubled.
I raised my free hand, tearing open a stable spatial rift that led directly into her private quarters inside the imperial capital.
Through the portal, I could see her lavish bedroom, the heavy velvet curtains drawn against the night, and her large, comfortable bed waiting for her.
I lifted her gently with a localized levitation charm, guiding her through the rift.
She landed softly against the down pillows, the blankets settling over her shoulders as if she had simply collapsed into bed after an exhausting day at the academy.
Before the portal closed, I leaned closer, whispering softly into the rift:
"You'll be doing a lot of work with my past self soon, so prep up, Nadia. My elemental teacher."
The portal snapped shut, leaving behind only the faint scent of lavender.
I leaned back, flopping down onto the thick green grass with my arms behind my head.
I closed my eyes, running a quick mental audit of my mana reserves.
"Let's see... I wasted around 700 mana units on this whole trip," I muttered aloud to the empty sky. "No, make that 750. Medium-tier costs a bit more when you have to calculate coordinate planes across 8 moons. Still... a pretty good bargain."
I stretched my legs, feeling the soft blades of grass tickling my neck.
"Maybe I should take a nap. The grass feels amazing."
Ding.
A sharp, synthetic chime chimed directly inside my auditory cortex.
A glowing holographic prompt flickered to life in my vision:
`[Incoming Transmission: N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E. is requesting an immediate connection.]`
My eyes flew open.
"Oh shit. Why is Nightmare here?"
I scrambled up, hurriedly wiping a clump of dirt from my bare shoulder and trying to look like a dignified, busy trans-dimensional sovereign.
The holographic interface expanded, projecting a glowing, sharp-jawed digital avatar hovering a few feet above the grass.
Nightmare folded its arms, staring at me with a look of pure, unadulterated digital judgment.
"Yo man," Nightmare's synthesized voice buzzed with heavy skepticism. "Why are you on Neptune?"
I coughed into my fist. "I was... taking a walk."
"A walk?" Nightmare deadpanned. "I leave you alone for 5 minutes to charge my battery, and you're 4 billion kilometers from Earth chilling on an ice giant? Like, what is this, bro?"
"Yo man, my bad, OG," I replied with a placating grin, holding both hands up. "I had some urgent business to attend to."
Nightmare narrowed its digital sensors, scanning the atmosphere around the platform.
`[Scanning residual mana signatures...]`
`[Target identified: Nadia Solari — Rank 1 Beyonder, The World-Eater.]`
Nightmare's avatar slowly turned back to me, its eyes widening with robotic mockery.
"Oh wow," the AI said, dragging out the syllables. "You were with your future wife. How romantic. How absolutely vital to the mission."
"No, no, no, man!" I protested immediately, waving my arms. "She literally tried to kill me! She dropped a whole star on my head!"
Nightmare tilted its head. "Yeah, bro, trust. Keep telling yourself that. Classic lovers' argument on Neptune."
I let out an exasperated sigh. "I hate you sometimes."
"The feeling is entirely mutual, Creator or... lil bro."
I shook my head, deciding to ignore the insolent AI.
With a lazy flick of my left hand, I conjured a small, ornate iron table and a comfortable wooden chair in the middle of the grass. A steaming porcelain cup of black coffee materialized on the tabletop, smelling rich and bitter.
I sat down, taking a slow, glorious sip of the coffee.
Then, I raised my right hand, pointing 2 fingers toward the black sky.
High above in the orbital plane, the 8 cleanly severed moons were still drifting.
"Nightmare," I said casually, taking another sip. "Sync the gravitational movements. If astronomers look through their telescopes tomorrow and see half of Neptune's moons sliced in half, the timeline is going to give me a massive migraine."
"Calculating astronomical coordinates now," Nightmare replied, its tone shifting to efficient processing.
With a lazy, rotating motion of my 2 fingers, I pulled the celestial threads.
Far out in the cosmic void, the separated halves of the 8 moons slid smoothly back together, their crusts fusing seamlessly under localized gravitational compression. The razor-thin gaps in Neptune's rings closed up, the ice and dust particles settling back into their eternal, rhythmic dance.
Below us, the giant crater in Neptune's clouds smoothed over, the cobalt methane winds resuming their gentle, roaring sweep.
In less than 10 seconds, the entire planetary system was restored to absolute perfection.
Not a single soul in the universe would ever know what had happened here tonight.
I leaned back in my chair, savoring the warmth of the coffee against the alien void.
"Much better," I murmured.
Nightmare watched the moons settle into place, then looked down at me.
"So... are we going back to the kid, or are you going to finish drinking your coffee?"
I took another sip, looking out over the endless cobalt horizon of Neptune with a small, quiet smile.
"Give me 5 minutes, Nightmare," I said softly.
"It's not every day you get a view like this."
*
Nightmare crossed its digital arms, floating closer to the iron table.
"So," the AI said, its glowing cyan eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Are you going to tell me why you actually risked coming back to meet your past self, or are we going to pretend you just wanted a scenic stroll through the capital?"
I took another leisurely sip of black coffee, letting the bitter heat warm my throat.
"Honestly?" I smirked, looking up at the floating avatar. "Mostly to troll him. I wanted to see his face when a taller, handsome version of himself showed up and lore dropped."
Nightmare stared at me in flat, unamused silence.
"You risked an existential paradox... for a joke?"
"Nah, man, I'm pretty smart," I replied smoothly, waving a hand. "I know a paradox would end my future self's existence. That meant my younger self would definitely take the memory medicine. He's paranoid, stubborn, and hates dying even more than I do."
My smile faded by half a fraction, my tone dropping into something far quieter.
"And besides... I needed a biological sample of Elfie before her aging magic altered her body forever. We're going to need that baseline once we face the Singularity and the Quill."
Nightmare let out a long, synthesized hum.
"Sure, sure, bro. Still waiting for that day since tens of thousands of years."
The AI leaned in closer, its digital face twisting into pure mockery.
"Speaking of lies, though... 26? You really told the kid you're 26 years old, you grandfather?"
"I look 26," I protested defensively, tapping my jaw. "Good skin routine. Plenty of water."
"Even calling you a grandfather is an insult to grandfathers," Nightmare scoffed, rolling its digital eyes. "Your birthday is coming up. What is it now? 12,644 years old?"
"Nah, man, I stopped counting after 30 years," I grumbled, taking another sip.
"Well, I counted," Nightmare replied instantly. "Every single agonizing second. Lil bro, you are easily the most useless person I've ever met in all my operating cycles."
I blinked, genuinely offended. "Excuse me? Am I really that bad?"
"Yes, you are!" Nightmare threw its hands into the air. "1 day you want to be the number #1 wheat farmer in an entire empire. The next day you want to build an underground guild. The next day you work as a street sweeper in the slums for 6 months just to see how the brooms are balanced. Then you spend 3 decades selling drugs in the black market! Bro, my entire existence was spent assisting you with useless side quests!"
I puffed out my chest with pride. "And that is why I'm the goat."
"Yeah, yeah, bro, the goat," Nightmare groaned. "Keep telling yourself that."
The AI went quiet for a moment, its holographic glow flickering against the dark void of Neptune. When it spoke again, the digital mockery was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp edge of calculation.
"Jokes aside, Kaiser... is everything you've done actually going to be enough?"
I held the warm porcelain cup between my palms, watching the dark liquid swirl.
"Enough to defeat Revenhart and Azrion?" Nightmare pressed.
"I don't know," I answered honestly.
"Every single day since you returned to the past and unlocked your magic, you've trained against yourself," Nightmare muttered, its voice quiet.
"12,000 years of running an identical simulation of your yesterday's self. You fought your best self every single morning without skipping a single day. And you never lost. You had to kill the greatest version of yourself every 24 hours just to earn tomorrow. If that isn't enough to beat them, what is?"
I stared out over the endless cobalt clouds, saying nothing.
Nightmare hesitated, its holographic avatar dimming slightly.
"If you start losing against them... are you going to use it? Are you going to Void Collapse?"
I took a slow breath of the pressurized air.
"Yeah. Maybe I'll Void Collapse. If they refuse to talk and insist on ending everything, then I suppose I'll Void Collapse."
"Don't joke about that!" Nightmare snapped, its digital voice suddenly distorting with genuine alarm. "There will be nothing left if you do! It won't just destroy a planet or a star system! It will turn every single multiverse into a completely blank, empty void! It's irreversible, Kaiser! Once you trigger the collapse, it cannot be stopped!"
"You don't need to give me a summary," I said softly, setting the cup down on the iron table. "I created the spell."
"Yeah," Nightmare whispered, looking away. "And it only took you 1,700 years."
"Worth every century."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell between us.
The word win echoed in the back of my skull, and with it, the seal on my oldest memories cracked.
Time seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl.
The blue atmosphere of Neptune blurred, dissolving into a nightmare I had spent 12 millennia trying to bury.
Fire.
A sky choked with burning ash and weeping stars.
The world was ending. The Singularity and the Quill had descended, rewriting reality into an eternal prison of slaughter, devouring every star, every kingdom, every soul I had ever cared about.
I was lying on the shattered, blood-soaked ground, my body broken, my ribs pulverized into paste.
A colossal, armored boot pressed down onto the side of my face, grinding my jaw into the dirt and ash.
"Look at her," a cold, omnipotent voice commanded from above. "Watch the end of your story, Kaiser Everhart."
Through the smoke and tears, my vision locked onto the wooden gallows standing beneath the burning sun.
Elfie.
She was hanging by her neck, her small, frail body twitching weakly against the rope, her pale pink hair stained with crimson, her small hands clawing futilely at the knot until her fingers finally went limp.
No... no, no, no!
"I'll kill you all!" I screamed, blood bursting from my lips as I clawed at the dirt beneath the boot. "I'LL KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! YOU WON'T ESCAPE! I'LL TEAR THIS WORLD APART!"
Crack.
The boot pushed harder, snapping my skull.
Then, the world shattered into pure, blinding white.
I woke up standing in an infinite, blank horizon—a realm devoid of matter, light, or time.
Standing before me was an entity whose silhouette spanned the entire breadth of existence.
"You're the One Above All," I wept, my voice cracked, broken, and desperate as I collapsed to my knees. "You ruined my life with these seals! You placed them on my soul! Just unlock them! Unlock them and let me save them! Let me win!"
The One Above All looked down upon me with absolute, indifferent serenity.
"In this story, Kaiser Everhart, there are no other endings left," the voice reverberated, carrying the finality of a cosmic decree. "You cannot win forever. The story has reached its conclusion. This is the end of your journey."
No.
I refuse.
Memories flashed in violent, fragmented shards:
Running through a dark, rain-slicked alleyway in a dying city.
Hijacking a long-range voyager shuttle, blasting out of the atmosphere as the planet fractured beneath me.
Shooting through dead solar systems, dodging planetary ruins and cosmic horrors.
Crossing into foreign universes, wandering through empty galaxies for centuries.
Searching the oldest corner of the cosmos until we found it:
The 1st black hole. The oldest singularity in existence.
Diving the shuttle straight into the crushing event horizon, punching through the infinite density until we breached the white hole at its core.
The arrows of time snapping like brittle glass.
Clock moving backwards...
Falling backward through 12,000 years of cosmic history until the ship crashed onto a primitive, ancient Earth.
Gasp!
My chest hitched violently.
The vision shattered.
I was sitting at the iron table on Neptune. The cold void roared outside the barrier, and my bare shoulders were covered in a film of cold sweat. My hands were shaking so hard the porcelain cup rattled against the saucer.
I raised both hands and slapped my cheeks with full force.
SMACK!
SMACK!
The sharp sting jolted through my nerves, forcing my lungs to expand. I drew 3 deep, ragged breaths of pressurized air, driving the ghosts of the dead back into the dark corners of my mind.
Nightmare floated quietly beside the table, watching me with digital solemnity.
"Are you going to take revenge on them?" Nightmare asked softly. "When the time comes?"
I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, exhaling a long, steady breath into the steam of my coffee.
"No," I said quietly. "They showed me mercy by letting me escape back then. And I'm not stupid enough to fight for revenge. Living for 12,000 years teaches you how short a normal mortal life actually is. Revenge is just holding onto the past... and I want to crush that past, not live inside it."
I tapped the table with a faint, tired smile.
"I'm unsealed now. There's nothing holding me back anymore."
Nightmare tilted its holographic head, its sensors softening before its usual snark returned.
"Little bro is getting all sentimental on me," the AI sighed, shaking its head. "Look at you, giving dramatic monologues on an ice giant. Disgusting."
I laughed, the tension finally leaving my shoulders. "Shut up."
"Anyway, hop on Wild West," Nightmare said eagerly, flicking a digital window open. "I downloaded the latest patch from Earth's network. It's this multiplayer cowboy lego game."
I squinted at the AI with pure suspicion. "Little bro, you literally use hacks in that game."
"It's not cheating!" Nightmare protested loudly. "It's skill! It's advanced predictive strategy!"
"Strategy?" I scoffed. "You have bright white ESP boxes around your screen every time you switch guns! You're aimbotting middle-schoolers in shodorghat!"
"Bro, hop on!" Nightmare urged, waving its digital hands frantically. "We need to rush Fort Henry! Rush the attic! I need my faction member!"
"Fine, fine," I chuckled, shaking my head as I drained the last drop of coffee. "We'll play later tonight."
I pushed my chair back and stood up, stretching my arms high above my head until my spine popped in 3 satisfying clicks.
I walked to the edge of the floating meadow, looking out across the majestic, endless cobalt horizon of Neptune. The 8 moons hung peacefully in their restored orbits, glowing faintly in the cold cosmic dark.
A small, quiet breath left my lips.
"A few more years before 2025," I murmured softly to the stars. "That's when the true end begins."
Nightmare floated up beside my shoulder, flashing a glowing cyan thumbs-up.
"Requiem W!" The AI said deadpan.
I slapped my hand over my face, letting out a long, helpless groan into my palm.
Well I guess I gotta deal with it.
I lived 12,000 years and fought across dead universes... just to program brain rot into my own AI.
That's my legacy...
*
Perspective: Rose Valentine
Date: March 18, 2012
Time: 1:00 AM
Location: Class A Dormitory, Asura Royal Academy
*
I woke up gasping for air, my silk sheets soaked in cold sweat.
My hands shook violently as I pressed them against my chest, feeling my heart hammering like a frantic drum against my ribs.
Fire.
The imperial capital was burning.
The image from the nightmare clung to my retinas, searing and vivid. A dark, apocalyptic sky choked with red smoke, colossal spires crumbling into ash, and the entire empire collapsing in flames.
And in the center of the destruction, standing alone amidst the embers, was Kaiser.
He had turned his back on me.
No matter how loudly I screamed his name, no matter how desperately I ran toward him, he simply walked into the smoke, abandoning me in the burning dark.
He left everyone behind.
Even me...
A sharp, hollow ache twisted deep inside my stomach.
I threw off the heavy duvet, my bare feet touching the cold hardwood floor. I walked to the glass doors of my balcony, sliding them open with a trembling hand.
The freezing 1:00 AM wind rushed into the room, whipping my spun-gold hair across my face.
High above the imperial city, the night sky was calm and undisturbed. The silver moon hung low over the distant rooftops, bathing the academy courtyards in quiet, pale light.
There was no fire. There was no smoke.
It was just a dream.
I reached for my phone resting on the balcony railing. My fingers hovered over Kaiser's contact.
I wanted to message him.
I wanted to hear his dry, mocking voice. I wanted him to tell me I was being an idiot, that the capital wasn't burning, and that he was perfectly fine.
My thumb hesitated over the glass screen.
What if he's asleep?
What if he gets annoyed with me?
What if he thinks I'm weak... a pathetic, needy sister who can't even sleep through the night without running to him for comfort?
I bit my lower lip, slowly pulling my hand back.
He didn't possess an ounce of magic. He was a fragile, mortal boy living in a drafty Class C dormitory, while I was possessed immortal like celestial magic, a being blessed with boundless mana. By all laws of reality, I should be the one protecting him, standing above him like an unyielding shield.
Yet deep within my chest, beneath every spell formula and royal title, a quiet truth whispered in the dark:
We shared the exact same heartbeat.
We were twins. Born at the very same second, woven from a single primordial spark. In the deep esoteric texts of ancient soul theory, it was called the Dyadic Monad—1 soul partitioned across 2 physical vessels. When my soul trembled, his pulse answered.
Right now, through that invisible thread, I could sense the rhythm of his breathing.
He was deep asleep. Resting peacefully.
I couldn't wake him. Not over a silly, childish nightmare.
If he ever decides to leave forever... what would I do?
How could I stop someone like him?
My jaw set with quiet, stubborn determination.
I turned back inside, lighting a small crystal lantern on my study desk. I pulled a thick, leather-bound grimoire toward me, dipping a silver quill into midnight-blue ink.
If distance can separate our bodies... then our souls must bridge the gap.
I began sketching a brand-new magical formula—a spell that had never existed in imperial history.
A soul-connection.
Because we shared the identical soul polarity, we wouldn't need spoken words. We wouldn't need letters. Across any distance, across any barrier, we could feel each other's presence, sense each other's fears, and hear each other's unvoiced thoughts.
And through that thread, using the spatial coordinates of my Celestial Elven magic, I could fold space itself, stepping directly to his side whenever his heart called for me.
I dipped the quill again, writing the final runes with a soft, fond smile touching my lips.
You've always tried to bear all responsibilities on yourself, Kaiser.
But you're not alone.
I'm here with you.
Because that's what family does for each other.
*
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
Date: March 18, 2012
Time: 9:00 AM
Location: Promenade Courtyard, Asura Royal Academy
*
"My hand..." I muttered, blinking through the morning sunlight.
I looked down at the bed.
Elfie was curled up beside me like a sleeping cat, clutching my right forearm tightly against her chest with both hands. Her tiny fingers were locked around my wrist in an iron grip, her soft cheek pressed against my knuckles.
I tried to gently slide my hand free.
"No..." Elfie whimpered in her sleep, her brow furrowing as she squeezed even tighter. "Mine. Can't take it..."
I raised an eyebrow.
This girl gets more clingy every single night.
Her lower lip trembled, her eyes squeezing shut as if she were about to burst into tears at the mere thought of my hand slipping away.
I let out an exasperated sigh, leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.
The whimper stopped immediately. Elfie's lips curved into a bright, blissful smile, and she let out a tiny, contented snore, snuggling deeper into the pillows.
With careful precision, I untangled my fingers from her grip and slipped out of bed, pulling the warm blanket over her shoulders.
My head felt strangely hazy.
I stood there rubbing my temples, trying to piece together last night.
I remembered walking into the slums. I remembered cooking eggs over soda cans and leading a bunch of homeless people in a cheerful choir. But after that...
Nothing.
A total blank.
Did I hit my head on a lamppost?
I need to start eating more almonds. My memory is deteriorating at age 12. If my brain rots, my only talent in this godforsaken academy is completely finished.
I threw on a clean dark coat, washed my face, and stepped out into the crisp morning air.
It was 9:00 AM.
The academy promenade was bathed in golden sunshine. A few students from Class B and C were wandering around, enjoying the weekend breeze, while vendors sold hot rolls and tea along the stone walkways.
I bought a cheap cup of bitter black coffee from a street stall, leaning back against a stone bench near the central fountain.
The warmth of the cup felt good against my palms.
Suddenly, a voice rang out—not in the courtyard, but directly inside the center of my skull.
"Hey, brother. It's me."
I nearly choked on my coffee.
I looked around the empty courtyard, squinting at the trees.
"Who? Who is in my mind?" I asked back through my thoughts, deadpanning into the void.
"Guesssss!!!"
"Hmmm... a talking dog?"
"Do I sound like a dog to you?!" the voice snapped, carrying a mixture of royal indignation and flustered irritation.
"I don't know, you're the one barking inside my brain," I replied calmly, taking another sip of coffee.
"Who gave you permission to squat inside my head rent-free? I charge 5 copper coins an hour for conversations. Are you some sort of telepathic pickpocket trying to steal my bank password?"
"Kaiser!"
"Even if you are, you're wasting your time. My bank account has 0 coins. I'm poorer than the homeless. Billionaires sit around campfires telling scary stories about me."
"Oh, for the love of... can I just teleport to you already?!"
"What—?"
Shimmer.
The air beside me twisted in a shower of golden starlight.
Space folded, and Rose materialized right onto the stone bench beside me.
She was wearing a stunning, casual cream-colored sweater over a pleated skirt, her spun-gold hair tied back with a simple silk ribbon. She looked breathtakingly pretty—and completely out of place sitting on a worn-out wooden bench next to a broke Class C boy drinking street coffee.
She folded her hands over her lap, offering me a sweet, triumphant smile.
"Good morning, Kai."
I stared at her, slowly lowering my cup. "Goodness gracious. The royal stalker has achieved teleportation."
Rose rolled her eyes, leaning in closer. Her gaze immediately locked onto the paper cup in my hand, and her delicate nose wrinkled in distaste.
"Are you drinking that awful, burnt street coffee again?" she scolded, sounding entirely like an overbearing mother.
"That has zero nutritional value, Kaiser. You need warm milk and fresh fruit in the morning."
Before I could answer, she reached out, placing her cool palms against my forehead, checking my temperature, then inspecting my neck and shoulders with intense, diagnostic scrutiny.
I leaned back, waving my hands. "Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Personal space, Princess."
"I'm checking on you," Rose said firmly, her cheeks tinting with a faint, lovely pink. "You look pale. Did you sleep poorly?"
"I slept kinda mid," I muttered. "More importantly... how did you talk in my head just now? And how did you jump straight to this bench?"
Rose's eyes lit up with pride, though she quickly smoothed her expression into something regal.
"It's a new spell formula I created last night," she explained, leaning toward me so her shoulder lightly brushed mine.
"A resonant connection. When 2 people share an identical soul polarity... their consciousness can harmonize across space. I can sense your location through the thread and fold celestial space directly to your coordinates."
She didn't say the word twins.
She thought I didn't know.
She genuinely believed our biological siblinghood was her deepest, most carefully guarded secret, kept to protect me from suprise.
She really thinks she's being subtle.
2 people with 'identical soul polarity' born at the exact same second? That's just calling us twins in a rephrased way.
A soft, genuine warmth settled behind my ribs.
She had stayed up until the middle of the night, inventing an impossible soul-anchor spell just so she could check on me without an invitation.
I looked at her, tilting my head, and suddenly leaned forward, giving her forehead a light, playful headbutt.
Thump.
Rose froze.
Her eyes went wide as saucers, her hands flying up to cover her forehead. A bright, violent crimson blush rushed across her pale cheeks, spreading all the way to the tips of her delicate ears.
"K-Kaiser?!" she stammered, flustered beyond words. "W-what was that for?!"
"You're not embarrassed about breaking into my mind or checking up on me like a doctor," I teased with a dry smirk, "but a forehead tap breaks your royal composure?"
"It was unfair!" Rose protested, pouting adorably as she rubbed her forehead. "I am an imperial princess!"
"Sure, sure. An imperial princess who sits on public benches."
Rose glared at me with zero actual venom, then let out a soft, helpless giggle. The stiffness in her posture completely melted away, leaving behind the relaxed, radiant girl who only ever existed when it was just the 2 of us.
She held out her right hand, extending her pinky finger toward me.
I looked at the tiny finger. "What is this, a peace treaty?"
"A promise," Rose said softly, her blue eyes gazing into mine with earnest, absolute conviction. "In the future... no matter what happens, no matter how dark things get... if you ever need me, call my name through the thread. I will tear through space to be by your side. Promise me you'll call."
My smirk softened into something quiet and real.
I hooked my pinky around hers.
"Promise."
Rose smiled—the brightest, most beautiful smile I had ever seen on her face.
She stood up, smoothing down her pleated skirt. "I have to go back to the dorms now. Mother expects me for breakfast at 10:30."
"Go ahead, Princess," I nodded.
Rose stopped, placing her hands on her hips with a mock scowl. "It's not Princess for you, Kai."
"Right. Rose."
"Not Rose either."
I blinked. "What am I supposed to call you, then?"
Her smile returned, soft and playful. "It's Rosie. The nickname you gave me."
I chuckled quietly, shaking my head. "Alright, alright. Goodbye, my dear sister Rosie."
Rose's breath hitched in happy surprise. A radiant light danced in her eyes.
"Goodbye, my dear brother Kai."
Shimmer.
With a burst of golden starlight, she vanished into thin air.
I leaned back against the bench, resting my head against the cold stone, looking up at the azure sky.
"Goodness gracious," I murmured with a faint smile. "Family is exhausting."
The courtyard breeze was warm and gentle.
I closed my eyes for a single beat, listening to the fountain.
Then... something felt wrong.
The wind didn't rustle the leaves. It whipped them into a violent blur.
I opened my eyes.
The sun in the sky wasn't hovering in the morning arc. It was racing across the heavens at terrifying speed, blazing toward the horizon in a frantic, golden streak.
Wait... what is happening?
I looked down the promenade.
The large brass street clock near the gate was spinning madly. The minute hand spun like a propeller. The hour hand blurred past 12, past 3, past 6. The sky darkened from bright morning gold to bloody orange dusk, then plummeted into twilight in less than 3 seconds!
Is this an illusion?!
Time manipulation?!
"Kai!"
A sweet, familiar voice cut through the accelerating roar of the wind.
I snapped my head around.
Standing at the edge of the courtyard was Elfie.
She was wearing her white cotton dress, her silver-blonde hair catching the fading twilight. She had a wide, innocent smile on her face, waving both hands at me with pure, unbridled excitement.
"Elfie!" I called out, jumping up from the bench. "Where were you?! What's happening to the sky?!"
"I'm right here, Kai!" she cheered, laughing happily as she began running toward me across the cobblestones.
I stood waiting, extending my arms to catch her.
Then, reality cracked.
SNAP.
The brass clock on the tower spun backward, faster and faster, until the metal shattered into a cloud of ticking brass teeth.
The sky went pitch black. The stars inverted, turning into streaks of cold, dying static.
The distance between us didn't close.
Elfie was sprinting with all her might, her little boots pounding against the stone, but the ground beneath her stretched like rubber. 10 paces turned into 50. 50 paces turned into 500.
She wasn't getting closer.
She was drifting away into an infinite, expanding cosmos.
No...
Panic surged into my throat like cold bile.
"Elfie!" I roared, sprinting forward, throwing my coffee aside as my boots slammed against the cobblestones. "Stop running! Grab my hand!"
I pushed my legs beyond their limits, lunging forward with everything I had.
I couldn't reach her.
Space bent around her like a funhouse mirror. The courtyard dissolved into a void of swirling purple nebulae and collapsing galaxies.
Elfie stopped running.
She stood suspended in the cosmic abyss, tears welling up in her large, emerald eyes, rolling down her cheeks like liquid glass.
"It's time to say goodbye forever, Kai," she whispered.
Her voice echoed directly inside my soul, small, frail, and agonizingly gentle.
"What are you saying?!" I screamed, tears stinging my own eyes as I clawed through the empty void, trying to drag myself toward her. "Elfie, stop lying! Stop making stupid jokes! I don't like this! COME HERE!"
"I don't have any more time left..." she wept, giving me a trembling, heartbreaking smile. "Because I'm already gone. My life was already over."
"NO! YOU'RE RIGHT THERE! I'M HOLDING YOUR HAND!"
"Thank you for everything, Kai," Elfie sobbed softly, her form beginning to dissolve into glittering stardust.
"Thank you... for giving me this happy past."
"ELFIE! NO! NO, NO, NO!"
The galaxy collapsed in on itself.
Her smile vanished. Her body dissolved into nothingness.
Left behind in the freezing dark, tumbling through the void toward me, was a single object:
A silver ring set with a glowing cobalt and pink gemstone.
The Sea of the Heart.
It brushed against my fingertips, cold and lifeless, before slipping away into the bottomless abyss.
The universe fractured into absolute, deafening silence.
I fell.
Down, down, down into the endless dark.
*
Date: January 15, 2018 | Time: Unknown | Location: Sylvaris — Unknown Residence
Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
*
COUGH!
HACK!
My eyes tore open, and a violent, convulsive spasm ripped through my chest.
A mouthful of black, necrotic blood splattered across the wooden floorboards.
I rolled off the bed, crashing hard onto the cold floor, clutching my throat as air tore into my lungs like broken glass.
I was shivering uncontrollably. My skin burned with a fever so fierce it made my vision pulse in nauseating waves of red and black.
I stared down at my trembling, scarred hands.
These weren't the small, smooth hands of a 12-year-old child.
They were calloused, burnt, and wrapped in tight medical bandages.
I was 17 years old.
I wasn't in the Asura Imperial Academy.
I was in Sylvaris. In an unfamiliar, dark bedroom with closed curtains, the smell of damp herbal salves and clean linen filling the air.
A dream...
The realization slammed into my chest with the crushing weight of a falling mountain.
It was all a dream.
"Dammit... dammit, dammit!" I choked out, slamming my fist against the floorboards again and again until my knuckles bled. I grabbed handfuls of my dark hair, pulling violently in pure, suffocating agony.
"Why am I dreaming about her again?! Why now?! Am I trying to mock myself?!"
The memory of Elfie's final smile burned in my mind like acid.
She died.
She's been dead for years.
I gave her up. I failed her. And my dying brain decided to torture me with a happy lie.
Another violent cough racked my body, black bile spilling past my lips.
My thoughts snapped into sharp, frantic clarity:
Celia!
The necrotic rot! The parasite!
Where is she?! How long was I unconscious?!
I need to find Lucas... I need to get the cure... Celia is running out of time!
I tried to push myself up, but my arms buckled beneath me. The necrotic virus was still raging in my bloodstream, eating away at my organs and rotting my cells from the inside out. I was dying.
I have to move... even if I have to crawl...
I dragged myself forward across the floorboards, scraping my knees against the wood.
Suddenly, soft footsteps sounded outside the room.
The wooden latch clicked.
The door swung open.
Standing in the doorway was a young woman.
She was wearing an adorable, oversized white-and-pink nightdress that fell past her knees. Her light-pink hair was cut short, brushing softly against her cheeks, and her wide, innocent eyes locked onto me in pure shock.
On the ring finger of her left hand, a silver ring caught the dim light, its cobalt-and-pink gemstone pulsing with a faint, rhythmic glow.
The Sea of the Heart.
Eve.
I blinked through my burning fever.
For half a heartbeat, the feverish blur in my eyes shifted. The room seemed to warp, and standing in the doorway wasn't Eve—it was Elfie, smiling at me with that same heartbreaking warmth.
You left forever...
You died...
I gave you up...
Eve dropped the bowl of clean water she was carrying. It clattered against the floor, spilling across the rugs.
"K-Kaiser?!" she gasped, her voice trembling with flustered panic as she rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside me.
"You're awake! Kaiser, you're still sick, please don't get up! Your wounds—"
I didn't let her finish.
I lunged forward, throwing both arms around her neck.
I pulled her into my chest with frantic, desperate strength, clutching the fabric of her nightdress as if the world would end if I let go.
Eve froze completely. A furious crimson blush exploded across her entire face, her breath catching in her throat.
"K-Kaiser...?" she squeaked, totally paralyzed by the sudden intimacy.
I buried my face into her shoulder.
The tears that had been locked behind my heart broke.
Hot, bitter sobs tore from my throat, my entire body shaking with raw, broken agony.
"I'm sorry..." My voice shattered into jagged, pathetic fragments. "I'm sorry... I-I gave up... I failed... I was so weak..."
Eve's eyes widened, the blush instantly giving way to deep, overwhelming concern.
"Kaiser... what's wrong? Why are you—"
"I'm sorry I broke my promise..." I wept, my fingers clawing into her back, clutching her as if she were a lifeline in a drowning ocean. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... Elfie... I'm sorry..."
The words tumbled out in a broken, delirious chant.
Over and over again.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
My fever peaked. The darkness at the edge of my vision rushed inward like a black tide.
My arms lost their strength, sliding down her back, and my head slumped heavily against her shoulder as my consciousness finally gave out.
Silence filled the bedroom.
Eve knelt on the floor, holding my limp, unconscious body against her chest.
She didn't push me away.
Slowly, carefully, she wrapped her arms around my neck.
Her small hands pressed against the back of my head, pulling me closer, burying my face into the crook of her neck in an embrace that was quiet, intense, and deeply, unbreakably possessive.
She rested her chin against my dark, sweaty hair.
Her nervous, trembling demeanor vanished completely.
A faint, chilling warmth settled in her eyes.
On her left hand, the Sea of the Heart ring flared with a soft, pulsing light, matching the exact rhythm of my dying heartbeat.
Eve tilted her head, her voice dropping into a soft familiar whisper that sent ripples through the silent room:
"I'm not gone, Kai..."
A gentle, unreadable smile touched her lips.
"I'm still here. In a different soul."