With a heavy heart and a mind swirling with doubt, Edard stepped back into the cave to investigate. This was his final gamble—his last chance to understand the impossible. When he crossed the threshold, his watch showed fifty-nine seconds. He stood perfectly still in the darkness, his eyes glued to the display. He waited. Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. Then a full minute.
The clock did not move. It remained frozen at fifty-nine seconds.
To test the phenomenon, he drew a long breath and walked back out of the cave. The moment he crossed into the open air, the gears of fate began to grind again; the seconds started ticking down remorselessly toward his demise.
With a surge of frantic energy, Edard rushed back inside. He began to scour the cave, searching for the source of this temporal sanctuary. There had to be an object—a relic, a charm—something that held time at bay. The floor was a graveyard of human and animal remains, but he ignored the stench. He used his Status Key, hoping it would highlight any object brimming with energy, but the screen remained silent. There were only old bones and ancient dust. No magical artifacts, no hidden treasures.
He tried another experiment. He picked up a bone and carried it outside. The clock continued to tick. He went back, swapped it for another, and another, eventually lining up the skeletal remains of various creatures at the cave's entrance. None of them stopped the clock.
That left only two possibilities: the cave itself, or the girl's body.
The thought of the girl being the anchor filled Edard with a deep, unsettling anxiety. If the corpse was the source of this miracle, it meant she was far more than she appeared. It raised terrifying questions: Was she the one who had repelled him with that invisible force earlier? Even in death, did she possess a secret so powerful it could stall time itself?
He approached her body with hesitation. He felt a profound sense of guilt and a lingering fear of desecrating the dead. He knew nothing of her life or her passing, and he didn't want to be the kind of man who treated a human body like a mere tool. Yet, as he looked at the seconds remaining of his life, his survival instinct overrode his moral qualms.
Gently, with as much respect as he could muster, he lifted the girl into his arms. He cradled her carefully and stepped out of the cave. If the clock didn't stop, it meant the cave was his only sanctuary—a prison where he would have to stay until someone found him, or until he rotted away.
With a heart full of trepidation, he stepped five meters away from the cave's mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to wait five seconds before looking. But the thumping of his heart was too loud, too insistent. When you are told you have thirty-two seconds to live, waiting five seconds in total darkness is a psychological torment few can endure.
Edard, despite his extraordinary abilities and the secrets he carried, was still a man. He felt the same raw terror as any other mortal. He couldn't make it to five. He snapped his eyes open at the three-second mark and jerked his wrist up to his face.
32 seconds.
He squinted, his breath catching in his throat. He stared at the display, then tilted his head to look at the girl in his arms, then back at the watch. The numbers were static. They were dead.
If he hadn't realized it by now, he wouldn't deserve his title as a cultivator. He took off at a run, putting a great distance between himself and the cave. He ran until his lungs burned, his eyes never leaving the watch.
Still 32 seconds.
The truth was now undeniable. It wasn't the cave. It wasn't the bones. The miracle was the girl—this "corpse" named Rusi Kaz. Finding such a thing could be seen as a stroke of incredible luck, or perhaps a dark omen. But finding her in this specific cave, hidden away like a forbidden treasure, suggested that this was no accident. This cave was likely a hideout for someone who specialized in the macabre.
During his years in Kano, Edard had encountered powerful occultists who claimed to deal with spirits. Some, he discovered, used genuine, high-level magic involving fresh corpses. Through his research into ancient Western texts, he knew the term for them: Necromancers.
It was highly probable that a Necromancer used this cave as a sanctuary, and this girl was being "kept" there for some dark purpose. The safest thing for Edard to do would be to turn back, lay her down exactly where he found her, and run far away before the owner returned.
But he couldn't. If he let go of her, he wouldn't make it ten paces before collapsing into his grave. This girl was his oxygen tank. Without her, his life-support was cut off.
He drew a shaky breath. A Necromancer would almost certainly have placed tracking spells or charms—perhaps even on that metal collar around her neck—to find her if she were ever moved. Taking her was a declaration of war against a powerful, unknown enemy.
"I have no choice," he muttered. He adjusted his grip, hoisted her more firmly against his chest, and began to move. He would run until he found a way to secure his own life permanently, or at least for a few more days. Then, and only then, would he abandon her and disappear. He had to stay ahead of the owner of the cave.
The weight of the situation—and the girl—pressed down on him. He found himself sighing every few seconds, a habit born of pure, unadulterated stress. He looked at the girl. He felt a strange conflict: a flash of resentment that his life was tied to a dead body, yet he hugged her tighter, knowing she was the only thing keeping him from the void.
Suddenly, a voice cut through the silence.
"Kut! So, he is Rapian."
The voice was tiny, filled with shock and wonder. It was a voice that could only belong to a creature. Because of his talent and his unique physiology, Edard could hear the frequencies of animal speech—sounds that the people of Kano could never perceive because their ears weren't tuned to such high, complex vibrations. To Edard, the distinction between a human voice and an animal voice was clear; each had its own "texture" and "flow."
The sound came from behind a large, wide boulder—practically a small hill. Immediately, a notification appeared:
Edard glanced toward the hill. A raven was watching him. Was it a scout? A guardian left by the Necromancer? It was common for such masters to leave familiars to watch over their property.
Edard played it cool. He pretended to be looking at the horizon, making sure not to lock eyes with the bird. He kept walking, his pace steady. He had decided he would never return to his original mountain cave. The energy used to summon him to this world likely left a "scent" that Kalahari had tracked; returning there would be suicide.
He began to jog, then accelerated into a full run. After two minutes of sprinting, he risked a glance back. The raven was still there, flapping effortlessly behind him, keeping pace with his supernatural speed.
His brow furrowed. How could a common bird maintain such speed?