Vaelira's jaw clenched.
Her gaze lifted slowly, locking onto Nyxvi.
"So this was your plan from the beginning?" Her voice trembled with restrained fury. "To lead me here… to force my hand?"
Memories surged.
The day they met, five years ago, amidst the ashes of their fallen clans.
Nyxvi had been there.
The one who saved them.
The one who spoke of prophecy, of destiny, of fulfilling her father's final wish.
The one who guided them, trained them, helped them awaken their Soul Astras and rise to Astral Saint in mere years.
The one who concealed their lineage, allowing them to step into the Trial of Ascension.
And the one who had revealed them.
At the very end.
Only after Kaelrath had fallen did she act.
Vaelira's eyes shifted to the sky, to the countless threads binding the figures above.
"This… this is the power of the Asura Vansh DoomsVeils…" she murmured, realization dawning.
Nyxvi's voice followed, calm and distant.
"This land is where they were annihilated ten years ago. The first of the Ancient clans to fall, The beginning of it all.. how ironic. Anyway, I am merely borrowing what remains of their karmic obsessions."
There was no pride in her tone.
No guilt.
Nothing at all.
Vaelira's heart trembled.
"You… you're not human."
The words came out hoarse.
How could someone plan so far ahead… manipulate everything so precisely… and remain so empty?
For the first time, Vaelira felt something deeper than anger.
Fear.
Nyxvi did not respond to that.
Instead, her voice turned colder.
"The Karmic Entanglement will not hold for long. If you hesitate now… he will be gone forever."
A faint sheen of sweat had formed along her brow.
It was subtle.
But it was there.
—
Vaelira closed her eyes.
She took a slow breath.
When she opened them again, she looked down at Kaelrath one last time. Her expression softened, if only for a heartbeat.
Then it vanished.
When she looked back at Nyxvi, her gaze had turned cold.
"I will remember this."
Her voice was steady.
"And one day… I will make you regret it."
She sat down, crossing her legs, and held the Aeonshard between both hands.
"Aeternyx… Manifest."
The cluster of crystalline prisms materialized around her, rotating slowly, each facet reflecting distorted fragments of time itself. Within them, the faint clockwork patterns flickered, turning without rhythm.
The moment they appeared, the Aeonshard responded.
It trembled.
As though it had finally found what it had been waiting for.
Vaelira's voice followed, low and resolute.
"May the rivers of time gather what was lost… and bear witness to what was broken."
"Aeternyx… Immemorial Chronicle Reversal."
The Aeonshard began to crumble.
Not shattering, but dissolving—turning into fine, shimmering dust that drifted upward, drawn into the rotating prisms.
A translucent current of energy emerged, flowing like liquid light as it merged into Aeternyx.
The prisms began to glow.
Brighter.
Hotter.
Until they shone like a miniature sun.
Something ancient stirred within them.
Something that did not belong to the present.
—
Nyxvi's lips curved faintly.
"Finally—"
Her voice broke.
A sudden cough tore through her as blood spilled from her lips.
Her gaze snapped upward.
The threads… were breaking.
One by one, they snapped apart, their glow fading as the figures in the sky tore free.
"Ah… finally," one of them exhaled, rolling his shoulders. "These Ancient powers are truly troublesome."
"Troublesome, and persistent," another added.
Their attention shifted immediately.
Toward Vaelira.
Toward the growing radiance.
"What is that energy…?"
"It exceeds the power of Astral Saint."
A pause.
"I have a bad feeling."
"Me as well, if feels foreboding."
The calm voice spoke again, urgency cutting through his composure.
"Whatever it is… stop it. Now."
Power surged once more.
A storm of attacks formed, descending toward the ground.
—
Nyxvi watched.
Then, she turned slightly, glancing at Vaelira.
And back at the sky.
A faint smile touched her lips.
"Too late."
—
Just as the attacks were about to strike—
everything stopped.
The air froze.
The light halted.
The world itself seemed to fall into stillness.
Then—
it began to move again.
In reverse.
The shattered ground reformed. Dust rose back into stone. Flames retreated into nothingness. The sky rewound, the very light bending backward as though time itself was being unraveled.
Everything moved.
Backward.
Faster and faster.
Life.
Death.
The sun.
The moon.
Even the figures in the sky.
All of it was being pulled into the past.
—
Vaelira.
Nyxvi.
Kaelrath's lifeless body.
All of them.
Rewinding.
—
Except..
a few things.
The cluster of prisms above Vaelira remained unchanged, their rotation steady, unaffected by the reversal.
Aeternyx.
Nyxvi's eyes, reflecting countless threads of fate, unmoving amidst the collapse of time.
Eidryx.
And on Kaelrath's body—
faint, fading… yet still present—
the markings.
They flickered.
Resisted.
Velkharis' Curse.
—
The three Mythical Soul Astras stood apart from the flow.
The tide of time surged to pull them back—
to unravel them, to return them to what once was.
Yet it failed.
Time did not erase them.
It bent around them.
As if they were not merely resisting its laws.. but defying them.
Fighting the reversal, they did not remain unchanged.They evolved.
—
And it was not just those 3 Soul Astras that resistance the reversal of time..
Beneath the fractured earth, something else stirred.
Not far from where they stood, two dormant presences awakened.
The first one.
A steady, dark yet unyielding force, its aura comparable to the three Mythical Soul Astras above. It also resisted the pull of reversal without faltering, standing firm as time flowed backward around it. And similar to the 3 Mythical Soul Astras above, it also began to change, its presence deepening, refining, as though the very distortion of time was tempering it into something greater.
As for the other, it.. it was different.
The reversing world wavered as it reached that presence.
The currents of laws of time, which tried to drag everything into the past, slowed as they drew near. They did not break, nor did they cease—but they bent away, skirting its existence as though unwilling to touch it.
The reversal of time continued to flow across the world, across the sky, across the land—
but not here.
Not fully.
Unlike the three Mythical Soul Astras above, and the awakened presence nearby that stood firm against the reversal and began to evolve within it, this existence did not resist, nor did it adapt.
It simply remained.
Untouched.
As though the reversal of time itself was beneath its notice.
Then—
it stirred.
A slow, deliberate pulse spread outward, like a heartbeat rising from the depths. With it came a shift in the air, subtle at first, then suffocating. The essence of the world—faint traces of power, fragments of life, remnants of destruction—began to gather.
Not drawn.
Taken.
They drifted toward it, circling, tightening, as if caught in an unseen pull.
What surrounded it did not feel like time.
It felt like hunger.
Ancient. Ominous.
As though something vast had awakened—not to resist the world, nor to defy it—
but to consume it.