The silence in the valley was a lie. I spent my days whittling wood on the porch, but my mind was miles away, watching a nightmare through the Eyes of Gilgamesh. I saw a man named Acnologia stop being a man. It wasn't some sudden transformation; it was a slow, agonizing rot. I watched him kneeling in the dirt of a city he'd just flattened, his robes soaked in the blood of patients he couldn't save. He looked at the sky and screamed, and the Ethernano didn't just flow through him, it bonded to him. His skin turned to obsidian scales because his soul was so full of hate that his body had to change just to hold it all.
"Solomon," I whispered, my hand trembling slightly on the wood. "He's not even a Dragon Slayer anymore. He's just... the end of everything."
[Warning: Entity Acnologia's power levels are beyond measurable parameters. He has become a conceptual singularity of 'Destruction'.]
A few months later, I felt a familiar, oily pull in the air. Zeref.
I watched the first thread of the "400-Year Plan" pull together. It started when Zeref was wandering through a scorched clearing and came face-to-face with Igneel, the Fire Dragon King. Normally, this would be the part where someone gets eaten, but Igneel just sat there, his massive wings folded, looking at the tiny human with a strange curiosity.
"You smell of death, human," Igneel rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "Yet you carry a soul that refuses to stay in the ground."
Zeref didn't flinch. He looked up at the king of dragons with those hollow, immortal eyes. "I am Zeref. And the soul I carry is my brother, Natsu. I brought him back as an Etherious, but he needs a teacher. He needs to become something more than a demon if he's going to survive what's coming."
Igneel leaned his massive head down, his hot breath smelling like sulfur. "You want me to teach a demon the magic of dragons? To make him a Slayer?"
"I want him to be the one who kills me," Zeref said, his voice completely flat. "And eventually, the one who kills Acnologia. The other dragons are already losing their minds, Igneel. You know it's only a matter of time before the world is nothing but ash."
Igneel let out a long, smoking sigh. "The Dragon King Festival has turned into a slaughterhouse. My own kind have forgotten what it means to coexist. Very well, Black Wizard. I will take the boy. I will raise him as my own son and teach him the flames of the King."
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Then came the meeting with Anna Heartfilia. I saw them in a clearing that looked like it had been sucked dry of life. Anna was a blonde whirlwind of unmatched celestial power, but she looked exhausted.
"It won't work, Zeref," Anna said, her voice sounding ragged. "The kids... they're just children. We're asking them to carry the weight of a god-slaying dragon into a future they don't even know."
Zeref didn't look up. "There is no other way, Anna. If they stay here, Acnologia will find them. Igneel and the others will seal their souls inside the children to heal and wait. Four hundred years... it's a long time for the world to forget the taste of dragon blood. The air in the future will be rich with Ethernano—it'll be safer for them there."
"But the gate," Anna pleaded. "To move five lives through the void... my keys can open the door, but they can't hold the walls up while we walk through."
I stepped out from behind a tree. I didn't hide my presence this time. The "Sage" aura was heavy, smelling of ozone and ancient trees. Anna gasped, reaching for her gold keys like a dagger, but Zeref just sighed. He finally looked up, his black eyes meeting my gold ones.
"The Magus of Flowers," Zeref said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "I wondered when you'd stop watching from the shadows and actually say hello."
"I like the shadows," I said, leaning on Odin's staff. "They're quieter. But you're about to tear a hole in the universe, and I don't feel like being erased because you forgot to carry a one."
I walked over to the spot where they were trying to sketch out the Eclipse Gate. It was a mess. Anna's celestial math was brilliant, but it was too delicate. Zeref's dark magic was too volatile.
"You're trying to build a bridge across an ocean using toothpicks and dynamite," I told them. "Move aside."
For the next few weeks, I became the foreman of a project that shouldn't have been possible. We didn't talk much. I used Space Magic to warp the interior, making the "tunnel" larger on the inside than it was on the outside. Then came the hard part: the anchor.
"Anna, I need you to talk to the Spirit King," I said. "Not just for permission. I need him to act as the secondary battery. One end of the line stays with your bloodline, the other end stays with his throne. That's the only way the gate stays 'synced' across the centuries."
The ritual was brutal. When the Celestial Spirit King appeared, the sheer weight of his presence made Anna fall to her knees. I just stood there, matching his stare. I'd spent fifteen years fighting a Sage Dragon; a giant king with a mustache wasn't going to make me flinch.
"WHY DOES A MORTAL GRIP THE THREADS OF THE AGES?" the King boomed.
"Because the alternative is Acnologia ruling over a graveyard," I replied. "Link the gate, King. Use your power to connect the two time periods."
The King slammed his sword into the ground. Twelve beams of light shot out, hitting the gate and sinking into the metal. The Eclipse Gate didn't just glow; it hummed. I started layering Origin Runes and Cosmic Runes over the structure, weaving the concept of 'Durability' and 'Stasis' into its atoms.
"It's done," I said, wiping soot from my face.
Zeref stood before the shimmering portal, holding a small, sleeping Natsu. Igneel and the others were already fading, their massive forms turning into light and sinking into the children's shadows. Zeref looked at me, and for a split second, I didn't see the Black Wizard. I saw a brother who was terrified of saying goodbye.
"Will they be happy there?" Zeref asked. It was a small, human question.
I looked through the Eyes of Gilgamesh, seeing the fuzzy, distant images of a guild called Fairy Tail. "They're going to be a giant pain in everyone's ass," I said. "And they're going to love every second of it."
Zeref closed his eyes, a single tear trailing down his face. "Then that's enough."
One by one, the kids were sent through. Anna followed them, her heart breaking as she stepped into the void. Then it was just me and Zeref in the dark forest. The gate went cold, the light fading until it was just a hunk of ancient metal again.
"You're not going with them?" Zeref asked.
"I've got things to do here," I said. "Besides, someone has to be the 'wise sage ' of the world while you're out there being the 'dark lord'."
Zeref turned to leave, the death miasma already starting to wither the trees behind him. "We'll meet again, Merlin. Four hundred years is nothing to us."
"Try to keep the mass murder to a minimum, kid," I called out.
He didn't answer. He just vanished into the trees. I stood there for a long time, looking at the empty Eclipse Gate. I'd just helped start the story. Now, all I had to do was wait for the ending.
"Solomon," I said, feeling the weight of the years ahead. "Let's go home. I think Martha made bread today." and with the tap of my staff I vanished leaving the field of flowers .