Siegfried Fors
"No," Uncle Erik said as he moved to the front. "They are dying. There is another familiar trace of non living mana... It is her weapon."
Non-living mana? From what little I knew, high-level weapons possessed mana and will of their own, a faint reflection of the materials used to forge them. I looked down at the wand Mother had given me. Mana flowed through it, though I wasn't sure if it possessed a true will.
"We need to hurry." Uncle Erik spoke before I could even look up from my wand. Suddenly, gravity surrendered again. We were lifted into the air, and in an instant, we were soaring through the tunnel at a breakneck pace with Uncle leading the charge.
I watched the back of his head, feeling a surge of genuine worry. I'm surprised he can still maintain this level of magic. He looked so drained just a few minutes ago, yet here he is, burning through his reserves.
Granny drifted closer to him, her expression tight with worry. "Erik, you should not push yourself."
"Ma, I am fine," Uncle replied. He didn't even look back, his eyes fixed forward with a singular, desperate focus.
Granny did not argue, but her silence spoke louder than words.
"We are close," Uncle declared.
The tunnel widened rapidly, the rough walls giving way to a cavernous expanse. We finally emerged into the open air of a massive, circular chamber.
I had expected a fresh wave of monsters or a swarm of Darkkin to greet us, but the silence that met us was heavy and absolute. Lying on the cold floor were two massive bodies, their heads severed. My gaze drifted past the carnage, settling on the far end of the cavern where a pair of towering, ancient doors stood embedded in the rock.
"Why are there doors inside a time dungeon?" Aifa asked, her voice edged with shock as our feet touched the ground.
"There is a chance something was living here when the cave was transformed into a time dungeon," Ashar suggested, his eyes scanning the doors.
"Inside a waterfall cave?" Aifa asked, skepticism pulling at her features.
"It is possible we are in a time period from before the Great Split," Tavian said, stepping toward the entrance. "Meaning, before the start of the current era."
The Great Split. I read once about how the continents were once a single, unbroken landmass. It was said a battle took place in the black sky—what my previous world called outer space—and the sheer shockwave of that conflict shattered the continent into pieces. If Tavian was right, we were standing more than twelve hundred years in the past.
"Sieg." Granny's voice pulled me back. I turned to see her kneeling beside one of the headless beasts, Uncle and Blake beside her.
I walked over, my eyes tracing the grotesque form of the monster, which looked as if many different creatures had been randomly thrown together into one. "What kind of monster is that?"
"It is a Chimera," Granny said.
"A Chimera? Aren't those incredibly rare? I thought they were only found in the deep forests south of the Aland Barony."
"That is correct." She nodded. "But these are far larger and…" She reached out toward the stump where the head had been and pushed back the coarse fur, revealing a thick, metallic band. "... And it looks like they were wearing slave collars."
Huh? Collars?
I looked at the collars and then back at the towering doors as I slowly realized what was going on here.
"Were they used to guard the door?" I asked as a terrible feeling settled within me. To use a creature that should be an B-rank threat as a mere watchdog...
"It appears so," Granny said as she straightened, dusting off her robes. "For now, put them into the magic pouch." I nodded and pulled it out. "And Erik..." Granny continued, her eyes narrowing as she looked at her son. "I believe the mana you felt 'disappearing' was not from these Chimeras."
Uncle paused, then nodded as he hauled the first beast into the pouch. "That's right. It's coming from..." He didn't finish the sentence, simply glancing at the towering doors.
Granny followed his gaze and nodded once. "That confirms it. To the doors."
After the last body vanished into the pouch, we turned as one and moved forward, the ancient doors looming larger with every step.
The only truly impressive thing about the double doors was their towering, oppressive size. The metal plating that covered them was thick and battered, covered with deep dents and jagged scratches that spoke of violence.
As we stood before the threshold, all eyes naturally moved toward Uncle. With his gaze fixed on the iron surface, he stepped forward and pressed his palms flat against the metal.
The screech that followed clawed through the cavern, metal grinding against stone until the doors were forced apart.
For a brief moment, a heavy silence fell over us. The sight that met our eyes was so far beyond what we had imagined that our jaws dropped in unison.
Bodies. Massive ones. Piled upon each other in grotesque layers, blood darkened and drying. And standing atop that mound, as if it were nothing more than broken ground, was a lone woman.
An axe was buried deep into a corpse beneath her feet. Mana seeped out from the wound like mist, drawn toward the white gem set at the center of the weapon. It pulsed faintly as it drank it in.
As she turned her gaze toward us, a sudden wave of terror washed through me, a primal reaction to the sheer aura of death surrounding her.
Then she smiled.
That same foolish, familiar grin I knew far too well.
"You guys sure took your time to get here."
"Mother..." The word escaped me before I could even think.
In a heartbeat, she vanished from the top of that mound. Before I could even register the movement, my feet left the ground. "My Sieg~" Mother cooed, her voice a jarring contrast to the carnage behind her as she pressed her cheek firmly against mine.
"You are not hurt, are you?" she asked, pulling back just enough to scan me from head to toe.
"I... I am fine," I managed to say, my voice coming out thinner than I wanted.
Granny let out a long, weary sigh as she walked toward us. "Don't scare us like that, Valka."
"Scare you? What do you mean?" Mother's eyes drifted from person to person, taking in the tattered clothes and everyone's condition. "Looks like you guys really fought hard to get here."
"You can say that again," Uncle Erik said with a dry scoff, his shoulders finally losing some of their defensive tension.
"You did well, Erik." She reached out and patted his shoulder with a heavy, approving hand. "You always did perform better under pressure."
Uncle looked ready to snap back with a retort, but Granny's voice cut through the air first.
"Leaving all that aside... just what are these?" She gestured toward the humongous corpses piled in the center of the room.
Only then did I truly look, the scale of these beings was staggering. Their skin was thick, rocky, and grayish in color, looking more like hewn stone than flesh. Each one possessed a singular white gem embedded in its forehead, and their eyes were completely blacked out, devoid of pupils. Their clothing was unlike anything I had ever seen, unfamiliar in shape and design.
And the room itself…
I lifted my gaze upward.
Above us, something unseen projected artificial light downward, illuminating the chamber in a way that felt far too advanced for a simple cave.
"Not sure..." Mother said lightly. "I arrived in this time period not too long ago. I had to kill those pets outside after they tried biting me, then I entered this room. These rocks were in a complete panic, scurrying around a large magic circle in the middle of the floor. When they saw me, they gathered around and started jabbering in some weird language. One of them, who looked like a leader, looked at me and licked his lips. That made me angry for some reason, so I punched him in the face. He is lying over there."
She pointed off into the distance. Even from here, I could tell his face... his head was simply gone. Mother continued without a hint of remorse, her tone almost bored, "Then the rest of them grew in size and attacked me. You can see the result."
I looked at the mountain of rock creatures and felt a strange flicker of pity. Poor guys. They ran into the one person they shouldn't have even seen in their worst nightmares.
"Wait!" Aifa's voice rang out from near the base of the mountain of corpses. "Ashy, are they not Sky Titans?"
"What?" Ashar dropped everything and ran to her side, his eyes wide as he scanned the fallen giants.
Sky Titans?
Before I could ask Granny for an explanation, her entire demeanor shifted.
"It cannot be possible..." She walked toward the corpses with a sudden, hurried intensity, and the rest of us followed in her wake.
"You are right. The descriptions match perfectly," Ashar confirmed, his voice hushed with a mix of reverence and terror.
"Are you both sure?" Granny asked.
Aifa nodded hurriedly, her hands gesturing to the features of the nearest body. "They look exactly like the Sky Titans our nanny read to us about as kids. The rocky skin, the ability to change their size, and especially the gems on their foreheads."
"Unbelievable..." Granny whispered, her hand trembling slightly as she touched the cold, stone-like flesh of a corpse.
"Um, can somebody tell me what Sky Titans are?" I finally managed to ask, the silence of the room making my own voice sound small.
"I also would like to know that," Mother said, raising her hand like a curious student. "I do remember the name from somewhere, but I can't exactly recall where."
"Let me explain, Lady Valka," Aifa said quickly, seizing the moment. Then her gaze shifted to me, as if remembering I was listening too. "…And young lord. You remember the Great Split we spoke about earlier. The continents were torn apart by the aftermath of a battle that took place in the black sky. That battle was against the Sky Titans."
Her voice grew steadier as she continued.
"They came from a distant world and seized control of the moons, using them as bastions to prepare for an invasion of our own. The founding emperor of Basiledra chose to strike first. He carried the war to them and shattered the legions of the Sky Titans. The battle was so violent that the shockwaves split the land itself, ending the old era and birthing the one we live in today."
So these things are actually aliens? This world keeps proving that danger never came from just one direction.
"Ah," Mother said, nodding slowly. "Now I remember. The dwarven king told me about them when he was helping craft my axe. He said the gem on it came from a Sky Titan. Apparently, each gem carries a different power." She glanced down at the white gem set into her axe.
Wait. She knows the dwarven king too?
"Huh? Didn't you say a dragon craftsman worked on your axe?" Granny asked, completely bypassing the mention of the Dwarf King, maybe she has gotten used to it by now.
"It was both of them. At first, they fought constantly over who would craft the weapons; in the end, they decided to work together out of respect for each other's craft, or something like that."
"Sis," Uncle said, his gaze fixed on the axe, "when we entered, it looked like your weapon was draining mana from those things. What was that?"
"Not sure..." Mother looked at the axe with a genuine expression of confusion. "After I finished them off, the gem just started reacting like that on its own. It was like it was hungry."
Her fingers tightened around the handle.
"But this situation doesn't make sense…" Captain Tavian said as he and Blake returned after scouting the chamber. His gaze moved slowly, taking everything in. "For Sky Titans to be here, especially in a cave like this. There are two doors, one from where we entered and one on the other side. And that lighting tool above…" He looked up. "I believe that is a Sky Titan magic construct."
"Captain is right," Ashar added, his tone serious. "Sky Titans never landed on our world alive. Only their dead bodies ever fell from the sky."
"Wasn't there a magic circle here?" Granny asked, turning her focus back to Mother.
"It's under the bodies," Mother replied calmly. She lifted her hand, and one by one the massive corpses rose into the air, drifting aside as if they weighed nothing, nearly brushing against the glowing tool on the ceiling.
"That doesn't look like a magic circle," Granny muttered as we moved closer to the center of the room.
She was right. It wasn't a circle at all. A square lay etched into the stone, with another tilted square inside it. Strange symbols filled the space between them, nothing like any script I had ever seen.
My head hurts just trying to follow the lines.
"Must be some titan magic," Granny sighed, shaking her head. "We can't understand it anyway. For now, let's pull the gems from the titans, then we move to the source of the Darkkin."
Everyone got to work. Since the bodies were far too large to haul through the dungeon or store in magic pouches, we focused on extracting the white forehead gems. While we worked, I told Mother about everything we had faced on our way to find her. She listened intently, mentioning that she had also encountered many Darkkins here, but they were different from any she had seen in the past.
According to her, the ones she had fought in the past were black and red rather than black and gold. They didn't have these strange golden rings, either; instead, they had simple red spheres where their heads should be.
That's strange... Could it be side-effects of the time dungeon?
As we finished our grim work, everyone carefully placed the white gems into my pouch one by one. On the other hand, Mother casually tossed the headless corpse in last and brushed her hands together.
"All done," she said, as if we had just finished packing for a trip.
"We should hurry to the Darkkin source now," Aifa said, her voice tight with the urge to move.
"You can deal with it, right?" Granny asked, her eyes searching Mother's face for any sign of hesitation.
"I can... but I think we should remove the core of the time dungeon first," Mother suggested, her expression unusually serious.
Granny studied her face, uncertainty clear. "Your reason?"
"If we remove the time dungeon core first, the darkness will end up stabilizing the dungeon," Mother said calmly. "Then we can deal with the source of the darkness on the way back."
"You talk as if the source was close to the entrance," Granny noted, raising a brow.
"It is. Because…" Mother's eyes shifted to the other set of doors across the chamber. "I can feel the core in that direction."
"Then we should—"
A harsh grinding sound cut through Granny's words.
Every head turned toward the doors we had entered through. They were being forced open wider, stone groaning in protest. Something massive pushed through first, its head scraping against the frame. A hulking black bull stepped into the chamber, its body a wall of muscle. Its eyes swept across the room before locking onto us.
The moment our gazes met, a sharp burning sensation flared beneath my eyepatch.
"Ugh…"
"Young lord?" Aifa's voice reached me, tight with concern.
"Sieg, what's wrong?" Granny leaned closer.
"I… I am fine," I said, though the heat refused to fade. The sensation was like a hot needle being driven into my right eye. Why so suddenly?
A deep, bellowing roar shook the chamber. I looked up just in time to see the bull vanish from where it stood, its massive form closing the distance in an instant.
Before anyone else could react, Mother stepped forward.
She caught the beast with one hand, stopping its charge dead. Stone cracked beneath her feet. Her other fist moved fast, slamming into the bull's skull with a sickening bone-breaking sound. The impact echoed through the chamber as the monster was sent flying, its body smashing into the far wall and leaving a web of fractures behind.
Mother stared at her fist for a moment, her brows knitting together, before turning toward me.
"Sieg, are you in pain? Is it your eye?"
"No, it doesn't hurt anymore," I managed to say. The eye had actually cooled off, leaving only a faint, lingering throb behind the leather of the patch.
"Just where did that thing even come from?" Uncle asked, his eyes narrow as he watched the slumped form of the beast. "Should we take the carcass with us?"
"No, we should go immediately—" A low, resonant bellowing sound cut Granny off mid-sentence.
We turned to see the bull shaking its massive head, pushing its body off the floor. It was getting back up.
"Sis, stop playing around. End it," Uncle said, his voice dropping into a combat-ready growl.
"I wasn't playing. I felt its skull breaking under my fist," Mother replied, her confusion deepening.
"Such strength..."
The moment that voice reached me, an unbelievable, hot pain erupted in my eye. "AGGH! GAAA!" A ragged scream tore from my throat as my knees gave way. It feels like my skull is being split from the inside!
"Sieg!" "Young Lord!" The voices felt distant and muffled, as if I were underwater, the pain dulling everything else.
"...No, you are not human..."
The voice echoed again, vibrating through my very self. The pain intensified, a violent pressure building behind my eyepatch like something was trying to claw its way out of my head. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, desperately trying to channel healing magic into the eye to force the suffering down.
"Aifa, stay with the young lord!" Tavian's voice rang out as the frantic rhythm of footsteps moved to form a line in front of me.
I forced my head up, fighting the haze of agony. The bull's body was beginning to undergo a sickening transformation. Its front hooves expanded and warped, slamming into the ground like giant, muscular fists as its skeletal structure groaned and shifted. "Not so fast!" Mother's roar cut through the air. A silver arc of light descended, her axe biting deep and splitting the beast cleanly in two.
The moment the blade passed through the creature, the burning pressure in my eye lessened. I looked up to see Mother standing over the severed remains, her weapon gleaming with the spray of dark blood.
"Feels like we averted some crisis," Uncle said, exhaling a breath he must have been holding as he moved closer to her.
Even though he spoke with relief, the throbbing behind my eyepatch didn't truly stop. It pulsed slowly, insistently, like a warning that refused to fade. Something is wrong. Why do I feel like we are being watched?
"No, stay back!" Mother suddenly shouted over her shoulder, her voice laced with a rare note of alarm. To everyone's horror, two massive hands erupted from the bisected remains, wrapping around Mother and lifting her off the ground before she could react.
"That was painful," the voice echoed again. The hands began to tighten with a strength that made the air hiss. The rest of the body started reforming, knitting together into something far more humanoid and terrible. At the same moment, agony flared in my eye, far worse than before. I clenched my jaw, trying to push it down with healing magic.
Mother let out a grunt of effort, flexing her entire body against the crushing grip. With a burst of raw physical power, she tore the hands apart, fragments of he hand flying across the chamber. She dropped lightly to the ground in front of us, her eyes fixed on the regenerating nightmare.
"Valka!" Granny said, rushing closer.
"I am fine."
"Sis, what is that? You cleanly split it in two, yet it... and this magical energy..." Uncle's voice trailed off as he watched the mass knit itself into a new, towering shape.
"It's a... Demon." Mother said. Her voice was stripped of all humor, dropping into a tone of absolute seriousness that I had never heard before.
My body trembled as the thing finished its transformation before us. Black skin changed to the color of dried blood, stretched over corded muscle that looked carved from knotted stone. My gaze was dragged to the skull-like mask fused to its face, rows of needle teeth locked in a permanent jagged grin. Those glowing red eyes pressed into me, heavy and suffocating. Obsidian spikes jutted from its shoulders and forearms like broken mountain peaks. As it pushed itself up with its thick, large hands, its heavy, clawed feet cracked the stone ground beneath it. It was easily bigger than all of us, casting a shadow that felt heavy enough to crush the breath from my lungs. I could hear Aifa gulping nervously next to me, and I knew everyone could feel this suffocating pressure.
That is a Demon?
"Now this is a surprise..." the demon said, its grin seeming to widen as it spoke. "From where does a 'Paradeus' like you crawl out?" Its eyes locked onto Mother.
Paradeus? What is he talking about?
Mother glanced over her shoulder at us for a fleeting second before turning back to the monster, her grip tightening on her axe. "Just who are you? And how the hell are you still alive after getting split in two?"
The demon just laughed, a raspy, hollow sound that echoed off the cavern walls. "Amusing. So amusing. You are talking back. Back in the day, your kind used to shiver and pray at the very sight of us."
"What?" Mother snapped, her mana beginning to flare in response to its arrogance.
"Either way, what is this familiar smell I have been savoring? This disgusting and nauseating smell..." The demon began to sniff the air, its head tilting in a predatory fashion.
Its eyes suddenly shifted, locking directly onto me, and the throbbing behind my eyepatch intensified until I thought my skull would burst.
"Why?" Its eyes flared, boring into me with a weight that felt like it was peeling back my very soul. "Why do you smell like that tree's bastard?"
At those words, Mother moved. In a blink of an eye, she was in front of the demon, her fist slamming into its skull-like mask with a force that should have leveled a building. The mocking laughter only grew louder as the demon took the hit straight on. "Amusing." The demon lunged, an uppercut from its giant fist striking Mother square in the abdomen.
"Is that all?" Mother asked, not even flinching from the impact.
The demon's laughter twisted, echoing wildly. Both of them vanished from sight. Shockwaves thundered from every direction, the air ripping apart as unseen blows collided again and again; they were moving too fast for my eye to track.
"Circle around the young lord!" Tavian's voice rang out. Everyone hurried to form a protective ring around me, while all I could do was helplessly clutch my eye, trying in vain to suppress the white-hot agony. Every impact around me sent knives of pain through my skull. I clutched my eye, teeth clenched, my vision burning white.
No... not like this!
"Faux!" I shouted. With a defiant "Fuaaa," an invisible barrier shimmered into existence around our small circle.
"Sieg, please don't force yourself," Granny's muffled, worried voice barely reached through the haze of my pain.
"There!" Uncle's voice cut through the air. I lifted my head to see him hurl his axe into the empty space. It struck something solid with a heavy thud, revealing the demon for a split second. A large, jagged claw began to close in on our position, but the demon's body tilted violently as Mother appeared, kicking it in the side.
The beast was sent rolling, yet it landed on its feet. It opened its monstrous maw, and torrents of blood-red flames came pouring out. Mother slipped beneath the fire, closing the distance in a blur and swinging her axe low, severing the demon's legs. As it tumbled forward to regain its balance, Mother swung upward in a savage arc, cleanly cutting off its head.
Before the head could even hit the stone, it was slammed back into the body by an invisible, crushing force. "Graviton Cage!" Mother shouted. From her palm, a sphere of pink and black energy shot out. The moment it touched the demon's mangled form, the ball exploded into a swirling sphere of raw mana, completely engulfing the creature and annihilating it until every trace of its existence vanished.
Is it finally over? But the heat in my eye won't die down.
"Such a strong spell." The laughter slithered through the chamber, surrounding us in a suffocating embrace. "Just who are you? You don't look like that damn goddess's servant... Are you one of the concubines of that tree's bastard? Then that boy is..." A crazed, jagged laughter followed that sent a primal chill through my entire body. I heard a sickening slurping sound, as if the air itself was being tasted. "There can be no better revenge for my kin than by devouring that bastard's kin!"
"Damn it!" Mother shouted, her voice sharp with a rare flash of urgency.
Suddenly, we were plucked from the ground by an invisible force and pulled out of the room in a second. I saw the large double doors closing shut behind us, the heavy metal booming as it sealed. As we moved further away, the blinding pain in my eye finally started to dim, receding into a dull, manageable throb.
"Valka?" Granny called out, her voice strained as she spun through the air alongside us.
"We will go as planned! We will go for the core of the time dungeon first, then for the source of darkness!" Mother declared. She led us at terrifying speed, pulling us through tunnel after tunnel, stone blurring past as if the dungeon itself was trying to swallow us whole.
"But sis," Uncle said as he moved beside her, his voice tight, "what was that thing? How is it still alive after getting blown to pieces?"
Before Mother could answer, multiple Darkkins materialized in our path. We slowed for only a fraction of a second before Mother flew straight through them, destroying their forms in an instant. Then, the same serpentine Darkkin we had fought before appeared. It leveled its greatsword, shooting a beam of concentrated golden mana directly at us. Mother didn't swerve; she flew straight through the light, shattering the beast upon impact.
"Be careful! It can regenerate!" Granny warned, her hand tightening on her staff.
"No, it won't," Mother declared firmly. To our surprise, the creature didn't knit itself back together.
"Just how..." Uncle stared with wide eyes at the broken pieces as they dissolved into nothing but harmless dust.
"We are close," Mother said, banked sharply. We flew into a small, circular chamber, and at the far end, another black Time Veil shimmered, waiting for us.
We were slowly lowered. As my feet touched the ground, I realized for the first time just how weak my legs felt.
"Young Lord, does your eye still hurt?" Aifa leaned in, her eyes searching mine with a look of deep concern that made me feel both cared for and strangely small.
"I am good now," I said with a firm nod, trying to reassure her, though the strange warmth behind my eye still lingered like an echo.
"But why did it happen?" Granny asked, moving closer to caress my cheek with a hand that trembled ever so slightly. The warmth of her touch grounded me more than any magic could.
"I'm not sure... but it felt like it was reacting to that demon." As I spoke, my eyes moved past her toward Mother, who stood apart from the group.
"Brings me to my previous question, Sis. Do you know what that thing was?" Uncle asked, turning to her.
But Mother was murmuring to herself, her brow furrowed in a way I rarely saw. "...A demon from before the time of the Great Split, and it can heal itself after getting its body obliterated... one that is actually strong..."
"Could it be!" Captain Tavian's voice broke the air. I looked at him to see a look of sudden realization dawning on his face. "Lady Valka, you surely don't mean that demon... It was an Unending Demon."
Unending? Even the name sounds like a curse.
Mother crossed her arms and looked at Captain Tavian with a questioning, sharp look. "Have a better explanation?"
Tavian looked like he wanted to argue for a second, then his shoulders slumped and he went silent. "...Nothing, my lady."
"What is this 'Unending Demon' thing?" I whispered to Aifa.
"They are said to be the most dangerous demons who lived in the previous era," she whispered back, her voice tight. "They appeared when the demon continent, Setanas, first merged with our world. They went about killing and eating any magical being they found, including humans. My nanny used to say that if I didn't sleep at night, an Unending Demon would come and eat me."
So they are the boogeymen of this world.
"But the most terrifying part," she continued, her voice dropping, "is that they are immortal."
"Immortal?"
The word slipped out of me before I could stop it. "As in… they cannot die?"
Aifa nodded slowly. "Yes. That immortality is the reason they were considered impossible to deal with."
It's unbelievable to think things like "Immortality" truly exist in this world. In my previous life, one of the underground organizations I exposed was conducting horrific human experiments on eternal youth. They were obsessed with creating a nectar of eternal youth and immortality, but it was all madness and stupid dreams.
"But Valka, I am surprised you know about this at all, seeing how you didn't remember the Sky Titans," Granny said, her eyes narrowing as she studied my mother.
Mother hesitated for a moment, long enough to be noticed.
"I... and some other people looked into the concepts of immortality and invincibility during the time of the Beast of Cataclysm," Mother answered.
"What?" Granny's eyes widened. "It's forbidden. Why would you do that?"
Mother let out a heavy sigh, the weight of those memories visible in the slump of her shoulders. "It's a well-kept secret, so do not repeat this to anyone." Her gaze swept across all of us before settling. "The Beast of Cataclysm was 'invincible' and I am not speaking metaphorically. No magic or physical attacks worked on it. It simply could not be harmed."
"Invincible..." Tavian murmured, his face pale as he processed the gravity of that statement.
"That is new information..." Aifa whispered next to me, her hand tightening on her bow.
Mother continued, her gaze fixed on a point far away. "While we were looking for a way to overcome that invincibility, we thought the Beast might also be immortal. That is how we stumbled upon the records of those demons."
"But if the beast was invincible, how did you guys actually kill it?" Uncle Erik asked the question that was suddenly burning in all of our minds.
"Not important." Mother turned her back to us, her voice snapping back into its usual commanding tone. "We don't have much time. Let's go."
Without another word, she started walking toward the shimmering surface of the Time Veil.
She is hiding something.
The way she walked ahead, the way her voice had shut every door, it all felt too deliberate.
And there was a question burning in the back of my throat too. It was one that I couldn't let go of after the agony I had just endured.
"Mother," I called out, quickening my pace to walk behind her. "What did that demon mean by 'Tree's bastard'? What was that about?"
Mother didn't turn around. She didn't even break her stride as she stared at the shimmering black veil ahead of us. "Don't know," she answered, her voice clipped and dismissive.
So that's how she wants to play it? I usually didn't care about secrets as long as things remained peaceful, but that demon looked at me like I was a piece of sauced meat served right in front of him. It wanted to consume me. If I was being hunted for my very blood, I had a right to know why.
I looked at Granny, hoping for a spark of honesty, but she pointedly looked away, her jaw tight. My eyes shifted to Aifa, searching for any clue in her expression. She looked at the ground, a wave of sadness washing over her features, lips pressed together. "Sorry..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. That single word hurt more than denial.
Does everyone other than me know?
The realization stung more than the physical pain in my eye. They were protecting me, but the walls they had built around the truth were starting to feel more like a cage.
I watched Mother's back as her hand moved toward the veil.
"Great. More annoying roaches have walked in."
A woman's voice drifted through the chamber, dripping with boredom, and in that same heartbeat, the world changed. I felt my body grow heavy, slowing down until I couldn't move a single muscle. The vibrant colors of the cavern began to drain away, leaching out of the stones and the air until everything turned a dull, lifeless gray.
What is going on? I can't move at all.
I was trapped, stuck in a mid-stride position with one leg still suspended in the air. I couldn't even tilt my head, move my eyes or open my mouth to cry out. A few feet ahead of me, Mother was caught in the same impossible stasis, her hand still extended toward the veil.
"Just look at the crowd," the voice continued as the black surface of the Time Veil rippled like water. From it, a woman stepped through.
And for a moment, even fear took a step back.
I knew people in this world were far more beautiful than those from my old one.
But this woman…
Wow.
No. That word was not enough.
Wooowwww.
The woman was an absolute beauty; her radiance even surpassed Mother's and Aifa's. My breath caught at the sight of her long, ash-blonde hair, which flowed in heavy, braided tresses that seemed to catch and hold the light even in this colorless world. Her face had a startling, porcelain clarity, and her eyes, a sharp and piercing amber, scanned the room with an intelligence that felt otherworldly. Ornate, winged hairpieces gave her the silhouette of a actual deity. She was clad in regal robes of deep violet and midnight black that flared out like the wings of a moth, revealing tall, dark boots and intricate silver filigree. In her hand, she gripped a massive, dark-wood staff capped with a jagged purple crystal surrounded by two curving jagged piece of metal.
"A child? Seriously?" She shook her head as she walked past Mother, not even sparing her a glance. "Good luck getting out."
She walked past me, disappearing from my line of sight. I heard the soft rhythm of her footsteps slowly vanish into the distance until a heavy, suffocating silence was all that remained.
Did she leave?
Who was she?
More importantly, how are we supposed to move?
"This is a surprise."
My heart nearly tore itself apart. The voice came and... it was right beside me. I felt the weight of a hand settle around my shoulder, and a warm, steady breath brushed against my ear, sending a shiver straight through me.
"You can perceive me, right, little one?"
W-what?!?