There was no warning.
One moment, existence was silent.
The next, space pulled.
Not summoned.Not called.
Pulled—like a mistake trying to correct itself.
Anos Voldigoad opened his eyes.
Before him stood a city of stone and iron, loud with human voices and weak mana. The air felt thin, strained, as though the world itself was maintaining shape through effort rather than law.
"So this is where it leads," Anos said calmly.
The royal capital of Lugnica.
He stood in the middle of a crowded street, yet no one noticed him. Not because he hid himself—because the world had not yet decided how to acknowledge something like him.
A few steps away, a black-haired boy stumbled forward, staring at his own hands.
"This isn't Japan…" the boy muttered. "Did I seriously—"
Anos did not listen further.
His attention was elsewhere.
Something had reacted.
From deep within the world's structure, an authority stirred. It crawled along the seams of causality, touching moments of death, looping them, repeating them endlessly in search of a "correct" outcome.
It reached for Anos.
It failed.
The contact broke instantly, like glass touching the sun.
Anos felt it recoil.
"…I see," he said quietly. "A world ruled by denial."
He raised his gaze.
"You erase failure instead of overcoming it. You rewind instead of improving."
The sky darkened—briefly.
Not clouds.Fear.
The authority tried again, more carefully this time, attempting to brand his existence, to bind him to its rules.
Anos smiled.
"You mistake persistence for power."
The concept shattered.
Not destroyed.
Invalidated.
Somewhere far beyond perception, something screamed.
The black-haired boy flinched, clutching his chest, unaware that a fate meant to bind him forever had just been broken before it began.
Anos turned and began walking.
Each step stabilized the ground beneath him, as though the world itself was being forced to behave correctly.
"I did not come here to be a hero," Anos said, voice steady and absolute."I did not come here to be worshipped."
He stopped at the edge of the street and looked out over the capital.
"But since I am here," he continued,"this world will stop relying on death to move forward."
The wind fell silent.
Time did not rewind.
And for the first time since its creation—
The world of Re:Zero advanced without a reset.