A Short Interlude [TRAVELER]

The moon was the only thing shading a light on the man's path. It was the first time he had entered the city of the first chain. Due to him being a Fateless, he had always wanted to stay away from it, both because he was aware that the seal was impossible to destroy with his powers, and because he was essentially uninterested in the mission entrusted to him.

He had already lived, already died, come back to life without a choice, died again, and been transformed into a living calamity. The same calamity that had destroyed his world, threatening to end his universe.

Ironically, it was he who had lit the spark that allowed his reality to rise from the ashes. It was he who had defeated the calamity whose power he now wielded.

But to do so, he had had to witness the death of everything he cared about. None of it mattered when the end came. He had a daughter excited about her first day of school, a son in his rebellious phase who barely spoke to him, accusing him of being an absent parent because of his job as an astronaut, and a wife pregnant with their third child, something he was against.

He knew the fate of the world.

Bringing a newborn into a doomed reality was just cruel.

But his wife wanted to have children again and again. “To give them a chance at a little happiness.”

Perhaps she was right. The man couldn't deny that he had never been as happy as he was on the day his first child was born, or when his second child gave him a terrible drawing of him wearing his astronaut helmet, returning from a trip.

He regretted not having had the opportunity to develop a memory with his third child. He regretted not even knowing its gender before the calamity struck.

Everyone knew it was coming.

No one knew when.

He was not on his planet when the wave of cold swept everything away. Entropic death.

At that moment, he was in space, on a mission to the edge of the known universe. He carried with him the last faint hope, a small core of fire, a miniature sun. The man was not allowed to die embracing what he loved, his loved ones were not allowed to see him one last time, while his third child had already been born. Perhaps if he had stayed home, he could have made peace with his eldest son, he could have seen his second daughter finish school, not just start it.

But the fate of the universe depended on that mission.

That mission which, in retrospect, did not matter to him.

He would have liked to be with his wife.

He knows the tragedy of seeing a life torn away in an instant, which is why he never took the mission entrusted to him by Arthesya seriously. That mission involved the death of many people, and he had decided never again to put anything above the value of personal life.

That is why he did not join the Chosen in the battle for the chains.

Yet he was dragged by a mysterious girl into a major accident.

There he died.

There he became a Fateless.

There he gained the power of the calamity that destroyed his universe.

Using it, he managed to break a chain. He didn't want to, it just happened. But someone else knew exactly what was going on. Someone had pulled the strings to bring him into the middle of that accident, because without entropic death, this person's goals would not have been achieved.

From then on, that man became the Fateless [TRAVELER], but he did not side with Arthesya.

Instead, he vowed to prevent the same woman who deceived them from involving other innocents in her crusade to liberate the Goddess, from playing with other lives to save her own.

When he saw the magic sphere disintegrate, he knew he was too late. However, there was still a chance to save someone from the woman's clutches, so he threw himself into the fray. He entered the city and climbed up to the mansion.

There, after seeing what looked like a small meteorite crash into the house, he saw what he was looking for. Near a window, there was a little girl with fox ears. She entered the house before he could stop her, but he knew he had to chase after her.

This time, I won't let you kill everyone for your own purposes [ECHOES]