VOL. 2 (PROLOGUE): CHAPTER 18 — "THE WORLD MOVES WHEN YOU LEAVE, AND IT HAS BEGUN"

— KAI’S POV —

I didn’t look back.
Not when the last elven watchtower faded into the mist.
Not when the ancient forest thinned into nameless plains.
Not when the mana density dropped so sharply it felt like the world itself had exhaled.
If I looked back, I might stop.

And stopping was worse than running.
Three months.
It had been three months since everything ended.

Since Aerin died.
Since blood soaked into roots older than nations.
Since I learned—
too late—
that saving fate didn’t mean saving people.

I walked alone.
No escorts.
No goodbyes.
No destination.
Just movement.

The road was dull and gray, stretching endlessly beneath a sky that refused to change. Travelers passed me—merchants, pilgrims, soldiers—but none of them looked twice. I kept my presence folded inward, erased just enough to be forgettable.

A trick I’d perfected.
Erase the boundary between yourself and the world, Amara had once said.
Then the world forgets to notice you.

It was useful.
It was lonely.

I stopped at a shallow river near dusk. The water reflected the sky in broken pieces, like a mirror dropped and never repaired. I crouched, splashed my face, and stared at my reflection.

Black hair.
Tired eyes.
A face that looked older than it should.
Sixteen.
That number meant nothing anymore.

I pressed my fingers into the dirt until my knuckles whitened.
Aerin would’ve complained, I thought.
He hated walking.
The memory hit harder than any blow.
I exhaled slowly, forcing it down. Grief was a luxury. Attachments were liabilities. I’d learned that lesson with brutal clarity.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” I muttered to no one.

Amara didn’t answer. She rarely did when I wasn’t asking something technical. Silence was her way of giving me space.
Or judging me.

Night fell.
I stood, shouldered my pack, and continued forward.

Toward the human lands.
Toward Valenheim.
Toward a world that didn’t know my name—
and didn’t need to.



— LYTHIRIEL’S POV —

The chamber was too quiet.
Lunaryn never slept. Even at night, the capital breathed—spirit-lights drifting, leaves whispering, mana flowing like a living current. Silence meant something was wrong.

I felt it before I knew it.
A hollow space.
Like a thread snapping inside my chest.
I left my chambers without a word, bare feet carrying me through moonlit corridors, past startled guards who didn’t dare stop me. My heart pounded harder with every step.

Please be wrong.
Please be wrong, I thought.
Please.

I reached the outer platform overlooking the forest.
And felt it.Nothing.
Kai’s presence—chaotic, irritating, impossible—was gone.

No lingering echo.
No distortion.
No trace.

He hadn’t just left.
He had erased himself.
My breath hitched.

“No…” I whispered.

I searched. With senses honed by spirit contracts, by training under kings of wind, by blood older than most civilizations—I searched.
And found nothing.

The forest answered with silence.
My knees gave out.
He hadn’t said goodbye.

Not to me.
Not to Mother.
Not even to—

A sharp ache cut through me, and I pressed my fist against my mouth to stop the sound that tried to escape.Idiot, I thought fiercely.

You absolute idiot…
Did he think leaving would protect us?
Did he think disappearing would erase the pain?
Tears blurred my vision, but beneath them burned something sharper.
Resolve.

I stood slowly.
If he thought he could vanish—
Then he didn’t know me at all.



— ELDER MINA’S POV —

The stars were wrong.
I knew it the moment the ritual circle stabilized.

The astral chamber shimmered with layered sigils—prophecy arrays refined over centuries, each one anchored to a different leyline, a different future possibility. I had performed this divination hundreds of times in my long life.

Never like this.
The moment my consciousness brushed the astral plane, resistance hit me.

Not darkness.
Correction.

Threads tightened.
Paths folded.
Possibilities collapsed into one another like pages being torn from a book.

My vision lurched.
Time… stuttered.

I gasped, clutching the staff as the chamber spun.

“What—what is this…?”

The stars above Lunaryn shifted.
Not visibly.
Not to the untrained eye.

But to me, it was unmistakable.
Acceleration.
Fate was moving faster.

No—
forcing itself forward.

I pushed deeper, ignoring the warning burn behind my eyes.
And then I saw it.

A world-line bending unnaturally.
A fixed point—
human, young, unresolved—
moving away from a convergence point he was never meant to leave.

Kai Rajput.
The anomaly had changed position.

And fate—
Fate was panicking.

The backlash slammed into me like a hammer.
I cried out as blood spilled from my nose, the ritual circle fracturing beneath my feet. The future shattered into overlapping afterimages—cities burning, time freezing mid-scream, a girl with silver thread crying for someone she could not remember.

I fell to my knees.
The vision ended.
Silence followed.

Queen Vaelindra was beside me in an instant, hands steady as she supported my shoulders.

“Mina,” she said sharply. “What did you see?”

My lips trembled.
I tasted iron and starlight.

“It has begun,” I whispered.

Her grip tightened. “…What has begun?”

I lifted my gaze to the heavens.
“The balance has been disturbed beyond recovery,” I said. “The anomaly moved out of position.”

Her eyes widened—
just a fraction.

“Time,” I continued hoarsely, “has accelerated its correction cycle. Fate is tightening its grip.”

A long, heavy silence settled.
Finally, the Queen spoke. “…If he had stayed?”

I closed my eyes.
“If he had stayed,” I said, voice breaking, “the wound might have scarred.”
I looked back at her.
“Now… it will bleed.”



— UNKNOWN POV (UNOBSERVED) —

In a place where clocks had no hands,
where bells rang after the sound had already passed—
A girl stirred.

Black hair spilled across white sheets,
fingers curling instinctively around a thin silver thread tied at her wrist.

Her chest ached.
Tears slipped from closed eyes, soaking the pillow.

“Don’t go…” 
"Don' disappear..."
"don't die..."
"Please...I beg you..."
"Please..." she murmured, though she did not know to whom or why.

Somewhere far away, something precious had moved.
And her heart—
Her heart remembered.