Vyan glanced at Clyde. Then Althea. At the Grand Hall, which wasn't on fire this ti. At the sealed box. At everything he'd just fought to change.
"It's ti," he muttered under his breath. Finally, his gaze was on Iyana. "She's safe now."
"What?" Clyde asked.
Vyan gave him a half-smile, already feeling the pull getting stronger. "Let's just say… I know the future."
With his gaze locked on Iyana, Vyan watched as she drove her blade clean through Wyatt's chest, pinning his body to the stone wall with one final clash.
She looked up. Her violet eyes, storm-lit and blazing with triumph, found his across the battlefield.
A victorious smile broke across her blood-sared face—an expression of unguarded relief and fierce pride. Through the gri and exhaustion, she looked truly happy. Satisfied that the nightmare was over. That everything had ended as it should have. That he was safe. That fate hadn't claid him today like the pages of that damned novel Leila had read once prophesied.
But Vyan couldn't return that smile. He wanted to—dear goddess, he wanted to.
The force tugging at him now felt stronger and sharper. Like hooks beneath his skin. He staggered slightly, the ground beneath him no longer stable.
The ground beneath him swam. The air felt thinner. And Iyana… she noticed. Instantly.
Her smile faltered, freezing in place like a painting cracked by ti.
Her eyes widened as she watched the subtle shimr at the edges of his form, like heatwaves distorting his silhouette, like reality itself couldn't decide if he belonged. The shift was gradual for a brief period. Then suddenly.
The victory in her eyes died.
And Vyan felt it—her fear. Raw, suffocating, like a scream being born in her chest.
Her body had gone rigid, but her soul… her soul was thrashing.
Because in that mont, she knew. She knew sothing was wrong. Sothing terrible. It was like she was watching him being ripped away from her, even though they had done every possible thing to prevent his doom. To her, it must have looked like he was being stolen from her. And no matter how strong they were, no matter how hard they fought, they couldn't stop it.
She couldn't save him.
And neither could he.
He didn't have ti. Not nearly enough. He was mistaken to assu that he'd get a few minutes at least to tell her he would co back. That this wasn't goodbye. That she didn't have to fear.
But his body was unraveling too fast—being pulled apart, atom by atom, by a force neither visible nor rciful. And gods, he knew what it ant. The tiline was rejecting him. His ti here was up. He had to go back to the present.
"Vee?" she breathed, barely audible. Her body was frozen in shock. Her voice trembled like the aftermath of an earthquake.
He reached for Iyana, his instinct overriding everything else. He didn't think. He just stretched out his hand, needing—aching—to touch her. Just once. Just a second. Just enough to hold onto her until the universe tore him away.
"Wait for . I'll be back in—" he managed. His voice cracked, then failed.
Words abandoned him.
"No… no… Don't…" she murmured. Her legs moved before her mind could catch up. "Don't go!" she cried, her voice rising into a scream as her body blurred into multiple flash-steps.
She moved like lightning, like every second mattered. Because it did.
"Stop!"
Iyana was right there. Her hand outstretched, trembling. Her lips parted in silent agony. Her eyes shimred, not with victory now, but with grief and disbelief and helpless rage.
They were inches apart.
Their fingertips—
So close. So damn close.
And then—
Fwoosh.
The tiline surged like a tidal wave of fate and tore him away.
It wasn't gentle. It was violent. Brutal.
Vyan was ripped backward like a soul wrenched from flesh, like the world itself had decided he no longer belonged.
And Iyana's scream followed him—raw, breaking, and gut-wrenching.
"Vyan!!"
But by the ti her voice reached the empty air… he had already disappeared from that world.
–——
Vyan tumbled through a storm of fractured light and sound. The world spun in impossible directions. Up didn't exist. Neither did down. Past and future twisted and collided around him like shards of broken glass suspended in a tornado of ti.
A spiraling maze of gears, numbers, and glowing threads coiled around him—so moving too fast, others too slow. It was the clockwork realm between tilines, and it was chaos.
He was seeing his own mories, mories of others, of his other selves, and so many other things.
But the one that struck him the most was his own death, most likely from the universe that Leila had read of.
It made a weird, nauseating feeling rise up in his chest, seeing his own death play out.
How cruel, he thought. The balance of ti and fate must be punishing him for crossing his limits.
But did they really think he was that weak to crumble from this?
He had watched the love of his life fall into an eternal sleep with his hopes of her waking up being crushed ruthlessly multiple tis. His own death ant nothing compared to that.
Besides, he already knew that she lived a happy life after the villain's death in that universe. As long as she was happy, he was okay with whatever.
Even so, that didn't an he wanted to watch this any longer. He wanted to trace his own tiline.
Hecate had warned him.
"You must understand that changing the past warps everything. The present will beco unstable, and you cannot stay in the past and continue from that point, because these nine days have already passed. Either way, tilines will have twisted. It won't be easy to return to the new present you'll have created. You might lose your way. You might get lost in ti itself."
And to that, he had replied, "I'll find a way back ho."
Easier said than done.
He truly was too overconfident and reckless sotis.
He was already bad with ti-related spells, and now… geez.
Vyan tried to focus, squinting through the blinding fog of seconds and centuries, trying to trace the thread that belonged to him. The one he had shaped. The future where Iyana lived.
But just as his hand reached toward a glimring path, where he saw a flash of Iyana sitting by his bedside, looking at the moon with a tear spilling down her cheek, clearly waiting for his return—his mind flared with static.
A jolt ran down his spine, and his fingertip brushed the wrong path.
No— wait— that's not the one I wanted to go into!
Too late.
The wave of ti washed him over, swallowed him whole, and dropped him to the shore he had selected.
———
Vyan fell.
And fell.
And fell.
It felt like hours. Or seconds. Or both. There was no air. No sense of ending. Just the deafening silence of transition.
Then ca the impact.
Vyan stumbled into a dark alleyway. His vision was still catching up as he raised his head and found out that there was nobody around.
Where was he?
He picked himself off the ground and dusted his clothes, walking toward the source of light at the end of the alley.
When he stepped out, it was bright. Too bright.
He was standing on a sidewalk, surrounded by towers of glass and steel that scraped the sky. The sun blazed overhead, but the light felt alien and sterile. Strange vehicles zipped past him with angry beeps. People brushed by in bizarre clothes, shouting into glowing rectangles, not sparing him a glance.
He could barely breathe. The air was thick with smoke, tal, pollution, and sothing fake.
Where the hell am I? What is this place?
"I want to go back ho…" he murmured like a lost child and tried to call so of his mana, to figure out a way, to feel sothing familiar. But his mana didn't respond. It flared for a single second, only to go out like a dying ember.
In fact, he couldn't even feel magic channeling through his mana circuit. He tapped his foot on the ground, trying to channel the raw mana from the earth, like the land of Haynes could, but it didn't co. The land was neutral.
He tried to call in mana particles from the air, but there was none. Not a single speck.
Wait, whatever this world was… did it not have mana? Did magic not work here at all?
If so… how am I supposed to go back?
As the realization hit him like a brick, his face paled and his hands started to shake. His world started to spin in an uncontrollable spiral.
Without magic, without his loved ones, without his own fucking identity… what the hell was he supposed to do? How would he go back ho?
His knees gave out, all those days of starving himself and living on potions hitting him all at once. Of course, the effects of potions were running out. Even his thermal regulated suit had stopped working. After all, magical things like that didn't work here.
He felt so many things at once. Thirsty. Hot. Hungry. Dizzy. Nauseous. Powerless. Helpless. Lost. Alone. So, so fucking alone.
This wasn't the future he had planned.
This wasn't his world.
He, whose existence revolved around magic, didn't belong here—not to an unenchanted realm of all places!
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