Randel stared, feeling the boundaries of his world crumbling, one after another.
Inside him, two forces clashed with brutal force: the cold rationality of a ruler forged on reports and hard facts, and the trembling, primal instinct of a man standing face-to-face with a living miracle.
(…This is the legend? Alive? Breathing?)
“May I… ask one more question, my lady?” His voice slipped into the forbidden form of address she had banned. (Any other way… and I don’t know how to speak at all.)
The golden helm turned. On its polished surface reflected sothing—not eyes, but a silent, waiting permission.
Randel gathered his words like fragile glass.
“You said… you lived before the first kings were even born.
All the great wars, the fall of empires, the rise of dynasties…
You watched them all… from the shadow of the forest?”
(Impossible…)
“Forgive , but my mind refuses to accept it,” he confessed, and for the first ti his voice carried not timid awe, but raw, almost desperate incomprehension. “How could a power like yours remain hidden? Even the Empire’s greatest archmage, Violetta, has limits! She needs scrolls, gestures, components! And you… you simply waved a hand. Your strength… it doesn’t fit inside any fra I know.”
(…What are you?) His gaze tried to pierce the tal, searching for an answer.
But before he finished, she snapped upright. Not in anger. Sothing alive and sharp crackled through her posture—suddenly, shockingly human, in stark contrast to the glacial detachnt of monts ago.
“What?” The word cracked out, short and jagged. It wasn’t the voice of unshakable certainty. It was sothing else entirely. “Mages… they’re rare on this continent?”
“There… there should be many of them, shouldn’t there?”
Randel **froze**, utterly and completely. (What… kind of reaction is this?!) He had braced for wrath, for arrogant confirmation. Not genuine, almost frightened confusion. He had never imagined this.
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“Uh… yes, of course,” he answered, his own voice faltering. “Magic is extraordinarily rare. A talent that appears perhaps once in tens of thousands. Truly powerful mages—those who can do more than lift a quill or spark a fla—can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Most serve at royal courts. Why… why does that surprise you so much?”
But Amanda was no longer listening. Her body had **turned to stone**. Inside, everything inverted.
(In the story, mages were everywhere!)
A storm erupted in her skull. (In Chronicles of Aetheria, magic was commonplace! Knights fought with enchanted blades, alchemists wove miracles! And… Roxana! I was too stressed to notice before, but… she should have been at Randell’s side! Where is she?! Why isn’t she here?!)
(…Sothing’s wrong.)
Her mind groaned under the strain, like an overloaded beam on the verge of snapping.
Cold panic —thick, cloying, rising in her throat like bile.
(Everything I knew from the Chronicles… useless?! The plot… has it changed? Why?!)
Her thoughts **froze** the mont they brushed the most terrifying possibility.
(…What if this isn’t the world of Chronicles at all?)
Her silence, her petrified stillness, was more frightening than any display of power. This was no omnipotent spirit. This was a terrified human inside golden armor.
And that sight was more terrifying than anything she had shown him yet.
“My lady?” Randel forgot caution entirely. Instinctively he leaned forward and seized her gauntleted hand—warm, firm. (A reaction… proof of life!) “Are you all right? Can you hear ?”
His touch, his voice yanked her from the spiraling abyss. Slowly she raised her head. Though the helm hid her eyes, Randel felt her gaze lock onto him.
“…I’m fine,” she said, the words muffled, forced out through clenched teeth. She did not pull her hand away. “Your words… simply made think.”
Silence. She needed to gather the shards of her mind.
(I thought I knew the future. My entire plan was built on that knowledge.)
It was collapsing now, with a sound like breaking bone. This world she had believed she knew like the back of her hand… she was blind in it.
(Everything is wrong. Everything.)
“Duke,” she said at last. Steel had returned to her voice, but it was a different kind—cold and surgical, the edge of a scalpel poised to cut reality open.
“The current state of magic in this world. Everything you know. Tell .
Everything. Schools. The strongest practitioners.
How long… has magic been in decline?”
In the wreckage of her certainty, a new resolve crystallized— ruthless, ice-hard.
(I will learn this world from scratch. And you, Randel… you will be my guide. You and that ‘spark’ of yours I now have no choice but to believe in—truly.)
The ga had changed. She was no longer walking a familiar map.
She was stepping into absolute darkness.
And the first step in that darkness was information.
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