Above the ruins of Blue Mountain Island, where the forest had been utterly annihilated by lightning.
At the place where Edward had vanished, a golden clock floated in midair, ticking softly.
Tick…tock…tick…tock…
Suddenly, the tir's hands began to move backwards. At first slowly, then faster, and faster still.
That final bolt of lightning reappeared. Its blinding brilliance drew back into itself, restoring the mont just before its fall. And the Edward and Lilith who had been reduced to ash and dust…reappeared as well—just like during the previous "Reboot."
"This is…?"
Edward stared blankly as the abyssal thunder that had monts ago consud everything now surged back into the heavens, while the devastation it caused rapidly reversed itself. Around him, the world seed to rewind faster and faster.
He watched with wide eyes as the events that had unfolded only monts earlier now played backwards at astonishing speed—not just for a few people, not just in a small area, but as though the entire world was being wound back in ti!
Is this Will's Reboot again?
Impossible!
Even if the Snake of rcury advanced to Sequence 0, it would still be impossible to truly reverse ti.
"Reboot" was nothing more than a pseudo-reversal—a chanic like saving a ga and reloading from that save. The effect was an illusion of rewinding ti, limited in scope and duration.
It couldn't possibly turn back all of ti, nor could it affect a true god like Leodero!
Then what…what was this?
The moon fell in the east, the sun rose in the west. Day and night alternated at a maddened pace. Edward realised with certainty—this was the entire world's ti flowing backwards!
And this sensation…
He had felt it before.
It was the exact sa feeling as when he used the Ti-Turner.
Whether in Tingen, when he had gone back two hours, or at Hogwarts, when he had gone back five days—it had always been the whole world's ti rewinding.
Tick…tock…
The ticking of a clock echoed by his ear.
Edward turned his head and saw the golden clock not far away, its hands spinning backwards at an incredible speed.
Is it really…a Ti-Turner?
But in the world of Mysteries, it could rewind no more than two hours at most. Even in the Harry Potter world, its limit was only a few months.
Yet the ceaseless cycle of night and day before him told another story. Ti had already rolled back years—perhaps even decades—in re monts.
Tick…tock…tick…
The hands spun faster still, far beyond the eye's ability to follow. The entire device began to shake violently, as if pulled and crushed at once. Until finally—
Bang!
The tir exploded.
What remained was a pool of strange, shimring liquid. It writhed and twisted, reshaping itself into the form of clock hands, still spinning backwards with insane speed.
Beside it, a die had appeared at so unknown point, whirling just as frantically.
The world dissolved into radiant threads of light, and Edward felt as though he had entered the ti tunnel from Doraemon.
But unlike a cartoon, he had no control here. He could not halt the flow. He could not choose the point in ti he wished to reach.
Ti slipped away.
Or rather—Edward was no longer certain if this endless rewind even counted as ti's passage.
"Edward!"
Lilith's voice suddenly reached him.
The backwards-flowing light began to slow. The streaks of brilliance dimd into hazy streams, then into distinct scenes flickering in reverse. Once again he could see the sun and moon racing backwards across the sky.
He realised the reversal of ti was about to end.
"Edward!"
Her voice ca again.
Only then did Edward notice that Lilith's figure was drifting away from him, growing hazy and indistinct.
The rewind for her…had not stopped!
Panic-stricken, Edward stretched with all his might to grasp her wrist. Lilith struggled as well, reaching desperately toward him. But nothing could change it.
They could only watch as the distance grew, wider and wider, until—
Her third cry tore through the stream of ti:
"Edward!!!"
At that instant, Edward regained control of his body. He lunged with all his might.
"Lilith!"
But his hand grasped nothing.
She was gone.
Vanished before his eyes like a skipped fra, swallowed by the rushing current of ti—gone to so far older, more distant past.
And with her disappeared the Die of Fate.
Edward's heart clenched as though crushed in a fist. Pain like nothing he had known swept through his body.
Why?
Why had it turned out this way?
WHY?!
They had been together. Both caught by the sa Ti-Turner. Why had she alone been pulled further—cast away into an even more distant ti?
An endless terror engulfed him.
He dared not imagine how far back Lilith had been thrown—what kind of dangers she might encounter there. With her simple heart, and strength still only at Sequence 7…how long could she possibly survive?
Will I…ever have the chance to see her again?
Edward's chest throbbed with another stab of pain.
Up until now, the Lilith who had gone to the past had never once sought him out.
On the optimistic side, perhaps she had rembered his warning back at Hogwarts: never to et with her "future" self or Edward before the right mont.
But on the pessimistic side…perhaps she had never survived long enough to reach the present.
After all, if the span of ti was too great, she would need to advance to at least Sequence 3—Demoness of Unaging—to withstand the erosion of ti itself. Yet from Sequence 7 to Sequence 3, every step along the Witch pathway was steeped in disaster and despair. Each promotion ant endless dangers…how could she possibly overco them all?
A wave of regret crashed through Edward.
He regretted having once taught Lilith to be a good person.
For soone on the Witch pathway, a "good person" could scarcely walk very far.
At this mont, Edward realised he was nothing more than a hypocrite.
When Lady Despair's promotion had blanketed Backlund in smog, he had despised it, wishing nothing more than to kill her.
But now, when it was Lilith's turn, he wanted only for her to succeed in her advancent and live long enough to survive until the present. As for the calamities and deaths that her promotion might cause—he felt no sympathy at all.
Damn it!
If not for that sudden appearance of the purple-gowned witch, none of this might have happened.
Yet even an existence like the abomination Suah had either perished or fled under Leodero's thunder. Why had that witch shown no fear at all?
Her state then had been clearly abnormal. She had smiled at Lilith—smiled with ease, with pride, with not a trace of panic. Not at all like a "mortal" facing the wrath of a god.
Cheek!
The na surfaced abruptly in Edward's mind.
Perhaps, at that mont, the purple-robed witch had already been under Cheek's control.
But if that was true…why?
Why would a true god suddenly descend just to strike at Lilith?
If not for Cheek, how else would Lilith have been cast alone into a far more ancient past, to face unknown terrors?
Cheek!
Cheek!!
CHEEK!!!
By then, ti had fully stabilised.
Edward's feet touched solid ground once more. Around him, insects chirped and birds sang. Raising his head, he looked at the forest of Blue Mountain Island—an indeterminate number of years in the past.
It felt both strange and familiar.
Familiar, because the forest seed unchanged across the years.
Strange, because at this point in ti, all the people he knew might not even exist yet.
"Maybe…it's only a few years earlier."
He spoke the words like self-comfort, though even he did not believe them. Even if it was just a few years, in this era he was still a stranger to the world.
A figure surfaced in his mind—Audrey.
Fear and pain surged again.
For the Audrey of the future, perhaps his absence would only be a brief mont—so brief she would never even notice that he had been cast into the past.
But for Edward, every day ahead would be a long, drawn-out separation.
A sudden thought struck him.
If I use Hearth now to return to the Harry Potter world…could I then travel back from there to the present?
Imdiately, he shifted into spiritual form and invoked [Hearth], first attempting the coordinate he had marked in the Room of Requirent.
It failed.
The feedback was clear—the coordinate did not exist.
Impossible. A coordinate is rely a mark tied to a position—like latitude 51.50°N, longitude 0.12°W, where London lies. As long as Earth itself exists, no matter the era, that coordinate should still be valid.
So even if Hogwarts had not yet been built, even if the Room of Requirent did not yet exist, the location itself should remain. At most, teleporting there should have landed him in an empty clearing.
But now the coordinate did not exist at all.
Did this an the entire Harry Potter world was nonexistent?
Or perhaps, in this particular era, the Harry Potter world had not yet been born.
Perhaps only at the mont he transmigrated into the world of Mysteries had the Harry Potter world truly co into "existence". It was real now, but separated by a dinsional wall, not yet intersecting with the world of Mysteries.
So it's true…I'm trapped in an unknown past.
Dumbledore's words surfaced unbidden: Those who ddle with ti will eventually be played with by ti itself.
The first two tis he had used the Ti-Turner, Edward had never felt its malice.
But this ti, this journey back into the past—was it ti's vengeance upon him?
Edward stood blankly in place, dazed, his eyes filled with confusion and pain.
He did not know how long he remained that way.
At last, the illusory pages turned before his eyes, and he cast several Placate upon himself. His turmoil, anxiety, and bewildernt gradually eased.
Drawing several deep breaths, he forced his mind into stillness.
Finally, he cald.
Things were already as they were. Drowning in despair and confusion served no purpose. If he wanted to see Lilith and Audrey again, he had to survive this era first.
"Let's see what I've gained from this advancent…then decide on my next step."
———
[Note]: Don't forget to VOTE. It keeps motivated.
Reviews
All reviews (0)