"It seems that these aren't just echoes of the past."
Wang Yu's eyes tracked the middle-aged man who had just apologized to the woman he had collided with before walking away. He swiftly concluded that there was more to these spectral beings than re shadows of bygone days. Surely the power of the Chariot didn't extend so far as to allow him to alter the past itself.
That was utterly impossible. The Chariot's power could never tamper with ti, neither in appearance nor in essence. Reversing ti itself was contrary to the fundantal laws of this world and Earth alike.
There were only two forms of ti-related abilities or spells: slowing it down or stopping it entirely. Speeding up ti was of little use and had been relegated to another category entirely; draconic hibernation barely fell into that category.
Reversing ti was completely impossible. One could witness the past, perhaps, but never rewrite it. What has happened will always remain fixed. Anything beyond that belonged to an entirely different realm: the creation of a duplicate world, equivalent to rewinding ti. If Wang Yu had that much power in his fingertips, he'd be beyond divinity.
"These people remind of the alchemical constructs in Skyborne City," Avia remarked. "They act according to rules engraved into them, chanical and precise. Perhaps there's sothing we can't yet perceive about their structure. That's why they appear to us as ‘echoes of the past.'"
Her theory was compelling—but it only deepened the mystery. Who had created these phantoms, and for what purpose?
"Studying them won't help us escape," Wang Yu said with a dismissive wave. "If we can find the Professor, maybe he could fly us out of here. But if not, we'll have to find our own way."
Abandoning these shadowy citizens, who busied themselves with aningless tasks, yet were strangely subject to the Chariot's force, Wang Yu pressed on, ears straining for the song that haunted him. It swelled ever louder, yet always defied his search for its source.
Just then, a thunderclap shattered the twilight sky. It ca without warning, a violent crack of sound rolling across the heavens as the sun dipped into a crimson haze.
Both Wang Yu and Avia turned at once toward the horizon. Around them, the spectral townsfolk likewise turned their heads in bewildernt.
They were murmuring sothing, their faces pale with fear. Wang Yu, who had so experience in lip-reading, tried to figure out their words.
His intuition told him that sothing bad, possibly a calamity, was unfolding around him. He could sense a change in his environnt, an intangible suppression that accompanied the sudden thunder.
"What the hell are they saying?"
Wang Yu shook his head. It was all Greek to him.
"They're not speaking the common tongue," Avia explained patiently, seeing the look on Wang Yu's face. "Rember, the common tongue only ca into being after the War of the Abyss. Whatever they're speaking, it's older than that."
"Right. Got too used to the common tongue."
There was no ti to dwell on language. What mattered was not what they said, but what they did.
Every phantom face twisted in terror. Knights and magicians, rchants and peasants alike, all quaked as though they had glimpsed the world's end. And then, in one great surge of panic, they ran—every last one of them—fleeing from the thunder with reckless desperation.
The truth was plain. Whatever catastrophe had struck these people in ages past was starting again, right here, right now.
The cataclysm wasn't rely a fignt of the past. Wang Yu and Avia had heard that thunderclap themselves. They, too, were poised to suffer its consequences.
"I don't care what it is anymore. Avia—run!"
Wang Yu swept the girl up beneath his arm and bolted.
anwhile, the horizon collapsed. A wound tore open in the heavens. Black, roiling smoke spilled down. From within the smoke flared searing bursts of fire. Lightning crawled across its surface. Every thunderclap was a war-drum heralding impending annihilation.
Then, the clouds fell. Where they touched the earth, the ground caved in, splitting open with bottomless fissures as though the world itself were bleeding. Soil and stone poured down into unseen chasms. The tide crushed and devoured all in its path.
It was like a tidal wave born of the abyss itself—a tidal cataclysm.
The world began to warp even before the tide reached it. First ca the heat. The comfortable air tended toward boiling in the span of minutes. Wang Yu saw phantoms collapse, their faces scarlet and sweating, overwheld by the sudden heat.
Avia's cooling spells bought them ti. Wang Yu could endure inhuman heat, but she could not.
The world continued to buckle. Magic and void energy thickened in the atmosphere until Avia realized, with cold dread, that she could now wield the wizardry of this world.
That was no good on. It was proof that the approaching tide was forcing the very fabric of existence to unravel.
Gravity faltered. Pebbles floated into the air, then entire beams and walls of the silent city, torn upward by so unseen force. Wang Yu himself felt light—too light. Rather than help him, the decreased gravity was more like a hindrance.
Still, Avia had cast a suite of buffing spells on him, increasing his speed to a ridiculous threshold.
But even with all those spells, he wasn't fast enough. The tide was closing in on him, its pressure alone distorting matter, unmaking physical law, and grinding reality into ash before it even touched down.
The sky was swallowed in smoke and lightning. Red light pulsed within, an unendurable weight pressing down on every living thing. Wang Yu did not know what this horror was, but he was certain one truth: they could not withstand it. Not even for an instant.
"That's it. Those people—all those phantoms—must have been trapped by this calamity too. So must have been stronger than us. Yet none escaped. Not one."
Avia's eyes were bright with grim resolve. "But there's still one chance."
"I understand." She did not need to say it aloud. He knew well what she ant.
The ground split wide beneath them, exposing what had been hidden: a colossal gate carved into the deep earth. Wang Yu's eyes widened. But there was no ti to act. He wrapped Avia tight against his chest, shielding her with his own body, summoning the Chariot's full power to envelop them both. Then he leapt.
Three seconds later, the world behind them roared. The tidal cataclysm struck, erasing everything in sight. Avia and Wang Yu were swallowed up by its ruin.
anwhile, high above the Endless Sea, cloaked within stormclouds, the blue dragon Susumi wove draconic magic far beyond what her kin possessed. With her spell, the flight of dragons passed unseen across the Tidewall and over boundless waters, following the mory etched into their blood. At last they neared their holand, the ancient kingdom of dragons.
"How strange," murmured the green dragon Goelia. "The cult has not risen up against us. Not once have we seen their presence. It slls of a trap. We must tread carefully."
It was a thought shared by one and all. They had expected a series of ambushes, but their passage had not been challenged at all. The cult, long a thorn in their side, had vanished into thin air.
"It matters not," said Aurelian, silver scales glimring in the dark. Her tone was calm but filled with confidence. "Whether they rise or not, we shall cut down the Dragon God. We shall free our kin."
No dragon disputed her. Aurelian had the right to speak in this fashion, and the strength to see it done.
Only Goelia cast her a sidelong glance, hearing beneath her even words the faint notes of suppressed fury. Just what had happened to make her feel this way?
The clouds broke. There before them lay a vast island, rising from the Endless Sea. They had returned ho.
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