Her fingers curled slightly.
"If I rush to a conclusion now, I’ll only miss sothing important. It would be better to wait, give myself so ti to process everything, and hear a few more opinions before deciding anything."
Helena nodded in agreent. From the bottom of her heart, she felt it clearly... among all of them, Ivy was the sharpest mind.
After returning to her room, Ivy lay down on the bed.
Exhaustion washed over her, and before she realized it, sleep claid her.
When she woke again, faint chattering reached her ears. It sounded close, familiar.
She stepped outside and saw her teacher, Nora, sitting quietly in the living room.
Ivy appeared beside her almost instantly. Nora lifted her head, and upon seeing Ivy, her expression softened with visible relief.
It was only then that Ivy noticed how pale Nora looked. Her skin lacked its usual warmth, and dark shadows rested beneath her eyes.
Concern tightened Ivy’s chest. She walked up and gently took Nora’s hand, feeling how cold it was.
"What happened?" she asked softly. "Why do you look so pale? Did soone bully you? Or... have you not been eating properly?"
Nora waved her free hand dismissively. "It’s nothing," she replied, forcing a faint smile.
Then her grip on Ivy’s hand tightened slightly. Her voice lowered.
"Ivy, you should deal with all the zombies around this base." She looked straight into Ivy’s eyes. "If possible... annihilate them completely."
Ivy fell silent.
She had already received news that the full anti-zombie antidote would soon be completed.
’If that’s true,’ she thought, ’then killing the zombies makes no sense at all.’
Saving them, preserving them until the cure was ready, seed far more logical.
As that thought ford, Nora spoke again, her voice trembling slightly.
"I’ve been having strange dreams these past few days," she confessed. "I keep seeing... Isla becoming a zombie."
Her fingers tightened around Ivy’s hand, knuckles paling.
"It would be better," Nora said urgently, "if you could find where Isla is."
Her eyes glistened. "Confirm that Isla is still alive. Make sure nothing happens to them." Her voice cracked. "So that... you don’t end up getting killed."
Ivy noticed the worry etched clearly across Nora’s face, and a quiet sadness settled in her chest.
Honestly, she wanted to tell Nora that Isla was already dead, that these fears were nothing more than overthinking born from exhaustion.
Yet the strangest part was this... Nora was seeing those dreams at all.
’Has she awakened so kind of power?’ Ivy wondered. ’Precognitive dreams... could that be it... just like Felix? I can ask him to help Nora...’
But almost imdiately, Ivy paused mid-thought.
’No,’ she realized. ’If Nora truly awakened precognition, her ability would be completely different from Felix’s.’
Felix only received fragnts of a person’s past life mories.
He never saw the future. Nora, on the other hand, seed to be glimpsing what had yet to happen.
The two powers were fundantally different.
Her mind drifted to others who possessed divination abilities.
None of them had shown such accuracy before.
At most, they predicted small incidents... minor disruptions within the base that could have escalated into disasters if left unchecked.
And then, suddenly, one na surfaced clearly in her mind.
Ivan.
She rembered him well.
Once, he had divined that the entire base would face a massive calamity... that a large zombie horde would gather and storm the base from outside.
At the ti, Ivy hadn’t taken his warning seriously.
With her abilities, it was nearly impossible for zombies to approach unnoticed. She had dismissed it entirely.
But now...
A strange chill crept up her spine.
Just monts ago, her mother had ntioned milky fragrance. Then Nora’s dreams.
And now Ivan’s prophecy resurfaced.
The connections lined up too neatly to ignore.
’What if Raya’s actions...’ Ivy’s thoughts raced. ’What if Raya and Isla triggered what Ivan and Nora both saw?’
Her breath grew shallow.
’What if Isla really did reincarnate, as so kind of zombie, planning revenge? Or worse, what if Ivan was right, and a massive horde is already moving toward the base?’
If that were true, the base might not survive.
Especially if Ivy herself ended up triggering a death wavelength because of the Milky fragrance left behind by Raya.
The more she thought about it, the more plausible the theory beca.
Her expression turned grim, but she quickly masked it. Looking at Nora, Ivy forced a gentle smile.
"If you have any more dreams like this in the future," she said calmly, "tell imdiately."
Nora sensed the shift in her tone. Her face turned even paler.
She clutched Ivy’s hand tightly, her fingers trembling. "Ivy... you won’t die, right?"
At those words, Ivy was about to shake her head.
Then a faint voice echoed in her mind.
’Don’t promise her.’
Ivy froze.
Her heart skipped violently as she turned her head to the left, horror flickering in her eyes.
’I heard that,’ she was certain. ’I really heard it.’
But no one stood there. Neither her mother nor Nora had spoken. The room was still, almost suffocatingly quiet.
’Then who...?’
She scanned the surroundings, but there was no one.
Slowly, she clenched her fists, forcing herself to stay composed.
Nora, noticing Ivy’s hesitation, grew anxious. Her eyes darted nervously, as if sensing sothing unseen.
"Ivy?" Nora whispered.
Ivy inhaled deeply, then put on a strained smile.
"I can’t make promises like that," she replied softly. "No one knows what the future holds."
Nora nodded slowly, her gaze deep and conflicted.
After a mont, she spoke quietly, "If that’s the case... then I’ll wait." Her voice trembled. "I’ll wait for you to promise that you will... see off on my deathbed."
Ivy nodded in response, her throat tight. After Nora left, the room felt emptier than before.
Helena approached and sat beside her. She took Ivy’s hand, her grip firm but cold.
"What happened?" Helena asked, her expression grave.
"I saw your reaction just now. You closed your eyes like you heard a death sentence."
Ivy pressed her lips together before looking at her mother.
"Have you ever felt," she asked slowly, "like soone was secretly manipulating you?"
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