The light faded.
And with it, the choking presence of the void dissolved like mist at dawn.
Nagara blinked—and the world had changed again.
The pulsing, cursed heart of the ruins was gone. The jagged chamber, the vision of flame and annihilation—it had all vanished. Now they stood on familiar ground, a shattered corridor they had passed hours ago when the ruin was merely a ruin, before the shadows began to breathe and memory turned into prophecy.
Nagara turned in place, slow and wary. Cracked pillars. Hanging ivy. That same broken statue leaning against the east wall—its missing arm and eroded face like a mark from a fading dream.
They were back.
Back where they began. As if the entire ordeal had folded into itself, leaving no trace but the cold sweat on their skin and the tremor in their bones.
"How…?" he murmured to no one.
Absurd. That was the only word for it. The shifting visions, the ghost of a future self, the man who named destruction with every breath—and now this. This return to normality, as if nothing had ever happened.
But everything had changed.
He turned toward Azlin, still pale, still quiet.
Rania approached him cautiously, her golden eyes scanning him with practiced control, though even she couldn't fully hide the worry laced in her voice. "Azlin... can you walk?"
For a long moment, he didn't respond.
Then he nodded.
It was subtle. Measured. And when he stepped forward, there was something unnerving in the way he moved—graceful, deliberate, older.
Nagara noticed it first. Rania felt it next. A shift not in form, but in bearing.
Azlin turned slightly, his face still unreadable, and said in a voice that had gained a strange depth:
"I'm sorry. I attacked you both."
His tone was clear, steady, and filled with genuine remorse.
Neither Rania nor Nagara spoke.
Not because they didn't forgive him—because they didn't understand.
How could they?
Nagara swallowed hard, trying to place the boy before him with the one he had trained beside, fought with, laughed with. But something had hollowed him. Refined him. The Azlin before them was still their friend—but sharpened by something neither of them could name.
Azlin turned, the edge of his cloak brushing dust from the ground. "Follow me," he said. "There's another exit. It's hidden behind the western wall. The collapse is false—illusion magic layered over the real path. I saw it before, when I was…"
He trailed off, eyes briefly flicking with something old. Something fractured.
They followed without question.
Step after step through the ruined halls, the silence between them was thick. Not cold—but reverent. As if none of them wanted to disturb the fragile quiet left in the wake of that vision.
Then, as they passed under a crumbling arch, Azlin spoke again—soft, but certain:
"Please don't ask me about Him. Not now."
His voice was tired, not from pain, but from knowing.
Nagara and Rania exchanged a glance but said nothing.
Azlin's hand trailed along the wall as they walked, fingers brushing ancient moss. "What I can tell you," he said at last, "is that he's dangerous. Beyond anything I ever imagined."
He paused, then looked over his shoulder, eyes catching the faint light from Rania's presence.
"And we are not ready for him… yet."
The words hung there—cryptic, weighted, a prophecy carved in the dust.
Neither Rania nor Nagara pushed further.
Not yet.