A Bygone Fate

With his cooldowns reset, Rakna activated his Wings of Spatial Collapse for a second time. Silver sparks flew where he stood inside Gaelius' lab and he flickered away after enveloping himself and Nyx with his wings.

Once again, he teleported to a completely different place; a vast meadow with giant trees in the distance. Rakna immediately collapsed on his knees upon arrival without being able to even utter a single cry or word.

"Shit," he cursed and put his hand on his neck where a bit of pale pink blood was flowing through the gaps of his fingers. Interestingly, it also had purple spots mixed in that pulsed with light.

"Are you okay?" Nyx asked softly as she crouched in front of him, holding his shoulder.

"Could be better… and that's not going to happen any soon at this rate," the therian uttered with an annoyed grunt when he looked up and saw nothing more than a plain.

"We're still in the First Plateau," the Night Goddess said matter-of-factly. "Why here? Who is it that owes you a favor?"

He grunted and let go of his neck which was essentially covered in its entirety by obsidian. "This exact place is where the Mental Trial was located before the Reset. I was hoping it wouldn't change locations since it's a unique kind of Trial, but it seems I'm unlucky."

"The Mental Trial…" Nyx muttered with a scowl. "That old woman? Flegra?"

"Yes. Call it a gut feeling, but my chances are probably the highest with her at the moment. She is not only a being supposedly as old as Systema itself, but she is part of it. I had no way of properly understanding what she did to me the first time we met, but now? I know that she's far from simple and I would bet that she knows her way around the soul even better than someone like Tira."

"…so, we need to find her new location," Nyx concluded and opened her System's map. "Sadly, we aren't able to see the location of the Trials after leaving the Plateau… I don't have a spell capable of giving us a lead either. At least, not inside the System."

"I have one," Rakna groaned. "But I can't use it. Forget my magic, I think I can't use any skills at all in this state. This teleportation was the last straw; I can't even transform. To make it worse, soon, the Perfidious Edict will reset all my cooldowns to their maximum duration."

"So, we are stuck? Really?" Nyx tried to be sarcastic, but it came off as more of a reprimand.

Rakna helplessly chuckled. "Well, look at the bright side of things, how many can claim they will be able to die on such a peaceful sunny meadow with a beautiful woman at their side?"

The goddess deadpanned, "Don't think for even a second that your little change of attitude will get to distract me and allow you out of this."

"…that sucks. I think it would have worked with pretty much everyone. Maybe not Kaelith… yeah, definitely not her," he whispered to himself. "Damn, she's going to kill me."

"I'm first in the line," Nyx huffed in amusement. "Your girlfriend will have to wait."

"Sure, you are…" Rakna smiled to himself and straightened his back. "All right, I'm going to try out one last idea. It might succeed, knock me out, or finish me off. I'll need you to take care of me in either case, unfortunately. If it ends on the second, I'm sorry. If it ends on the third, sorry too."

"…" Nyx fell silent and she bit her lip with a torn expression.

"I'll take that silence as an agreement," the therian said and smiled internally, keeping to himself that his vision had already been taken away from him. Even Eye of Symphony had somehow been turned off by the encroaching obsidian.

Promptly, he gathered the dregs of soul power he had left and purple lines began to appear across his skin and fur. They glowed weakly and released a smoke of the same color.

"[Origin Flux…]" He struggled to chant. "[Second Stage… Clairvoyance…]" He croaked out and his mind was temporarily thrown out of his body. And in a blurry series of images that lasted less than a second, he saw the small cabin where Flegra lived recur somewhere else in the Plateau.

When he returned to his body, he lost all strength in his body. 'Ah…' In blank realization, he noticed that he didn't even have the necessary energy to speak up. In a last-ditch effort, he tried to call on his Legendary Guard skill to summon Higure or Pronos, but all he heard in return was the System blaring all sorts of warning notices.

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The Host's soul has been corrupted beyond recognition!

The Host's spiritual energy is unstable!

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Impossible to establish Peer Connections.

Warning! System Support Failing!

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❮ ◈ ❯

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His consciousness began to slip right after and he silently laughed in irony. His soul was scattered he couldn't even contact his own soul beast.

'I should have done it earlier…' He berated himself as he tried to take out a certain object from his soul storage, only to fail miserably. That only made him even more disheartened.

'Well, damn… Sorry, Kae… I might actually die because of my idiocy…'

With those last remorseful thoughts, he blacked out.

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Nyx sat on her knees and expressionlessly held Rakna as his body leaned over her. She gritted her teeth at the sickening and twisting feeling growing in her stomach. Despite herself, a tear formed in the corner of her eye and she muttered, "You damn fool…"

She wondered to herself if she would watch him die right here, just like that. Without being able to do a thing. She knew there wasn't much time left. Even if she called someone for help, it would not save him in time.

Rakna had bet on being able to find Flegra with his last teleportation, disregarding help because he knew he didn't have enough time, nor would he have been able to transfer to the Mental Trial's new location if they had learned of it from others.

She bit her lip until blood came out and her shadows grew taller. She wanted to stand up and scry the entire Plateau, aware that it would not result in anything. But she would try to the end, and if she alone wasn't enough, she would summon an army to search.

If this had been happening in another bygone, yet inexistent time, she would have scoured all that she could and ultimately fail as the body in her arms crumbled.

Despite that… she would save him regardless.

A gap suddenly opened up in space right as Nyx was about to summon her army and a young man walked out of it, sheathing his sword at the same time as the closing of the spatial tear. He looked at the goddess with a sympathetic eye and smiled awkwardly.

"I should not be too late, right?" The regressor asked.

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"I see. Flegra…" Kim Shin-Woo muttered to himself. At the same time, he quietly watched Nyx sit with Rakna in her arms and couldn't help but understand why her future version had sounded so deeply heartbroken when she sent him off.

'If this had gone like it was intended… he would have died right here in front of her eyes,' he thought with a grim expression before shaking his head. "I should be able to find her location with a spell of mine. Hold on," he quickly said and opened the sachet he carried at his belt.

"You are that strange man Astraea saw talk with Rakna in private…" Nyx uttered, her tone now far calmer. She seemed to be simultaneously hopeful and relieved. "How did you know to come here?"

Shin-Woo glanced at her for a short moment and then pulled out a sealed scroll. He tossed it in the air in front of him and watched it roll open on its own. "I predicted the general time when Xiorra would be down in Zero and waited for his location to be once again available on the friend's list. I first saw you appear inside Black Steel so I came to the First. And then, you suddenly vanished and popped up back here. Basically? I followed you. I'm happy to have been on time."

"…did Rakna ask you to be on the lookout?" She asked sharply. "Or is it something else?"

"I'm afraid it's a secret between us two," the regressor replied succinctly and brusquely grabbed the floating scroll before tearing it into two pieces. They combusted right afterward and a stream of beige light flowed into his eyes. "I have it," he stated and drew his sword.

Under the sleeve of his tunic, white tattoos began to shine across his entire arm, up to, and beyond his shoulder, and transferred their light to the blade he held. With that, he slashed the air and a tear in the fabric of time and space was opened.

"How are you doing that so easily…?" Nyx furrowed her eyebrows. "Those tattoos and that light, it felt like… Fae Magic? You are a Faerie?"

Shin-Woo chuckled nervously. "Not really. I'm half; I just have some Fae Blood in me. But it isn't important right now, is it?" He retorted and sheathed his weapon. "Can you carry him?"

Nyx looked back at Rakna and nodded. She carefully moved and lifted him, doing her best to ignore how some of the black crystal peeled off into dust. She was afraid that it might transform his whole body at any time and scatter him along the wind.

Shin-Woo stepped into the portal first and she followed after him.