Fafnir continued to examine the soul. There were some traces of memories left, but they were incomplete. He couldn't properly deduce their origins, and they weren't in a correct order either. He took a crystal flask out of his pocket. Well, no, it was regular glass, but it was shaped funny, making it look like crystal. He had no idea how it had gotten there, but since he had it, might as well put it to use.
He poured the soul into the flask. Souls don't have a physical form, so they can't be moved by touch, so he had to guide it inside using his spiritual energy. It was difficult, since, if not handled carefully, the soul could get damaged. You can compare it to peeling a banana with a hammer.
He securely closed the bottle, now emitting an eerie light from the soul contained inside. He wanted to keep the soul for further examination. First things first though, he had to verify that Smok was actually dead. To do that, though, he needed to know where he was in the first place.
He had never seen this place. He had likely entered a different timeline. It was unreasonable to believe that the previous one had survived the battle between the Ruler and himself. The only problem was that he had no way of knowing if he was in the same timeline as the Ruler. After all, if Smok did survive, he would most likely be under the Ruler's custody. Fafnir had tried to shield him in their battle, but there was a hostile energy already coating the boy's soul. The only explanation was that the Ruler had protected the boy, for one reason or another.
Fafnir himself had failed to train Smok. He had no doubt that the Ruler would succeed, though, and turn the boy into a powerful weapon. That was why Smok was a priority at that moment. Fafnir needed to find the coordinate.
The coordinate. The starting and ending point of every timeline. There were two ways to find it. One, the timeline ends. When nearly all life in a timeline ends, the timeline cannot continue. That is the ending point of a timeline. A portal is created from the spiritual energy released during the mass-destruction of said timeline. A portal to the next timeline.
The second way was to go back in time to the starting point of a timeline. However, there's no way to do that. None known to Fafnir, at the very least. What could be done, however, was to reverse time. Timelines start and end in nothingness. Either extreme was a complete absence of life, so no matter what choice he was to make, every life form in this timeline was going to disappear.
Obviously, eradicating the timeline was easier. For someone like Fafnir, that was. However, this implied that he would never find out who killed the corpse lying in front of him. And he wouldn't be surprised if that human would survive the destruction of this timeline. That's why Fafnir needed to reverse the time. It was the only way to find out more about the being who committed such an extraordinary feat.
Now, reversing the time is different from travelling back in time for multiple reasons. Virtually, travelling back in time implies the ability to return to the present. Reversing time is different. Instead of transporting one being to a prior point in time, it reverses the caster's environment to the desired point in time. [btw, this doesn't actually change much, it just avoids creating a multiverse with infinite possibilities etc.]
There was one single way to perform this. Fafnir, assuming that he wasn't in the same timeline as the Ruler, was the most powerful being in the timeline at that point. This meant that the flow of time was equal to his perception. There was an easy way to manipulate this. When a Duke's body dies, it takes time to heal. During this time, the soul's perception of time is inaccurate. this can be used to change one's own perception of time, with that also morphing the timeline.
There was an additional benefit to using this method. If it were to fail, Fafnir could be sure that the Ruler was already in the same timeline, saving him a good part of the hunt. He needed to kill the current Ruler's body before destroying the incarnations. He was too powerful to be left alone.
But enough of that. He sliced open his throat with his fingernail, feeling his body's life force decrease. The pain was real, but it was endurable. As his body died, he went into some sort of trance. He let his mind wander freely, over the thousands of years he had been chasing the Ruler for, about the lie of his origin that he had told Smok. He kept a counter constantly in his head, reminding him of his task. Although he had only recently woken up from his confrontation with the Ruler, this felt like his first real rest in ages. He still had no idea how much time had passed ever since.
As the counter reached -40 years, he slid his soul back into his body. Opening his eyes, he found the corpse still lying in front of him, confirming that he had been dead for quite a while now. He took another look at his soul, hoping to find some information that had gotten lost over forty years, but the memories were the same. Incomplete and unorganised. This was going to be fun. he got a better look at the door. It didn't seem special at all. No signs of spiritual energy, no traces of poison. However, the corpse's body was still twitching.
It turned out that Fafnir had gotten really lucky. The Duke had only just passed away. He was dead, there was no reversing that, but it had only been a couple of days. He didn't hesitate to snap his own neck, reversing time a bit further. When he woke up again, he was on the other side of the door. He heard steps approaching from the other side.
He was a bit troubled. He couldn't open the door, nor could he wait for the Duke to open the door, because either way, one of them would die. He settled for the next best option. He blasted a ray of spiritual energy through the door, breaking it, revealing the duke standing behind it, just before he was about to touch the knob.