After the test, Kael approached Aelina as they packed their things. "You should head straight home today," he said. His tone was soft, but his expression carried a weight he couldn't explain.
"Why? Is something wrong?" Aelina asked, concerned.
"It's nothing... I just have something I need to take care of," he replied with a forced smile, leaving her behind.
---
Kael made his way to the spot where he had first been transported into this timeline. The air there felt different, almost alive, as if it held the secret to the questions haunting him.
"It's time to see what I couldn't before," he muttered, his fists clenched, anger flashing in his eyes.
At first, he hesitated. What if he wasn't ready? What if what he found only made things worse? But he shook the doubt away. I have to know.
With that thought, it began.
Threads—countless, shimmering threads—materialized around him, stretching infinitely in every direction. Each one seemed to pulse with life, a memory, a possibility. He reached out and took hold of a silver thread, drawn to it by instinct.
Suddenly, he was no longer in the present. Like a ghost, he drifted through the past. He couldn't interact with anything, but he could see it all.
The place he landed wasn't as he had imagined it. It was broken, shattered like fragments of glass. The world around him was distorted, pieces floating aimlessly, as if reality itself had been ripped apart.
Then he saw it.
A figure, standing amidst the chaos. It was tall, about his height—170 cm—but entirely shrouded in shadow. Its form was indistinct, but along its body ran black threads with pulsating white veins, like a living paradox. Kael couldn't make sense of it, but the presence of this figure filled him with dread.
Before he could comprehend more, he was yanked back to his own timeline. The transition was abrupt, leaving him shaken.
"What can I do?" Kael whispered to himself, staring at the empty horizon. "If that person has such a rare power... how can I possibly defeat them? I'm... I'm too scared."
For a long time, he stood there, lost in thought, until the sky began to darken. The stars twinkled faintly, but they offered no answers. Finally, he decided to return home.
---
Kael returned home, but the silence that greeted him was not the comfortable silence of old. The house felt colder, as though it had rejected the warmth of his memories. The air was heavy, and the darkness seemed to press closer, as if it sought to smother him.
His home was little more than a ruin—a shadow of what it had once been. The walls were cracked, and the air was damp and stale. It had felt abandoned for years because it was.
Kael's gaze lingered on the empty space, and memories of his family surged to the surface. His parents were no longer among the living, and the loneliness had long since become a part of him. Aelina's family had taken him in when he had no one. They fed him, cared for him, and Aelina had been with him since he was just two years old.
She was always there—bright, kind, and unyielding. She never fought with him, never abandoned him, even when the world seemed cruel. He thought of her golden hair and sapphire-blue eyes, a reflection of the skies themselves, and his heart ached with the weight of what he might lose.
As Kael turned on the light, an unexpected detail froze his blood in his veins. A thin line of shadows, almost imperceptible, stretched across the wall near the door. It moved slowly, pulsing like a lifeline.
Kael took a step back, his breath shallow, but the shadow remained still. His gaze dropped to the floor, where he saw a small piece of paper. His hand trembled as he picked it up.
On it, only one phrase was written:
"You cannot protect what you love without losing who you are."
Kael's grip tightened on the paper as his heart pounded in his chest. The shadow, the note, the figure he had seen—it was all connected. He couldn't shake the feeling that the shadow was watching, waiting.
He stood there, alone in the dim light of his crumbling home, the words on the note echoing in his mind. What would he have to sacrifice to save Aelina?