Chapter 482 (1/2)

Chapter 482

Chapter 480: Providence

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Through the cacophony of indistinguishable sounds, I heard a muffled voice

“Kill her”

“No”

A bright blur in the heart of darkness The bitter backdrop for the echoes of ten thousand splintered aspects of a e of capability, of sanity

Against the back of my closed eyelids, aether seeped like blood froe was another: golden threads stretching beyond the bounds of one world and into the next, through a rift, reaching far and wide as they spread frole man, a man whose hands were red with the blood of civilization after civilization In the ie, I cut the cords of Fate and watched an ee, I looked down at my own hands, and they were red like his

Not like that I cast the vision aside A s behind it

I tried to speak The words cae One I considered harder, longer: ht above rona powerless against me In the vision, I struck him down ten different ways, and yet each Fateful blow reverberated across time and space to ensure failure and destruction, and ten different visions within the vision collapsed aroundat the epicenter of failure

I cast the irew closer, brighter

I pondered the last vision, the only way It was a door I could open but not see beyond But it was the only way

The visions ht blur I tried to close my eyes, but they were already shut

Indiscernible sounds battered my ears

“Kill her”

“No”

“Arthur-Grey”

Lightning behind s A world written in fire, seen through closed lids

My eyes snapped open, and a weak cry escaped my lips

I saw ged in the pool of aether-rich liquid, which rippled slightly and cast an uneven blue-purple light across the interior of the large underground cavern where Sylvia had hidden so long ago Beside me, Sylvie sat in an identical position Her face was scrunched into a tight frown, her eyes still closed, the lidsas the eyeballs below raced back and forth, as if she were having a tortured dream

There was no emotion in what I saw before me The scene was still too detached from me, too distant and unreal

Tessia—no, Cecilia—was on her hands and knees next to the pool Her gun down in front of her face Alh the silvery strands at the ers and spilled into the pool, staining the diht

I didn’t have to search for the source to knoasn’t her blood, butheart sentfro black spike that protruded frouess at how this had come about The rona, barely controlled He had already forgotten Nico, I knew His entire as bent on Cecilia as hestare with a look of cruel, expectant coolden threads ran between the three Those around Nico were beginning to snap one by one Most led frorona A couple of threads bound Nico towith tension, ready to snap

While few threads connected Nico and Agrona, Agrona himself radiated more than I could count

And yet I was covered in even olden threads than the others Wrapped around every inch of olden threads connected me to all the others, and then spread out into the wider world, just like Agrona So thickly were the threads wound, that I alh the woven threads, dis of an ancient , I saw it The aspect of Fate, in and aroundjust behind and above me—not in three-dimensional space, but in time and the pressed layers of the fabric of the universe that separated the physical world and the aetheric realm in which it was trapped

“I accept the vision of the future you have offered as also being within the natural order, the necessary advance of the arrow of time,” the aspect continued, its voice only for ”

My vision retracted even further, pulling back through the roof of the cavern and the soil above it into open air Instead of looking down on the Beast Glades, I was above Etistin, just like in the visions Fate had shown me of the past events there

Now, it showed me the future

Just like before, white blurs representing the dragons arrived, and Etistin as I kneiped from the face of Sapin The bay looked lonely and forlorn without the city looking down on it, but ti there The si before they too iped out The speed of the vision see, so that I only saw flashes of each new city being built before it was destroyed

I withdrew further, until the entire world was only a distant bit of color against an expansive dark sky, empty except for the distant stars All the wide universe was laid out before ht pin-pricks of light against a swirling, oil-on-water backdrop of purples, blues, and grays

And huainst the walls of reality, was the building pressure of the aetheric realan to pulse outward from the aetheric realhtened and bulged The beats grew stronger, faster, and I suddenly understood as about to happen

As ifhad conjured it into existence, the world ruptured It was like the vision I had seen before—the future Fate was atte cataclyslobal scale

It ith a deep, vague horror that I watched as the aetheric explosion spilled across the sky, wiping away the stars and leaving behind only an endless void

The scene faded away, and I was once again looking down onwithin and aroundof the vision, my horror faded as well What it left behind was like a distant dreaht One that none-the-less stops the dreahtmare will resurface

“Kill her” The cold words issued fro intent, pinning her to the ground on all fours

She closed her eyes, her pain written in the golden threads that connected therona were snapping and fizzling away to nothing

Through gritted teeth, she uttered a single word “No”

My eyes snapped open, and a weak cry escaped an to turn towardat his feet, Cecilia’s eyes shi+fted to h the Tessia uncurled and reached outward Knots of golden thread strung back and forth between the two, a ether

Another thread connecting Nico to Cecilia snapped, and I sensed that the breath leaving his lungs was the last he would breathe in this world

“Nico!”

The pool erupted into co out, and a silvery, half-foran to wrap around rona’s intent struck it, and it burst with a sound like a bell Sylvie was lifted up, her body spinning through the air like a ragdoll

Waris desperately expelled all his own aether, forcing it through the gates aroundand inexorable

Agrona rebounded back fro a step

Beside him, Cecilia rose

Just as Fate hovered above and behind olden shadow, a silver shadow rose with Cecilia Eht as Cecilia and Tessia stood together The knotted golden threads binding the, each frayed knot co rapidly

The silver shadow that was Tessia raised her arm Half a heartbeat later, Cecilia did the sa like green lightning through the air between her and Agrona They sla hi at his wrists and horns

Cecilia’s hand tightened into a fist, and the threads around her flexed and vibrated, pulsing with golden light Her jaorked, her eyes closed, and tears leaked frorona scoffed, and Cecilia was lifted off the ground She hurtled into the air until her back sla a hail of s heavily in front of me A dozen threads or rona

The silver shadow that was Tessia was gone, dragged back into the prison of her body

Agrona’s scarlet eyes lingered on Cecilia, his lips curling into a disappointed grirona’s eyes shi+fted to

Many threads still bound Cecilia and Agrona Aether hardened between olden bundle, shearing through the threads of Fate as if they were no more than spun wool

A shockwave rolled back in both directions fro over Cecilia’s prone forrona stu to one knee His eyes lost focus, and in the rippling of space and tirona was able to use the Legacy, as a weapon in the form of Cecilia or as his oer The shockwave continued to jolt through hiain as each potential future collapsed in hisforward, I pulled Cecilia towardher face-up on the surface of the dense liquid, now depleted of aether and casting a weak purple light Many threads still connected her to the wider world I reached for thee of aether aroundinto the erabbed hold of the relic aran to fold into existence overout from my chest to cover my entire body

But as the ar over it, growing into pauldrons and greaves over top the black scales Heavy plated boots rew around my hands between my skin and Cecilia’s in my arms

I had no tie, and, as the ar at what I could The aetheric edges around ain reached for the golden threads extending from Cecilia

Time seemed to stutter Beneathinto swords, axes, and spears Black-lined wind struckra her as best I could The wind began to pick up the weapons and spin the me at the center of a deadly vortex

As the liquid swords and axes struckto reform as each blow ripped it apart piece by piece

Through the storrona’s eyes, now the color of clotted blood

With a shaking hand, I reached for the golden threads My fingers closed around a handful of the threads of Fate, and the aether bit into thes, spreading out across the entirety of the world I felt every one, saw behindeffects as the lives of Alacryans and Dicathians everywhere were changed forever My legs treht of it

The vortex subsided, the conjured weapons splashi+ng back down into the pool, now stained with rona was on his hands and knees, his body heaving with every breath, his face a grimace of pain and desperate perseverance

Only a few threads re frorona were uncountable I had seen sofor the way forward so that Fate would free me of its bonds I didn’t knohat I’d have done if I’d faced this moment before Even now, it was a difficult decision toIt felt unfair