Yue saw Tamasya being bound by chains; she shook her head and moved on, not wanting to revisit the bitter memory.
A few minutes passed, and she reached the day on the fate line when Tamasya was meant to meet her for the first time after coming out of the prison of gods in Andrea’s office at the time of the world academy trials.
Eager to confirm whether she was on the right point on the line, Yue peeked through a small hole in the fleshy wall, only to see Tamasya still bound by dark chains in the prison of the gods.
Yue’s brows furrowed; she checked her calculations again and remained certain that this was the day of the academy trials, the day when the cultists attack the academy and also the day she meets Tamasya.
To verify, she went back and started again from the point of Tamasya’s fall, yet after a few minutes she ended up in the same place.
Yue’s head shook, and confusion blurred her mind.
Giving up at this point, Yue decided to continue moving forward parallel to the wall.
A year passed along the fate line; Yue peeked again from a small hole, and what she saw was exactly the same. Tamasya was chained inside the prison of gods.
She became suspicious at this point; she gave up checking every moment in time and simply walked forward towards the present day, the day when Yue was divining inside Ming Long’s den.
As Yue arrived a few miles ahead and approached the flesh wall at that point, she proceeded to peek again.
Only despair greeted her as she saw that Tamasya remained chained inside the prison of the gods.
Her mind rang with alarms, yet she controlled her emotions with special meditation and breathing techniques.
She could not afford to lose control now. Something was definitely wrong with this fate line.
Slowly, a doubt crept into her mind: was the Tamasya she had been seeing all this time a fake one?
This thought came and went away in the same instant.
That should not be possible; Yue had held Tamasya’s hand during the divination so that she could appear directly in front of her fate line.
If Tamasya were a fraud, then all the events Yue saw in the current fate line would have been different, and she would have seen the true form of the fake Tamasya, trying to mimic the real one.
But since that was not the case, this meant that the Tamasya in front of her was genuine.
However, she noticed a strange contradiction in the events she was witnessing.
Her mind was left with questions, and Yue decided to find the answers as she proceeded to walk forward, parallel to Tamasya’s fate line.
She kept walking straight, but for a few centuries the wall only showed Tamasya restrained inside the prison of the gods.
That was until Yue saw the scene change.
She saw the silhouette of a blond man appear in front of Tamasya. The man’s aura was glaring and heavenly, as if he had been blessed by several gods.
With a wave of his hand, the blond man broke the chains binding Tamasya, and he whispered something to her, something Yue could not comprehend, but looking at Tamasya’s hollow expression, the words definitely did not bring good news.
To get a clearer picture, she moved slightly forward into the future; the scene changed instantly. Yue witnessed Tamasya going against several godly figures in the skies of the Aris empire; she saw lands and empires collapsing and the massacre of countless beings by unknown invaders.
At her side, the blond man and several other unfamiliar figures fought, although she could not see their faces; that was a limitation. In someone’s fate line, one could not witness the actions of others unless they affected the subject.
Yue moved again; the image of Tamasya surrounded by and fighting several figures valiantly appeared.
Yue kept moving; now this time her pace was slow, witnessing everything, until at one point she lost her footing and fell.
"Aoww!" she let out a slight moan as she turned and looked back at what had made her fall.
She realized her foot had stumbled upon a charred overgrowth from the flesh wall.
Wait a minute?
Charred?
Yue’s eyes widened, and she looked up this time, her gaze fixed on the flesh wall instead of what was beyond it.
The flesh wall was charred black and crisp; the pulsing fluids were no longer visible, only melted outgrowths or protrusions that looked and smelled even worse than before.
The wall was not even pulsing as it used to, as if life had been sucked out of it and it had been burned to death.
Yue’s eyes widened; she stood up, her heart beating frantically. She started running along the burnt wall, but this time she did not need to run far like before.
A few meters, and the wall’s end appeared.
Yue’s already shocked heart started beating with another wave of alarm. A chill ran down her spine, and sweat broke out across her face; her hands shivered.
She knew that now that she had exposed her emotions, those creatures could arrive at any moment.
She needed to leave right now, yet she did not.
Before leaving, she needed to see the end of this wall.
Yue moved parallel to the wall, breathing heavily with nervousness and dread apparent in her body language.
Soon she saw the wall ending much earlier than she had anticipated; without waiting for her to make any more assumptions, she decided to move.
She peered through the wall, and what she saw filled her heart with despair.
Tamasya lay dead on a battlefield; her torso was pinned to the earth by a sword.
Yue looked at the dying figure. She saw tears in Tamasya’s eyes, tears filled with loneliness, devoid of love, hope, or any form of satisfaction or closure.
Yue witnessed Tamasya taking her final breaths.
Alone.
"Raaaaaawwwr!"
The creatures of this realm had arrived, sensing the despair in Yue’s heart.
Yue did not turn around to look at those creatures, and she did not even disappear from the realm immediately.
Her eyes remained fixed on Tamasya’s dying figure, unable to come to terms with what she had seen.
Before long another howl sounded, and this time it felt much closer to her. Yue had to cut off the divination forcefully at this point.
"Haaaarrrrghh!" Her consciousness returned to her body, and she took a deep breath. In an instant familiar surroundings appeared around her.
"Get a hold of yourself," a voice entered her mind through transmission; it was Master Ming’s voice.
Her master’s voice supported her and stopped her from crying immediately in front of Tamasya, who was now sitting close, rubbing her back.
"Are you alright?" Tamasya asked Yue with concern.
Yue looked back at Tamasya.
For a moment she could not bring herself to say what she had seen.
She did not even have the guts to cry; instead, she smiled like she had brought good news.
Tamasya looked at the subtle smile on Yue’s face and asked, "What happened? What did you see?"
"Your mother’s curse is nonsense," Yue replied playfully in a loud voice, trying to mask the despair she felt.
"Really?" Tamasya’s eyes widened.
"Yes," Yue nodded quietly, trying hard to make her lie believable.
A smile blossomed on Tamasya’s face; she brightened up and gave Yue a tight hug.
"You do not realize how big of a favor you have done for me today, Yue." Her lips trembled, and tears of happiness flooded her eyes.
"Thank you." Tamasya broke into sobs of relief.
"Thank you," she repeated.
Yue patted her head while swallowing hard the truth she was trying to bury in her heart.
Her mind was in turmoil.
Yue wanted to do something, but for now, she could only lie to Tamasya and relieve her from the stress, because even she herself had not yet fully understood anything about what she had witnessed inside that realm.