Chapter 208: So It Was You, Grey
“That was the cry of a girl plunging into the abyss, erupting in the moment of utmost despair and helplessness.”
“A cry calling out to the hero who, throughout her past life, would come to save her every time she wept.”
Grey’s voice once again echoed within the Watchtower.
“I had thought that as long as I fulfilled this one wish.”
“Then, under the guidance of fate—that Brother Rast, who had saved me from peril countless times in the past, would once again appear before me and rescue me.”
“After all, you’ve always been like that. At the moments I needed you the most, you would appear in my life like the wind, and then disappear again like the wind. No matter how I searched for your trace afterward, I could never find you.”
The girl’s voice was like a wind chime swaying softly in the midnight air.
“I didn’t even need Brother Rast to provide any substantial help… as long as I could see your figure, as long as you could stay by my side—”
“Then I would be able to pick up my courage once more, to face that destined dead end, that tragic ending where the very meaning of my life was denied.”
“That was, at the time, the only wish in my heart—to meet you again.”
“However, only after the wish was fulfilled did I realize I was wrong.”
“Completely wrong.”
Grey’s voice came to a halt.
At the same time, within that crystalline light screen, a hazy stream of light and shadow began to surge.
The previous image on the screen—where red and blue dots interwove and the map of the Western Continent marked by rapid expansion of human civilization—vanished.
Replacing it was a clear and vivid scene.
A town engulfed in flames, collapsing walls, pieces of falling floors.
Dust-laden hot winds, metal pipes twisted and warped by high temperatures, steam and fire erupting in all directions...
And the sky, scorched black and red by thick smoke and blazing fire.
It was a scene of devastation, a barren wasteland.
At the same moment, Rast’s gaze completely froze.
The imagery on the screen was reflected in his eyes, like an old dream descending once again, overlapping with reality.
Everything in that ruined wasteland within the screen—every detail—felt overwhelmingly familiar.
Each crumbled wall, every collapsing floorboard, the streets charred black by fire… every building, every detail matched the memories in Rast’s mind perfectly, without the slightest error.
He slowly closed his eyes—
Feeling that recurring nightmare from deep within his soul—one that made him question whether it was even real—gradually align with reality, perfectly mirroring the scene on the screen.
It was only at this moment that the vague premonitions and guesses in Rast’s heart were finally confirmed.
This was a burning border town, where the black-red sky loomed over a blood-stained land.
A ruin named “Canaan.”
And that memory—of struggling to survive buried beneath that ruin—was not a hallucination born from being trapped in Deep Blue Port for over three centuries...
It was a scene that had truly occurred.
Rast tilted his head back, looking toward the dome of the Watchtower—the pitch-black dome of steel.
He recalled once more that moment that had replayed in countless dreams at midnight—
Beneath the sky, turned black-red by fire, the woman who found his still-living self amidst the burning ruins, smiled from the heart, and embraced him tightly.
A woman who had claimed to be a “Shoreguard.”
To this day, that long-ago memory had worn down with time. Even the woman’s face had become indistinct...
But Rast still remembered that smile. Perhaps it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his life.
And now, the silhouette of that woman from his memory slowly overlapped with the grey-haired girl named Grey, becoming one and the same.
“Grey.”
He softly said, “So it was you…”
At last, all the memories of the past connected.
Including those heart-wrenching agonies, and the ideals that had persisted even after three hundred years of erosion—though shattered, they had never disappeared.
The entire library fell into prolonged silence. Even Dean Silver, usually the most restless and talkative, remained quiet.
It merely crouched silently on Rast’s shoulder, feeling that boy, mechanical in nature, reveal for the first time an expression of wavering and vulnerability.
...
“I had thought that after making the wish, I would be able to see Brother Rast immediately.”
After a long while, Grey’s voice once again rose, accompanied by the burning wasteland within the light screen.
“However, what I saw was nothing but a small town wasteland engulfed in flames.”
“In truth... I should have realized it earlier.”
Grey’s words also carried an undeniable tremble.
“The knowledge you left behind, Brother Rast—everything passed on to me through the ‘The Fool’s Library’—was all so far ahead of its time... as if it came from the future.”
“So when you disappeared, no matter how painstakingly I searched, I could never find your trace... because you did not exist within the timeline of the Sixth Era. You were never a part of this epoch.”
“And now, I made a wish to fate to meet you once more... and under the immense power of fate, the twisted outcome of that wish—”
“Was to pull you, Brother Rast, along with the entire town you lived in from the future, across time, summoning you into the Sixth Era, into what for you would be ancient history.”
Her voice paused briefly.
“And within that timeline of yours, you had yet to travel across time to meet me, and had never even known of the ideals of the Shoreguards—”
“At that moment, you were still just a child living in a small town called Canaan, living a peaceful, yet happy life.”
“However, the life belonging to you, Brother Rast, was destroyed by my own hand—leaving only the raging flames and collapsing ruins, tearing apart that once tranquil daily life.”
“After realizing the truth and understanding what kind of foolish mistake I had committed... I desperately tried to make amends, but it was all in vain.”
Within the light screen, Grey’s perspective was displayed.
She walked endlessly through the burning town, amidst the smoke and hot winds swirling around the crumbling ruins, trying to rescue the residents trapped beneath the wreckage.
But under the collapsed rubble, all that answered Grey were only mangled, bloodied, broken human forms.
“Under the great power of fate, the entire town of Canaan was struck by the aftershocks of ‘Temporal Annihilation’ and ‘Temporal Collapse’.”
“It was a leap from the future back to the past of several thousand or even tens of thousands of years—a traversal across an entire epoch... With such a massive leap through time and space, even someone like me, an angel of the ‘Fate’ Sequence, would suffer severe burden and pressure when rewinding time.”
“Let alone those ordinary people in Canaan who lived quiet lives without any means to defend themselves? Most of them did not die in the fire, but perished from the side effects of ‘Temporal Traversal’.”
“I searched every corner of the ruins of Canaan, and in the end, I found only two living survivors.”
“The first, was you, Brother Rast... your younger self.”
Although that version of you was far more immature and innocent than the boy in my memories, from the very moment I found you in the burning ruins, I knew it was you... No matter what you looked like, no matter what age, I would never mistake you.
“Perhaps it was because you, Brother Rast, were the core of the wish I made... Or perhaps because you would one day become the inheritor of ‘The Fool’s Library’, this connection transcended time, beyond past and future.”
“In any case, your body suffered no harm, unaffected by the aftereffects of ‘Temporal Collapse’.”
“And the other survivor from Canaan—”
Her voice paused: “Was a little girl named Emis.”
“That is... the ‘Xiao Ai’ you speak of.”
...
Hearing Grey speak the name ‘Emis’, even Dean Silver couldn’t help but glance at Rast below.
She had already heard the name ‘Emis’—or rather, the nickname ‘Xiao Ai’—from Shiltina.
It seemed to be someone extremely, extremely important to Rast. Precisely because he carried thoughts of this person in his heart, Rast was able to remain steadfast even after being trapped in Deep Blue Port for more than three centuries, never falling into collapse or self-destruction.
Yet, even Shiltina, even Dean Silver—those in the Present World who were closest to Rast and knew many of his secrets...
Their understanding of ‘Emis’ remained at the level of having merely heard the name.
She appeared to be the most secret, yet most important existence within Rast’s heart—someone he had never shared the meaning of that name with anyone.
Beneath Dean Silver, at the very instant he heard that name, Rast instinctively closed his eyes.
The truth about Canaan, and the matter concerning the woman in his memories who had rescued him from the blazing ruins—being Grey herself... had actually been foreshadowed through various clues from the very beginning.
After all, those bearing the title of “Shoreguards,” those who possessed “The Fool’s Library”... throughout all of history, there had only ever been a few. And among them, females were even rarer.
Rast had long formed guesses and deductions about all of this in his heart.
What he had just heard from Grey merely confirmed his own conjectures—it wasn’t some shocking revelation.
His true purpose in entering the Nightworld this time and coming to the Mechanical Research Institute within the Watchtower—
Was, in fact, to uncover the truth regarding Xiao Ai.
It could even be said that the very reason Rast had first chosen to enroll at Starfall University, the reason he became a Black Night Traveler, was all for the sake of uncovering this hidden truth.
And now, that truth he had long pursued was finally within reach.
Rast closed his eyes, feeling that involuntary surge of hesitation and anxiety from being so close to home.
He feared that the answer he would hear might not be what he had long hoped for.
Yet in the end, Rast still opened his eyes once again.
And at that moment, Grey’s voice finally rose once more.
“When I found Emis, barely clinging to life amidst the ruins, I could hardly believe my eyes.”
“No one could understand how that frail little girl named Emis managed to survive... enduring a level of stress from ‘Temporal Collapse’ that even adults—let alone lower-tier Transcendents—would never have withstood.”
“But even so, Emis’s physical condition was far from optimistic.”
In Grey’s voice, there was now an indescribable tone.
“Even if she hadn’t immediately perished in that catastrophe, due to an extraordinary willpower beyond human limits... she was, in the end, just a completely ordinary little girl—”
“Exposed to the residual waves of twisted time, having undergone a time traversal spanning tens of thousands of years in a single instant... the burden she bore could not possibly come without a price.”
“The stress endured from traveling through time, a condition called ‘Post-Temporal Collapse Syndrome’, continues to affect Emis even now.”
“Her entire body, every inch of flesh, every single cell... was twisted during the process of ‘Temporal Collapse’, her DNA fragmented, incapable of healing, and impossible to repair.”
“This is a true terminal illness—far deadlier than cancer... At the level of technology in the Sixth Era, even the most severe cancers could be treated, allowing a patient’s life to be extended for decades—yet in the face of Emis’s illness, not even the finest hospitals or doctors in the entire Federal Government could do anything.”
“Even my ‘Temporal Rewind’ is ineffective. With ordinary illnesses, no matter how serious, as long as I apply rewind to restore the body’s condition to a state before the illness, everything can be resolved smoothly.”
“But Emis is different. Her condition is a direct aftereffect of ‘Temporal Collapse’. If I tried to apply rewind, not only would it fail to help her, it might even worsen the aftereffects.”
The scene within the light screen shifted.
It appeared to be a room reminiscent of the ICU from Rast’s previous life—the highest-level intensive care unit in a hospital.
Countless medical instruments were densely arranged within the unit.
And at the center of that ICU, a small figure lay on the pristine white hospital bed, her thin arms covered with all kinds of IV lines and life-support apparatus.
Rast recognized the name of the frail, golden-haired girl lying there—
She was Emis.