Ptomelus watched with burning eyes.
He had seen transcendent beings.
Immortal monarchs.
Entities worshipped as gods.
None of them fought like this.
They imposed power.
Sora negotiated with reality—and reality deferred.
He's only a Transcendent, Ptomelus thought distantly.
And yet—
There was no doubt left in his mind.
Right now…
There is no one stronger in the Empire.
Not the Emperor. Not the generals. Not the hidden monsters sleeping beneath ancient realms.
This boy—this ridiculous, calm, mildly annoyed boy—
Was winning.
The Watcher reached a conclusion it had never reached before.
DIRECT CONFRONTATION: FAILED
OBJECTIVE UNMET
ALTERNATIVE METHODS REQUIRED
Its perception widened.
Not across space.
Across possibility.
Threads of causality unfurled before it—countless futures branching, overlapping, collapsing.
And then—
It saw it.
A thin, red thread.
Fragile, incomplete, and barely formed.
A potential.
A causal link between Sora and—
The Watcher turned.
Its gaze locked onto Lyra.
CONNECTION DETECTED
STATUS: PROBABILISTIC
LEVERAGE: ACCEPTABLE
Sora's immediately read the watcher's intentions, and, his smile vanished.
"…Don't."
The Watcher vanished.
Lyra felt it before she understood.
The warmth around her faltered.
Not vanished, but stretched.
She turned—
And the world ended.
The Watcher reappeared inside her reach, existence folding violently as it struck—not at her body, but at the thread behind her, aiming to erase her from every possible future.
She couldn't move.
Couldn't scream.
Couldn't think.
Death descended—not loud, not cruel—
But inevitable.
Sora's eyes trembled.
Not with rage.
With something deeper.
Something unfamiliar.
Of course he knew why.
The Watcher wasn't attacking Lyra because she mattered now.
It was attacking her because she might matter later.
Because somewhere in the branching futures, there existed a version where—
She mattered to him.
And Sora would not allow that future to be decided by something else.
Not before he knew.
Not before he could choose himself.
He moved.
For the first time , for as long as he could remember, Sora pushed.
Hard.
Time collapsed.
The world slowed to a crawl—every particle frozen, every explosion suspended mid-bloom.
Everyone except him.
He crossed the distance in a single step—
Then two—
Then—
Why isn't it working?
His power screamed as he forced it harder, tearing through layers of priority, ripping open speed beyond speed.
But, the Watcher moved too.
Not fast.
Independent.
Sora's breath hitched.
I can't get there in time.
The realization struck like a blade.
For the first time ever—
His power failed him.
And Lyra was about to die.
The universe held its breath.
And Sora, for the first time in his life—
Was uncertain.
...
The Watcher was inches away from Lyra.
Its presence compressed reality so tightly that her body had already begun to fail—not tearing, not shattering, but yielding, as flesh and bone tried to obey a law that said she should not exist here anymore.
The red thread behind her—thin, trembling—was already being grasped.
Nooooo! Sora screamed...
And then—
His eyes flashed with an bright light.
An unfathomable aura crashed down on everything in the world.
And then the world vanished vanished around him in a flash of brilliance, only to dim a second later, elsewhere.
No sound.
No color.
No pressure.
Just absence.
Sora found himself floating in an endless, empty space—black, but not dark. Silent, but not dead. It felt familiar in the way something long forgotten suddenly does.
"…My mind's space," he murmured. He recognised the space instantly, subconsciously, even though he had never been here before
He frowned.
That shouldn't have happened.
Not now.
Not like this.
Then—
The memories came.
Not gently.
Not one by one.
They flooded his mind.
They played out in front of him like a reflection in a pond of water.
A face revealed itself to him.
His face. Only...
He was older.
Not by much.
Same face. Same eyes. Same posture. Only, different hair. Amethyst velvety hair.
The weight of him was different, even if only watching through a projection, the power radiating in the image was undeniable.
He stood in a vast expanse of woven light—countless threads stretching into infinity, crossing, knotting, unravelling, reforming. Each thread was a life. A world. A possibility.
He reached out—
And the threads obeyed.
"Still sloppy," the voice said lazily.
Sora turned.
Twelve figures unravelled behind him.
The Primordials.
His siblings.
Each one was an absolute monstrosity. Not in appearance, no, they were all beautiful. By their presence? Was another think entirely.
A woman made of starlight and void, arms crossed, expression amused.
A towering man whose shadow alone crushed galaxies.
A being of shifting script and living law, watching silently.
And him.
The youngest.
The smallest.
The strongest.
"Tch," he replied—no, replied then, voice sharper, less restrained. "You try managing infinity without shortcuts."
A laugh rippled through existence.
"Careful, little brother," another sibling said. "You'll tear imaginary universes again."
"They were imaginary," 'he' said flatly. "That's the point."
More memories played out.
They argued.
Constantly.
About everything.
As they created worlds and entire civilizations from nothing but their combined strength.
Creation methods.
Entropy thresholds.
Whether free will was an emergent property or an indulgence.
"You interfere too much," said the eldest, voice heavy with inevitability.
"You interfere too little," countered another, smiling cruelly.
And him—
He simply watched.
Adjusted based on his whims.
Pulled a thread here.
Loosened one there.
"Balance isn't about stillness," he said. "It's about correction."
They called him Weaver.
Not because he created threads.
But because he understood how they tangled.
...
The space shifted.
The threads dimmed.
And she appeared.
Selene.
She stood apart from the others, moonlight clinging to her form like a second skin. Her eyes were calm, ancient, and unbearably gentle.
Her long, pointy ears twitching faintly with intelligence.
"You've already decided," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"This cycle is collapsing," he replied. "They always do."
"And you intend to abandon your station."
"I intend to reset my perspective."
She studied him for a long moment.
"You're tired."
He exhaled slowly.
"Yes."
Not of power.
Not of existence.
Of knowing.
"I see everything," he said quietly. "Every outcome. Every failure. Every inevitability. Even when I change things… I know how it ends."
Selene stepped closer.
"And you think forgetting will help?"
"I think living might," he answered.
She smiled sadly.
"You always were the strangest of us. So where are you going this time."
"On a little vacation..." He laughed freely.
The projection shifted once again. A different memory with Selene.
They stood at the edge of a collapsing tapestry—an entire multiversal cycle unravelling into nothing.
Sora frowned. For some reason, this memory felt different from the others, like it has been altered, tempered with.
The thoughts felt weird to him. Why would he suddenly have such a thought about his own supposed memories.
He decided to watch anyway, but he didn't write it off either.
"You'll be weaker," Selene warned. "Bound. Limited."
"I know."
"You might suffer."
"I know."
"You might die."
He shrugged. "Everyone does."
She reached out, touching his forehead.
"I will seal your memories," she said softly. "Not all at once. That would break you."
"Good."
"And your power?"
"Seal it with them."
Her eyes searched his.
"Why do this?" she asked one last time.
He smiled.
"Because I want to see if the future feels different when I don't know how it ends."
Silence.
Then—
"I'll anchor you," Selene whispered. "If you ever awaken… I'll make sure you remember who you were."
He nodded.
"Thank you."
...
The memories slowed.
Settled into his mind.
Sora floated in the void, breathing steadily.
"…I planned all this," he said softly.
His rebirth.
His indifference.
His boredom.
His curiosity.
Even his refusal to rule. Was because, subconsciously, it repulsed him, it reminded him of his old authority as weaver, and weaver, with his power, hated being all knowing, ruling.
It all made sense now.
And yet—
He didn't feel regret.
Only clarity.
He could feel it.
This was only the first seal.
There were more.
Many more.
And still, he still couldn't understand the feeling he got on the last memory.
I will get to the bottom of it, one way or another.
But this was enough.
For now.
The seal on his memories cracked.
And with it—
The seal on a fragment of his power shattered.
Sora felt it immediately.
His existence expanded.
Not outward.
Deeper.
Fifth stage of Transcendence—
Gone.
Sixth.
Boom.
Seventh.
BOOM!
Eighth.
BOOOOM!
Ninth.
BOOOOOOM!
Tenth.
BOOOOOOOOM!
Reality convulsed.
The void around him warped as his being crossed a threshold that no longer belonged to the Transcendence Realm.
And then—
Silence.
He stepped into the next realm as casually as breathing.
Sora exhaled.
"…That's better."
He flexed his fingers.
The void rippled.
He flexed his shoulders.
Existence adjusted.
He felt no strain.
No instability.
Only… familiarity.
Knowledge flowed back along with the influx of power.
Not all.
Just enough.
He reviewed them instinctively.
Names surfaced.
Concepts aligned.
Descriptions reduced themselves to essence.
One word surfaced again and again as he digested the techniques into his mind.
Godly.
If before—
He could deny causality.
Alter outcomes.
Negate spells.
Now—
He could tug the strings.
He could reach into someone's fate and rearrange it like a poorly written story.
Change their past.
Rewrite their present.
Erase their future.
And they would never know.
On the lower end?
He could simply strip someone of power.
Not suppress.
Remove it entirely.
As if it had never been theirs.
Or maybe, grant someone without a silver of power in their veins unfathomable power
"…That's excessive," he murmured.
Then paused.
"…Useful, though."
The memories didn't just come with added power, but a consequence as well, for the current him at least.
He felt it as soon as his thoughts settled.
A subtle change.
The memories pressed against his personality, smoothing edges, sharpening others.
He was calmer.
Colder.
Playful.
More patient.
But Sora frowned.
"No," he said firmly.
"I'm not letting the Weaver live my life for me."
The memories were his.
But this life—
This was Sora's.
He accepted the influence.
But not the control.
He simply breathed out, and the influence was neutralized.
The void began to dissolve.
Reality returned.
Sora opened his eyes.
Everything was frozen.
Lyra hung suspended in mid-death, her hair floating, terror frozen on her face.
The Watcher was motionless, its strike incomplete, its authority paused.
Time itself waited.
Sora stepped forward.
Each step echoed with quiet finality.
He glanced at Lyra.
"…Perks of seeing the future," he murmured.
"You're apparently important to me."
He looked back at the Watcher.
"And you," he said softly, "made a very bad choice."
The chapter ended there.
Right before Sora decided—
It was time to finish his unfinished business.
And save his potential future lover.