The dream hit Kale like a blade to the heart.
He saw a battlefield of fire—familiar, but twisted. A sky of screaming stars. A palace of ash. And in the center of it all stood himself, cloaked in obsidian light, his hands drenched in golden blood.
In this future…
He had become something else.
"I became the Last Sovereign. The Woundwalker. The one who ended the gods—and the world."
His own voice echoed in his skull—not from memory, but from beyond time.
When Kale awoke, the floor beneath him cracked from the pulse of power that surged through his veins. The sigils on his back glowed white-hot, unfamiliar runes etching themselves alongside the old.
They burned—but didn't hurt.
They remembered.
"This power… I haven't earned it yet. But my soul knows it. I've been this already. Just not here."
Scarlet nearly dropped the book in her lap.
His thoughts. Again.
Louder than ever. Clearer.
He was closer now. Awake.
And something inside him had changed.
She rushed down the halls, robes whipping behind her, heart racing.
When she reached the training grounds, Kale stood in the center—eyes closed, wind swirling around him.
She opened her mouth to speak—but stopped.
Because the moment she stepped into the field, the air folded.
Not broke. Not burned. Just… shifted.
And suddenly Kale's shadow no longer matched his body.
It had wings.
Kale opened his eyes.
They glowed not gold, but silver-blue.
Ancient. Alien.
Scarlet took a step back.
"In the 479th loop, I became something else. Something I swore I'd never be again. But the power clings. It remembers me."
"This is the first time it's bled into the present."
His hands curled once—power rippling through the grass, the trees, the earth.
"If it keeps leaking in… I may become what I was in that loop again."
"And that will be the end of everything."
Scarlet's throat tightened.
She watched him breathe—calmly. Patiently.
Like someone trying not to become a god again.
In the east wing, Evan watched from a high balcony, too far to sense the truth, too arrogant to imagine what was unfolding.
He still believed he held control.
Still thought Scarlet could be swayed.
Still smiled like the hero of a story long since broken.
That night, Kale sat atop the western tower, cloak pulled tight against the wind.
Scarlet approached quietly, not sure what to say—but knowing she couldn't say nothing.
He didn't turn to her.
But his thoughts came.
"You shouldn't be near me."
"I don't care," she said aloud.
A pause.
Then—
"I remember burning the sky to save you in one loop."
"And failing in a hundred more."
"I remember watching you die, again and again, because I was too weak, too slow, too blind."
She swallowed, heart aching.
"In one timeline… you were the one who killed me."
Scarlet froze.
"But I'm still here," she whispered.
He turned to her, then—eyes back to gold, no wings, no flame. Just a man. A tired, broken man who remembered too much.
And for the first time, his voice came not as thought—but as breath:
"I don't know what this loop will make me into."
She stepped closer.
"Then let's find out together."