Chapter 190: A Familiar Voice
On the other side of the mountain range separating human territory from beast territory...
Inside an ancient palace whose magnificence had not diminished with time, but instead had only grown greater, a woman sat upon a throne.
The hall was mostly empty, with only her presence seated on the throne in a relaxed position, eyes closed, showing almost no sign of movement, enough to make an outside observer wonder whether the woman was even alive.
She remained like that for an unknown amount of time, undisturbed, for no one dared enter her territory.
But today, something changed.
The woman’s eyebrows furrowed for a moment before her eyes, a mix of violet and dark blue, opened, her gaze shifting toward a specific direction.
Her stare stayed fixed for a couple of seconds before those eyes flashed, as though she’d caught onto something.
She rose from her throne at once, as if whatever she’d detected had completely captured her interest.
’Someone reopened that dimension,’ she thought, and the realization alone was enough to capture her full attention.
"Has the time finally come?" she wondered, her eyes flashing with an even brighter light now, intense, almost frantic.
She stayed lost in thought for a while before that glow in her eyes finally settled, along with her mind.
"I wonder how that girl is doing," she murmured to herself, her gaze shifting away from human territory and toward a place within Beast territory.
Her gaze appeared to stop at one of the great windows of the throne room, yet it crossed dozens of miles, reaching its destination.
A forest, once rich with flora and fauna, now in complete disarray, destroyed in some places, scorched in others. But amid all of it, one spot stood out.
It was an area of the forest that had been completely leveled, not by any natural phenomenon, but by something, or someone.
There, at the center of what was now a crater filled with scattered corpses of strange-looking beasts, all leaking a strange black liquid, stood a girl. Tall, with long black hair tied back in a ponytail that did nothing to diminish her striking presence.
Her face was calm, one hand resting on the hilt of a sword now sheathed again, and her eyes, a deep violet, glowing with an unnatural color, had slit-like pupils that were slowly beginning to shift, taking on a more unnatural shape.
Behind her, the silhouette of a massive, colossal creature, the same one that had terrorized the entire forest just moments ago, was now fading away, finally dissolving that oppressive presence that had dominated the entire area until now.
The girl looked at the scene before her, her expression utterly devoid of emotion.
This had been her battlefield just moments ago, a battlefield that, just like every other one she’d taken part in, had become nothing more than a disordered wasteland of enemy corpses and nothing else.
She watched the scene for a while longer before turning her head in the exact direction of Evangeline’s palace.
She returned the gaze she’d just felt settle on her, and understood at once who it belonged to.
Right at that instant, a voice echoed inside her head.
"Come. It’s time we returned to human territory."
***
Evan slowly opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the sky.
A gray sky, covered by clouds stretching across his entire field of vision.
However, it wasn’t the kind of sky that carried the signs of an incoming storm, nor one that completely blocked out the sunlight. There was no rain, thunder, or any sign of an imminent change in the weather.
It was simply... gray.
A strangely ordinary sight.
For some reason, after everything he had experienced, that sense of normality felt almost more unfamiliar.
He remained still for several seconds, his gaze fixed upward as he slowly tried to piece his thoughts together.
His mind felt heavy.
’What happened?’
He wondered as he tried to recall what had occurred, or why he had lost consciousness, but no matter how hard he tried to grasp those memories, something seemed to slip away from him.
He frowned slightly and attempted to sit up.
It was precisely at that moment that he noticed something.
His hands had touched a soft surface beneath him, with a faint prickling sensation, as if countless tiny points were pressing against his palms at once.
They were small enough to be noticeable, but too weak to cause any real discomfort.
It was grass.
Only then did he realize that he had been lying on the ground.
Evan slowly sat up, looking around.
The place he found himself in appeared to be a park.
It wasn’t particularly large, nor did it seem to have anything special about it. There were trees scattered around, a few benches, and pathways crossing through the area.
There weren’t many people around at the moment, making the entire place almost completely peaceful.
It was an ordinary place.
A place that, logically, Evan was certain he had never seen before.
And yet...
For some reason, a strange sense of familiarity slowly began to surface within him.
It wasn’t the kind of familiarity that came from recognizing a place he had visited in the past.
It was something different.
As if a part of him, a part buried far deeper than his current memories, already knew this place.
Before he could reflect any further on that strange feeling, his gaze fell upon the clothes he was wearing.
Evan was slightly surprised.
These clothes didn’t belong to the Solren Kingdom.
In fact, as far as he knew, they didn’t belong to any known kingdom.
His eyes lowered, carefully examining them.
A pair of blue pants, their color almost completely faded by time.
They were old.
Not merely worn, but so deteriorated that they seemed to have reached the very limit of their lifespan.
Then there was the shirt.
A simple red shirt, also damaged and faded.
Evan remained silent as he stared at those clothes.
To his current self, they were completely unfamiliar.
But to the old him...
They were incredibly familiar.
His eyes widened slightly as a realization slowly began forming in his mind.
But at that exact moment—
"You’re finally awake."
A female voice sounded from nearby.
"I thought you had really kicked the bucket this time."
Evan froze.
The voice was close, very close.
A young female voice that, for some reason, made his heart beat faster.
He didn’t understand why.
And yet, that simple voice had awakened something deep within him.
Evan slowly turned his head.
Only a few steps away, leaning against the trunk of a tree, stood a girl.
She had short blonde hair cut in a bob style that suited her features perfectly, and emerald colored eyes that seemed to shine even beneath the gray sky.
A lollipop rested between her lips as she looked at him with a calm expression.
She wore simple cargo pants and a clean white shirt.
Nothing extravagant.
And yet, somehow, that simplicity only seemed to make her beauty stand out even more.
Evan stared at her, and despite himself, a name surfaced in his mind.
"Sera?"