Above the ruins of Blue Mountain Island, where the forest had been utterly annihilated by lightning.
At the place where Edward had vanished, a golden clock floated in midair, ticking softly.
Tick…tock…tick…tock…
Suddenly, the timer's hands began to move backwards. At first slowly, then faster, and faster still.
That final bolt of lightning reappeared. Its blinding brilliance drew back into itself, restoring the moment just before its fall. And the Edward and Lilith who had been reduced to ash and dust…reappeared as well—just like during the previous "Reboot."
"This is…?"
Edward stared blankly as the abyssal thunder that had moments ago consumed everything now surged back into the heavens, while the devastation it caused rapidly reversed itself. Around him, the world seemed to rewind faster and faster.
He watched with wide eyes as the events that had unfolded only moments earlier now played backwards at astonishing speed—not just for a few people, not just in a small area, but as though the entire world was being wound back in time!
Is this Will's Reboot again?
Impossible!
Even if the Snake of Mercury advanced to Sequence 0, it would still be impossible to truly reverse time.
"Reboot" was nothing more than a pseudo-reversal—a mechanic like saving a game and reloading from that save. The effect was an illusion of rewinding time, limited in scope and duration.
It couldn't possibly turn back all of time, nor could it affect a true god like Leodero!
Then what…what was this?
The moon fell in the east, the sun rose in the west. Day and night alternated at a maddened pace. Edward realised with certainty—this was the entire world's time flowing backwards!
And this sensation…
He had felt it before.
It was the exact same feeling as when he used the Time-Turner.
Whether in Tingen, when he had gone back two hours, or at Hogwarts, when he had gone back five days—it had always been the whole world's time rewinding.
Tick…tock…
The ticking of a clock echoed by his ear.
Edward turned his head and saw the golden clock not far away, its hands spinning backwards at an incredible speed.
Is it really…a Time-Turner?
But in the world of Mysteries, it could rewind no more than two hours at most. Even in the Harry Potter world, its limit was only a few months.
Yet the ceaseless cycle of night and day before him told another story. Time had already rolled back years—perhaps even decades—in mere moments.
Tick…tock…tick…
The hands spun faster still, far beyond the eye's ability to follow. The entire device began to shake violently, as if pulled and crushed at once. Until finally—
Bang!
The timer exploded.
What remained was a pool of strange, shimmering liquid. It writhed and twisted, reshaping itself into the form of clock hands, still spinning backwards with insane speed.
Beside it, a die had appeared at some unknown point, whirling just as frantically.
The world dissolved into radiant threads of light, and Edward felt as though he had entered the time tunnel from Doraemon.
But unlike a cartoon, he had no control here. He could not halt the flow. He could not choose the point in time he wished to reach.
Time slipped away.
Or rather—Edward was no longer certain if this endless rewind even counted as time's passage.
"Edward!"
Lilith's voice suddenly reached him.
The backwards-flowing light began to slow. The streaks of brilliance dimmed into hazy streams, then into distinct scenes flickering in reverse. Once again he could see the sun and moon racing backwards across the sky.
He realised the reversal of time was about to end.
"Edward!"
Her voice came again.
Only then did Edward notice that Lilith's figure was drifting away from him, growing hazy and indistinct.
The rewind for her…had not stopped!
Panic-stricken, Edward stretched with all his might to grasp her wrist. Lilith struggled as well, reaching desperately toward him. But nothing could change it.
They could only watch as the distance grew, wider and wider, until—
Her third cry tore through the stream of time:
"Edward!!!"
At that instant, Edward regained control of his body. He lunged with all his might.
"Lilith!"
But his hand grasped nothing.
She was gone.
Vanished before his eyes like a skipped frame, swallowed by the rushing current of time—gone to some far older, more distant past.
And with her disappeared the Die of Fate.
Edward's heart clenched as though crushed in a fist. Pain like nothing he had known swept through his body.
Why?
Why had it turned out this way?
WHY?!
They had been together. Both caught by the same Time-Turner. Why had she alone been pulled further—cast away into an even more distant time?
An endless terror engulfed him.
He dared not imagine how far back Lilith had been thrown—what kind of dangers she might encounter there. With her simple heart, and strength still only at Sequence 7…how long could she possibly survive?
Will I…ever have the chance to see her again?
Edward's chest throbbed with another stab of pain.
Up until now, the Lilith who had gone to the past had never once sought him out.
On the optimistic side, perhaps she had remembered his warning back at Hogwarts: never to meet with her "future" self or Edward before the right moment.
But on the pessimistic side…perhaps she had never survived long enough to reach the present.
After all, if the span of time was too great, she would need to advance to at least Sequence 3—Demoness of Unaging—to withstand the erosion of time itself. Yet from Sequence 7 to Sequence 3, every step along the Witch pathway was steeped in disaster and despair. Each promotion meant endless dangers…how could she possibly overcome them all?
A wave of regret crashed through Edward.
He regretted having once taught Lilith to be a good person.
For someone on the Witch pathway, a "good person" could scarcely walk very far.
At this moment, Edward realised he was nothing more than a hypocrite.
When Lady Despair's promotion had blanketed Backlund in smog, he had despised it, wishing nothing more than to kill her.
But now, when it was Lilith's turn, he wanted only for her to succeed in her advancement and live long enough to survive until the present. As for the calamities and deaths that her promotion might cause—he felt no sympathy at all.
Damn it!
If not for that sudden appearance of the purple-gowned witch, none of this might have happened.
Yet even an existence like the abomination Suah had either perished or fled under Leodero's thunder. Why had that witch shown no fear at all?
Her state then had been clearly abnormal. She had smiled at Lilith—smiled with ease, with pride, with not a trace of panic. Not at all like a "mortal" facing the wrath of a god.
Cheek!
The name surfaced abruptly in Edward's mind.
Perhaps, at that moment, the purple-robed witch had already been under Cheek's control.
But if that was true…why?
Why would a true god suddenly descend just to strike at Lilith?
If not for Cheek, how else would Lilith have been cast alone into a far more ancient past, to face unknown terrors?
Cheek!
Cheek!!
CHEEK!!!
By then, time had fully stabilised.
Edward's feet touched solid ground once more. Around him, insects chirped and birds sang. Raising his head, he looked at the forest of Blue Mountain Island—an indeterminate number of years in the past.
It felt both strange and familiar.
Familiar, because the forest seemed unchanged across the years.
Strange, because at this point in time, all the people he knew might not even exist yet.
"Maybe…it's only a few years earlier."
He spoke the words like self-comfort, though even he did not believe them. Even if it was just a few years, in this era he was still a stranger to the world.
A figure surfaced in his mind—Audrey.
Fear and pain surged again.
For the Audrey of the future, perhaps his absence would only be a brief moment—so brief she would never even notice that he had been cast into the past.
But for Edward, every day ahead would be a long, drawn-out separation.
A sudden thought struck him.
If I use Hearth now to return to the Harry Potter world…could I then travel back from there to the present?
Immediately, he shifted into spiritual form and invoked [Hearth], first attempting the coordinate he had marked in the Room of Requirement.
It failed.
The feedback was clear—the coordinate did not exist.
Impossible. A coordinate is merely a mark tied to a position—like latitude 51.50°N, longitude 0.12°W, where London lies. As long as Earth itself exists, no matter the era, that coordinate should still be valid.
So even if Hogwarts had not yet been built, even if the Room of Requirement did not yet exist, the location itself should remain. At most, teleporting there should have landed him in an empty clearing.
But now the coordinate did not exist at all.
Did this mean the entire Harry Potter world was nonexistent?
Or perhaps, in this particular era, the Harry Potter world had not yet been born.
Perhaps only at the moment he transmigrated into the world of Mysteries had the Harry Potter world truly come into "existence". It was real now, but separated by a dimensional wall, not yet intersecting with the world of Mysteries.
So it's true…I'm trapped in an unknown past.
Dumbledore's words surfaced unbidden: Those who meddle with time will eventually be played with by time itself.
The first two times he had used the Time-Turner, Edward had never felt its malice.
But this time, this journey back into the past—was it time's vengeance upon him?
Edward stood blankly in place, dazed, his eyes filled with confusion and pain.
He did not know how long he remained that way.
At last, the illusory pages turned before his eyes, and he cast several Placate upon himself. His turmoil, anxiety, and bewilderment gradually eased.
Drawing several deep breaths, he forced his mind into stillness.
Finally, he calmed.
Things were already as they were. Drowning in despair and confusion served no purpose. If he wanted to see Lilith and Audrey again, he had to survive this era first.
"Let's see what I've gained from this advancement…then decide on my next step."
———
[Note]: Don't forget to VOTE. It keeps me motivated.