Kael Lanpar's POV
Everything around me was blurred — reality twisted into something unrecognizable, preventing me from seeing beyond what I already knew.
The world dissolved into shapeless stains, as if someone had dragged a veil across my eyes.
I could still feel Elizabeth's weight in my arms, my hands soaked in her blood.
That weight — so real just moments ago — began to fade, slowly devoured by the relentless march of time.
When my eyelids finally closed, everything collapsed into a state I could only describe as a return to the void. There was no sound. No existence. Only the absolute certainty that I was going back to my world.
That unnatural sensation — being nothing but consciousness drifting through a formless expanse — wrapped around me once more in its frozen mantle. I felt exposed. Bare. Profoundly alone.
"You are… very interesting. Just like… your father."
The voice emerged from the deepest part of the darkness, distorted and fragmented.
I barely caught it — but it was enough.
As my senses began to return, I became aware of my body again. I was drenched in sweat, as if my skin were boiling from the inside out.
"Stay still, brat. The florion is still coursing through your body. If you keep straining yourself, it'll hurt even more."
The involuntary groan that escaped my lips was confirmation enough: I was back.
A cruel return — welcomed by a searing pain that spread through every corner of my body like a poisoned gift.
"It burns… damn it, it burns too much."
My nails dug into what felt like damp soil beneath me. My jaw tightened, and when my vision finally steadied, I recognized the owner of the voice.
The same being who had orchestrated the massacre in the forest near the abandoned village watched me cautiously.
There was no emotion in his expression — only the faint arch of an eyebrow, a look that suggested irritation more than curiosity.
Before I could speak, my throat filled with something thick and hot. My own blood. That metallic taste was unmistakable… unforgettable.
"You'd better turn onto your side," he said coldly, "unless you want to drown in it."
With my heart pounding against my ribs, I obeyed and forced myself to roll over. Every movement was a battle — a futile resistance against pain that refused to subside.
Air rushed back into my lungs as I expelled the liquid that had been suffocating me. I coughed violently, my body convulsing as I fought to breathe again.
Confusion struck when I noticed the blood was darker than it should have been. Far too dark. For a few seconds, fear crept into my mind.
"Your body is purging the florion's toxins," he said, giving my back a firm pat. "That color is normal. Excess mana fuses with dead blood."
I let my body slump against the stone behind me and, almost instinctively, tried to draw atmospheric mana into my core.
The punishment was immediate. Pain surged through me like a brutal electric shock.
"You really are an idiot," he growled. "Which part of 'your mana is flooding your body' did you not understand?"
A sharp blow struck my head. The elf's fist forced me to bite down on my own tongue.
"W-what do you want from me…?"
The laugh that escaped him at the tremor in my voice filled me with bitter humiliation. I was standing before an enemy who didn't even see me as a threat.
To him, I was a joke.
"Don't try to reactivate your mana cascade," he continued calmly. "Your body created an artificial dam to block the flow. It did that to save you."
He extended his hand and revealed a flower I recognized instantly. The mere sight of it made my stomach twist in pain.
"Get that thing away from me."
"Hahahahaha…" he laughed. "I see you can't even stand the sight of Avella Citra anymore. Understandable. You've grown disgusted with it."
Instinctively, my hand moved to the sheath where my dagger — Crimson Shadow — should have been. My fingers found nothing but empty air.
Panic struck instantly. I looked around in every direction, desperately searching for the connection I shared with Vastiar, only to collide with a bitter, silent truth: it wasn't there.
There was nothing.
In a pathetic impulse — driven more by fear than reason — I lunged at the elf and grabbed him by the collar of his cloak with all the strength I could muster.
My eyes sharpened… but the moment they met his, I could only step back.
"Y-you… why do you have that mark?"
For a brief second, the elf looked confused. Then he understood what I meant.
Seeing that one of his eyes was a different color from the other awakened a memory that chilled my blood: Ameria.
That dark orange iris, moving unnaturally — independently — without obeying its bearer's will, was an unmistakable sign of prior manipulation.
"You don't seem very frightened that I separated you from your group."
He looked away, letting a strand of dark hair fall to conceal the eye as he walked toward the cave's exit.
"It'll take you a few days to recover," he added. "Until then, don't do anything stupid with your astral magic."
He said nothing more.
From deep within the cave, powerful winds rose and spiraled around him. I felt that devastating power immediately — the same kind Striker Boro had displayed during the assault on the capital.
That elf wielded a sub-element. A variation of wind… one unknown to me.
As I watched him leave, lifting the waterfall that served as the cave's natural entrance so he wouldn't get wet — parting it effortlessly with his own wind — I let my head fall back and released a heavy sigh.
No matter how hard I tried to reach Vastiar, there was no response.
The thought that Crimson Shadow might have fallen during the battle in the dungeon sent a chill crawling across my skin.
Even though my greatest problem at that moment was figuring out where I was — and why that elf hadn't killed me yet — my mind kept circling back to what would happen now to my astral magic.
I had awakened through corruption, which made me far more dependent on raw destructive power than on refined technique.
In simple terms, if absorbing atmospheric mana had already been a headache for me, now it was practically impossible. Vastiar had regulated that flow… but he was gone.
"Hey, Lanpar brat. Come outside for a moment."
I turned my head and saw the waterfall lifted once more by the elf's wind.
Paying closer attention to the finer details, I noticed something intriguing: the mana particles sustaining the spell didn't glow with the typical pale blue of the wind element. Instead, they shimmered in a deep green hue — impossible to ignore.
Not having mana flowing through my body didn't completely nullify my latent senses. I could still perceive the energy around me, but I felt more like a cripple than a mage.
"So, have you decided to kill me under the moonlight?"
He exhaled in annoyance before motioning for me to follow.
"If I'd wanted you dead, you would've been a corpse a long time ago. Don't you think?"
I forced myself upright, heat burning through my body. For a moment my legs nearly gave out, but I followed him anyway.
As I stepped outside, the soft murmur of fireflies greeted me. In the distance, their glow faintly illuminated vast wheat fields stretching endlessly across the land.
The moon hung full above us, shining with a whiteness brighter than usual — almost unnatural.
"How do you know I'm a Lanpar?"
My eyes remained fixed on the fields when, far away, I spotted several figures moving in the same direction.
"Are you seriously asking me that?" he replied. "Aren't you more curious about why I kidnapped you?"
I shook my head. From the very beginning, something inside me had insisted he had no intention of harming me.
"In the dungeon, you mentioned my clan. I saw melancholy in your eyes."
I turned and looked at him directly.
"I know you want something from me… I just don't know what."
Before we could continue, a spectral chill struck our backs. I felt multiple gazes fall upon me.
Then everything went dark.
The torches carried by those walking through the wheat fields were extinguished all at once, as if fire itself had been torn from the world.
Only the moonlight granted us a faint measure of sight.
My eyes widened as, in the sky above, something like a celestial procession began to manifest. They bore human shapes, yet lacked weight and flesh; they looked more like souls than bodies.
Still shaken, I heard a chant rise in the distance from the group among the fields. More than a chant — it was a lament.
"Hail, Doru. Eternal Vision."
The elf beside me repeated the same praise. I stared at him in confusion, which did not go unnoticed.
"For someone born into a powerful clan, your education is surprisingly lacking."
A grimace formed on my lips — not because he was wrong, but precisely because he wasn't.
"I never had time to learn other languages," I said, looking away in quiet embarrassment.
"Eternal moment. Eternal life," he repeated calmly. "That's what it means at Racing. Still, it's strange that you don't know Antis, the human mother tongue."
We both fell silent when an invisible pressure forced us to kneel. From the sky — where that beautiful phenomenon unfolded — a muted explosion echoed.
The floating beings marching together merged into a vast circle, and from it, shockwaves burst outward, unleashing hurricane-force winds.
A sharp pain pierced my heart as, among all those presences, I recognized the face of someone I had recently lost.
Elizabeth looked at me… smiling.
"I see you've recognized someone," he said beneath the crushing weight pressing down on us.
"From your expression, I'd say this is your first time witnessing the March of Souls."
Although his voice reached me muffled, I managed to snap out of the melancholic trance that threatened to consume me, aware that I could carry that pain for the rest of my life if I let it.
Then one final explosion split the heavens. Calm returned, and the pressure bearing down on us vanished completely.
"Now I understand why those villagers knelt," I said, rolling my shoulders to ease the strain. "Remaining standing feels like a sentence carved into the body."
I found no excuse — my body was still weak — so I didn't even react when the elf flicked my forehead with a finger.
"Don't be foolish. That's not why they kneel."
His tone sounded almost like a reprimand, which caught me off guard.
"There are traditions that bind different races together. This is one of them. I assume you've already sensed the power this event holds."
"For a few fleeting moments, you can see those who have died. For many, it's a return to the past… a brief farewell."
When I tried to speak, the air suddenly fled my lungs. I fell backward, bracing my hands against the damp stone, fighting desperately to breathe.
Though the burning had lessened, my body wasn't strong enough to remain upright for long. That weakness reminded me — bitterly — of my days as an infant.
"I'll leave you to rest. I promise I'll tell you everything tomorrow."
He didn't give me time to respond. He leapt from the cave toward the forest, and for a few moments the only sound was the snapping of branches before his presence vanished entirely.
Fearing wolves might mistake me for prey, I staggered back into the cave… only to be drenched by the waterfall.
The cold struck me immediately.
Pathetically, I dragged myself toward a nearby rock and leaned against it, wrapping my arms around my own body.
I had done everything wrong from the very beginning. I knew it. The thrill of being given a second chance — even if this was, in truth, my first life — had completely clouded my judgment.
I was so dazzled by it all that I grew accustomed to expecting things to be handed to me. That was my greatest mistake.
If I wasn't mistaken, I was now in Calaris — our agricultural city. I would heed Matías' words.
I will live knowing there are no second chances.