Anastasia floats in space beside a black hole. The light in a whitish color forms a disk-type ring around the black hole, being absorbed by the event horizon.
The intense gravitational force of the event horizon pulls everything inside it. Anastasia is still calmly in space while staring at the black hole.
She folded her hands and narrowed her eyes around the black hole to find out the presence of an unknown presence but couldn't catch a single clue.
Hmm, time got slower in the event horizon, and if anything fell inside of it, it would never return, and nor can any maiden sense any presence of the thing which fell inside of it…
Anastasia takes her right hand out and points it toward the black hole. She thinks for a moment before closing her fist calmly and slowly.
As the first gets closer, the spinning whitish ring around the black hole gets slower and smaller.
And the moment the fist got completely closed, the black hole's whitish ring stopped completely and got shorter than normal.
The time in this light and cosmic dust tells a whole different story. An accretion disk is completely made of dust, a leftover of the universe. If I peek in, I'll find out what happened in the past.
Anastasia closed her eyes and held her fist tightly, and in a second, she started becoming that dust. And now she is part of that dust, but with consciousness and power to return.
Meanwhile, on Naiadine's side…
The dark void seems empty; there wasn't a thing in it, just darkness all over. Naiadine seems completely alone in all of this endless void.
Never imagine timelines can be this creepy. Now, where to start… Hmm, what's that?
There was nothing in front of her eyes, but it seemed she was able to see something in the empty void.
She goes forward a little in the void and stops. Afterward, she moves her hand in the void, and surprisingly, her hand gets inside the void, as if it were a waterfall of darkness.
A fall of darkness—no, it's not darkness nor void, it's… It's time flowing in every single possible timeline—past, future, present—all at once… So that's why they sent me here.
As she was thinking in her mind, she suddenly felt the immense weight of past, future, and present from different timelines.
She saw past, future, and present at once, not only her own but all of the cosmos, and from different timelines.
What was that… a million memories ripple through my mind at once… it hurts too much…
She screams out of pain after getting hit by that many different memories of the timeline at once. She takes her hand out immediately and feels dizzy and pain in her head.
After calming herself for a short time, she put her hand on her head while processing all of the different memories she had just seen.
I have lived billions of years in these timelines' memories… but whose voice was that I heard in the end…
She turned around to reach out to the portal she came from, but the moment she turned around, that portal wasn't there.
I'm stuck again… And in those timelines, I was stuck in this place for, like, twenty different timelines for decades… Anastasia, be safe… He'll hunt you down.
In Anastasia's side…
The cosmic dust moves at insane speed while Anastasia floats near the flowing dust, staring at the moving dust.
I meant to check Threads of Fate, and here I am peeking in memories of cosmic dust and junk of dead stars and planets.
She was about to touch the cosmic dust but suddenly stopped, and she started thinking; her finger rested on her cheek, and her cat-type yellow pupil was still on the flowing dust.
Wait, this dust and light are from other places, not here, so checking in them is useless… I should go check threads of fate instead.
All right then, hmm, let's see who was here 300,000 years ago.
She closed her eyes and put the palms of both hands together. She closed her legs mid-space, and after a short time, she slowly started separating them from each other.
As she separates both of her hands from each other, the place around her kind of feels like it's changing. The particles in space start to disappear.
The space starts changing; its dark void color gets even darker. Everything from the previous space got removed, and green threads flowing infinitely started showing.
The shiny stars, which seemed like dots in the dark space, disappeared, leaving the space dark. The light shone bright from the threads but then got absorbed by the dark.
Anastasia opened her eyes while leaving both her hands free. She set herself properly and turned around toward threads of fate.
She reached toward one of the threads out of the infinite and touched it. She closed her eyes and felt the memories in threads. After a short time, she let it go and moved toward the next one.
And just like that, she checks many different threads out of an infinite number. After checking through 36 threads, she started thinking while moving toward the next one.
If I keep going like this, it'll take me forever. I know that time is stopped for me, but I will feel the time I pass here… Ohh, wait, I have an idea…
She reached out to a thread that was flowing and glowing at the bottom of many threads. She holds that flowing thread and looks at her palm.
It's not a timeline; it's a fateline I'm peeking in, so even if I mix them all, it won't affect being in the universe. Time is everything that is happening, but fate is the thing that can happen if our choice makes it happen.
Timelines are different from fatelines; time flows while fate is already written, and still, it's just about what choice a being makes, so it chose that fate.
She was about to go up a little while holding that thread when she suddenly felt a powerful force, which was trying to enter this space.
It seems like Hyacinth and Death's power combined… Why are their powers forcing reality to glitch out open here…?I had to find out where it is coming from.
She moved firmly toward the direction the force was coming from. She keeps feeling that force at a high level, but then suddenly she stops, not by her own will, but it's like something is stopping her.
What's happening… this presence, it's the same as what we are finding… Why is it coming from inside this space? No single presence nor being can enter this place… Then how…?
She moved her head toward her right and saw only endless dark space, while threads of fate flowed infinitely in space.
As the seconds pass in that space, Anastasia feels that presence closer to herself but is unable to see it. She closed her eyes and calmed herself.
And after calming herself, she started focusing on that presence and tried to find out where it was. She opened her eyes, and with a blink of an eye, she moved around while summoning a spear in her hand.
And she hit in space; at first sight, it seemed she just moved her spear in the air, but after she pulled her spear a little backward, a dark, glowing orb-type thing appeared.
"I found you…"
That dark, glowing presence didn't act, nor did it move; it just kept being stuck in the spear. The dark, glowing presence starts taking over Anastasia's spear; she, without a second thought, pushes the spear even deeper so that it comes out from the other side.
But even after getting stabbed through the spear, that dark presence kept taking over the spear, and then Anastasia let go of her spear. And the moment she let it go, it vanished, leaving that presence with a hole in it.
The black presence fills the hole in no time and tries to slip from the side, but Anastasia takes out her spear again and again and stabs the presence.
"Ohh no, you can't… You can't move when you are stabbed. Hmm, interesting."
The black presence again starts observing the spear, and this time, before Anastasia leaves it, the spear vanishes and becomes part of the dark presence.
Anastasia flinched for a moment before summoning one more spear in her hand. That dark presence starts dripping darkness, and it seems like it's taking the form of something.
Anastasia's eyes widen; her yellow cat-type pupil gets smaller with shock as she sees that black presence taking the form of the spear it just absorbed.
But then she lets her emotion go and smiles; she takes the form of being in a fight and points her spear toward that dark presence.
I don't know what kind of power this presence holds; it just wanted a physical thing to take its form so it can fight back… I have to be careful.
The presence seems to be powerful enough, like Anastasia, even if it's just in a spear form. It was dripping with darkness, like blood dripping through a fresh wound.