The sunlight is deep.
The sound of the wind howls.
Above the ruins.
Ian stood in front of the stone steps, draped in his Flying Cloak. He looked back at the group of black-robed wizards; everyone shrank back except for Zeus, who stood at the front, his expression stern and unmoved.
He was holding firm.
His body had an obvious instinctive reaction, but he suppressed his reflexes. As a leader, his dignity compelled him to appear fearless in front of his people.
"I must go."
Ian's tone was calm.
"The journey ahead is not suitable for you."
He spoke with a sense of emotion.
"We never said we wanted to go with you; we can't wait for you to leave and not return." Zeus spoke honestly, lightly tapping the top of his scepter's Crystal Ball with his fingers.
Perhaps this was Zeus's way of easing his inner emotions.
"..."
Ian didn't much like such honesty; he preferred the treatment he received at Hogwarts, where even students who disliked him would pretend to be reluctant.
Slytherin students might be bad, but they knew how to flatter Ian too.
"For you, your future has many paths to follow; the first thing you should learn is the ways of the world." Ian advised the group of ancient humans who had yet to become the Gods.
"After you leave, we will hide. We hope you won't come back to find us, even if the Raven completely corrupts your heart, and we hope you remember the help we gave you."
Zeus was as honest as ever, sincerely voicing the unified hopes of the entire tribe. He successfully drove Ian to silence again with a single sentence.
"Not even saying nice words to me, and still trying to PUA me?"
Ian was extremely speechless.
After a moment of silence, he finally became exasperated.
"We truly hope you never return." Zeus continued, his voice low and with a hint of a prayer: "If you are truly from the future, that would be great."
He finished speaking.
Beside him.
A woman of stunning beauty chimed in.
"Yes, that way, you'll take the Raven back to your own time and plague the living beings of that era... which would be undoubtedly good for us."
She was the future Goddess.
Honest just like her husband.
"None of you thought that even if I leave, this era still has its own Raven?" Ian didn't know much about time.
But he had seen plenty of related movies.
"The Raven is a being that transcends time; it will always exist in one space-time. If it perishes in your era, it will only remain there."
Zeus previously seemed not to have disclosed all the information. This statement made Ian frown slightly, surprised in his heart, but outwardly he feigned worry.
"If I go and find a way to solve the Raven crisis, wouldn't that be good for you too?" Ian hoped Zeus would reveal more information.
However.
"Perhaps."
Zeus didn't believe that Ian could resolve the Raven issue.
He was somewhat perfunctory.
"Good luck."
Zeus said softly.
His tone was like sending off a ticking bomb that could destroy the world at any moment. Clearly, he wanted this plague known as Ian to leave quickly, so he could lead his tribe to rebuild their home.
"Alas~"
Ian could only spin around and leave using his Flying Cloak. He took one last look at the baby Fierce Goddess, then disappeared into the sky.
The air returned to silence.
The wind whispered through the stone pillars.
As if speaking softly of something.
"Do you think he will succeed?"
The future Goddess asked her husband.
Zeus slowly put away his scepter.
"That has nothing to do with us."
His response was quite light-hearted. Even now, he displayed the short-sightedness he inherited from the Titan, perhaps sowing the seeds for the future Twilight of the Gods.
Of course.
This group of people still had a long way to go before they reached that era. They had witnessed the divine might Ian wielded, now they only found a direction to move forward.
It was incredibly glorious.
But destined to be the wrong direction.
...
Ian flew for a long time using his Flying Cloak.
The shell from Zeus was constantly guiding him.
"It doesn't show the remaining distance, poor design."
Ian found this ancient navigation somewhat challenging to use, not knowing how long he needed to fly, and the Flying Cloak, slightly rudimentary in craftsmanship, wasn't particularly fast—if the navigation led him to the other side of Earth, who knows how long it would take to fly there.
"I'll have to rely on my Animagus form."
Standing at the edge of a cliff, below him a deep abyss, and in the distance, an endless primeval forest.
Unable to even imagine what the destination looked like, he could not use Apparition or the Raven's teleportation ability to reach the Titans' ancestral land directly.
"Seems like I'll have to fly over."
He closed his eyes.
Feeling the power of the Raven within him.
Black feathers emerged from beneath his skin, his arms stretched wide, transforming into broad wings. His bones made a slight cracking sound, his body twisted and shrank, and finally, a jet-black raven took flight.
Soaring into the sky.
By this time, night had fallen.
In the sky, stars dotted the skyline, the Milky Way slanted across the horizon, like a flowing stream of light across the heavens. Ian, transformed into a raven, glided gracefully through the high sky, wings lightly flapping, tearing through the silence.