The wind howled fiercely at the northern edge of the continent, carrying a chill that felt capable of freezing blood. In the expanse of dead land known as the Black Wasteland, the concept of day and night seemed blurred. The sky never radiated the color blue; gray and black clouds rolled in suffocating eternity, blocking the sunlight from a territory long abandoned by the gods' blessings.
Bell Cranel, a fourteen-year-old youth still wearing a School District uniform for his disguise, walked in silence. His pair of ruby-red eyes stared intently ahead. In this place, there was not a single sign of natural life. The forest of black rocks they passed through looked like the skeletal remains of a long-dead earth.
"Leon-sensei," Bell called out, breaking the roar of the wind. His gaze remained fixed on the bleak horizon. "Did you know the heroes from the past? Those from the Zeus and Hera Familias?"
Leon Vardenburg, the 'Knight of Knights' walking at the vanguard, did not answer immediately. The man, radiating the charisma and absolute power of a Level 7 adventurer, continued walking with his knight's cloak fluttering gently.
"Of course I knew them," Leon finally answered, his voice sounding heavy and laden with memories. "In my youth, when I was still filled with ego and anger, I challenged them. I tried to prove myself by fighting those heroes. And in the end, I saw for myself how their light shone brightest when facing the absolute despair of the Leviathan."
Leon turned slightly, looking at Bell over his shoulder. "They failed to defeat the Final Calamity. However, the glow of resolve they left behind—the Afterglow of those heroes—still remains. The one who first etched the history of that resistance was the Great Hero Albert, but the Zeus and Hera Familias were the next torchbearers. Now, the world needs a new torch."
Bell fell silent, pondering the weight of those words. The epic tales of heroes he had only ever heard from his grandfather's stories now felt so real, pressing down on his shoulders.
Their journey finally brought the three of them to the edge of a rocky plateau. As they reached the top of the cliff, Bell's breath caught in his throat. Nina Tulle, standing beside him, unconsciously gripped the hem of her coat with trembling hands.
Before them, at the edge of the Black Wasteland, towered a giant tornado that pierced through to the highest limits of the sky.
The storm was so massive and beyond reason. Its scale stretched vast like a natural fortress capable of swallowing the entire city of Orario whole. The vortex of gray wind mixed with purple flashes spun at a terrifying speed, creating a sound distortion that sounded like thousands of screams of despair.
"That is the Spirit Storm," Leon said, breaking their silence. "The storm that seals the Black Dragon, preventing it from leaving this place."
Bell swallowed hard. He could feel the existential pressure radiating from the giant vortex.
"That giant seal was created at the end of the ancient era, right at the beginning of the gods' descent," Leon continued explaining, his eyes glaring sharply at the eternal storm. "After the Black Dragon lost one of its eyes to the Great Hero Albert's slash and flew away from the battlefield, the monster issued an absolute 'command'. It summoned all dragons in the Lower World to gather in this valley."
"For... what?" Nina asked in a hoarse voice.
"The Gods concluded that the summons aimed to gather 'food' to regenerate its destroyed eye," Leon answered without hesitation, making Nina's face grow even paler. "When most of the dragons in the world had responded to its call and gathered in this place, a Great Spirit sacrificed herself. She released her entire essence to create this wind seal, trapping all the dragons inside, including their king."
Bell stared at the giant vortex with a mix of awe and horror. The territory inside the tornado was known as the Dragon Valley. A prison for the apocalypse itself.
"The Black Dragon sleeps soundly inside there," Leon explained again. "However, every time the monster lets out a 'snore', its resonance creates a distortion on the storm wall. The spatial rift created by that snore allows smaller dragons to escape, bringing threat and destruction to the southern territories."
To hold back that constant leakage, the School District bore an incredibly heavy duty. Leon pointed toward the lower boundary of the storm, although they were too far away to see the details. "A special barrier device—an artificial magic net made by the School District—is installed circularly at the base of the tornado to strengthen and maintain the seal. That is humanity's frontline boundary that must not fall."
They stood on the cliff, keeping a safe distance of several kilometers from the storm vortex, so their presence wouldn't trigger a reaction from the entities within.
Leon then turned his body, looking at Nina. "Nina, take out the magic device and the crystal ball from the backpack."
The half-elf girl nodded quickly, trying to suppress her fear. She knelt and began unpacking their supply bag.
While Nina was busy assembling the magic device on the rocky ground, Bell's gaze lifted again toward the dark clouds above the tornado. He narrowed his eyes. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw a teal glow—a pure bluish-green—blending and blinking among the gray clouds. The light felt foreign in a place like this.
Am I just imagining things? Bell thought, closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head.
"Our battle starts now," Leon said, breaking Bell's reverie.
Without the slightest warning, Leon Vardenburg moved. His movements were so fast that the wind around him split in two. Leon swung his sword straight at Bell's head.
Swish!
The sword did not injure Bell at all. With the precision of a master, the tip of Leon's blade merely scooped off the wig that had been disguising Bell's identity as "Lapi Flemish". The object flew into the air, freeing Bell's snow-white hair, which immediately fluttered in the strong northern wind.
At that exact same second, the crystal ball Nina had just prepared shone brightly. A straight beam of light shot from the crystal toward the sky. Bell instantly realized what that transmission light meant. Their position, the location of the Dragon Valley, and his true face were now being broadcast live through the Divine Mirror network. In Orario and in the School District, millions of eyes were now watching him.
Leon drove his greatsword into the rocky ground, folded his arms, and looked at Bell with a warrior's challenging smile. "Our battle here will determine the final victor between Orario and the School District."
This was the long-awaited climax. The peak match of the Orariopiad. Bell Cranel, the hero of the new generation, facing off one-on-one against Leon Vardenburg, the strongest knight.
Bell took a deep breath. He would not run. He could not back down. His hand moved steadily, drawing the black Hestia Knife from his waist, while his left hand was slightly raised, ready to chant magic. A white glow slowly began to envelop his body, accompanied by the soft chime of the Argonaut Skill beginning to charge.
Leon raised his sword, his eyes glaring sharply, ready to dash.
However, at the exact second when the tip of Bell's shoe pressed against the ground to launch forward—the world around the youth suddenly shattered.
Not shattered by a physical explosion, but by a soundless distortion. The air around Bell suddenly twisted, like ripples of water crashing against glass. The colors around him faded instantly, stripped from reality into monochromatic. A strange resonance—like the echo of a ticking clock clashing with the sound of cracking glass—rang in his head.
In the next second, the vacuum pull of another dimension sucked Bell's body in without resistance.
To Leon, Nina, and the millions of spectators holding their breath in front of the Divine Mirror, Bell Cranel seemed to be swallowed by nothingness. The white-haired youth vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye. Leon stood frozen with his sword swung in empty air, his eyes widening in disbelief as he witnessed the absolute anomaly that canceled the final match of the Orariopiad.
Bell fell quite hard, rolling twice on the rough rocky surface before he planted his feet and braced his body with his palms.
He immediately sprang up, the Hestia Knife still gripped tightly in front of him. His wary eyes swept the surroundings quickly, prepared for an attack.
"Leon-sensei?! Nina?!" Bell shouted.
There was no answer. His voice seemed muffled by a gripping, absolute silence.
The same gray sky still hung above him. The lines of the Black Wasteland's dead earth were still beneath his feet. However, Leon and Nina had disappeared as if they never existed. The crystal device and the light of the Divine Mirror were also nowhere to be seen.
Bell didn't know that the second he stepped forward earlier, an impossible collision of realities had pulled him. In his original timeline, the spatial distortions caused by the Black Dragon's "snores" often created minor anomalous rifts. But this time, the rift resonated fatally with something from another dimension.
Far in the past timeline of a world whose history had been altered—exactly fifteen years ago—Barbatos utilized the absolute Authority of Time, Temporal Severance, to slice through the laws of reality and banish the Black Dragon. The god-level power of the Archon was so massive that it accidentally tore the boundary between parallel dimensions. The tear sought the nearest anchor point possessing the resonance of the dragon's storm, and inadvertently connected directly to the dragon's distortion in Bell's canon timeline.
It was the vacuum pull from that time slash that sucked Bell across the chasm between timelines.
Bell stepped forward, trying to maintain his composure and piece together logic for this situation. He decided to move slightly northward, intending to find out if his friends had accidentally been thrown toward the border of the Dragon Valley.
However, as he gazed toward the northern horizon, his eyes widened in shock.
The giant tornado touching the sky—the storm fortress he had just seen towering a few seconds ago—was gone without a trace.
There was no longer a colossal wind vortex. There was no deafening roar of a storm. Instead, the Dragon Valley territory was now only enveloped by a strange time distortion. It looked like transparent water ripples frozen in the air, stretching across to cover the horizon's boundary. The absence of the Spirit Storm that was supposed to seal the place further shook Bell's common sense.
Despite being stricken with confusion, his instincts forced him to keep moving forward toward the boundary of the anomaly to seek answers.
However, an absolute strangeness soon occurred. Every time Bell ran hundreds of meters toward the transparent distortion, his vision suddenly blurred. The scenery spun for a moment, and in the blink of an eye, he found himself standing back at his starting point.
Bell gritted his teeth. He tried again, this time exerting his agility and speed to the fullest. He dashed like a white flash. The result remained the same. His vision blurred, and he landed back in the exact same position.
The laws of time around him absolutely rejected his presence. It was as if there were an invisible wall cutting off the present from the area, trapping every step inside in an endless time loop. The Dragon Valley had been exiled from the circulation of the world's time flow.
Realizing that forcing his way north was sheer futility, Bell slowly sheathed his knife. He caught his breath. There was no panic on his face, only the tactical evaluation of an experienced adventurer. He gazed toward the stretch of continent in the southern region. The compass of his instincts told him there was only one place at the end of this world that could give him information about this bizarre situation.
"Orario," Bell muttered calmly.
He turned his body, pulled his dull hood back up to cover his head from the dusty wind, and began walking across the dead land, leaving the mystery in the north behind.
Bell lost track of time during this long, tedious journey. It might have been days, or perhaps weeks. The landscape around him gradually changed. The expanse of cold, dead land gradually transitioned into a vast plain. Wild grasslands and rocky hills began to appear, signaling that he was getting closer to the borders of civilization.
The twilight sun cast a warm reddish-orange hue over the main overland route stretching straight southward. Bell's footsteps felt a bit weary. His cloak and combat attire were now covered in a thin layer of dust from the long journey. Even so, his posture remained upright, and his pair of ruby-red eyes kept staring straight ahead calmly and clearly.
His footsteps halted when his senses caught a familiar sound. The sound of heavy wooden wheels grinding against the rocky ground, followed by the soft whinny of a draft horse.
At the intersection of the main route ahead of him, a horse carriage rolled along at a steady pace, moving to cross the path heading toward Orario.
On the driver's seat sat a large man in pitch-black armor. The man pulled the reins, stopping the horse carriage just a few meters away from where Bell stood.
"Hey there, kid," the giant man called out, breaking the twilight silence. His voice was incredibly heavy, deep, and filled with absolute authority. "This overland route gets dangerous once night falls. Where do you hail from and where are you heading, walking all alone?"
The figure beneath the hood looked up slightly. "I intend to go to Orario," Bell answered. His voice sounded calm and polite.
The man stared at Bell for a moment. The veteran's gray eyes scanned the youth, as if his combat instincts were specifically measuring the depth of power hidden beneath the dull cloak. After a moment of silence, the large man finally nodded.
"Orario is still very far from here. Hop in, I'll give you a ride since our destinations happen to be the same."
"Thank you very much," Bell replied, bowing his head politely.
Bell walked steadily, climbing onto the back of the carriage intended for exterior luggage. The space was quite roomy. Stretching his tired legs, he slowly lowered his hood, letting the twilight breeze caress his white hair.
"My name is Bell Cranel," he said softly from the back, a customary etiquette of introduction he practiced.
However, before the large man on the driver's seat could reply, a sudden movement from inside the enclosed carriage cabin made Bell's instincts twitch.
The partition curtain was pulled and thrown open roughly. Someone leaped out from inside the cabin with an incredibly light movement—as if ignoring all laws of gravity—and landed soundlessly right in front of him.
Bell flinched slightly in surprise. His eyes widened as he stared at the petite androgynous figure before him in utter confusion. Bell's hand reflexively moved down and readied near his waist, but he held it tightly when his instincts realized that this figure emitted no malicious intent or murderous aura whatsoever.
Instead, the pure teal eyes of the figure shone brightly. The petite entity stared straight at Bell with absolute shock, as if his common sense had just been turned upside down.
Bell remained silent. He stared back at the mysterious god before him. Soon, his heart would be filled with a sea of questions, standing under the twilight sky of a past he did not yet know, one that would leave him astounded.
An anomaly of destiny where this encounter would change the trajectory of the world forever.
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P - Gem_Blanks
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