Skyler struggled with every ounce of strength, but Fergo’s dimensional cage was tighter than any shackle could ever hope to be. Each time he fought back, the bind only constricted further. Cold sweat seeped along his hairline.
The friends who once fought alongside him lay scattered and motionless, roots withering without water, too far for help to ever reach… even hope couldn’t follow that far.
Before the Tree of Life withered down to its final root, Gaia unleashed her last surge of divine light—the radiance of a savior—igniting a fleeting spark of hope inside his chest.
The ground beneath his feet quaked. Stone slabs cracked apart. Radiance surged upward from beneath the earth, sweeping away everything—sound, body, and consciousness—until all drowned in the blinding current of sight.
— Flash —
When sound faded, Skyler blinked into a realm of particles and void. His friends glowed faint, crystalline, stars scattered across an endless cosmos. Their hands shimmered—glass under a torch beam. The world warped into a translucent tunnel, streaming faster than time could breathe. And then he realized—it wasn’t the universe racing forward. It was him.
He caught sight of Roxy and Zoe drifting close, their forms stretched and wavering, rippling waves across invisible water. Their eyes met, trading everything—fear, anger, hope—without a single word.
Then it struck—an image slammed into their minds, lightning splitting a skull. Fergo’s laughter echoed from the wormhole on the moon. His soul tore free, slipping into the void, drifting toward Eden unseen, without warning. A silent cataclysm.
With his malignant spirit riding the tide—black, venomous—the Rippers surged. An army exploding forth, a rabid swarm unstoppable, tearing at that world with frenzy. The vision bled into Skyler’s mind—he saw the day he first met Valentine. The past replayed itself before his memory.
This was the tragedy of twelve years ago, the one Emilia had spoken of. His jaw clenched; cold crept through his chest, colder than the cosmos itself.
That instant, all Eden convulsed. Screams tore the sky. Every scene was a horror film on repeat inside Roxy’s mind. Her legs locked. She swallowed against a dry throat. Her heart squeezed tight. She remembered this fear. It was the shadow of the past dragging itself into the present.
Skyler turned and saw the fracture in her—someone robbed of home and childhood so violently no one could ever guess what she had endured.
In the aftermath of chaos, Fergo waited, patient, to choose a vessel. He never chose at random. There was one child marked: bloodline, gifted potential. He cultivated the darkness within that kid for years, feeding nightmare upon nightmare until the victim was ripe to be hollowed into a shell. And that child was—
“…Len!” Zoe’s voice cracked, trembling. Awe burst open inside her, her pulse breaking rhythm.
It was brutal clarity. Fergo had chosen Len because they was Trinity’s own blood. Another layer to his perfect scheme. If such knowledge were ever used for good, the world might have advanced a thousandfold.
The puzzle in Roxy’s mind snapped together faster. As time flickered past, she saw Fergo seizing Len’s body, biding years collecting the Tree’s secrets, waiting for the one moment—the ritual of the Chosen.
And the day came. Gaia’s power flowed through the body of a young girl—Ellie. The parasite in Len’s flesh watched with hunger of a wolf beneath sheep’s wool. They knew instantly she was the key.
He did not hesitate. He took her.
“You bastard!” Roxy’s fist clenched until her knuckles went white.
The reel of fate spun faster than film devoured by a crank. Fergo ripped through dimensions, carrying Ellie three centuries ahead—to a world where he believed no one could ever reach.
“That’s Cosmic City! …In the future!?” Skyler rasped, mind hammering—under the wheels of a train.
Fergo erased and rewrote Ellie’s childhood. Built her a new life in that designed world. Waiting for the day Gaia’s power would awaken. He gave her a new name—
“Zoe!” Roxy shouted, her cry slamming the air until it echoed back at them.
The pink-haired girl snapped open, a surge threatening to burst from within. Her lips trembled. “What… does that mean?” She hugged herself tight as old and new memories tore each other apart, pulling her toward the verge of splitting in two.
There was no time for shock—the vision kept unfolding.
Fergo abandoned Zoe there, convinced that a sealed portal and the gulf between two universes were more than enough to keep the truth buried forever.
Sorry… he had underestimated the protocols of fate.
When Fergo returned to Eden to review every piece on the board, there was one person he never stopped watching—Roxy. The woman whose mind moved fast and played beyond the rules without ever bragging about being clever. People of that kind were dangerous for anyone arrogant enough to believe they owned the board.
He had learned that lesson once already.
Roxy had cost him a critical piece—the Epsilon Firewall breached, the plan collapsed.
So Fergo, living inside Len’s body, reshuffled his strategy—layer upon layer, never trusting the future.
Until the day Roxy walked out of Gaia’s cave with Zoe at her side.
That sight—the red and the pink standing together—was a one-in-a-million accident, a probability so far below zero that even running scenarios in his head a hundred times a day wouldn’t have found it.
From that moment, the balance of the game tilted.
Fergo recalculated: Roxy had to be erased from the board. Zoe had to return to his hands. The truth of their bond—red and pink—could never be allowed to surface. This was the only leak he would never accept.
He reached for a classic method: the assassin’s move. He struck Emilia in secret at the moon base, hijacked her body as another piece, and tried to push Roxy into a blunder.
But that plan flipped as well—Zoe leapt in to take the hit. Worse than a plasma surge splitting the board. What should have ended neatly twisted into a reversal so sharp the player himself nearly bit his tongue.
Even so, Skyler and Roxy misread the board, believing everything was Trinity’s scheme.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Fergo seized the moment, adding fuel with only a few words, tossing blame into their laps: Emilia attacked on the moon, the base destroyed.
Eden’s guardian snapped, feral and uncontrollable—a rabid dog set loose on the world. Fergo knew the moment Trinity’s heart fractured, the grand plan would be within reach.
His true aim wasn’t just erasing Roxy—it was to claim Trinity’s darkness for himself. He let both sides tear each other apart, waited for exhaustion to dull his enemy, and then lunged to seize the body at the perfect moment.
Everything flowed along his design, tighter than a card deck stacked by the dealer himself.
And when the Tree of Life restored Zoe—
Fergo finally dove in, seizing Trinity’s vessel at last.
This time, the phantom piece laughed coldly at a truth no one could stop…
Skyler and the others dropped to the ground, bodies the limp avatars of a reset mid-game. The Gaia cave fell silent.
Erwin, Roxy’s father, stood still, saying nothing.
Skyler blinked rapidly, lungs heaving as if he had just broken the surface of an ice-cold pool.
Everyone seemed safe—no bruises, no scars from the war with Fergo. Even the knots in their chests had loosened. That’s when it hit him: because they had returned from the future, the brutal battle hadn’t happened yet.
But there was something else that stunned him even more.
The one Roxy had bent the universe searching for… was Zoe, the girl standing before her now.
Both froze—spacing apart, duelists in a coliseum. The pull between them was so sharp no one dared move first. Their glances wavered: a flicker of a smile on trembling lips, a glint of tears behind lifted chins.
A hand twitched forward, then drew back—because whoever revealed their heart first would be the one who lost.
Erwin stood in silence behind them. When he finally saw Zoe’s face clearly, his breath caught. Those eyes had never changed. The hair that once tangled under the dinner table, the lips that once sounded out the first words from the same book as Roxy’s…
“Ellie…” The name slipped from him in a slow tremor.
Zoe turned to him, her whole frame quivering. She swallowed hard before whispering back, “Papa…”
“You’ve… grown so much,” Erwin said, stepping forward, placing a hand on her shoulder. The granite mask of his face collapsed in an instant as he pulled her into an embrace.
In that moment, every memory cascaded through the father’s mind—floodwater breaking loose.
Roxy bit her lip, choking back words she couldn’t bring herself to say.
Emilia, watching, only nodded softly. She had heard the story of Ellie countless times, always believing she would one day witness this moment. She leaned toward Skyler, whispering:
“Our wedding… who will you choose as your bridesmaid?”
The blue-haired boy smiled weakly, at a loss for words.
I think I’m starting to believe this myself now…
Then another voice cut the air, cold and merciless, cutting through the moment without care:
“I didn’t mean to interrupt—but Gaia is dying.”
They spun around.
Trinity stepped out from the shadows, silent, solemn.
What the—when did he get here!?
Skyler jolted. Roxy staggered back a step. Emilia lowered her head fully, hand already resting on her gun. Len shifted their weight forward, then straightened—body tense, waiting for the general’s command.
Erwin locked eyes with Trinity. No words passed between them, but their gazes burned with the ashes of memories—blood on snow, a gun in hand, and a vow sworn over a brother-in-arms’ grave.
Trinity stood unmoving, face unreadable. He blinked once, slowly, as if swallowing thousands of corpses inside his chest. The air between them thickened, heavy with wounds too deep for anyone to name.
This wasn’t just a meeting of two leaders in the present. It was the wreckage of the era before Eden—the genesis of a world no one dared recount, the past no one truly knew.
“Lord Trinity…” Roxy bowed low. “I apologize… for ever misunderstanding you.”
“…Everyone makes mistakes,” Trinity replied evenly. Then his head shifted toward Zoe.
“I’ve never bowed to anyone,” the girl declared.
“Ellysia Starcrest!” Erwin barked her full name with such force it made every spine in the cave straighten.
Zoe let out a subtle sigh. “…Fine. Just this once.” She bent forward reluctantly, a shallow bow weighted with defiance.
Trinity’s lips curved into the faintest smile, almost invisible. He understood exactly who she had inherited that stubbornness from.
Skyler turned back toward Gaia—the Tree of Life in the cavern now brittle, more bone than bark, as if it had lain buried for a thousand years. Some roots powdered into dust, leaves sagging on the edge of breaking with a dying breath.
The chosen girl stepped forward and sank to her knees before Gaia. The trembling in her eyes was gone; serenity took its place. She closed them. A faint luminescence breathed from her skin, flowing into her fingertips. Particles drifted into the bark. Chimes, delicate as crystal bells, rippled through the air. In that moment, she was royalty.
When the radiance faded, she stepped back into herself. No aura lingered—yet her spirit was sharper, steadier than ever.
“The only way to save Gaia is to stop Fergo.”
Zoe paused, the silence hanging heavy. “But Gaia doesn’t have the strength to send us anywhere right now. We’ve got three hours to restore her power. And the only way… is to find the Seed of the Universe—the Primeval Atom.”
The air froze. Everyone fell silent.
“And where the hell do you get something like that? I’ve never even heard of it until today!” Emilia demanded.
Skyler pushed up invisible glasses, a ridiculous yet blazing aura bursting free—the full nerd aura igniting, chalkboard behind him in spirit flames. He blurted fast, words spilling in a flood: “The universe began at a single point—so dense, so full of energy no law of physics could touch it. We call it the Primeval Atom, the moment before the Big Bang.”
His hands carved diagrams in the air, every motion a lecture. “After the explosion, everything unfolded in less than a heartbeat—quarks coupling into protons, neutrons, electrons spinning into nuclei. Photons streamed through because atoms didn’t exist yet. Matter and antimatter clashed, vanished into pure energy… but some survived—”
He stopped, breath catching, then hammered the words out: “The Primeval Atom is the seed of all creation. Somewhere, its power must still exist.”
Emilia rolled her eyes. “Sorry, love, but this isn’t physics class.” Her voice cut cleaner than his explanation.
Skyler froze, laughed dryly—the sound of a student realizing he’d just lost points for showing off.
Zoe shook her head slowly, the answer flickering in her posture. “No… the Seed of the Universe isn’t just science. It’s not a bedtime story, not a myth. It existed before gods. Creation itself hides inside it.” She lowered her tone. “And it could be anywhere—in either universe.”
Emilia crossed her arms, brows drawn tight. “Sounds more like a fairy tale for the desperate. Anywhere in two universes? How the hell are we supposed to find that?”
“I don’t know… I just feel—” Zoe cut off. Something shifted behind the roots. Time slowed.
What emerged was a unicorn—its coat white, streaked with silver sheen, catching Gaia’s dim green glow. Its horn stretched long, sculpted as though to sign destiny itself. It stepped forward into the shadows, regal, every gaze understood.
“See! I told you I’d seen a unicorn!” The girl bounced, radiant with joy. She ran to it, arms thrown around its neck as if reuniting with an old childhood friend. The creature lowered its head in answer, a wordless language binding the two.
She paused only a moment, then turned back, delivery clear as a bell.
“Bianca will lead us.”
The words broke the suffocating air.
Skyler stood frozen, throat desert-dry, gulping harder than the day his mom scolded him for burning down the kitchen wall. He had never imagined this in his wildest equations. At this point, even if God Himself walked into the cavern, it wouldn’t surprise him more.
And so, the burden of the cosmos landed square on their shoulders. They had no choice but to follow Bianca. Because if they stopped now…
There might never be another chance to start again.
