Chapter 810: A Missing Cycle

A/N

2 chapters combined into 3k chap, I'm happy with how it turned out, enjoy!

Chapter 810: A Missing Cycle

I stared at Kal for a long moment, taking in the familiar lines of his face, the white hair, the blue eyes that had seen more of the world than anyone had a right to see, and I knew I was going to shake his world with what I said next.

"You weren't here last loop," I broke the news to him.

The amusement on Kal’s face faded away and he tilted his head slightly as if wondering if he misheard me or if this was my attempt at humour. "I was here," he said. "I remember the entity devouring my soul. That is not an experience I could forget even if I wanted to, and believe me, I have wanted to."

"That was two loops ago," I said.

Those words brought about a silence that felt heavy to everyone in the room. Laelyn had gone very still near the bookshelves, her hands folded together in front of her, and Beric stood with his arms crossed and his eyes moving between myself and Kal, as for the Rank 8, he didn’t say anything for a while, his eyes looked lost, like they were looking at somewhere faraway.

I realised that he wasn't refusing to respond but was instead doing what he always did, which was process every implication of what that meant before allowing himself to react to it. The problem was that this particular statement had implications that reached back through centuries of accumulated loop memories, and wasn’t an easy pill for anyone to swallow, especially someone who thought they understood the time loop they were in.

"Share the memories with me," he whispered finally.

So I did.

I opened the loop and let him see everything, the arrival in Porvale to find Tomas already dead, the days with Laelyn's caravan playing the role of a servant and listening to academy gossip while I searched for any sign of him, the slow confirmation that no Rank 8 named Kal existed anywhere in that world, and then everything that followed because I had chosen to move forward anyway rather than retreat.

I gave him Beric's awakening, the war, the journey to the Vermilion Vale, the possessed elders descending with their glowing blue eyes, Beric's arms wrapping around a Rank 7 elder in that final terrible moment, the golden avatar I had raised above the Sacred Ring to bring down upon cultivators who were just following orders, and then the tear in the sky, and the eye, and the voice that had called me a world walker as though it had known me for a long time.

Then I gave him the worst part, which was the detonation, the continent turning to ash, the world rewinding, and the entity's parting words about how the reserves were nearly spent and how one or two loops remained at most before the world became its property.

And then I gave him the little bit of hope that we had left to cling onto - the prophecy.

When it was done, Kal sat very still in the chair behind the desk, his hands clutching his knees, his eyes focused on something that wasn't in the room with us. The colour had drained from his face.

I had seen Kal surprised before, or as close to surprised as a man of his experience and cultivation level ever allowed himself to appear, but I had never seen him pale like this, and watching it happen now was strange because it forced me to remember that underneath the centuries of accumulated tactical brilliance and the Rank 8 god-like power that made him the single most powerful Lightweaver in this world, there was still a person.

A person who had just learned that his soul being devoured by an entity wasn't the temporary inconvenience of a loop reset that he had always believed it to be but something that had needed an entire cycle to recover from, if it had recovered at all.

"That explains it," he whispered. "I woke at the beginning of this loop with almost no energy. I thought it was an anomaly, something in the loop's reset mechanics that had misfired, but my breakthroughs took three times longer than they have in recent memory and the energy felt wrong, thinner than it should have been."

That didn’t surprise me at all. Just because you’re a time looper, it didn’t mean you were invincible, there was always something that would be able to affect you, or even kill you permanently, that was just the way things went in a cultivation world.

"I wonder," he continued, very slowly, "how many loops I missed before this one. Whether there have been others I never knew about, resets I simply wasn't present for, and I assumed the world was continuing its pattern when it was actually..." He stopped.

I considered the question seriously rather than brushing it aside, because he deserved that. "Maybe there were loops you’ve missed," I said. "But I don't know how you could verify it, and I'm not sure it matters anymore, because we have no more loops to spare."

Kal was quiet for another long moment, and then he nodded, slowly as he tried to absorb what had been revealed to him. As for why he was alive this loop, I wasn’t too sure.

Whether it was my karmic explosion that had freed his soul from the entity's grasp, or whether the soul just needed an entire cycle to reconstitute itself after that particular form of destruction, I genuinely didn’t know, and I didn’t think I would ever find out.

Then again, I guess that didn’t matter anymore because if any of us had our souls devoured or destroyed, that was it, there would be no more resets to absorb the loss and restore what had been taken. This was the real deal, in every sense of that phrase.

It was Lady Laelyn who broke the silence.

"Elder Kal," she said, looking concerned. "My people. Beric, the guards, the driver. Where are they right now?"

The question didn’t surprise me. I had known Laelyn across enough loops to understand that this was the first thing she would ask once the shock settled enough to let her think clearly, because she was someone who counted her people and made sure they were accounted for before she counted anything else.

Kal's attention shifted toward her, and some of the internal distance cleared from his expression as he came back to the room. "They are safe," he said, and he gestured slightly toward the space around us, the study with its shelves and its dark wood desk and its four unremarkable walls. "All of them. I created this space specifically to have this conversation without complications. The caravan, the guards, the horses, everything and everyone who was on that road, they exist in a different painting I made. They are experiencing a very pleasant afternoon and will have no memory of the pause when they return to it."

"They better be fine," Beric said, taking a step forward as his Rank 7 aura flared once again. "I don't think I can fight you. I'm not under any illusions about that. But protecting my people is what I am, and I will put my life on the line for them regardless of what that costs me."

"I believe that," Kal nodded, probably thinking about the scene of Beric sacrificing himself in an explosion to protect Lady Laelyn.

Even though that trick wouldn’t work on a Rank 8 like Kal, a look of respect passed between them. I'd never actually seen the two interact with each other before, across all the loops I'd only watched them occupy completely separate spheres of this world's hierarchy, a Rank 8 Lightweaver and a mortal captain of guards had no particular reason to share a room. Watching them exchange a few sentences and arrive at a mutual recognition was unexpectedly satisfying.

Laelyn’s gaze moved along the shelves, the ceiling, and the walls with a look of wonder. "So none of this is real," she murmured.

"Well, the conversation is real," Kal said. "The rest is construction."

She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, almost to herself, "The Vareyn family has had Lightweavers for many generations. My great-aunt could hold a painting for eight minutes before it began to fray at the edges. My grandmother could create constructs that lasted an hour if she was rested." Her eyes came back to Kal with an awed expression. "None of them could have made something like this."

Kal didn’t respond to that directly, which was his version of accepting a compliment, instead he looked at me. "What you accomplished in that loop without my support," he said, looking almost proud, "is impressive. I have run this world through over a thousand iterations, and I could not have done what you did with the resources you had available."

"I had a great deal of help," I said, and I looked at Beric and Lady Laelyn when I said it, because that was the truth and they both deserved to have it acknowledged.

Kal's attention moved to Beric, and he studied the older soldier for a moment with those calm blue eyes before nodding once, slowly. "This energy," he said, addressing me again rather than Beric, "it comes from your original world, the one that your cultivation draws on?"

"Yes," I said.

"It's very powerful even in this constrained form," Kal said, and I could see him already beginning to calculate, running the numbers on Beric's output against the threats we knew were coming, the way he always did with any new variable.

"I think qi is probably on par with golden sun energy," I said. "Possibly stronger under the right circumstances."

"Maybe that is why you’re able to carry the energy of all three suns simultaneously," he said. "Red, blue, and golden. I have never encountered anyone who could manage even two of those without destroying themselves. As for having all three, no one thought that was possible. Even I never thought it could be done."

"Maybe that's the reason this world keeps choosing me to come back to it," I shrugged.

Kal looked at me for a moment and then nodded. "In that case," he said, "we need to discuss what comes next, because the two suns saw what you did to Lord Kaeven, and the energy you used was unmistakable, especially to them."

I frowned because I'd been aware of this the moment the golden light had left my body on that orchard road.

"I didn't have a choice," I said. "Kaeven was already writing the calligraphy. Another millisecond and he would have finished it, and I'd have been very dead in his hedgerow, and this entire loop would have collapsed at the first obstacle. Between being killed by a Rank 6 lord and defending myself with the only technique powerful enough to end it quickly, it wasn't a difficult decision for me to make."

"I understand," Kal said. "And I'm not saying you made the wrong call. I'm saying we need to factor the consequence into our planning, because the Blue Sun and the Red Sun both have intelligence behind them, and now that intelligence knows something new about what you are, they’ll be keeping an eye on you."

I held back a sigh.

That was true. I wouldn’t be able to enter either academy again like I did in previous loops.

But before I could figure out what our next steps were, Beric made a sound that was close to a grunt of agreement.

"A rank six elder and you dropped him in one strike," he grumbled. "Boy, you carry a Rank Four aura, that's what my senses tell me, that's what everyone in this world reads when they look at you, and then something like that happens. I served the Vareyn family for decades. I thought I understood what power looked like, but you’re something else."

I rubbed the back of my neck, because I always found this particular subject somewhat uncomfortable to discuss without sounding either falsely modest or genuinely arrogant, and neither was a good look. "He wasn't expecting it," I said. "That matters. A Rank Six who knows he's in a genuine fight is a completely different problem from a man who thinks he's about to handle an inconvenience."

"Still," Beric said, and left the word there without adding to it, which was very much Beric's manner of delivering a compliment.

“Executing a Rank 6 at your level is a genuine achievement. Don't minimise it,” Kal added.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I nodded and looked around the room, that’s when I realised just how quiet Lady Laelyn had grown through most of the exchange.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I believe it," she sighed. "I believe you and Elder Kal and what you've shown me, and I understand now what we're facing and why it matters. I just," and here she paused and pressed her lips together briefly, "I’m finding that understanding something and being able to accept it are not the same thing."

"I'm sorry," I started.

"Don't be," she said, and she said it quickly enough and firmly enough that it shut the apology down without being unkind about it. "What you and Elder Kal have lived through, what you carry around with you every time you come back here, it's not something that anyone should have to experience and the least I can do is take a moment to acknowledge that before we talk strategy. Please let me do that."

I nodded and let her, because she was right and because I had spent so much time managing the practical implications of everything that had happened across every loop that I had stopped making space to acknowledge the weight of it.

I always felt bad for Kal and Du Yanze, for how it must be for them, but for myself, I never gave it much thought because there wasn't much point dwelling on it in the traditional sense, because dwelling didn't move the problem forward.

But Laelyn was right that acknowledging it and moving on were not mutually exclusive activities, and sometimes the most efficient thing you could do was give weight its proper moment before carrying it somewhere more useful.

“It isn’t easy,” I began, “it’s definitely not something I asked for or ever wanted, but it’s nearly over, and that’s what’s keeping me going right now. No one deserves to have their world devoured, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Once again, everyone went silent as they absorbed the conviction behind the words of someone that wasn’t even a native to this world.

"We need a plan," I broke the silence, when I judged that the right amount of time had passed, "because like I said before, this is our final chance, and there are two Otherworldly Beings to deal with, one pressing against the barriers from outside and one that is inside the Red Sun, we can’t mess up this time."

Kal's mouth shifted at that, the smallest possible movement, and he said, "When you say it like that, I understand why the Heavens believed this needed a world walker."

"Sometimes I'm not sure the Heavens understood the full scope of what they asked for," I said.

Beric made a sound that was almost a laugh and caught himself immediately, covering it with a cough that convinced no one in the room.

“Well, whatever the Heavens understood or didn't, you're here,” Lady Laelyn cut in. “And we're here, and from everything I've seen in those memories, that's a lot better than the alternative." She paused and then added, "Even if the alternative you personally experienced has been quite terrible."

"Repeatedly terrible," Beric murmured.

Kal ignored them, he straightened slightly in his chair as his eyes fixed on me. "Tell me about that seer of yours, you trust his reading?"

"I do," I said, without hesitation. "Ignis is not someone who deals in comfortable predictions, and the marks on his face from what it cost him to look through the barrier at this world were real. He paid for that prophecy, which means it matters, and everything he described fits with what I already know about the shape of this problem."

"Then we plan," Kal agreed. "You can’t approach the Blue Sun Academy as you have before," he said.

"No," I agreed.

"Then the question becomes where you go instead." He paused. "The suns will be watching the approaches to the Academy, to the Eldest Tree, to everything they consider their territory. What they will not be watching is the place that belongs to neither of them."

That confused me because what territory in the Two Suns World didn’t belong to either of the suns?

Laelyn looked at him with her head tilted slightly. "Stone Haven," she said.

"Stone Haven," Kal confirmed, and then he looked at me directly. "Perhaps it is time for you to pay a visit to the Stone Haven Monastery."

Now, that was not something that I had expected for the final loop. I hadn’t even considered going there. But what surprised me more than any of that was the Golden Sun’s reaction in my inner world to the Stone Haven Monastery being mentioned.

For some reason, it had stirred as though its interest had been piqued.

All along, I had known that the Stone Haven was neutral when it came to the conflict between the two academies, and I had always thought it was merely neutrality as a philosophical and political position.

But if that was the case, why would the Golden Sun stir at the name? Maybe their neutrality was something older than philosophy and politics? What was the connection between Stone Haven and the Golden Sun?

I had no idea, but I had a feeling I would find out very soon.

A/N

Comment below what you think the connection between the two is

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