Kairo did not stay.
Lalise was only thirteen.
Too young.
Whatever he needed to tell the woman she would one day become, this was not the time.
So Kairo left her behind.
Not by walking away.
By stepping into time.
Years passed around him without touching him.
Moments folded into moments.
Odania changed beneath his feet.
Kairo had traveled through time enough to understand its movement.
Its pressure.
Its resistance.
Even its mistakes.
But this...
Something was wrong.
Kairo stopped.
For the first time, he couldn't tell where the disturbance was coming from.
Past?
Future?
Another universe?
Then—
BOOM.
Something tore through time.
Kairo turned.
Two figures crashed through the boundary of one universe and disappeared into another.
Then another.
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Then another.
They weren't traveling.
They were fighting.
Every collision forced them through another reality.
Kairo barely saw them.
A fist.
A chain.
A body thrown through the wall between universes.
Then—
CRACK.
The consequences of their battle struck the flow of time itself.
Kairo's eyes widened.
"No—"
His control vanished.
Time twisted around him.
He fell.
Not through space.
Not through years.
Through both.
And then—
silence.
Kairo hit the ground.
Grass.
Wind.
Sunlight.
He immediately knew where he was.
Odania.
But something was different.
He slowly stood.
Then he saw it.
The horizon.
The land.
The mountains.
Everything that should have been separated...
was connected.
Kairo stared.
This was Odania before it was divided.
Before one continent became two.
But he didn't have time to understand why he had been thrown here.
Because the disturbance returned.
Kairo looked up.
For less than a moment, he saw them again.
The two people fighting across universes.
And this time...
he recognized one of them.
Safsan.
Not the Safsan lying unconscious on the battlefield.
Not the Safsan who had called Kairo his first test.
An adult Safsan.
The Safsan Kairo knew.
But—
Kairo's expression changed.
There was something different about him.
Something Kairo had never seen in the Safsan he knew.
Black chains moved around Safsan.
Kairo knew those chains.
He knew their pressure.
He knew their power.
But Safsan wasn't using them the way Kairo remembered.
He was attacking as though there was only one possible conclusion to this battle.
The other person had to die.
And then Kairo saw his opponent.
Royal clothing.
Patterns Kairo didn't recognize.
No weapon.
No sword.
No spear.
He fought Safsan with his hands.
Fist against chain.
Body against force.
King against—
The vision broke.
But somewhere else...
SEENEE had seen it too.
And unlike Kairo...
SEENEE had recently seen this person enter Sirna.
SEENEE froze.
"Wait."
The figure turned for the smallest fraction of a moment.
SEENEE's eyes widened.
"Is that N—"
The two collided again.
Safsan's chains ripped across the space between them.
Nafsan blocked them with his bare hands.
And there was something in Safsan's face that neither Kairo nor SEENEE had seen before.
It wasn't anger.
It wasn't hatred.
It was worse.
Certainty.
Safsan looked at Nafsan as though killing him was not a choice.
It was necessary.
As though Nafsan had taken something from him.
Something Safsan intended to take back.
No matter how many universes stood between them.
And now...
for the first time...
I will give you his full title.
NAFSAN.
THE SAFSAN HUNTER.
Across Sirna, that name would one day mean something very different from what it meant now.
And there is one more thing I will tell you.
Not SEENEE.
Me.
The one who sent NAREZEN...
????????.
The mission that brought NAREZEN into all of this was not unique.
Nafsan was sent by the same ????????.
For the same mission.
But if you think that means you understand Nafsan...
you don't.
Not yet.
The glimpse disappeared.
The universes closed behind them.
Kairo stood completely still.
He didn't know who Safsan had been fighting.
He didn't know the name Nafsan.
He didn't know what had been taken.
And he didn't know why the Safsan he knew looked like he absolutely had to kill that man.
Kairo only knew one thing.
That was Safsan.
His best friend.
And yet...
Kairo had just seen something in him he had never seen before.
The wind moved across the grass.
Kairo slowly turned.
For now, there was nothing he could do about the battle he had witnessed.
Because another impossibility was standing directly in front of him.
Odania.
Whole.
The continent stretched farther than the Odania Kairo knew.
No division.
No missing half.
No wound across the land.
Kairo stared at the world that existed before everything changed.
He had been thrown farther back than he intended.
Farther back than he had ever planned to go.
And somewhere in this whole Odania...
the reason it would one day be torn in two was still waiting to happen.