Volume 4—Chapter 104: Above The Lion’s Mound
Despite it still being daytime, the sky has grown unnaturally dark. It is not clouds blocking the sun. The light itself feels suppressed, as if something massive has taken its place. High above, a dimensional crack stretches across the sky, swallowing the sunlight the way the moon does during an eclipse.
The world below looks broken.
Cities burn in scattered pockets. The land trembles. Distant flashes of light and shadow mark battles that should never exist in a normal world.
Syena clings tightly to Amelia as they hover in the air, her fingers gripping the fabric of Amelia’s sleeve as if letting go would send her falling into the chaos below.
“What the hell is happening?” Syena whispers.
Amelia keeps her gaze forward, her expression unusually tense.
“Back then… that girl,” Syena continues, her voice shaking. “That was Aria, right? You know her? Then why did we leave so hurriedly?”
Amelia exhales slowly, like someone trying to organise thoughts that refuse to line up.
“I would love to explain,” she says at last, “but I am not even sure myself. All I know is that staying back there was dangerous.”
Syena pulls back slightly, looking around at the fractured sky and the ruined world beneath them. “I beg to differ. Look at this. This looks like an apocalypse.”
Amelia nods faintly. “Yeah. It does.”
“Then how is this better?” Syena asks.
Syena frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to,” Amelia replies quietly. “Just trust me. Being here, even with monsters roaming the world, is still safer than being near her right now.”
The moment Amelia finishes speaking, the air around them distorts.
A pressure hits first, heavy and suffocating, like the sky itself is pressing down. Amelia’s eyes snap upward.
“Syena, hold on.”
Too late.
Something tears through the air above them. A massive shape drops out of the crack in space, its body warped and uneven, as if reality failed to decide what form it should take. Dozens of limbs twist around a core of shadow and bone, screeching as it falls.
“What is that?!” Syena screams.
The monster crashes toward them, and the shockwave alone knocks Syena clean off the broom.
“Syena!”
She tumbles through the air, arms flailing, panic frozen on her face.
Time stops.
The world snaps into stillness. The monster hangs mid-roar. Debris floats like dust trapped in glass. Syena’s scream is silent, her body suspended in freefall.
Amelia moves.
In the frozen world, she steps off her broom and appears beneath Syena in an instant, catching her before gravity can finish its work. She gently places Syena back onto the broom, adjusting her grip so she will not slip again.
“Stay. Still.”
Amelia turns.
Her sword flashes into her hand, steel humming with restrained force. She moves through the air as if walking on invisible ground, each step precise. In a blink, she is beside the monster’s core.
One clean slash.
The frozen creature splits apart, its form unravelling like a bad idea cut from reality itself.
Time resumes.
The remains of the monster collapse into nothing, dissolving into ash before they can even fall.
Syena barely has time to breathe before another shock hits.
“Amelia!” she yells.
A second monster bursts from a different crack, faster this time. The broom jerks violently as a tendril clips its side.
Syena loses her grip again and falls.
“No no no no no!”
Time stops once more.
Amelia exhales, frustration flickering across her face.
“I told you to hold on.”
She catches Syena again, placing her back onto the broom for the second time. Before releasing time, Amelia wraps one arm around Syena’s waist, securing her firmly.
“From now on,” Amelia says calmly, “you do not let go. Understood?”
Syena nods rapidly, clinging like her life depends on it. Because it does.
Time resumes.
The monster lunges. Amelia meets it head-on. Steel sings as her blade carves precise arcs through its body. Every movement is clean, economical, merciless. She does not fight wildly. She dissects.
In seconds, the creature collapses into nothing.
Silence returns, broken only by Syena’s shaky breathing.
“That was…” Syena swallows. “That was terrifying.”
“Sorry about that, we need to find a safe place quickly,” said Amelia.
She tried to utilise her time to stop again, but then she realised something.
There was an absolute rule when it came to manipulating time. In this world, there were currently two people who could stop time, and three others who could not be affected by it at all. Emilia, as an Authority holder, was, of course, unaffected. Aria was the same, for a similar reason. Syena too, even if Syena herself was not aware of it.
But the problem was, there was another one.
Far away, on the other side of the world.
Amelia made her decision instantly. She turned away and headed toward that place, without consulting Syena at all.
Meanwhile…
At the top of Lion’s Mound in Waterloo, right at the head of the massive statue, two children sat as if this historic place were nothing more than a playground.
“They’re gone,” said a small boy perched on the lion’s head, legs swinging lazily. “Probably heading to Tsukuru. So what exactly are we doing here?”
The girl beside him, equally small, stared out over the horizon with an expression far too calm for her age. “It’s complicated. I think it has something to do with a short-haired blonde girl. We need to find her.”
The boy frowned. “What was her name again?”
“Heck if I know”, the girl replied flatly. “You go to the same academy as her, don’t you?”
“Even then, she’s not in my class,” he shot back. “You know the academy separates boys and girls.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever. Just go look for her.”
“…Where?” the boy asked, already bracing himself.
“The forest,” she answered without hesitation.
The boy sighed, then vanished in an instant, moving with a speed that left the air trembling behind him.
Left alone, the girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She raised it to her lips, about to light it, when a hand suddenly snatched it away.
“Hey, who dares to…” she snapped, then froze.
Her tongue clicked in irritation as she looked up at the man standing beside her.
“You know cigarettes are bad for a young girl like you, right?” the man said calmly.
“Old man Takeru,” the girl replied, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing here in Belgium?”
Takeru smiled faintly. “That should be my question, little Iris.”
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