I woke up abruptly, my eyes snapping open and my breaths coming in ragged, uneven gasps as if I had narrowly escaped the clutches of death itself.
With my bleary eyes, I looked around the room through a bottle-glass blur, and the haunting remnants of the nightmare clung to my senses, giving me a sense of dread.
Beads of cold sweat slowly formed on my forehead, tracing a clammy path down my face as I continued to huff and puff.
My heart violently pounded against the ribs in my chest; each beat echoing a sense of panic that refused to subside.
The bedsheets stuck to me like a second skin, damp from the sweat and wrinkled from the struggle that made me wake up from the nightmare I was just experiencing.
In desperation to calm myself down, I brought my hands to my face and started massaging my cheeks with my trembling fingers while sitting straight up.
“Calm down,” I told myself. “It was just a dream.”
Seated on the edge of the bed, the fabric beneath me lay crumpled and entangled. I rubbed my eyes next and looked around, the sleepy blur subsiding as I regained my vision.
In front of me was a child – seemingly a six to seven-year-old girl – in a cute red and white skirt with her hair tied into two adorable pigtails.
She had a glass of water ready in her hands as she looked at me with a face full of worry and silent anxiety.
I sighed, not at all happy at the fact that I had made her worry for me once again, and wordlessly took the glass from her hand.
After chugging the water in two full gulps, I let out a heavy breath of relief and looked back at Sera with a reassuring smile.
“I’m fine, dear. Don’t worry about me.”
Sera cutely rolled her big red eyes, which were a clear reflection of mine, in evident skepticism and went to sit on the sofa.
She then picked a stack of paper in her hands and casually propped her legs on the center table.
“Pa says that, but Sera knows he’s lying. Pa is clearly far from fine,” she nonchalantly muttered while turning the papers in her hand and reading through them carefully.
Lately, Sera has taken a liking to reading and exploring the world’s history. She is also teaching herself other languages. She comes to me for help from time to time.
At first, I thought it was a bit weird for a child her age to be interested in such stuff. But then I was told that Phoenix are naturally curious creatures. It is one of the traits that makes them so intelligent.
Even right now, she was reading new world developmental history – the changes that were brought after mana started flowing.
I couldn’t help but sigh again. “I’m not lying. I really am fine. It’s just that… Well, nightmares and I go way back, okay?”
Sera shrugged. “If Pa says so.”
Yes, lately, I’ve started having nightmares once again. Only this time, I could barely remember what I usually see in them. But I do remember. I remember a lot now, actually.
“Is Pa still worried about Amelia?”
Then there’s that matter. I still don’t know what’s her part in all this. I can at least say after long, careful consideration that she’s not my enemy.
A power to stop time… If she wanted, she could’ve ended me long ago with that. So, what’s the explanation?
What else? She remembers the other timelines.
My other working theory was that she was the one who had been resetting the timelines, but after thinking it over with some late-night drinks, I doubt it.
Or at least, even if she’s doing it, she doesn’t remember the past timelines from the start. I’m all but confident about this.
I don’t know how long she had been keeping this information from me, but I know for a fact that she couldn’t remember it during the Mock War or the Silveserine trip.
Then when? When did she remember? Or, better yet, does she even remember every single one of the past timelines? Or is she still in the process of remembering?
There are too many questions.
“If Pa is that worried, why not confront her directly?”
“Confront?” I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a big word for your vocabulary.”
Sera pouted. “Sera– My vocabuwavy is growing!”
I couldn’t help but chuckle as she bit her tongue while trying to pronounce a word that big. She can read and write fine, but I guess it would still take a little time for her to start speaking correctly.
Slowly, the cheerful smile vanished from my face, replaced by a cold, lethargic, contemplative expression.
I slowly shook my head sideways. “Talking to her won’t solve this.”
Sera titled her little head in confusion. “Why do you think so, Pa?”
I shrugged. “Well, think about it. If she was ready to talk about it, she could’ve come to me as soon as she’d remembered the previous timelines. But she didn’t. That means she’s not ready to talk.”
Lingering to think over what I said for a few seconds, Sera raised her fingers and gently rubbed her chin.
In a calm, analyzing tone, she said:
“Maybe it’s not that she was not ready to talk about it, but that she couldn’t.”
It was my turn to frown in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
The little Phoenix leaned forward. “Sera doesn’t know a lot about time as the law of the universe and how it functions, but what’s to say something isn’t stopping her from talking.”
I stood there in absolute silence for a little more than a few seconds, utterly stumped. Then, suddenly, everything clicked in my mind as if pieces of a puzzle were falling into place.
“I see,” I abruptly murmured.
Sera was right. Not entirely, but her thoughts were heading in the right direction.
Fate. It was Fate that stopped Amelia from revealing. I think.
Kiara told me that the more I remembered, the more he – the Dragon God – would remember because the strings of fates were entangled in a never-ending mess for some reason.
What if… I’m not the only person with whom his fate is entwined? What if it’s the three heroes instead?!
Even in Kai’s Instruction Manual, it was written that telling the heroes ahead of time would only hasten the inevitable destruction of the world.
What if the reason she couldn’t tell me was because reminding me would only make the Dragon God remember?
But remember what? If he sent one of his soldiers, Kiara, to this world, then that must mean he already knows of our existence.
Then that must only mean there is something else that the Dragon God must not remember. Even if the cost of it is time – time that we could use in preparing for our inescapable war with a god-like entity.
“I understand,” I whispered once again.
But there’s something I still, for the life of me, couldn’t understand. How does Amelia fit into all of this?
In the novels, she was merely one of the main heroines. Not even a protagonist. In the prophecies, she isn’t even mentioned.
Then… Why does she hold that much power?