"!!!"

The Seer's eyes snapped open.

But the vision refused to let go.

Crimson light bathed everything. A man stood before her, dying on his feet, reaching with bloodied fingers toward something he couldn't quite grasp.

Toward "her."

No, not her.

"Through" her.

His lips moved, forming words swallowed by the roar of collapsing reality. She heard her own voice screaming his name, raw and desperate, a sound that tore from her throat like it was ripping her soul out with it.

Except it wasn't her throat.

Her hands stretched forward – different fingers, different skin, nails painted a color she'd never worn – and the anguish exploding through her chest felt more real than any emotion she'd experienced in seven centuries of omniscient observation.

'Please.'

The thought wasn't hers, but she felt it like a knife between her ribs.

'Not like this… Not you… Not now.'

Behind him, the world burned.

Not with fire, but with something worse – reality itself fracturing like glass under impossible pressure. The sky bled crimson and black, dimensions folding in on themselves as existence decided it was done pretending to make sense.

His smile cut through the apocalypse like sunlight through storm clouds.

Sad. Resigned. Filled with love so profound it made the dying world look insignificant by comparison.

Their fingertips almost touched.

Almost.

*Yank…*

Invisible force grabbed her, dragged her backward through screaming darkness that swallowed his smile, his reaching hand, the burning world, everything –

Gone.

***

The Seer jolted upright in her bed like someone had dumped ice water directly onto her soul.

*Thump! Thump! Thump!*

Her heart hammered against her ribs with violence that shouldn't exist in someone who'd achieved divine transcendence centuries ago.

Ceremonial robes clung to her skin, soaked through with cold sweat that made her shiver despite the room's comfortable temperature.

She pressed trembling hands against her face, fingers catching on tears she didn't remember crying.

The phantom sensation of reaching for that dying man still burned through her nerves with intensity that made her current reality feel like a dream instead of the other way around.

"Was it a premonition?"

Her voice emerged barely above a whisper, cracking slightly on the last syllable.

"Or vision?"

*Flicker...*

Her Eyes of Truth activated involuntarily, divine sight piercing through layers of time and possibility with desperate urgency.

Searching. Analyzing. Calculating probabilities across infinite branching futures.

And finding… still nothing.

No clear path. No definitive outcome.

Just the echo of emotions that didn't belong to her, yet somehow felt more intimately familiar than her own ancient memories.

She'd seen the deaths of civilizations with perfect clarity.

Witnessed the birth and collapse of dimensions with detached understanding.

Calculated the exact moment stars would explode with mathematical precision.

But this?

This single vision of a man dying while reaching for someone she might have been or might become or "was" in some timeline that shouldn't exist?

Complete mystery.

Her legendary composure – carefully cultivated over centuries of bearing witness to horrors that would shatter normal minds – lay in pieces around her like broken glass.

"I don't understand," she admitted to the darkness, and the confession tasted like ash. "I'm supposed to see everything. Know everything. Understand the connections between all possible outcomes… and yet when it comes to you, I…"

She stared at her hands, half-expecting to see different fingers.

Different skin.

The phantom sensation refused to fade, clinging to her consciousness like smoke that wouldn't dissipate no matter how hard she tried to wave it away.

For the first time in her impossibly long existence, the Seer encountered a future she couldn't definitively read.

Only "feel" with terrifying certainty.

And that scared her more than any apocalypse she'd ever foreseen.

***

Her gaze drifted without conscious decision.

'Through.'

Walls dissolved under divine sight that treated physical barriers like polite suggestions. Dimensions parted like curtains. Distance became meaningless.

And there, in a pocket dimension that shouldn't exist but somehow did anyway, a figure moved through combat forms with characteristic energy.

Nero Walker.

The anomaly who'd terrified her enough to vomit blood just from attempting to peer into his nature.

Ever since she knew the deeper mystery about this man, she's been haunted by the thoughts that such an existence is setting the world into a direction even she doesn't know.

Everything about him or those who are connected to him rendered her ability useless.

And even now,

"..."

The Seer could only watch Nero as he had a focused expression while sparring against an infamous dragon using some advanced sword-and-hand techniques.

His sweat was flying from his hair as he transitioned between stances with improved fluidity that spoke to intensive training.

Confident and alive… Completely unaware of the thing that's upon them.

"...!"

The resemblance hit her like a fist to the sternum.

'... No.'

The dying man's features.

His smile – that exact curve of lips that mixed humor with warmth.

The way he moved, fluid and precise despite the circumstances.

All of it aligned with frightening precision.

"..."

Her breath caught.

Realization crashed through her consciousness like a tsunami destroying carefully constructed walls of denial.

The man from her vision and the anomaly she'd been observing weren't just similar.

They were identical.

… And frighteningly accurate.

Separated only by time and circumstances she couldn't yet comprehend, but undeniably the same person experiencing different moments of existence.

"It was him," she whispered, the words tasting like prophecy and doom mixed together. "The man dying while reaching for... for..."

'For who?'

Whose hands had she looked through?

Whose anguish had torn through her chest with such devastating familiarity?

Whose desperate love had made the apocalypse look insignificant by comparison?

"..."

Her Eyes of Truth flickered again, searching frantically.

But the universe offered no answers.

Just Nero Walker, training peacefully in a garden that smelled like flowers and safety, completely oblivious to the fact that she'd just witnessed his death across some timeline that might be inevitable or might be one possibility among infinite branching futures.

The parallel should have felt random.

Coincidental.

Instead, it felt "inevitable."

Like watching puzzle pieces slot into place to reveal a picture she didn't want to see but couldn't look away from.

And that terrified her more than anything else.

"..."

The Seer's hands clenched into fists, nails digging into palms hard enough to draw blood she barely noticed.

Conflicting emotions warred across her usually serene features like storms battling for territory.

Fear for what the vision implied – that Nero Walker's fate involved dying while reaching for someone in an apocalyptic landscape where reality itself gave up pretending.

Confusion about why it came to "her" specifically, when thousands of seers existed with varying degrees of prophetic sight.

And beneath it all, buried under layers of analytical thinking and divine detachment...

That inexplicable anguish.

Profound. Overwhelming. Absolute.

It shouldn't exist for someone she'd never met outside of distant observation.

Yet here it was, echoing through her consciousness like phantom limbs that insisted on existing despite all logical protests.

The feelings from that other body still clung to her awareness with stubborn intensity.

Grief so deep it felt like drowning in an ocean with no surface.

Love so powerful it transcended the boundaries between vision and reality, between observation and experience, between what was hers and what belonged to someone she'd become or might have been or "was" in some timeline that refused to make sense.

"... What connection do I have to that moment?"

She whispered the question to her empty room, but the universe remained frustratingly silent.

No divine revelation. No sudden clarity. No convenient prophecy to explain why she'd experienced someone else's memories with more intensity than her own.

Just the lingering sensation of fingertips almost touching across an impossible distance.

The weight of emotions that didn't belong to her yet felt intimately familiar, like remembering a home she'd never lived in but somehow recognized with perfect certainty.

Her analytical nature screamed at the disconnect.

She was the Seer.

Observer of timelines.

Calculator of probabilities.

Witness to countless fates with perfect detached understanding.

She didn't "feel" prophecies this way.

Didn't experience visions through other perspectives with such overwhelming emotional intensity that her own identity blurred at the edges.

This was unprecedented.

Wrong.

Terrifying in its implications about connections she couldn't trace and futures she couldn't predict despite seeing everything.

"I didn't just witness a possible future," she realized, the words emerging hollow and shaken. "I experienced someone's memories of watching their world end."

"Someone" who loved Nero Walker enough that losing him felt like reality itself was dying.

"Someone" who existed in a timeline she couldn't access, couldn't predict, couldn't understand despite her omniscient sight.

… "Someone" who might be connected to her.

"..."

The thought made her chest tighten with emotion as her eyes furrowed.

Because she had absolutely no idea what to do with that information, nor can she make any sense out of it.

The mystery and confusion behind it only grew as time passed by.

***

Meanwhile, outside Waifuria's training grounds...

Nero wiped sweat from his brow, muscles pleasantly sore from the morning's intensive practice session.

Velraeth's brutal combat training combined with Luna's theoretical magic lessons was paying off in ways that made the suffering almost worth it.

Almost.

He pulled up his system interface with practiced ease, the familiar blue glow materializing before his eyes.

Inventory check.

Stats review.

Skill progression analysis.

All routine stuff.

Then his gaze landed on the countdown that had been haunting his peripheral vision for the past few days…

[2nd Trial: Outlander Invasion]

[Time Remaining: 10 Days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, 22 seconds]

His strategic mind kicked into high gear immediately.

'Summon more combat specialists. Distribute the Premium Relic Tickets I've been hoarding. Coordinate with Luna about defensive formations around Waifuria's perimeter… Maybe cash in those Premium Waifu Tickets for additional fighting power when shit hits the fan.'

The mental checklist built itself with practiced efficiency.

'Aurelia can handle frontline combat. Velraeth's overwhelming strength makes her perfect for breaking enemy formations. Luna's magical artillery will be crucial for area denial. Celis can–'

"..."

His feet carried him forward without conscious decision.

Away from the training grounds.

Toward the villa's peaceful garden where starlight that shouldn't exist in a pocket dimension created ambient glow anyway because Luna's magical engineering made reality negotiable.

Strategic planning dissolved like sugar in water.

Replaced by something he couldn't quite name but felt with growing certainty.

There, bathed in impossible starlight…

"..."

Celis knelt among flowering plants.

Her blind eyes remained closed, but somehow her expression carried profound melancholy that made his chest tighten unexpectedly.

Fingers traced leaves with impossible gentleness, moving with care usually reserved for handling butterfly wings or newborn dreams.

Then her lips moved, forming words that drifted across the evening breeze with haunting clarity:

"What wouldst thou do... were destiny not what was written, but what thou chose to make of it?"

The question hung in the air like smoke that refused to dissipate.

"..."

Nero stood still at the garden's edge, suddenly uncertain whether approaching would shatter whatever moment this was, or if walking away would mean missing something important that the universe was trying to tell him.

The countdown in his peripheral vision continued its relentless march toward whatever catastrophe approached.

But right now, watching Celis question destiny with an expression that suggested she already knew the answer but didn't like it…

"..."

Somehow he couldn't help but lean as he stretched his hand forward to her.

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