[Edanian Journey] Sylvia

Chapter 8: A Hand Beyond the Veil I arrived in Magaia, seemingly at a point just before we had come here and met my companion. I had no idea what had happened to her at this point in time. I was standing at the beginning of a path I had already traveled. With no answer to the questions this raised, the Black Spirit and I simply followed the road ahead. Where the devotees bowed their heads, I found my companion sealed away. I rushed into the fight, and the moment I finally broke the seal, time came to a halt and Elion appeared. The goddess said she had pulled me back from death, only to place me before a merciless judgment. Something felt strange, so I asked if she knew I had come from the future. She explained that while mortals saw time as a flowing river, to a god it was a folded veil in which past and future, cause and effect, all reflected one another. As I told her what I had been through, I admitted that I was no longer certain of myself. Elion asked whether I had truly imagined I could save all things beneath the skies. "Take the hands you can reach, and bear witness to the sorrows you cannot prevent. Then the road you walk will become the flame's own will." Just because I could not undo every tragedy did not mean the hands I had managed to hold were meaningless. When the goddess disappeared, time began to move again, and my companion caught her breath. In the distance, I could see the procession of devotees approaching with my past self. Had this moment, when I saved her, come before the meeting in which she would save me? I asked her to protect the version of me she would soon meet. Though she did not understand why, she said she would trust me. I returned to the passage Elion had opened and threw myself into yet another point in space and time.