An hour has passed and there is nothing.

The third flower and the man are no longer there.

Instead, high up in the sky, is a massive hole in space. Just a black dot leaking yellow energy into the air.

Twelve seconds pass and a yellow aurora spreads out from it, darkening the sky.

The link has been cut, but where’s the flower itself?

In the dark orange sky, massive balls of different coloured fire spread across it as far as the eye can see. Falling to a ground that’s getting ever further is a man with an ear to ear smirk that would repel anyone with a decent sense of social instinct.

The black fire pattern coiling around his body moves fast like a train following its track.

Before him is a crystal that floats in the middle of a pattern of hollow rings that shape a petal.

13 large beams of light shoot from various points in space at the falling man.

A shield of similar light blocks most of it as he starts falling from above the crystal.

His blood is pumping like never before.

You can’t put this situation on a scale of danger. Even the world shaking battles he has with ‘that wench’, as he would call her, don’t feel nearly as exciting as this.

As he throws his hand, swinging down a greatsword the size of a truck to cut the crystal, he is met with a shriek that resonates through his bones before all his blood vessels explode into a modern painting of chicken soup.

The hollow rings that now float far to the left(?) line up only for the crystal to get pulled back before it’s shot out into the never ending flames in the red sky, like a slingshot of rings or a futuristic railgun.

Out of a ball of blue fire, the man comes out with a greatsword the size of a yacht trying to cut through the crystal core before it escapes.

This has been a sort of confusing fight for the seed. Well, not that the seed can be confused; it doesn’t have thought to begin with. This fight resembles a bug in a system. The seed was never supposed to move outside of its range, and here it is, so far out, it moved to the netherspace in an attempt to conjure a worthy challenge. And it had.

The moment the sword touches the surface of the crystal, the very first clear hit in a very very long fight, the man tilts his head at, quite literally, impossible speed to the right.

The sword is no longer there, and there’s a big cut going right through the man’s head, cutting through his eye. Various fluids leaking from the sizable hole as his eye starts to float out, no longer intact, into space.

Like drops in space, they float slowly and not too far from him. Blood mixes with tears and vitreous gel. Time hasn’t slowed down but it sure feels like it.

The giant smirk on the man hasn’t changed one bit.

A crack starts to form on the crystal’s surface where the man supposedly hit, spreading before breaking and disintegrating to nothingness.

“Of course... it’s only normal for a subsystem of the universe to be able to do that."

He closes his eyes, ignoring the hole in the side of his face that shows his lively red meat and the coarse texture of his skull.

He wakes up hearing the cries of his beloved sister.

“Don’t kill the flowers!” he hears.

Unlike last night, he traced the source down.

The handsome man in tight black leather armour gets up and starts running.

The very definition of ‘from 0 to 10 real quick.’

His whistle echoes in the forest for a few seconds before a horse-sized Golden Retriever catches up to his side.

They ride on the spongy dirt as it ripples with each of their steps.

It’s his fifth night here but he can’t afford to explore any more. 2 generations together, and he’s never heard her in as much pain as he did yesterday.

Though he does want to stay a little longer, he is technically trapped here but he actively didn’t look for a way out. He stepped into a cave that has its own sky and 2 suns with a 36 hour day cycle. But it seemed obvious on his third day that he was no longer in a cave and perhaps it was one of those ancient “portals” they heard about from legend tales in their childhood.

But if his sister calls, he will be there for her.

He pulls out a black dagger from his belt and taps it on a tree they passed by.

The tall leafless tree that pierces the clouds alongside its brethren vibrate sharply, like hitting a tuning fork, a tuning fork with the texture of a tree, a forest of tuning forks with the texture of trees.

The echo helps him visualise a layout of the forest letting him ride the fluffy mount smoothly between obstacles.

But something’s not right.

There’s a large zone of nothingness that he can’t visualise in the middle of it all. A hole in the ground in a grove where there’s quite literally nothing.

That’s his target, he rides on his adept mount only to reach the empty zone to find… nothing.

The hole in front of him leads to quite literally nothing.

Hah! Of course, but seriously did you think I would fall for it? Cheesy leap of faith trash.

He puts on a black mask that looks like a compact gas mask that locks into the rest of his armour virtually cutting him off from the outside world.

“Come on buddy, we’re going home," he says as he pets the giant fluffy dog who answers with a cute woof and leaps into the hole of nothingness.

He suddenly finds himself in a purple space floating between big balls of multicoloured fire spread as far as the eye can see. And below him, is a grey ground that gets further and further away the closer he falls to it.

His dog, although technically magic, can’t fly or step on air, but in this place, he instinctively runs on nothingness making his way to even more nothingness.

There are many balls in the sky but even though they all seem close by, no matter how fast they run towards anything, it just seems to be further away, until something seems to actually get closer.

The floating corpse of a man with a sizable chunk of his face missing like a very thick hatchet made its way through the left side of his skull.

The giant cute doggo bites the corpse taking him along for the ride.

After a while of riding on this confusing yellow space, something seems to be actually getting closer rather than inexplicably existing elsewhere. A hole with nothing on the other side like the one they used to get here in the first place.

“Alright Shrimp, thanks for the ride but I’ll take it from here."

The giant fluff ball growls slightly before throwing the corpse he was carrying into the air. The man in full black leather jumps off as well and puts the floating corpse on his shoulder as they start falling towards the hole. Meanwhile the dog runs into the distance joining the many unidentifiable dots in the brown space.

Anari, a married young woman, is tied in a chair with cloth stuffed into her mouth. The light crystal in the wall is bright and doesn’t let her turn away from the puddle of blood leaking from the very fresh corpse of her late husband. She screamed and screamed, muffled to even her ears, till she didn’t have it in her any more. Her tears on the other hand, aren’t seeing an end any time soon.

He was so young, he didn’t deserve this. We were happy. We paid our taxes, to anyone who asked. We didn’t resist. This is a remote village, they were never gonna have any use for us. We only sustain ourselves, they would never come to somewhere like this. But why, why are they doing this. Even then, they’re in there with my boy. At least they should finish him without pain like his father. My poor boy, entangled in something he didn’t understand. Those damn rebels, got into his head and enticed him to join. If only I spent more time with him. If I would have known this. If… anything….

“Oh will you just shut it ALREADY!!” the woman sitting on the husband’s body screams at Anari, annoyed at her muffled crying.

Anari lets out a whimper before turning into heavy breathing breaking the silence.

“You’re lucky you know, we need you to stay alive and be a witness, else you would’ve joined him right now," the woman speaks with both smugness and disgust in her tone of voice. “Some people would pay top gold to have what he’s having right now." She starts laughing to herself like a maniac.

A sudden burst of light comes from the centre of the room splitting the dinner table and launching the halves at opposite sides of the room, startling the two ladies, but not pulling much of a reaction from the corpse.

There stands the figure of a man wrapped inside tight leather armour and mask leaving no open element exposed holding a man missing a large chunk of his face and wearing nothing; the only thing covering him is a black flame pattern that surrounds some parts of his body.

The man in leather stands for a minute unmoving. The women only sit there in shock looking at this sudden appearance.

This is home alright, but… what the HELL happened while I was gone.

The man can hear it all. He only wanted to check if he landed close to home or not, but he got a lot more than he bargained for. Too much information had flooded his mind before he closed his hearing range. And most important of all, his sister is in grave pain.

Something snaps him back into reality. A woman rushed him with a blade aiming to kill. The woman is very strong and athletic, unnaturally so in fact. Before she could reach him, he had already drawn his black dagger from the back of his belt and side stepped while pulling her neck closer making sure that he had done a clean cut. Her blood gushes in a stream splashing the tied Anari giving her more trauma as she bathes in the blood of one of her husband’s killers.

Another turn of his blade and the bleach-white haired head is no longer connected to the rest of her body.

He notices that the body he was carrying was no longer there, at some point before the woman attacked, he stopped carrying it. Not his problem.

He steps towards the tied woman that flinches backwards, closing her eyes, scared for her life.

It’s only natural to fear death, she’s only mortal after all.

But nothing happens, she opens her eyes to see another hand holding the leathered arm.

“That was self defence, any more interference and you lose your observer status." A gentle voice, and yet, a coarse tone that doesn’t belong. The man with a missing chunk of his face stopped the leathered one from untying the lady.

“I’m just gonna give her a fighting chance." A voice leaves the black mask.

“You already deemed her to die… let it be swift."

The extended arm retracts. The woman has many conflicted feelings, but she would have still liked to be untied. It’ll at least give her the choice to act… to try to protect her son… her only light in this world….

“You know what they’re doing on the other side of that door right?” the masked figure asked.

“Enjoying themselves… well… some of them anyway…”

“Thanks for the doorway."

“It wasn’t for you, I just needed a lift out of there while I was dead," says the black flamed man as he stretches, letting out a few popping sounds.

“What happened in 5 days?”

“Figure it out yourself," was the last thing the masked man heard from the guy who’s no longer there.

He removed his mask and looked at the woman with sad eyes that apologised stronger than words could before his face went emotionless as he jumped out the window.

Anari screamed and screamed, hoping he would come back for her.

Please… don’t leave me… help him… or at least let me….

He didn’t hear her pleas of help… after all… they weren’t voiced.

He runs following a road out the small village to find his loyal cute oversized Golden Retriever waiting. He jumps on only to ride into the night.

The road’s long, even with his trusty fast friend, it’ll take him at least two days to get to the castle.

But what happened? He’s only been out of the castle for nearly a fortnight, suddenly villages are being overrun by homunculi, Inva’s screaming in agony, and Soren’s… doing something he’s not quite sure what.

There’s a lot of things going on in the background but right now he can’t spare them the thought.

Even with how fast Shrimp is, he won’t make it back to the castle for another few days. Luckily, he can simply sleep on his trusty fluffy friend as he makes his way for him.

On his way back, he passes many villages that he doesn’t normally hear anything from or often visits. Even so, most of, if not all of them, are somehow bigger than he remembers. Sure he doesn’t remember how they were before but there’s no way that the entire Fields of Neian somehow became large enough to support import and export. It’s a relatively new area that was only unlocked 8 years ago or so.

Something else he notices on his way back is the charavans of merchants that aren’t entirely merchants. There’s homunculi travelling with them, like bodyguards. All of said homunculi seem to wear nothing uniform but the one thing they all have in common is they’re all strong women and have an insignia of some kind; A silver crest of a bee.

After a few days on the road, he finally reaches the edge of the tundra, what he calls ‘home’.

He makes his way through the glistening snow, as nothing but white reflecting the starry night fills the horizon. After a short while, everything behind him also becomes endless snow, far more than he travelled.

He makes it to the black wall only to find two perplexed people waiting at the open door. Did the silver shard grow taller?

The head maid, Rosaliya, and head butler, Avian, show an expression of absolute astonishment.

“Lord Caridin?” Avian speaks with disbelief in his eyes.

Why are they so surprised? Actually, he doesn’t really care at the moment.

“Sorry lads, gotta see the sister, talk to you in a few."

He jumps off the cutest of giant doggos and dashes past them by the doors.

He dashes between corridors and large rooms of various kinds. It’s all very… empty. It’s still the same but so so empty.

He steps through a door protected by vines to make his way into Inva’s room. There she sleeps, completely covered by vines, intertwined into many roots of trees that fill the large room, with only her tan face showing. He was right, she more or less expanded her body. He has seen her in this state once before, and it was ugly.

He sat with her throughout the night, talking to her about mundane things. The food they had last week. What he saw the two fishermen doing last month and how weird it was. Just passing the time as he caresses her forehead.

Somewhere between his arrival and sunrise, Avian brings him freshly made eggs for dinner without interrupting him.

The sun has risen, and he gets summoned to the front door by Avian. Rosaliya informed them that the 3 knights are returning.

He pulls out a bow and arrow and shoots it at the very far away old lady. Not long after that, he is tackled by a flying mass of a woman. He quickly bounces off the ground and instantly starts sparring with the girl.

It’s somewhat of a tradition for them, and it helps put a smile on his face again. Afterall, he’s not the type to be gloomy all the time.

They walk inside to catch up, only for him to find out that he’d been gone for a couple of decades and many things changed since he was last here.

They give him a very brief summary while he returns information about what he saw on his way here. Nothing too detailed, at least for now, until Inva wakes up and they gather enough information to have a full conversation.

Of course they could have done so already, but with inva getting freed in more or less a day, they won’t have the time. On the other hand, he forgot to tell them about what he heard Inva say that made him come back in the first place. Actually, they’ve yet to discuss where he was or how he came back either.

Somewhere along the general plan talk, Alistair slipped out the room without anyone’s notice, not that they’ll care either. It’s often that something will catch his interest before following it.

Out of Inva’s window flies out a white sheet covered man with silky cyan hair flowing behind him as he makes his way up the silver shard in the middle. His hair is usually folded twice over behind him, but now as he let it go while making his way up, it seems rather obvious that his hair’s length is at least twice his height.

The deathly cold air brushes his cheek as he stands atop the shard above the clouds and the sky itself, where even air is as thin as a paper sheet. Today’s a great day for him, as things are finally starting to feel like home again. It wasn’t the return of Caridin alone that caused this feeling. It’s something else. Something big made its way back into his family. He’s not quite sure what it is, but it doesn’t matter to him, because whatever it is, it has done everyone good. They’re fired up like they used to be, taking risks, and most important of all, having strategy meetings.

Deep down in his heart, he hopes that nothing comes again and breaks his family apart… he can’t take another one… not again.