Chapter 45: The Silver Lady

According to what the Omen described, and what the memory itself revealed, the Void Seekers had tried everything within their power to break Miyu’s silence.

When repeated torment failed to produce anything, one of the Seekers’ subordinates, cloaked in green, dragged a young boy up from beneath the rubble.

Lucian recognized the voice the instant it reached him: the same boy who’d once sold Adenium flowers in the market.

The guards began wounding the child deliberately, forcing Miyu’s hand.

Miyu’s expression cracked with indecision. She had no way to fight off six Void Seekers on her own, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to give them what they wanted either.

Then, in the middle of that impossible choice, the ground beneath everyone’s feet bloomed with silver dandelions, spreading outward until they covered the entire ruined stretch of earth.

The sight of them struck Lucian with a force that felt almost real, the sensation of the flowers near his own feet registering as though he genuinely stood among them.

The instant he reached down to touch one, every dandelion around him tore free of the ground at once, rising into the air and streaking upward toward the Void Seekers themselves.

Following their path, everyone below caught sight of a woman with silver hair, suspended high in the air.

The color of her hair struck Alayna immediately, close enough to his own that it couldn’t be coincidence. Her face remained hidden, though, too far above them, too far removed from view to make out clearly.

The silver-haired woman struck first, tearing into the Void Seekers from their blind spot with brutal, sudden speed, cutting straight through their formation to reach the boy still held hostage.

The instant he was free, she broke off and closed the distance to Miyu in a heartbeat, her hand rising to press gently against Miyu’s forehead.

Miyu’s eyes, dulled with exhaustion only a moment before, flared bright yellow at the touch.

The woman brushed her fingers along the line of a wound across Miyu’s face, murmuring an apology for dragging her into a fight that had never been hers to carry.

Miyu shook her head, as though she didn’t deserve any apology at all. Worry crossed her face instead, aimed entirely at the woman in front of her. She caught her hand and asked, quiet and urgent, why she’d chosen to reveal herself now, of all moments.

The Void Seekers smiled the instant they registered who’d arrived.

"So it’s true. Your family really has been hiding the Genesis crystal from us all along. Tell us, cursed Lysandra bloodline, where are the rest of its fragments?"

One of the Void Seekers’ voices cracked out loud enough to carry across the entire ruined stretch of city.

The silver-haired woman, the one they’d just named as part of House Lysandra, didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

Her gaze swept instead across the wreckage of the city around them, and something in her expression shifted, sharpening into open, unmistakable fury.

"You arrogant fools. No wonder your bloodline was cursed by—"

Whatever the Void Seeker at the far left had meant to say next never made it past his lips, cut off mid-sentence as a dandelion stem tore through the air and struck him square in the throat.

While everyone’s attention stayed locked on the fight overhead, Lucian had already broken into a run from below, chasing the trail of scattered dandelions streaking through the sky.

The silver-haired woman never spoke a single word directly to him. Something in Lucian’s chest pulled him toward her anyway, an instinct too strong to ignore, a need to close the distance and confirm, once and for all, whether she was truly the person he’d been searching for all along.

He kept running face tilted upward the entire time, hoping that closing the distance would be enough to finally recognize something, anything, about the silver-haired woman he’d chased through half his life without ever knowing her name.

The Omen called out again, urging him to stay back, insisting the effort was pointless. This memory didn’t work the way the Kirana crystal’s own memories had, where he could draw close enough to touch and feel every detail.

This one lived inside Sonata itself, and Sonata only projected these moments the way a picture might, flat, distant, nothing more than an image playing out in front of him.

There should have been no sensation to chase here at all.

Lucian ignored every word of it. Whatever the Omen claimed about sensation, the moment those dandelion petals brushed against his skin, he’d felt something achingly real, a memory he hadn’t known he’d been missing.

He kept running, face tilted upward the entire time, hoping that closing the distance would be enough to finally recognize something, anything, about the silver-haired woman he’d chased through half his life without ever knowing her name.

Then one of the Void Seekers, cloaked in green, gathered a massive orb of condensed aura between both hands and hurled it straight at the silver-haired woman.

Miyu moved to intercept it, but the woman threw her own arm out first, blocking Miyu from stepping in.

She held her ground against the incoming attack with nothing but her own strength, absolute certainty written across every line of her stance.

An ancient diagram bloomed from her outstretched hand, tracing itself into a fresh silver magic circle hanging in the air before her.

A storm of silver leaves tore out from that circle an instant later, moving with the speed of wind itself, except these were no ordinary leaves, each one honed to a razor’s edge, and together they slammed into the incoming wall of green energy with overwhelming force.

The green orb shattered on impact, breaking apart into a drifting cascade of silver particles, beautiful and impossibly gentle, falling like snow across the entire battlefield.

Somehow, that snowfall felt real. It landed on everyone below, and even the Omen raised a hand to catch some of it, registering the same warmth and softness it remembered feeling the first time it had fought at her side.

The Omen admitted, almost bewildered, that this sensation shouldn’t have existed inside a memory like this at all.

The particles drifted down toward Lucian as well, settling against his skin as he ran, and the warmth radiating off them hit something deep inside him, deep enough that his teeth clenched against the sudden certainty that this, whatever this was, was exactly what he’d been searching for all along.

Then something stopped him cold.

Whatever stood in front of him now felt like glass, an invisible wall marking the absolute limit of how far this memory would let him go.

The Omen’s voice carried across the distance, warning him he’d already reached the edge, that there was no walking any further than this.

Lucian tilted his face back upward, chasing the last of those falling particles as they brushed against his skin.

He pressed a hand to his own face, something trembling deep in his chest. Is this really as far as I’m allowed to go? His head dropped, his free hand curling into a fist at his side.

The instant his fist closed, he remembered what he was still holding. The white sword. The same blade the Omen had already told him was the true key to this entire domain.

His mana surged toward it without conscious thought, flooding into the blade all at once.

Sonata answered, flaring bright, trembling in his grip.

What he did next left everyone watching in complete disbelief.

Lucian drove the sword straight into the glass wall blocking his path.