Chapter 534 - 487: The Irreversible Sorrow

Chapter 534: Chapter 487: The Irreversible Sorrow

"How about it, Mr. Roland?"

He spoke softly, his voice like water flowing beneath a sheet of ice—calm and cold.

"Now, do you have a better understanding of just how sensible my proposal was?"

He didn’t wait for a reply.

It seemed he was certain Roland was incapable of any meaningful response at that moment.

He simply raised his hand elegantly and gave a crisp snap of his fingers.

SNAP.

The sound was crisp, yet it struck the dead-silent hall like a clap of thunder.

In an instant, the surrounding light, air, and even time itself seemed to be violently twisted and yanked back by an unseen force.

Roland felt an intense vertigo and weightlessness, as if his very soul was about to be stripped from his body. His vision filled with chaotic fragments of light and shadow, and an illusory, rewinding hum echoed in his ears.

When he "awoke" once more—or rather, when his Perception was forcibly shoved back into the node of "the present"...

He was standing on the polished floor of the Morning Star Archive’s main hall, his posture straight, his breathing steady.

His left arm was intact, with no hint of pain or distortion.

There were no crystal shards at his feet, no void beside him, and the air was free of that heartbreaking scent of burnt grass and ash.

Everything was just as it had been.

Orderly and solemn, as if it had never witnessed any destruction or slaughter.

Realizing this, Roland whipped his head around, almost convulsively.

His gaze swept frantically behind him.

Avril stood there, her emerald eyes watching Yemiga warily. The Leather Armor on her shoulder was pristine, without a single trace of blood, and her aura was steady and full of Life Energy.

Duraga leaned on his War Axe. Though his face showed exhaustion and anger, his armor was gleaming. His burly frame stood like an iron tower, his breathing heavy but strong.

Galvis was holding his Lute, its strings intact. His face was a little pale, but his eyes were still clear.

Even Bronson, a little farther away, was looking over nervously.

They were all alive.

Vibrantly, wholly, full of Life Energy, they stood behind him.

The brutal, utter annihilation from moments ago, that bone-chilling death—it was all like a nightmare that had been far too real.

"Roland?"

Avril noticed Roland’s gaze snap toward her. It was filled with a sorrow so thick it couldn’t be dispelled, a cherish-filled look of one who has regained what was lost, and a deeper, heart-wrenching agony that made her flinch.

While keeping Yemiga locked in her peripheral vision, she asked in a confused and worried tone,

"What’s wrong? Your expression... Did something happen?"

Roland’s lips moved.

He wanted to speak, to call her name, to confirm their existence.

But his throat felt as if it were clogged with coarse gravel, or constricted by an invisible force. It was dry and searing, and he couldn’t squeeze out a single syllable.

Only the heart in his chest was beating wildly, erratically.

It hammered against the lingering, icy despair that felt as though it had yet to dissipate.

Yes, they had all "come back."

Brought back with a single, casual snap of Yemiga’s fingers, plucked from the trash heap of time.

But...

What about that soul-crushing pain?

Witnessing the void where Duraga disappeared, the shattered crystal shards of Galvis, the sensation of Avril turning to ash in his arms...

Those sights, those sensations that chilled him to the bone, that excruciating agony of his soul being torn apart...

They hadn’t vanished with the reversal of time.

Like the most stubborn of Ghosts, they remained, clear and cold, entrenched in the depths of his memory, screaming and echoing in every fiber of his Perception.

The violent conflict between reality and memory almost made him want to vomit.

Just then, Yemiga’s voice sounded again. It was still placid, yet it was like a viper’s tongue, licking at Roland’s most raw and bloody wounds.

"What’s the matter, Mr. Roland?"

He tilted his head slightly, his dark yellow, vertical pupils flickering with an almost innocent curiosity.

"Aren’t you going to... share what just happened with your companions?"

His words landed like a heavy block of Ice dropped into stagnant water.

The hall fell silent, leaving only the suppressed breathing of the others and Roland’s own heavy, wordless gasps.