Chapter 1246: Lost in Time and Hidden by Fate

The borrowed eternity inside Phei Ryujin Tiamat was beginning to burn through him.

He could feel it from the strange place where his consciousness now rested, seated somewhere behind his own senses while another presence wore his body with terrifying ease. Eira had entered first, slipping into him through the bond between Familiar and Master and pouring enough of her hidden cultivation into his pitiful Master Stage foundation to force open a path that should never have existed.

Through her, the slumbering depth beneath his Void had been given just enough of a foundation to awaken, and from that moment onward Phei’s body had ceased belonging entirely to just Phei but him, Eira and something older that had opened its eyes through him that regarded World Transcendents as troublesome insects and the laws surrounding Earth as little more than curtains someone had hung in the wrong place.

For a short while, Phei had enjoyed watching.

It was difficult not to.

There was something deeply satisfying about sitting inside his own body while the Ancient Naga who had stabbed through his heart discovered that loyalty to Danton was a catastrophically poor retirement plan. Watching Cassian, the Gorgon and the male Demon vanish beneath powers Phei himself had barely begun understanding had inspired several emotions, most of them morally questionable and therefore quite comfortable.

The pleasure had faded quickly; his soul was coming apart.

Hair-thin fissures had begun spreading through it sometime during the battle in Anactica, too small at first for Phei to properly notice beneath the overwhelming power roaring through his body.

Now they were everywhere.

Some resembled faint cracks running through transparent crystal, while others had deepened into wounds that pulsed each time the presence forced more of that impossible might through him.

Eira continuously poured power into the worst places, stitching, supporting and binding wherever she could, yet even her efforts only slowed the destruction.

Dragon Regeneration fought beside her with all the stubbornness of Phei’s ability.

Unfortunately, Dragon Regeneration was designed to restore the Dragon.

It understood flesh, blood, organs, broken bone, damaged meridians and the countless physical injuries Phei had become depressingly familiar with. Even damage touching the deeper foundations of his body could be drowned beneath enough Dragon vitality if given time.

What was happening now exceeded it.

Every moment this state continued demanded far more from his soul than his present cultivation had any right to bear, and Dragon Regeneration kept hurling life into the damage with admirable determination while accomplishing approximately what a cup of water might accomplish when thrown into a burning mountain.

The Void seemed to find the comparison amusing.

{A rather small cup.}

Phei’s consciousness shifted irritably within their shared inner space. "I don’t remember inviting commentary."

[The Void isn’t wrong, Master,] Eira muttered, and unlike the fathomless presence surrounding them, her voice carried none of its serene amusement and care. [Your soul is being roasted alive.]

"You two done?"

{No.}

[Absolutely not.]

Phei would have rolled his eyes if he currently controlled them.

Instead those eyes remained completely white as the Void continued looking across the world.

They had been searching for Althea for far too long.

The first sweep had covered Hell’s Paradise Island so thoroughly that even Phei had struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. Every Maxton property had opened beneath the Void’s gaze and every living presence across the island became distinguishable with a clarity that made ordinary spiritual perception seem embarrassingly primitive.

Althea had not been there, so the search expanded across oceans, continents.

The Void passed through mountains, beneath deserts, into ocean trenches and across places hidden beneath formations whose creators had likely died believing their secrets would survive eternity. Ancient ruins, military shelters, and every pocket of distorted space still connected strongly enough to Earth to be recognized by the realm had been opened beneath that immeasurable perception.

Nothing.

Then they had searched the Past.

That was where Eira became more frightening than the Void itself.

She dragged their awareness backward through what had already occurred, forcing yesterday to surrender itself one moment at a time until the Ashford estate returned exactly as it had been before Althea disappeared. Phei watched the child moving through familiar halls, watched the preparations around the mansion and the people who should have protected her and the tiny ordinary details no one living through that day would have considered important.

They saw the kidnapping and they followed the one responsible.

The Blood Elf involved in taking Althea had been useful for part of it; her memories had been exposed through the slave connection already obtained, and every fragment that could be torn loose was examined until Phei felt as though he had personally lived portions of a stranger’s life.

The trail still ended.

That was what made the entire thing strange!

Althea did not just disappear behind some clever barrier they could break or sealed realm whose entrance Eira had overlooked:

History simply lost her.

One moment the girl existed inside it, small and frightened and painfully real.

The next moment there was a wound where continuation should have been; she was simply lost in time!

The Void lingered before that missing portion of time, its white eyes staring into absence with increasing displeasure. {Again.}

Eira’s irritation sharpened. [We have already crossed this moment nineteen times.]

"Twenty sounds luckier." Phei answered.

[Master, I swear by every prison I have ever escaped, if you say something that stupid again while your soul is splitting open, I will personally find a way to slap you from inside your own body.]

Phei almost smiled. "See? You’re still hopeful. That’s healthy."

{She means it.}

"I know she means it."

[And you are going to stop.]

"No."

There was a pause.

Eira’s voice became dangerously quiet. [Excuse me?]

Phei watched Althea’s final visible moments unfold once more through the shared sight. "Search again."

[We searched Earth.]

"Then we missed something."

{We searched everything this realm presently permits itself to remember.}

"Then make it remember more."

For the first time since the Void awakened, the presence became completely silent.

Phei felt Eira too, felt the tiny flare of frustration within her, then the immediate suppression of it when another crack opened across his soul.

Pain ripped through his consciousness.

He hissed.

Eira reacted before the sound finished forming; her power surged through him, cold and impossibly precise, folding around the new fracture before it could widen.

[That is the fourth serious tear in less than ten minutes.]

"It barely hurt."

[Your definition of barely has become medically offensive, I am the one burdened with healing you, stop this stubbornness.]

"We will live."

{Temporarily.}