Chapter 84: The anomaly

Senya’s smile lingered a moment longer before she shifted slightly in her chair, her frail hands folding neatly in her lap, as though settling in for a much longer conversation than I’d expected.

"The truth is that I don’t actually see the future. Not the way people assume."

I frowned. "But Diana said—"

"What I’ve allowed people to believe, and what is actually true, are two different things." She let out a quiet, tired breath. "I’ve let the villagers believe I can see future events because it gives them comfort, and because it’s close enough to the truth that correcting them never seemed worth the effort. What I actually feel are fluctuations. Ripples moving through the threads of fate itself."

"Threads of fate," I repeated slowly, trying to wrap my head around what that actually meant.

"Everyone, everything, every living being carries a thread..."

"Woven into a much larger tapestry that stretches across the entire world. Most threads are thin, quiet, barely noticeable unless you know exactly where to look. They shift occasionally, bend slightly with choices and chance, but rarely cause more than the smallest ripple."

She paused, her sharp eyes studying me carefully.

"I can’t see a person’s actual future, or their past. Not with any real clarity. I don’t know when someone will be born, or when they’ll die, unless that person’s thread becomes tangled enough to disturb everything around it. Unless they create enough chaos within the greater weave that even someone as limited as me can feel it from a distance."

I leaned forward slightly, my earlier frustration giving way to genuine curiosity. "So fate really exists then? Like, as an actual, real thing?"

Senya’s expression grew thoughtful; her gaze drifting somewhere distant again.

"Fate exists, yes. But not in the way most people imagine it. People like to believe fate is a fixed path, something written down somewhere, unchangeable and absolute. That isn’t true at all." She shook her head slowly. "The truth is, fate is far more complicated than that. You can’t really define it, because it is both everything and nothing at the same time. It changes. It breaks. It takes shape again. Every choice, every action, every decision made by every living being changes it, even if only by a little."

She fell silent for a moment, letting her words settle before continuing.

"And you, Neo Draven... are one of the very few people who has caused the most chaos within that weave that I have ever felt in my entire life."

My breath caught slightly. "What do you mean by that?"

"You’re like a magnet, drawing threads of fate toward you from every corner of the world. Threads that should have never crossed yours in the first place. Lives that were never meant to meet you, paths that should have remained completely separate."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"And yet, here you are. Even now, as you sit before me, I can feel it. The moment you enter someone’s path, things begin to change. Futures that were once certain start to shift. Possibilities that should have never existed begin to take shape."

A cold, uneasy feeling settled into my chest.

"So... you’re saying I’m some kind of anomaly?"

Senya shook her head slowly, her expression carefully blank.

"No. That’s not quite accurate either. It doesn’t mean you’re simply an anomaly. It means you’re a—"

Her words cut off abruptly.

A thin trail of blood suddenly spilled from the corner of her mouth. Before I could even react, she collapsed sideways off her chair, gasping violently for air, another thin stream of blood now leaking from her eyes as well, dark and startling against her pale, weathered skin.

"Senya!" I lunged forward instinctively, catching her before she could hit the ground, my heart hammering with sudden alarm. "What’s happening to you?!"

She coughed weakly, blood staining her thin lips, though to my shock, she waved a trembling hand dismissively, a faint, pained smile somehow still managing to curl across her face.

"Oh... it’s nothing. I’m alright, It’s simply fate, punishing me for revealing too much. A small price to pay, considering what I’ve just shared with you."

I stared at her, horrified. "This is ’nothing’? You’re literally bleeding from your eyes!"

She let out a faint, wheezing laugh, waving off my concern again as she slowly steadied herself, leaning heavily against my arm.

"Listen carefully, Neo Draven. This is important." Her grip on my sleeve tightened weakly, her sharp gaze locking onto mine despite her obvious pain. "If someone like you exists in this world, someone who pulls every thread of fate toward themselves, then somewhere, someone else must also exist. An opposite. An anomaly who negates everything you attract instead of drawing it in."

My blood ran cold as her words fell into place.

"And remember this—only one of you can exist in this world at a time." She continued, her voice falling to a quiet whisper. "The moment one of you appears, the other has no place here."

Senya’s grip on my sleeve finally loosened, her breathing settling into something closer to normal, though the blood still staining her lips and chin made it hard to believe she was actually fine.

"What do you mean, only one of us can exist? What happens to the other one?"

She let out a slow, shaky breath, and for the first time since I’d met her, something like genuine weariness crossed her face, not the weariness of age, but something far older and heavier than that.

"I don’t know, that’s the part even I can’t see. Whether one consumes the other, whether the world itself decides, or whether fate simply tears itself apart trying to hold two opposing forces at once. All I know is that the threads cannot bear the weight of both existing freely for long. Something will eventually give."

I sat there in silence, letting that settle over me like a stone dropped into still water. ’Someone who negates me. Someone built as my exact opposite.’

My mind raced immediately toward the obvious answer, the one name that had been sitting uncomfortably in the back of my thoughts since the ballroom.

’Kael.’

The male lead. The one person whose status I couldn’t appraise, whose very existence seemed to confuse even the system itself. The more I thought about it, the more disturbingly it started to make sense. But even then, I couldn’t say for certain.

"Is it someone I already know?"

Senya’s eyes flicked toward me; sharp despite her exhaustion.

"I can’t say for certain. I don’t see faces, or names, Neo. Only the shape and the amount of the disturbance they leave behind. But I will tell you this much." She paused, steadying her breathing further before continuing. "The thread opposing yours has grown louder these past months. Faster than yours did, in some ways. Whatever, or whoever, it is, it’s waking up."

A chill crawled down my spine. But I didn’t show any outward reaction.

I helped her back into her chair, my hands still faintly trembling from everything she’d just unloaded onto me in the span of a few short minutes. She accepted the help without complaint, her earlier strength clearly spent.

"You should rest."

She chuckled weakly, waving off my concern one last time. "Don’t worry about an old woman like me. I’ve survived worse punishments than this for far less important reasons."

I studied her a moment longer, a dozen more questions crowding behind my teeth, though I forced myself to hold most of them back, not wanting to risk her collapsing again on my account.

"One more thing, can you at least tell me which direction leads back toward the empire? Diana said there might be a way."

Senya’s expression went blank again. She didn’t answer right away, letting the silence settle around them. After a long moment, she finally parted her lips and spoke.

"No. I can’t let you leave this place."