Within the Night Curtain

In the future of fire, the world had been burned to ash.

Flames were not eternal, and the firewood within the shelters was likewise limited. Beyond the reshaped land and seas, that Eternal Veil still bound the entire world—and when all things within the veil turned to ash in the flames, the world ended in a long cooling.

It was said that this "cooling" had lasted a full four hundred years. At last, the age of embers arrived—cold ash covered the entire world, no new flames rose, no living beings cried or breathed, and the world stagnated amid that pile of cold ashes. Nothing new was born, and nothing old perished.

In a sense, this shelter that had endured the Great Annihilation had finally attained eternal peace. Embers would return to embers—the end had been permanently frozen in this moment, and no new suffering would ever descend upon this land.

Duncan came to a large rock and sat down without concern, paying no attention to the ashes everywhere. He looked at the ruins of cities on the plain, still endlessly weathering, collapsing, and turning to ash. After pondering for a moment, he suddenly spoke. "So this option offers no way back."

"You can reshape everything," Crete said as he came to Duncan's side. His thin, withered body stood in the cold wind like a bent dead branch. "But there is one exception."

"Myself," Duncan realized, speaking softly. "I cannot redefine myself..."

Crete remained silent for a long time before speaking. "If there truly is no path, then the future of fire would at least be a continuation—but I hope you will be cautious, and then more cautious still. Time is like a river. Many of its tributaries can be rewritten, but once the main current that crosses the endpoint has