With his eyes closed, the scorching steam mist nearly merged with the dense fog behind Shade. Whistles and bells carried far on the wind across the silver-glinting sea of sand. Since Shade was seated on the ground, the already enormous seven-ring Destiny Ring floated slightly upward, making it appear even larger than in the past.
The Destiny Ring rotated slowly, its thirty-two Spirit Runes flickering with dim light. The Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron Four-Colored Ling Light gathered within the ring itself. When Shade, who had been looking down at the sand, raised his head again, Enlightenment Spacetime seemed to brighten slightly.
"I'm the audience and the narrator, right?"
He asked softly, but it was "her" voice at his ear that answered:
Yes, Outlander.
"Then... Time Reversal—Breath of Time!"
As he drew a deep breath, he raised his right hand, aimed his palm at the scene of the story's ending within the mist, and slowly pulled it leftward. As wisps of gray air wrapped in White Fog entered his nostrils, the image in the White Fog actually trembled, even though Ms. Meister was not controlling the illusion.
Shade's thaumaturgy, "Breath of Time," could only reverse or accelerate the time of a single item, and it only worked on ordinary objects and a small number of Alchemy Items. Yet this time, his target was the "story" before him. Even with the identity of an "audience" within this illusion, this was completely beyond the range that the thaumaturgy could affect.
Although his extreme casting just now had caused a momentary temporal distortion, it was still far from enough to rewind the entire story.
But Shade did not give up. He raised his empty left hand, and the now-small piece of Philosopher's Stone left behind after the Mermaid Girls cast Earth Power All Things