Wherever the Aurora Curtain swept through, time was like a videotape that had been erased.
No, "rewinding" was not an accurate description.
Rewinding implied a process, implied that melted steel beams would solidify again and shattered concrete would reassemble.
But what was happening before them was replacement.
The vitrified ground of the ruins instantly returned to concrete. The vaporized steel framework of the dome reappeared out of nowhere, covered in rust and dust, as though it had never vanished.
The scorched stench in the air was replaced by a fresh breeze carrying a faint salty tang from the sea.
Everything had returned to how it was before the battle began.
No, it had returned to an even earlier point in time.
Zhang Qi hovered in midair. He was the only thing in this world that had not been replaced.
With the power of the Memory, he had avoided the Aurora Curtain's reset.
At the same time, he began analyzing the process in reverse.
The Aurora Curtain was the foundation of Decade's power and could preserve a world's data.
Decade's ability to transform into other Kamen Riders came from extracting the corresponding data from cards and loading it onto himself, or materializing it as Diend did.
And now, Great Shocker had used this principle to expand the loading range from a single individual to the entire world.
Thus, a perfect closed-loop prison had formed. So long as Tsukasa Kadoya, the core, died, all interconnected worlds would be reset.
Then the same events would play out again—
Until the Riders were completely exterminated and the future Great Shocker desired arrived—
The next moment—
Natsumi Hikari suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, a fine layer of cold sweat covering her forehead.
An old ceiling fan creaked overhead, slicing through the dusty sunlight filtering