Time rewound to a moment earlier.
The instant Jiang Yu pointed the gun at herself and fired, the Gypsy witch truly felt death descending.
Her eyes widened as she watched that speck of crimson light burst from the gun muzzle. In an instant, countless images crowded into her mind—a little red-haired girl playing with Tarot Cards in a dilapidated Wizard Tower; an old man behind curtains bleeding from all seven orifices under the backlash of divination; kneeling at the Moon God's feet in prayer after communing with another world; lips lightly touching those of a wizard in the snow.
Ilena shifted her gaze away from that crimson glimmer and looked at the enormous "black cat" beside her.
So beautiful. The words suddenly surfaced in her heart, followed by an inexplicable sense of pride. Then that pride slowly sank, turning into profound sorrow.
When had all this begun?
With the first time they struck up a conversation at Wander Bar, over their first drink together?
Or when they first fought side by side on Pedestrian Street and beat Arthur Ness senseless?
No, earlier. Even earlier than that.
From the moment he stepped onto the school's Special Plane, it had all begun.
As a diviner and medium, Ilena possessed astonishing talent in certain mysterious fields. She could clearly sense the existence of nodes of fate.
In that respect, she was very similar to Amber, the diviner from Atlas Academy. Amber saw the threads of cause and effect floating around wizards, while Ilena sensed the power of fate surging around their bodies.
Eastern mages had a particularly fitting term for people like her: aura readers.
On Zheng Qing, Ilena saw a density of fate's power unlike anything she had ever seen before. It gave the Gypsy witch, who desperately needed to change her