CHAPTER 204: CHAPTER 205: THEORY

In the air.

"Did you know, Aurora..." Merlin’s voice cut through the wind, low and sonorous, each syllable weighted like the chains still clinging to his limbs. Cracks bloomed through them, spiderwebbing from his wrists like glass under strain.

His mana flared—not in ripples but in sharp, vertical streaks, as if even the atmosphere rebelled against his presence. The clouds above twisted unnaturally, as if the very sky feared him.

"You missed a crucial lesson," he continued, head tilting back slightly, strands of his silver hair catching firelight and star-glow alike. "A theory I suggested... centuries ago. Do you still remember?"

His breath came out in frost despite the heat of his aura.

"I guess not," he said, smiling almost fondly. "It’s been long..."

Aurora’s hand trembled, not from fear, but from memory. Her other arm extended instinctively, fingers grazing his skin as if hoping to touch the man he once was—not the myth he’d become. Her palm brushed over a scar on his forearm—one she remembered stitching herself, years ago in that cracked-walled chamber at the Academy. It was still there. Faded. Human.

But nothing about him now was human.

The Book of the Damned vibrated in her grasp, as though awakened by an ancient rival. Its spine pulsed with red veins, and the embedded crystal at its core—once silent—shone like a second sun. The Eye of Dracula.

Merlin’s gaze flickered to it, and then lingered.

"...Wait. You don’t just have the Book," he said slowly, "but one of the Origin Crystals. The Eye of Dracula."

His eyes widened with rare, unfiltered awe. For a moment, he looked like the teacher she’d once idolized—a man caught mid-theory, his mind spiraling forward in a thousand directions.

"No wonder you arrived so quickly," he said. "You... your theory to use the Dreaming for travel... You did it." A pause. A genuine, breathless laugh escaped him. "You accomplished it!!"

His voice rose—laughing now, deliriously. "Ha... Hahaha... my prized disciple did the impossible!!!!."

A wind burst outward from him, disturbing the clouds in spiral rings. The mana in his chains shimmered with fractal hues, like oil on glass.

"I remember mocking that theory," Merlin continued. "But you proved me wrong—again and again. But now..."

His eyes narrowed.

"Now I will prove you wrong."

Crack!

The last chain shattered like brittle bone. Fragments flew through the air, burning away before they could touch the ground.

"My theory....The theory that particles exist—particles smaller than any eye could see. My prevailing theory that all matter is composed of smaller units... That reality is not divine, but divisible."

His feet hovered above now, body outlined in shimmering mana. The sky around him seemed to pulse with his heartbeat.

"We... as a human species..." he said, voice growing louder, "...should never have worshipped magic, Aurora. Magic was for the elves. The demons. Borrowed power. A leash handed to us by those who deemed themselves gods."

His fingers clenched, and something in the sky cracked—a faint sound like shattering crystal, though nothing visibly broke.

"No," he growled. "We should have chased something real. Something ours

.

Science...."

The word crashed into Aurora like a stone thrown into still water. A word she hadn’t heard since—

A memory surfaced. A younger Aurora, still a cleaner at Merlin’s academy, eavesdropping through a cracked laboratory door. Merlin muttering feverishly to himself, surrounded by instruments made of glass and copper, forbidden books open under candlelight. The word science whispered over and over.

"...science..." she whispered aloud now, as if tasting something sacred. "The study of the true structure of reality... but that... that’s heresy. Heresy of the highest order. The churches... the kingdoms would purge it..."

Her voice faded, caught between defiance and dread.

"They already have," Merlin spat. "Don’t you dare lie to me."

His gaze pierced her, not with hatred, but with unbearable clarity.

"I know Berkimhum has started to realize as well. Your kings, your thinkers, your buried laboratories. I’ve read the codes etched in the old walls. You’ve begun... But late. Far too late."

He raised his hand to the air, and it obeyed. Wind spiraled around him like dragons. The smell of ozone—sharp, electric—filled the space between them.

"Tradition will die. The age of magic will crumble into the sands of its own arrogance. At the dawn of this new era, I will stand." His voice broke into a thunderclap. "I will stand as its first prophet. The GUIDE."

Aurora flinched as the Book of the Damned howled in response. Pages fluttered open, spells clawing at her nerves.

"Airships," he said. "Artificial Primes. Reverse-engineered divine relics. It’s only the beginning."

He stepped forward. The air rippled like heat mirage around him.

"I am not magic’s heir," he declared. "I am its executioner."

His voice struck her deeper than any blade.

"...And the world will no longer follow the ’laws’ of the gods."

A gust tore through the clouds. Aurora’s braid came undone, strands of auburn hair whipped about her face. Yet her eyes never left him.

She saw it now. Not just the man—but the movement. The breathless momentum of an idea that had waited centuries to be heard.

A tremor passed through her shoulder. The spell etched into her nerves activated—a defensive trigger, one she’d used during the siege of the capital, when the dragon’s fire had split the sky.

"Then... what of the gods?" Aurora asked. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut the air like steel. "They will return, Master. If you defy them openly—twist the elements, bend their creations—they will look back. And they won’t smile."

He met her eyes. Unblinking.

"....I was born for this Aurora...i Feel it." he said. His spell transferring mana to his lips like the blessing of ’laws’ but there was something different. Something ominous.

Then softly, like an invocation: "Heli@#$#@ plus Hyd@$##en."

The words rang like a chime of doom.

Aurora’s heart clenched. A thousand simulations fired in her mind. The two elements, violently unstable. One near-mythical, harvested only from star fragments. The other—the simplest, most volatile. Together...

The world would not just bend. It would shatter.

{Hold} Her LAW split the world.