Chapter 137 The Glimpse Ahead

The town was a skeleton of what it used to be with hollow houses, wind-bent signs, and the occasional tumble of sand rolling down cracked streets. I wandered between the ruined storefronts, kicking aside debris until I found something resembling a clothing store. Most of what was left had long since rotted or turned to dust.

Still, I managed to find a few things from a faded coat, a shirt that might have been white once, and a pair of pants that didn’t look half-eaten by time. They smelled of mildew and old wood, but it would do. I gathered them in my arms and returned to where Mother sat on a half-collapsed bench, staring out at the horizon.

“Here,” I said, offering her the coat. “You must be cold. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Thank you,” said Mother, taking the coat. The fabric hung loosely on her naked frame, but at least it covered her. “That feels better…”

“How is she?” I asked. “Missive, I mean…”

Mother followed my gaze. “Asleep,” she said quietly. “It will take time before she feels anything close to peace. But sleep is good. It means her mind hasn’t shattered completely.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess we all needed some of that.”

For a moment, none of us spoke. The only sound was the faint whistle of the wind passing through the cracks in the walls. The adrenaline that had carried me through the fight was gone, replaced by the weight of exhaustion pressing down on my shoulders.

When I finally looked down at myself, I realized how bad I looked from torn clothes hanging off me, blood crusted on the fabric, and holes burned through the sleeves. I let out a tired breath.

“I’d better find something for myself too,” I muttered. “At this point, I’d be better off naked.”

I went around the town, kicking through the debris and ash for something wearable. Most of the clothes I found were moth-eaten, torn, or smelled like rot. Eventually, I stumbled upon an old boutique. The front window was shattered, and mannequins were still lined up like corpses waiting to be dressed.

In the corner, I found a suit. The color was faded, the fabric dusty, but it was intact enough. The pants were too long, the jacket too tight on the shoulders, but after the week I’d had, beggars couldn’t be choosers. I slipped them on and straightened my collar. The mirror nearby was cracked down the center, splitting my reflection in two.

My face seemed… calmer. Instead, it was less hollow and broken. “Weird.” Maybe it was just the lighting, or maybe that was just my imagination.

I buttoned the jacket, ran a hand through my hair, and walked back toward the diner where Mother was waiting. The wood creaked beneath my steps, the sound echoing in the dead quiet of the town.

She was sitting where I’d left her, on the bench, wrapped in the long coat I’d given her earlier. I sat beside her. The bench groaned beneath our weight. We waited.

The plan was simple: Wormhole would pick us up. We were supposed to stay put until he got here. It had been quite a walk from the ruins of the Tenfold Keep, but manageable. My legs ached, though. I wasn’t used to walking this much anymore.

Then my stomach growled, loud enough to make Mother glance sideways.

“Guess I’m hungry,” I muttered.

She tilted her head. “Do you eat human meat?”

I blinked at her, caught off guard. “My god… Where did that come from?”

Her tone was disturbingly casual when she replied. “Paleman is a cannibal. There are times he snacks on me.”

I winced. “That’s… disturbing, Mother.”

“He says it helps him recover faster,” she continued, as if discussing the weather. “I’ve stopped asking questions.”

If I had my way, I’d have torn Paleman apart, piece by piece. But Paleman was dead. Honestly, I’d rather he stayed that way. “

“Wormhole is taking far too long,” I said out loud, though the doubt in my voice was obvious. “I’m bored.”

Mother didn’t answer.

According to her, the other half of our team survived, so logically, someone should’ve reached us by now. But logic was a fragile thing in our line of work. Maybe Wormhole was dead. Maybe he was too injured. Maybe he decided we weren’t worth the trouble.

I sighed and leaned back, watching the pale sky dim toward orange. “Guess we’ll wait a little longer.”

Out of nowhere, Mother spoke. “Are you going to do it?”

I turned to her, blinking. “Do what?”

“Kill me?” asked Mother. “Because that’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

I turned to her. “What made you think I would kill you?”

She gave a faint, humorless smile. “I manipulated you. I involved you in this mess, and you almost died for it. I know how much you loathed being manipulated. That’s how your story started, anyway… right? Royal. Crow. Now, there’s me.”

Her words landed heavy, not like accusations, but as observations from someone who had seen too much. She wasn’t wrong, though. My life had been one long chain of people pulling my strings, and me pretending I didn’t care while I tore at their hands one by one.

I looked away, staring at the ruins beyond the road, the ghost town stretching endlessly toward the horizon. The wind kicked up dust around our feet. I didn’t know where to begin. I just didn’t feel like it.

Killing her… wouldn’t change anything. It would just make me another hypocrite. Another Crow. And I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not again. Besides, killing her would mean taking away the only parent Missive had ever known. And that? That would be the height of irony.

Honestly, I didn’t even know what counted as ‘right’ anymore. But I did know myself well enough that if I was ever forced to pick between logic and emotion, I’d choose emotion every single time. At least that way, when things went wrong and they always did, I’d only have myself to blame.

I let out a long sigh and leaned back on the bench. “You still owe me something, you know.”

Mother tilted her head, her expression softening with mild confusion. “Owe you?”

“Did you forget already?” I asked with a faint smile curling at the edge of my mouth. “About our deal?”

Her eyes widened. The flicker of realization and surprise hit me like a whisper through my Empathy.

“I want to know my future,” I said. “If you wish to not get killed, then show me…”

Mother went quiet, and then she smiled. “You really are strange,” she murmured. “You know, I don’t think there would be another person like you, willing to wage wars and stake your life for something as unreliable for a chance at fortune telling. I want you to know that precognition isn’t an absolute thing. Just by knowing certain futures, you can change things for the better or the worse. Most often, for the worse, because that’s just how Murphy’s Law works…”

“That’s not my problem,” I said, folding my arms. “You promised.”

“Very well,” she said softly. “If you want to see… then possess me.”

I had no idea how far into the future Mother had seen, but she knew a lot. Too much, actually.

The fact that she had suggested I possess her told me everything I needed to know. No one offered something like that unless they were certain of what would happen next.

Still, I couldn’t help but ask, “Are you sure?”

She nodded slowly, her expression unreadable.

“Can you not just use your telepathy to impart knowledge of the future to me?” I pressed. “Save us both the headache?”

“I can’t,” she said, her voice calm but laced with something like exhaustion. “To go further into the future the way you want requires too much energy. My telepathic prowess will not be enough.”

That made sense in a weird, psychic science kind of way.

I sighed. “Fine,” I said finally, and reached for her outstretched hand.

The moment I touched her, everything folded in on itself.

…

..

.

It felt like drowning in someone else’s reflection.

I blinked into her existence and found myself staring at unfamiliar, slender hands. It was Missive’s hands. I raised them in front of me, my pulse echoing in my ears. When I blinked again, the bench, the abandoned town, and even the sound of the wind were gone.

Instead, I was standing in a fitting room.

I turned toward a tall mirror. The reflection staring back was… me, but older. Sharper lines on my face, a faint scar at the corner of my eye. The lighting felt surreal, sterile, and warm all at once. People milled about behind me, their shapes and movements recognizable but their faces blurred like watercolor smears.

“The mind is a fickle thing,” Mother’s voice whispered, though she wasn’t there physically, only existing as a thought in this in-between place. “Sometimes it rejects information for the sake of maintaining continuity.”

“So this is your idea of showing me the future?” I muttered.

She didn’t answer. The world shifted again.

The next blink brought me to a grand hall… It was a church, maybe, or something like it. White fabric hung from arching beams. Rows of chairs lined a crimson carpet. Music hummed softly from nowhere and everywhere.

My hands were shaking. I was standing at the altar.

I was the groom, and everyone was waiting.

A wave of emotion hit me so suddenly I almost stumbled. My chest tightened with something foreign… joy, maybe? Nostalgia? Whatever it was, it wasn’t mine.

The doors at the end of the hall opened.

The bride walked in, veiled in white, every step measured and graceful. Faces on both sides blurred together into a haze of color and sound. My heart was racing… why was I nervous?

I found myself thinking absurdly: Who’s it going to be? Silver? Onyx? Nicole? I could feel the anticipation, the happiness swelling in my chest as if this moment had been years in the making. The bride reached the altar. I raised my hands, still trembling, and slowly lifted the veil.

I froze.

It was neither Silver, Onyx, nor anyone I expected.

She had brown hair, honest eyes, and a smile so radiant it could have set the whole world alight.

“Amelia… Morose?” I breathed. “Tigress…?”

My stomach dropped.

“What the fuck is happening!?”

It was so out of the blue that I was flabbergasted. Nothing about it made sense to me. Yet the happiness I was feeling was real and warm, intoxicatingly so.

To be honest, I was disappointed. It defied every expectation. On one hand, filled with pessimism, I expected to see my miserable death, something poetic and inevitable. On the other hand, filled with self-wish fulfillment, I thought I’d see one of them: Silver, Onyx, or Nicole. Maybe even all three. But no… none of them were here.

When the priest gave us permission, we kissed.

The memory flowed forward, one seamless, glowing moment after another. Nights spent tangled in passion. Quiet mornings of laughter and idle chatter. My hands were writing reports at a desk, of all things. Friends with faceless and blurred shapes were laughing beside me.

It was so ordinary.

“So mundane.”

For someone like me, that felt… foreign and almost wrong.

Still, I smiled through it. I watched myself live a life without war, without power struggles, and without ghosts whispering inside my skull. For once, I didn’t feel like a weapon.

Just as suddenly as it began, it ended.

“W–what’s happening?” I gasped as the world began to dissolve into black. “T-this… feels familiar…”

The warmth vanished. I couldn’t feel Mother anymore. The tether that held me steady in the vision had snapped. I knew I was still in the future, in some way that mattered, but everything around me had changed.

The air was cold, and my lungs burned.

I looked down and saw that I was carrying someone. Amelia. My wife. She was dead. Her weight sagged in my arms, her body limp and pale, her hair tangled with dust.

Around me, the world was nothing but ruin of overturned vehicles, shattered windows, and concrete skeletons of buildings clawing at a black sky. The silence was absolute and oppressive.

Finally, I saw it.

The sky opened, and a vast, blinding silhouette stood in the distance. It was humanoid, white as the light of creation, but faceless. A blank shape radiating stillness so absolute it made the ruins tremble. Two dark spots bloomed across its head… It was eyes, if they could even be called that. They fixed on me.

My mouth went dry. “N–No way…”

I knew what I was looking at. It was the same entity that the Witch and the Prophet had shown to Light, with the same shape that haunted his memories.

God.

That was the name they gave it. But no… no, I refused to call something so inhuman God.

A creature that looked down on everything and claimed dominion by its very existence didn’t deserve worship.

I didn’t believe in souls. So what was stopping me from not believing in God, too? The irony of it almost made me laugh… Moments ago, I’d just been married in a church. Now, I was cradling my dead wife in a world devoured by something divinely wrong.

Finally, the entity spoke.

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”