Crackle——

I felt like my mind was breaking apart.

It was as though I had just awakened from a long dream. A dream that was neither bitter nor sweet, neither pleasant nor painful. If I were not who I was, I would have gone mad right then and there.

First and foremost, what I had believed to be a soul transfer was not a soul transfer at all.

No. That assumption had been wrong from the very beginning.

All this time, I had always been Chae Eunwoo.

From the beginning up until now, that much was true. No matter what name I carried, no matter what body I inhabited, and no matter how many lives I had lived, the person at the center of it all had never changed.

I was Chae Eunwoo.

I had always been Chae Eunwoo.

I had always been Zen.

I had always been Vanitas Astrea.

Another Chapter added onto the same existence. No matter how many reincarnations occurred, no matter how much time passed, that fundamental truth had never once changed.

"So it was all going to shit anyway... Haha..."

A bitter laugh escaped my mouth.

The realization should have shocked me. It should have devastated me. Yet after everything I had witnessed, all I could do was laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The South Korea I was familiar with no longer existed.

It had never existed in this timeline to begin with.

What I had once assumed was a parallel world was not a parallel world at all. It was simply a different timeline that had diverged so drastically from the history I remembered that the two could barely be compared anymore.

The realization left a strange taste in my mouth.

Because the entire world I had once called home had long since disappeared into history.

And the worst part was that it had not been destroyed. It had become this.

To think that the era I remembered was the past.

To think that the world I once knew had eventually developed into this piece of shit.

The thought felt utterly insulting.

The world before me was so different from the one I remembered that calling them the same civilization felt dishonest. The only thing connecting the two was the fact that one had eventually led to the other.

"...."

I suddenly understood why the revelation bothered me so much.

It was not because South Korea was gone.

It was because I had spent all this time subconsciously believing I could still return.

Somewhere deep inside me, there had always been a small assumption that the world I remembered still existed somewhere.

Whether it was hidden behind dimensions, separated by realities, or merely out of reach, a part of me had continued believing there was still a road leading back.

But there wasn’t.

That road had never existed.

The world I remembered was not somewhere else.

It was behind me.

No amount of miracles could reverse the simple fact that time had moved on without me.

For some reason, that realization hurt far more than I expected it to.

——Father, please stop...

The scenes did not end there.

The memories continued playing before my eyes. One after another, they forced me to relive yet another life.

The life of Vanitas Astrea.

Naturally, this was already a story I knew.

Vanitas Astrea had never truly understood what was happening to him. He had never understood what "Zen" actually was.

What Vanitas believed to be an imaginary friend was not an imaginary friend at all. What he believed to be a dormant entity living within him was not another existence sharing his body.

There had never been another person there. There had only ever been himself.

A Zen who had repressed his memories. A Zen who had chosen ignorance because the truth had become too much.

But for the young boy, he had convinced himself that "Zen" was a separate person.

A secondary persona. A hidden existence living somewhere within his mind. Someone wiser, stronger, someone who always knew what to do.

Whenever Vanitas was afraid, Zen appeared.

Whenever Vanitas doubted himself, Zen appeared.

Whenever Vanitas needed courage, Zen appeared.

Again and again, he relied upon that existence.

Again and again, he convinced himself that the voice guiding him belonged to someone else.

The person he wished to be.

The person who pushed him forward whenever he wanted to give up.

The person he admired more than anyone else.

All of it was himself.

It was always himself.

In the end, it was a delusion.

A comforting delusion.

A necessary delusion.

But a delusion nonetheless.

"...Karina."

The moment her name left my mouth, everything finally began falling into place.

For the longest time, there had been pieces of the puzzle that never quite fit together.

Certain events felt too convenient, certain encounters felt too unrealistic, and certain moments in my life seemed as though they had been carefully arranged by an unseen hand.

Now, I finally understood.

Karina had always been there.

That woman had entangled herself in every stage of my life.

The memories continued unfolding before me, revealing truths I had never been meant to see. The more I watched, the more apparent her influence became.

She was there before I noticed her.

She was there after I forgot her.

She was there even in moments when I believed I was completely alone.

The realization sent a chill down my spine.

Because it was no longer a question of whether Karina had been involved.

The question was how much of my life she had influenced.

How many times had she intervened?

How many times had she guided events from the shadows?

How many times had she saved me without my knowledge?

Then I finally understood where she had disappeared to.

"That day..."

The day Karina vanished before my eyes. I had been looking at it from the wrong perspective the entire time.

Because that was not the day Karina disappeared, but the day I was born.

Karina had not abandoned me.

Karina had not left.

Karina had fulfilled her role.

That was the moment she finally carried out the decision she had spoken about so long ago.

And that day... when she killed Vanitas Astrea in panic, a delusion was born.

I was born.

A final gift from a woman who understood me better than I understood myself.

"Tsk."

I clenched my fists and took a step forward.

It was time to stop dreaming.

"Zen."

I only had one question.

"Is Karina still alive?"

——That’s a difficult question to answer.

"...."

——Whether she is still alive or not depends entirely on how you define the concept of being alive.

"Don’t bullshit with me."

I took another step forward.

"Is she alive or not?"

——Hm. Let’s just say that the moment she awakened as the Origin of Time was the moment she became something that can no longer be evaluated as living or dead.

I frowned. The answer only irritated me further.

"...What are you talking about?"

Zen let out a chuckle. The sound reminded me of a professor preparing to explain something obvious to a particularly stubborn student.

——You proposed it yourself, didn’t you? The String Theory. So tell me. What makes up space?

"Dimensions," I answered. "Coordinates. Distance. Position."

——Correct.

Zen sounded satisfied.

——Space is not a location, but a relationship. Every point exists relative to another point. And every location exists because something else exists beside it.

I remained silent.

The explanation was something I had already understood after building upon the framework of several physicists.

——Now apply that same logic to time. Human beings perceive time as a straight line.

"A beginning, a middle, and an end."

——Mhm. Birth, life, and death. But that’s only because our minds are too small to perceive anything else.

"...."

——When Karina crossed the threshold and became the Origin of Time, she stopped existing within a single timeline.

My pupils contracted.

Zen continued.

——She deliberately expanded the universe.

The images became clearer. I saw countless versions of Karina. One was walking east, the other west, another south. One was laughing, the other was crying, and another was laughing.

One was walking to finish her journey. And another had reached her conclusion.

And yet all of them were Karina. All of them existed simultaneously.

——In one universe, Karina goes here. In another, she goes there. In another, she makes a different choice entirely.

The possibilities multiplied endlessly. Branch after branch, timeline after timeline, as reality expanded outward infinitely.

——Every possibility became real. Every outcome became true.

I felt a chill run down my spine.

——You keep asking whether Karina is alive. But that’s the wrong question. Because somewhere, she is alive. Somewhere, she is dead. Somewhere, she is still searching for you. Somewhere, she has already found you.

The implications were horrifying, yet at the same time, beautifully tragic.

——As you proposed, time is relative. Past, present, and future only exist from the perspective of an observer.

A framework I had built upon Einstein.

——From a higher dimensional perspective, everything occurs at the same time.

I saw Karina as a child.

I saw Karina as a student.

I saw Karina standing beside the Archmage.

I saw Karina standing beside me.

I saw Karina rewinding worlds.

I saw Karina reaching the end of her journey.

Every version existed simultaneously. Every moment existed simultaneously. Every choice existed simultaneously.

There was no beginning.

There was no end.

There was only existence.

——That is why she can never truly die. Because there will always be a version of her somewhere.

A timeline where she still existed. A timeline where she was still walking. A timeline where she was still smiling.

——But that is also why she can never truly be alive. Because there will always be timelines where she has already reached her end.

Timelines where her story was already over. And timelines where all that remained was a memory that she left behind.

"...."

I found myself unable to speak.

Then Zen finally gave the closest thing to an answer he could.

——Karina exists. That is the only statement I can confidently make. Whether you call that life or death is entirely up to you.

I stared at him for several moments.

The answer irritated me far more than it should have. Perhaps because it sounded exactly like the kind of thing I would have said to someone else.

"You think you’re so smart, huh?"

I was not dreaming anymore.

"You think you have the right to veer the course of my life just because you’re me?"

For so long, I had been following footsteps that were never truly mine. For so long, I had been cleaning up the consequences of decisions made by a man who shared my face but not my conclusions.

"You’re not me."

Crackle——

"I’m not you, either."

Perhaps we shared the same origin. Perhaps we shared the same soul. Perhaps we even shared the same memories.

Yet we were no longer the same person.

We were two people who had arrived at different conclusions.

Zen had looked upon humanity and decided it was worth saving.

He had chosen hope. He had chosen preservation. He had chosen to continue carrying the burden of a civilization that repeatedly disappointed him.

I had looked upon the same humanity and reached a different answer.

Destruction.

I chose to burn away what was rotten. I chose to force change through violence if necessary.

The methods were different.

The conclusions were different.

The roads we walked were different.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized something infuriating.

Despite all our differences, we had still arrived at the same destination.

"Hah."

A bitter laugh escaped my mouth.

We were fundamentally the same.

Both of us wanted to shoulder the world’s sins.

Both of us wanted to bear responsibilities that should never have belonged to a single person.

Both of us insisted on carrying burdens that no sane human being would willingly accept.

As though we were martyrs.

As though suffering itself justified our existence.

As though dying along with our convictions somehow made us noble.

The thought was ridiculously pathetic.

And worst of all, the thought was true.

"...."

I finally understood why I hated him so much.

It was not because Zen was different from me.

It was because he was too similar.

Every flaw I despised existed within him. Every self-destructive tendency I had existed within him. Every irrational urge to sacrifice himself for a cause larger than himself existed within him.

Zen was a piece of shit.

But I was an even bigger piece of shit.

If I were the protagonist of a story...

"Zen."

...It would certainly be a tragedy.

"Perhaps Araxys was right."

Roooooooar——