After that, Aphelia and a handful of allies clashed with the demonkin, a blood-slick storm fought on the knife-edge of life and death.

Especially Aphelia—she rose in battle like a hawk catching a thermal, but almost got torn down by the demon lord’s personal guards, a ring of blades closing like ice.

“True enough. But as a Hero, wearing it this openly is a torch in midnight—bad idea.”

Aphelia hid a laugh behind her hand, her eyes on the youth named Ophelius, memories drifting up like lanterns on a river.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m a Hero anyway. But you, Sister—what’s your name?”

“Me, hmm—”

At Ophelius’s question, Aphelia’s lips lifted, a crescent moon cut in silk.

“My name is Aphelia.”

Ophelius froze, then let out a chuckle, a pebble skittering across a tiled courtyard.

“Come on, Sister, don’t tease me. Same sound, different story…”

He clearly saw her as a playful elder, a summer breeze inviting daydreams of gentler scenes.

Being the same person, Aphelia knew the tides inside his head, helpless as a shore at high tide, amused as a cat at a fishbowl.

“Not teasing. But I do need your help.”

“Say it, Aphelia-sis. First off, I won’t break my code,” Ophelius said, his voice a straight spine, a banner held high.

Aphelia smiled, a candle at dusk. She hadn’t thought she’d ever have to trick herself—even if it was the self from yesterday.

“Someone’s trying to kill me at any cost. He set an illusion realm on me. I don’t know its trigger, or its root. The power it touches is… too vast, like a sea at monsoon. Even the Church’s bishop couldn’t dissolve it.”

Ophelius’s brow folded like stormclouds. Anyone hearing that would doubt first, like touching a blade’s edge.

In that past era, Aphelia as a woman was a shadow behind a screen, almost nameless in the hall of records.

So how could a nameless figure be wrapped in an illusion even a cardinal couldn’t break?

Cardinals are near-Titleholder strength, pillars like stone lions at a temple gate. If they can’t pry it open, why would a Titleholder strike at a simple nun?

“I know you doubt me. Look at my habit,” Aphelia said, her smile a calm lake. She loosened her shawl and tapped the twin patterns at her shoulders.

In those five years, she had nowhere to go, drifting like a leaf, until a friend in a wimple settled her in the Church Inquisition’s rear chapel.

Out of kindness, that sister gave Aphelia a full member’s habit, a cloak against trouble like a roof against rain.

The Sister Inquisition belongs to the Church’s Tribunal, a lineage kept since the First Epoch, a pine that never bows in snow.

In the demon wars they blazed like irises in spring. Their will run iron-deep; to fight demonkind, they traded years of life for the gods’ strength.

When the human front cracked like dry clay, they stood as the spine that kept the body from falling.

When Ophelius saw the iris sigil, his face steadied like a soldier before a shrine.

He couldn’t sense Arcane Power from Aphelia, but the scent of many battles clung to her like iron to rain; that aura can’t be forged from paper and ink.

“My apologies, Aphelia-sis. I was reckless,” Ophelius said, bowing with the plain grace of a reed bending to wind.

He lifted a hand; an isolation ward spread like frost over glass, waiting for her to lay out the road ahead.

Aphelia only smiled, a lantern behind gauze. “I think the illusion was set by someone stronger than a Titleholder. I was already close to a Titleholder myself, so…”

“So a normal Titleholder could hardly slip an illusion onto you in the chaos,” Ophelius said, voice a measured drum. “Which makes chasing the caster even harder, unless…”

He followed her thread and looked at Aphelia as if at a cliff path, waiting for the next foothold.

“Unless we link the sea of consciousness,” she said, a bell tone in fog. “Only then can we find the hand behind the veil. And the only one I trust to do it is you—the Hero, Ophelius.”

Linking the sea of consciousness—yes, that was Aphelia’s plan, a bridge over darkness made of thought.

With her Arcane Power bound, she couldn’t drag the culprit out by the collar inside this illusion.

She refused to drift here like a boat in dead water. So she chose the most dangerous way, a method inked only in theory.

Every illusion realm has its singularities—people, objects, events—stones in the stream that set the swirl.

Break the singularity, and the waters run clear, the realm collapses like mist at sunrise.

For a human-shaped singularity, you make them see what the future might bring, or the memories woven to their marrow.

Doubt takes root like ivy on a wall. The realm falls, brick by brick.

The person before her—herself—was that rule-breaking singularity.

So Aphelia would link the mind-sea, let the young Ophelius watch those branching futures, paths diverging like crossroads flagged in red.

One worry still sat like a blade at her throat: that radiant Elven Holy Sword, perfect as its body in the true world.

Ophelius drew a long breath, like filling a bellows before fire.

Even as a singularity, he carried Aphelia’s older kindness, that Hero’s mercy like soft rain on stone.

A Hero in wartime still weighs the chance she’s a demon’s planted blade.

When Aphelia asked to link the mind-sea, he reached for the Holy Sword at his back like knocking a temple bell.

The sword gave no answer, a still pond under moonlight. That silence meant Aphelia wasn’t demon.

He didn’t know she once held that Elven Holy Sword as its master; a blade knows its own river, and won’t ring an alarm at its source.

Aphelia, seated across from him, let out a breath, relief uncoiling like smoke. From his face, she saw her gamble land true.

“Fine, Aphelia-sis. In that case, we pick the church—”

“No,” Aphelia said, a cut clean as snow on slate. “I suspect trigger points inside the Church. I’ve already tripped one illusion there.”

Her refusal surprised him like a gust turning the prayer flags, but Ophelius only nodded, the motion spare as winter bamboo.

“Then my hideout,” he said, voice a path through pines.

They reached his hideout quickly, moving like shadows under eaves.

Thanks to Ophelius, they skirted trouble like stones skipping past whirlpools.

Aphelia felt in her bones she’d found the right singularity, a compass needle settling true.

“Please, Sister, sit in the circle across,” Ophelius said, gestures crisp as brushstrokes. “Once I finish this side, we’ll start the mind-sea link.”

With a heap of Mana Crystals bright as crushed stars, Ophelius carved the magic circle without wasting a breath.

He inlaid extra protections and isolation Runes, a net of sigils tight as woven reeds.

“Feels so familiar…” Aphelia murmured, the words a wind stirring old flags.

She looked around; the old journey rose like mirages on hot stone.

She sat inside the circle, steady as a stone at a river bend.

Unique arrays spiraled like coiled dragons; rare scrolls piled in corners like a dragon’s hoard with a bandit’s mess.

Seeing her glance, Ophelius gave a sheepish laugh, a sparrow scratching dust.

The chaos wasn’t laziness; it was a life lived on the road, a house empty as a winter nest.

“Then, let’s begin,” he said, the words a pebble dropped into still water.

Ophelius lifted the Holy Sword from his back, setting it as the heart of the circle, a sun pinned at noon.

Silver light poured from the blade like a waterfall; the Mana Crystal circle woke, Arcane Power flaring into sight like lightning in cloud.

The isolation ward drank the surge like sand swallowing rain; not a ripple leaked beyond the hideout’s bones.

When the linking array touched both of them, it shone with two utterly different lights, twin moons over separate lakes.

Ophelius’s side glowed with the Elven Holy Sword’s purity, a gentle silver like dawn on birch.

Aphelia’s side did not glow; it held a darkness so pure it looked like black light, a shadow standing beside light like the other half of noon.

There was no malice in her shade, just the presence of night to day, a cool ink that simply is.

Light bled from both circles and mingled, black and white twining like koi in a pond.

Ophelius and Aphelia’s seas of consciousness touched, and memory surged like floodwaters breaking a sluice.

For Aphelia, those waves were old stories, a quick flip through pages yellowed by sun.

For the youth across from her, they were not mere memory, but meteors carving fire across his sky.

They were the future—his future—the branching that Aphelia meant to show, paths splitting like lightning forks.

Inside the mind-sea, Aphelia steadied first, a boat righted after squall.

She looked to the other side, where Ophelius struggled, veins rising on his temple like cords under skin.

Her eyes held helplessness like rain trapped under eaves; watching the past self in such pain would twist anyone’s heart.

But she had to do it. She waited for the youth to yield, for the weight of memory to crumble him like a sand wall against tide.

Then, before long, the unexpected rose like a hawk in headwind.

Ophelius, in that inner sea, pushed to his feet, one hand clamped over his brow like a bandage.

He looked at Aphelia, and the gentle spring in his eyes froze to winter steel, hostility and killing intent sharp as frost on a blade.