"Achoo!" Li Yue sneezed. She wiped her pinkish nose and wandered through the campus. Unlike the other students who were excitedly heading to the training grounds to test their magic, she had no real concept of her own, nor any particular thoughts on it. To her, magic was just a redundant item—at least for now.
She walked slowly through the corridor in her pure black clothes. A light rain began to fall, pitter-pattering. Through the veil of rain, she watched a marble fountain nearby spraying water. The surrounding greenery was lush, making it impossible to tell the season.
It was the chilly early spring... She paced slowly through the corridor, gazing at the flowerbeds. A small, pale flower bowed its head under the rain, its petals falling one by one, wilting in the downpour.
Must everything beautiful walk toward destruction? Is that what is right? Must all life head toward death? Is that the law of fate? After all living beings pass away, a new world begins, a new cycle—is that what fate is...?
Then at this moment, aren't we still bathed in the embers of twilight? It turns out the long night hasn't arrived, and neither has the dawn. The Twilight of the Gods hasn't ended... But now, I just want time to stay still at this moment, even if only for a little while...
Sadness flickered in her eyes. The flower in the distance was now just a bare stem. Its last petal drifted slowly under Li Yue's gaze, eventually vanishing into the rain.
She looked at the sky; there were signs of it clearing. But for now, the rain continued. It was about to stop, yet the flower had already withered.
The magic book in her hand trembled. An ouroboros magic rune appeared on the back of her hand. The God's remains throughout her body fell silent, seemingly more harmonized and no longer restless.
The pale flower seemed frozen in that moment. Its petals gradually returned to the stem, but then, the outcome of being washed away by the rain happened again. It looped once more, repeating over and over.
Until the sun slowly peeked out, casting golden light over the flowerbeds. The plants swayed after the rain, and the pale flower danced in the breeze, growing toward the sun.
Li Yue slowly withdrew her hand. This was her magic. Time Loop? No, no... Fate's Cycle...
Reversing the time of an object—this was her magic. Was it the magic of time? She felt a slight ripple in the air. This was the resonance of fate. She had rewritten the fate of a plant...
However, Li Yue didn't think much of it, because her cycle could only last for a short duration. It was a decent support spell, perhaps useful for healing.
Inside the library, Clo was searching the shelves for traces of cycle magic. This magic had stirred many of her fractured memories.
Suddenly, she found an old magic book recorded in an ancient magical language. Clo began flipping through it. The closer she got to the so-called Time Loop, the more her head throbbed, as if something were preventing her from finding the truth.
"Is there a difference between looping and retracing?" Black asked from the side, resting his chin on his hand.
"Retracing is returning to a certain point in time. But because you've foreseen the future, even if you change the past, you must bear the punishment of fate," Clo said, a headache pulsing at her temples as she searched the books. "And some endings cannot be changed no matter how many times you return to the past..."
"What about a loop?"
"In a time loop, because time is circular, the outcome repeats constantly. But as long as a factor appears that breaks the cycle, the outcome can be changed."
"The similarity is that both can return to the past. The difference is that the latter can change 'fate'," Clo spoke with some gravity. She frowned, her head throbbing in waves. She couldn't help but try to recall the past, searching for clues within her shattered memory fragments.
"With such a powerful effect, the conditions for activation... must be very difficult."
"I don't know..." Clo clutched her head. It was as if something were forcing her to say those words. She studied the records carefully.
The magic book recorded that this magic was discovered by the first few while exploring the astral realm. At the edge of the astral realm, on those indestructible barriers, they discovered time cycle magic, though no one had truly mastered it.
To whom this magic belonged was unknown. All magic was discovered through research on God's remains, yet this magic was found on the boundary barriers of the astral realm...
"The price of retracing is already immense... Often, you can't even take your memories back with you, except for some simple spells. For instance, making your physical state return to a certain moment only requires a cost in mana, or manifesting past events."
"Those utilize the power of time, but they can't change 'fate', can they...?"
"If I accidentally knocked over a cup this morning and it shattered, and then I returned to a past a few seconds prior, I might knock it over again while getting dressed. I might not even remember why I went back to the past..."
"A Time Loop cannot do those things, but it can change fate... It can loop the cup's time back to that specific point, allowing a variable to change the outcome..."
"What a domineering magic..." Black frowned.
"Perhaps the restriction is that it can't return to a time long ago... or that one must find that variable. The greater the impact of an event, the harder it is for a variable to appear."
"'Cycle' should be a separate authority... It seems to be Him..." A sharp pain shot through Clo's head. She couldn't recall that hazy, indistinct figure in the mist.
"Ha, maybe... we're all inside a massive time loop, waiting for some great variable to appear." Black laughed and walked out before the next class started, leaving a stunned Clo behind.
It seemed... something had changed.
Witness fate, then change fate...
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