Erend remained seated on the edge of his bed after the connection faded. His gaze lowered while his thoughts slowly aligned clearer than before.

He finally understood what he needed to do, and in its simplest form, it was almost straightforward.

Go to the Creation again then either purify it or rewrite its purpose. But the simplicity ended there. Because the moment he thought further, the real difficulty surfaced immediately.

How was he supposed to convince the ones who understood the Creation best to cooperate with him?

Those people would not be ordinary individuals. They would be the ones who studied it, guarded it, and built their entire world around it. Figures of authority. Mages, the overseers, perhaps even rulers.

And that alone made everything far more complicated than any battle he had faced so far.

They would not trust him easily. Not him, not Eccar, and not Aesa.

They were outsiders.

Worse than that, they were world travelers who had already breached the most protected sites in that world without permission. To those in power, that would be enough to treat them as threats rather than allies.

If he approached them without preparation, it could escalate into conflict immediately.

A misunderstanding could turn into hostility, and hostility could spiral into something far worse.

And if that happened, everything would fall apart before he could even explain himself.

Erend let out a long sigh, his shoulders lowering slightly as he accepted the reality of it. There was no alternative path. Avoiding them would only lead to failure. Acting alone was no longer an option.

"We have to make them agree," he murmured quietly.

The words settled with finality.

He nodded to himself after a moment, his decision firming as his thoughts moved forward instead of circling the same problem again.

This was not something he would handle alone. Eccar and Aesa needed to be part of it. They had seen the fragments and felt the same things he had.

"I'll talk to them tomorrow," he said under his breath.

—

Deep within the Grand Library of Leonora City, the silence had stretched long into the hours as Velrion, Arven, Eldric, and Draven continued their search through records that had been untouched for generations.

The air remained thick with dust and age, the faint glow of Magical light casting shadows across the endless shelves as they moved methodically through texts that carried fragments of forgotten history.

Suddenly, Velrion paused.

His hand hovered over something that did not belong among the usual records.

It was not a book or a scroll. It was a plank.

A thin, aged piece of carved material with its surface etched with symbols that had faded with time but still held a presence that felt deliberate and preserved.

The markings were written in an old dialect, far older than most of the texts they had uncovered so far.

He carefully lifted it, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied the lines.

"Hmm… This is not a usual record," he murmured, his voice quieter than before.

Arven and the others turned their attention toward him as he traced the carvings with slow precision, translating the meaning piece by piece.

The words formed gradually.

It was not a piece of history or observation. But a prophecy.

Velrion spoke to them about what he read.

It spoke of a time when the world would face a threat beyond its understanding, when the balance sustained by the Sky Anchor would begin to falter and the hidden danger within it would surface once more.

And at that time, it said something else.

Beings from another world would appear. They were not invaders. But as the ones who would stand at the center of that moment.

They were the ones who could help guide the outcome when this world reached its greatest point of need.

The chamber fell into a deeper silence as the meaning settled across all of them. It felt heavier than any discovery they had made before.

Because without saying it directly, the implication was already clear.

It implies that the world travelers were not just an anomaly. They might have been expected.

After the short silence, Draven was the first to break it.

He let out a low sigh. His arms crossed slightly as his gaze remained fixed on the plank, though there was a clear edge of skepticism in his expression.

"We're putting our trust on that?" he said, his tone restrained but firm. "A piece of carved wood with faded symbols and no clear origin?"

Eldric gave a slow nod in agreement, his expression tightening as he stepped closer to the table and studied the plank again with narrowed eyes.

"It lacks structure, Archmage," he added. "No author, timestamp, and no corroboration. This is not how significant records were preserved by the Ancestors."

"It could be anything. A warning, a myth, or someone's interpretation carved after the fact," Draven said.

Arven remained silent for a moment, his gaze moving between the plank and the others before he spoke. "Or it could be real," he said.

Both Draven and Eldric turned toward him.

Arven sighed slowly, choosing his words carefully.

"We are already dealing with things that should not be possible. World travelers appearing. The Sky Anchor reacting. Unknown forces interfering with something we barely understand. If this prophecy even has a chance of being accurate, then ignoring it completely might be a mistake."

Eldric frowned. "And accepting it without proof would be worse."

"It's not about accepting it blindly," Arven replied. "It's about not dismissing it entirely either."

Draven shook his head slightly. "We rely on facts, not possibilities."

The tension between them tightened subtly as the debate settled into a quiet but firm disagreement.

Velrion did not speak for a while.

He stood still, the plank still in his hand, his gaze lowered slightly as his thoughts moved beneath the surface.

The others' voices faded into the background as he considered the nature of what they had found. Not just the content, but the form it had taken.

A plank. Not a preserved manuscript or an archived document that was deliberately carved or documented.

After a while, he let out a quiet breath.

"It is… questionable," Velrion said at last.

The others fell silent as his voice cut through the discussion.

"If this held significant weight in its time, it would have been recorded more formally and preserved within structured archives. Not left in this manner." His gaze remained on the carvings for a moment before he lowered the plank back onto the table.

"However," he continued, "we are no longer in a position to ignore anomalies simply because they do not fit expected patterns."

Arven's eyes shifted slightly at that.

Velrion straightened slowly. "We will not treat this as confirmed truth. But we will not discard it either."

Draven remained silent, though his stance did not fully ease.

Eldric sighed quietly, still unconvinced but no longer pressing the argument.

Velrion's gaze moved across all of them, steady and composed.

"For now, we proceed with what we can verify," he said. "And we keep this… in mind."

The plank remained on the table between them. Still unconfirmed and untrusted. But based on their decision, it was no longer ignored.

—