Power of Runes Chapter 538: River of Time (2)

"So I can’t trust you guys. Not anymore."

Silence lingered after his words left his lips.

"But it’s not like I have any other way, so..." Ash sighed softly before continuing, "when do we start?"

Although Ash couldn’t see any of the Runes within the White Void, he could somehow feel the subtle emotions coming from them, and for some reason, he was certain that all of them were happy with his answer.

"Then we can begin whenever you are ready," the Rune of Time said, its voice carrying a faint trace of relief.

Ash did not answer immediately.

Instead, he closed his eyes and focused his consciousness outward, reaching toward his connection with the clone in the Realm of Eden.

"Eva."

His voice echoed within his consciousness.

There was no response at first, but the connection between them soon became clearer, and a familiar consciousness gradually appeared within his perception.

"Eva, withdraw your consciousness from my clone. I am going to dismiss all my clones within a few minutes, so withdraw now. The clone will wind everything up at the Academy, and we are leaving."

He cut off the connection without waiting for her reply.

There was no point in wasting time explaining everything to her, because the moment she saw his memories, she would understand what had happened.

Eva’s consciousness gradually withdrew from the clone.

At almost the same moment, Ash’s consciousness began synchronizing with the memories Eva had accumulated during the time she had been using his body within the Academy, while his own memories flowed into hers as well.

The countless memories passed between them almost instantly, with both of them retaining complete control over what they wanted the other to see and what they wanted to keep private.

Ash wanted to know what had happened outside during his absence, while Eva wanted to understand why she had suddenly been called back.

He saw the Academy corridors she had walked through, the classes she had attended, the conversations she had with the girls she had recently befriended, the small jokes they had exchanged, the gossip she had listened to, and even the strange incident involving Amelia Veynar.

Yet many parts of Eva’s memories were deliberately omitted, so Ash only knew that she had talked with her friends without knowing what they had actually discussed, because Eva had chosen not to show him those parts.

Ash’s consciousness lingered briefly upon the memory of Amelia.

He continued reading through Eva’s memories, quickly understanding why Amelia had approached her, how their conversation had been interrupted when Amelia suddenly fell into that strange state, and how Eva had spent the following four and a half days looking after her while continuing to attend classes through his clone.

He also saw the reports about the strange occurrence spreading throughout the Realm of Eden.

Curiously, he asked the Will of the Runes about it, and they explained that he was the reason it had happened, as well as why Arthur had still not appeared to find him, revealing to him the miraculous effect his Title had caused.

Ash processed the information quickly before moving on.

There was no need to linger on anything unnecessary.

The Title was certainly useful, but it couldn’t help him much right now.

After all, there were far more important things waiting for him.

Once they had both finished synchronizing their memories, Ash withdrew his consciousness from the connection and returned his complete attention to the White Void.

"Wait."

Eva’s voice suddenly echoed directly within Ash’s mind, carrying a clear trace of concern that made him pause.

"What about Eric and Snow?"

Ash raised an eyebrow.

"What about them?"

"If you’re going into the River of Time, what is going to happen to them? You’re leaving this Timeline, and from what I just saw in your memories, you don’t even know where you are going to end up or how long you’ll be gone, so how can you just leave them here?"

Her questions came one after another as she continued thinking about the situation.

"And what if that person finds them after you disappear? You already said that the people connected to you through your Soul are still tied to Fate, so won’t they become targets as well? Even if that person is only after the Runes, he knows that you are connected to them, doesn’t that make them dangerous to leave behind?"

Ash remained silent for a moment, because to be honest, this was something he had already been considering even before Eva brought it up.

His thoughts immediately turned toward the Wills of the Runes.

"They might indeed become targets," the Rune of Knowledge replied. "But there is a simple solution to that problem. We can sever your Soul connection with them."

"Once that connection is severed, they will become indistinguishable from the countless other existences within the Three Realms. You have already changed the Fate of far too many beings, so even if Arthur searches for the people connected to you, he is unlikely to notice two ordinary individuals whose connection to you has already been severed."

Ash’s thoughts remained silent for a moment as he considered the solution.

"There is another option," the Rune of Time added. "You can bring them with you into your Soul Space, but there is one condition. They cannot leave your Soul Space after you enter the River of Time."

"The reason is simple. I am not yet powerful enough to destroy their Temporal Anchors without an established connection to them. If they leave your Soul Space while you are in the Past or Future, they will no longer have the protection of a connection with us, and the moment they become exposed to the River directly, they will face the Wrath of Time."

Ash’s expression became slightly more serious.

"So they either stay here without any connection to me, or they come with me and remain inside my Soul Space."

"Yes."

Ash remained silent for several moments.

Bringing them along would keep them close, but it would also drag them into a danger they had never asked for.

Leaving them behind was much safer, especially if the connection could be severed and the person coming after him would no longer have any reason to notice them.

In the end, the choice was obvious.

He would leave them behind.

After having a talk with both of them, Ash finally severed his connection with Eric and Snow, and after making sure there was nothing else he needed to settle, he returned his attention to the White Void.

"I am ready."

"Then let’s begin. I will destroy your Temporal Anchor on the count of three."

Ash nodded as he tried to mentally prepare himself for what was about to happen.

"THREE!!"

And the ground beneath his feet suddenly vanished.

For a moment, Ash simply stared down in disbelief before realizing what had just happened.

A loud, completely shameless laugh echoed throughout the White Void.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The laughter continued for few moments before finally fading away.

Meanwhile, Ash was already falling.

At first, it didn’t even feel like falling.

His body felt suspended within an endless emptiness, with nothing beneath him and nothing above him, and because there was no air around him to create even the slightest resistance, there was nothing his body could use to judge his movement.

For a brief moment, it felt as though he were simply floating.

Then he realized that he was not floating at all.

He was falling.

And he was falling faster.

Ash instinctively tried to steady himself, but the moment he moved, his body continued drifting downward through the endless darkness, with nothing beneath his feet and nothing above his head even the white void has vanished.

Then something caught his attention as he looked above.

There were 25 points of light floating in the darkness above him. Like a lonely cluster of stars surrounded by nothing but darkness.

They were so far away that they almost looked like stars, each one shining with a different yet strangely familiar light, and the moment Ash’s eyes settled upon them, he found himself unable to look away.

There was something about their arrangement that felt strangely familiar.

Then everything clicked into place at once.

His eyes were fille with wonder and enthusiasm like that of a child after seeing those cluster of stars.

The 25 stars were arranged into a shape that immediately reminded him of the symbol he knew as Infinity their positions perfectly balanced within the vast darkness, and although he had seen the White Space countless times before, he had never actually seen the Runes like this.

They looked... beautiful.

Not because of how brightly they shone, but because of how small they appeared against that endless darkness, as though twenty-five tiny lights had been suspended at the edge of existence itself.

Ash remained mesmerized for a few moments, watching the stars silently from below as his body continued descending.

Then something suddenly changed.

The darkness surrounding him opened.

Ash’s gaze shifted downward.

And his breath caught.

A river was flowing beneath him.

No.

Calling it a river felt almost wrong.

It stretched so far into the distance that Ash couldn’t see where it began or ended, its enormous current winding through the darkness like an endless strip of flowing light, yet there was something impossibly strange about its surface.

Colors moved across it without any fixed pattern, silver, blue, gold, violet, and countless other shades blending into one another before disappearing beneath the current, while within those flowing waters Ash could occasionally see things that made absolutely no sense.

A city would appear for an instant before dissolving into the water.

A battlefield would emerge somewhere else.

A mountain range.

They appeared and disappeared so quickly that he could barely understand what he was looking at.

Ash stared downward.

Then his body suddenly felt heavier.

His expression changed.

A strange sensation began spreading through his Soul, as if something invisible had slipped through the surface of his existence and was slowly embedding itself deeper inside him.

Ash immediately tried to push it away but nothing happened.

The sensation remained, even though it was not painful.... it was deeply uncomfortable, and with every passing moment, that strange weight seemed to increase ever so slightly.

The Rune of Time had mentioned that entering the River would come with a price, and Ash now understood what it meant.

Whatever this force was, it was accumulating inside him.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

But it was there.

Ash didn’t bother resisting it anymore and instead turned his attention back toward the River below.

The distance between him and the water continued shrinking.

That realization had barely formed when his body finally crossed the boundary.

The River swallowed him.

For a moment, Ash lost every sense of direction.

The current seized his body and pulled him forward with a force that left him completely helpless, carrying him through the endless flow while the strange scenes within the water flashed past his vision faster than he could comprehend.

And before he could even begin to understand what he was seeing, the current had already carried him somewhere else.

***