NOVEL NEXT Chapter 813: New Outcome
The familiar-looking sky. She had seen this already. Twice was too many and once was not enough.
The bitter taste of blood was still on her tongue, and the lingering sounds of battle clung to her mind. A vast darkness fighting an angel. Screams, shattering light, the sensation that the world itself was about to break.
Twice was too much, yet she had endured that horrible ordeal more than once.
She found herself standing in a forest. It was noon, sunlight pouring through the leaves.
Right about now, she should have heard the voice.
"You are dreaming the Nightmare of Lazarak."
"Overcome from this Nightmare and receive the boon of the fourth class."
That was what everyone heard when they ended up here after being consumed by nightmares.
Everything was just a dream, a dream more vivid than real life.
Lilith knew all this. There were no mysteries left for her here. She had stood in this exact moment four times now.
And each time she had failed at the same miserable point, the hurdle she could not overcome.
She slowly dropped to her knees. Right about now, a fruit would fall from the trees and land on her head.
In the last three cycles she had caught it, having learned her lesson after being struck the first time.
She waited with a resigned expression. The fruit falling was inevitable. It was part of the events time had established. Nothing would be changed. Nothing could be challenged.
Time was absolute. No matter how many times you fought it, you could not push past its tide.
She reached out.
But her hand closed on nothing. Her emerald eyes shimmered.
"Hmm." A soft sound escaped her. Did she miss the timing?
Her eyes narrowed as she lifted her gaze to the branches. Her pupils trembled.
"The tree…" she whispered.
The tree had no fruit. Only bright green leaves. Not a single fruit in sight. She turned her gaze to the rest of the trees. None of them had fruit.
Lilith's breath tightened. This wasn't how it should be. The trees always had fruit. Now they didn't.
Her hand slowly rose to the small flower in her hair.
A gardenia with six petals. But of the six, four had turned dull grey and lifeless, leaving only two.
This flower was her hope and her despair.
Its origins were simple. It had come from the Unknown God. Seeing how easily he had given her this flower, she should have been far more wary of his boons.
But even if she had known what would become of her, she would have taken it.
The flower had one power. While it wasn't a weapon, it was vast and filled with mysteries Lilith couldn't comprehend.
It carried her back to a moment in time, a fixed point, while allowing her alone to keep the memories of everything that had happened.
But it was despair too, because time was merciless and the omniverse cruel. People's fates could not be changed by her choices.
More than anything, Lilith had wished for something simple. She had wanted to save Damon from dying, because she alone understood he would stop at nothing to die.
The first time, she failed. So she used the flower and returned to the moment she first entered the Nightmare.
With all she learned, with every mystery solved, she believed she could change his fate.
How dare she be so ambitious. He died again.
The second time, she told Damon everything, believing with all her heart she could save him.
And when all was said and done, he had only used her. Betrayed her. With her knowledge of the future, he created the very sequence of events that led to his death.
The fourth time, she tried alone. She wasn't naive enough anymore to believe her words could save him.
But it changed nothing. Damon still died, impaled on a black spear with a thin smile on his lips.
She couldn't stop him with words or with force.
That was her despair. How could you save someone who did not want to be saved?
The Unknown God believed fate was just our choices.
She bit her lip. "In the end I could not defy his fate because he made his choice. Living, struggling, surviving was his choice. And so was dying."
Her voice cracked slightly. No one was there to hear it.
Lilith noticed something fundamental about the nameless flower.
With each cycle, the world changed more visibly.
The first time, the trees had been heavy with hundreds of fruits.
Now they were barren.
"The world changes with every regression. The differences are minute but…" She pulled the flower from her hair.
"This flower isn't regressing me. It's trying to create a different outcome."
But the process was slow. Lilith's actions were a factor. Everyone else's actions were a factor. Everything was connected, and the slow flap of a butterfly's wings could create a tornado far away.
Even so, it could not change the outcome fast enough. With only two petals left, the shift would come too late.
She hugged her knees. For the first time since making that promise with Damon, she felt truly lost and alone.
Lilith wanted to cry. She couldn't. She hated to admit it, but she was scared.
But she also couldn't give up.
Overcoming the enemy was simple.
Overcoming Damon was difficult.
"I need to go find him… and stop him…"
She rose to her feet, then stopped.
Wasn't this exactly what she did every single time, believing she could stop him?
"No." She shook her head slowly.
"Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is madness."
She stared at the flower in her hand.
"I've been looking at this wrong the whole time. First I need to know what this flower actually is."
Knowledge was the key to victory. And the only person who would know was…
She bit her lip hard.
How loathsome.