Runes • Rifles • Reincarnation

80. Time Keeps On Slipping

Long Zui opened the door with a heavy heart—

She stepped into her palace's training room, pausing as a strange sense of déjà vu washed over her.

It was an unsettling feeling, as though she had been here before, in this exact moment. Yet, no matter how hard she tried, the memory eluded her. She lingered, waiting for Jinshu to appear as he usually did around this time, when her eyes flashed with a multicolored light—like two crystallized rainbows trapped within them.

"Something's wrong… I'm not supposed to be here," she muttered to herself. "I was somewhere else just a moment ago… but where?"

Her eyelids fluttered closed as she tapped her glowing eyes with a fingernail. A rune appeared beneath her touch, shimmering briefly before fading away.

Scenes played out in her mind—memories of things that hadn’t happened. Not yet, anyway. But they would, or at least they were supposed to.

A flock of Golden Rocs, numbering in the tens of thousands. Blood-soaked mountains. Dying dragons. A dead dragon. Someone important.

The images blurred, and she strained to focus. She couldn’t make out who it was, but deep in her soul, she knew someone precious to her had died.

“There are only a few I care about,” she murmured, her voice trembling. “So who is it? Jinshu? No, not him. Chanshi? Not her either. Jia... mei?”

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over, unnoticed as she wiped them away absently. "Was it her? Did Jiamei die? But how…?"

Her head snapped up, her eyes blazing brighter than before. With a thought, she extended her senses outward, quickly sweeping across the entire estate. She was

“Was that… real?”

“That power… was he truly one of us?”

Jiamei said nothing, her gaze fixed on the empty sky where her son had vanished. A single tear traced a path down her scaled cheek as she whispered into the silence, her voice trembling:

“My son…”