Precedence System: I Take My Rewards In Advance

Zishan shook his head and sank a little deeper into the water.

He could technically make bathing much easier if he had the appropriate Magic, though Water Mana Affinity had somehow escaped his growing collection so far.

’Can’t exactly ask Elinox to wash me either.’

The thought entered his head, followed by a very brief mental image.

Zishan stared at the opposite wall.

”...”

’Let’s not go there...’

Besides, bathing normally felt good. There were some things Magic could not replace, he guessed. His hand eventually reached toward a comb sitting beside the bathtub. Zishan picked it up, held it near his mouth like a microphone, and leaned back.

A familiar melody from Earth entered his head.

”You were the shadow to my light~~~”

His voice echoed through the bathroom.

”Did you feel u-u-sss~~~”

Zishan closed his eyes and attempted a run that his throat had absolutely no business attempting.

He did not stop.

In his mind, he sounded incredible, especially because of the echo.

Outside, Elinox had just found Silvy behind one of the chairs when a distant voice carried through the estate. Her smile toward Ollie stiffened.

The singing grew louder.

Then, Zishan apparently changed songs.

”The past is in the past~~~ let it gooo~~~ let it gooo~~~ I am one with the wind and skyyyy~~~”

Elinox’s lips twitched while Silvy raised her head, seemingly trying to figure out why Papa sounded like he was being tortured somewhere inside the estate.

Ollie stared toward the direction of the bathroom.

Elinox forced her smile back into place.

”Horrible singing...” she muttered. ”That voice could cause wars... catastrophic ones...”

Ollie covered his mouth.

Silvy tilted her head. ”Papa?”

Far beyond Olmost, beyond the Kingdoms surrounding the Sumwear Region and across distances Zishan had never traveled, the Central Continent rested beneath a night filled with countless stars.

Deep within that continent stood an organization older than nearly every Kingdom still existing in Cyrune.

Most of its visible halls occupied an enormous mountain range whose peaks disappeared into silver clouds, but its oldest chambers were hidden far beneath the stone.

There, time seemed to have forgotten how to move.

Ancient pillars surrounded a circular chamber carved from pale material that did not resemble ordinary rock. Thousands of tiny symbols covered every surface, glowing and fading in slow patterns like stars breathing across the walls. Threads of pale Mana drifted through the air, crossing one another without ever touching, while small points of light floated beneath the high ceiling and formed constellations that did not match the night sky above Cyrune.

At the center of the chamber sat an old woman.

Her silver-white hair reached the floor around her lotus position, spreading across the stone like fine threads. Age had covered her face with wrinkles, yet the Mana surrounding her carried such depth that even the chamber seemed to respond to every breath she took.

A transparent sphere floated several inches before her, countless lights drifting within it like distant stars. Some burned brightly, others flickered, while a few crossed impossible distances before vanishing behind clouds of mist that existed only inside the sphere.

The old woman’s eyes opened when several of those lights shifted at once for the first time in many years. She raised one hand and sent a thread of Mana from her fingertips into the transparent surface, causing the sphere to begin turning as the constellations spread across the chamber slowly followed its movement.

The rotation gradually accelerated, drawing more and more of the chamber’s light into motion around her.

Thousands of glowing symbols awakened along the pillars while the floating lights overhead shifted from their ancient positions. One after another, threads of Mana stretched toward the sphere until the entire chamber seemed to revolve around the old woman.

A pale silver light spread across the old woman’s pupils as images began racing through the sphere too fast for ordinary eyes to follow. She caught only pieces of them at first—a black shadow, a distant region beneath the Northern sky, the silhouette of a dragon surrounded by something far older than ordinary Mana, and strange threads that seemed to possess neither a beginning nor an end.

Before she could focus on any of them, the sphere abruptly stopped.

Every floating light within the chamber went dark at the same time, and the old woman’s body jerked forward as blood spilled from her mouth onto the pale floor. Silence settled over the chamber for several breaths before the symbols carved into the oldest pillars began glowing again, their usual silver replaced by gold.

The light spread from one symbol to the next until hundreds of them illuminated the ancient chamber, and the constellations above her gradually returned brighter than they had been for thousands of years.

The old woman raised her trembling head and stared into the transparent sphere. Reflected in her silver eyes was a single point of light with no visible thread connected to it, no beginning she could trace and no destination she could see, yet everything surrounding it had begun to move.

Her lips parted.

”So many things awakened...”

The golden symbols spread across the floor beneath her, forming circles within circles as forgotten characters surfaced from stone that had not displayed them since the earliest age of Cyrune.

The old woman’s breathing became uneven.

”But that one...” Her fingers tightened against her robe. ”His presence...”

The stars above the chamber shifted once more, and for one brief moment, every constellation bent toward that solitary light.

The old woman’s eyes widened. ”I can feel it...”

A deep sound rolled through the mountain, resembling neither thunder nor an earthquake but the toll of some enormous bell buried beyond the reach of time.

Its voice traveled through every sealed chamber of the organization, and with each toll, ancient doors that had remained shut for eras began trembling within the darkness.

Golden light gathered around the old woman’s frail body as she slowly rose from her lotus position, her eyes never leaving the sphere in front of her.

”He has awakened...”

A crack suddenly appeared across the transparent surface, spreading into a single golden fracture that cut through every visible future surrounding the solitary light.

The old woman watched it in silence as blood continued running from the corner of her mouth, while the ancient symbols around the chamber burned brighter with every passing breath.

Then, as the sound of the buried bell continued echoing through the mountain, she whispered words that had not been spoken within the deepest halls of their organization for countless generations.

”The Lord has awakened from his slumber...”