After Albedo spoke, the night was still. He looked at Gwen who was sleeping soundly, curled into his side while he stared blankly at the glowing panel in front of him.

[ Eternal Destiny Physique ]

Even the name carried weight, and it caused Albedo’s mind to race, not with panic, but with realization. The type of cold, dawning realization that slowly bled the color from a man’s thoughts.

His face grew pale as he realized what this meant.

“Eternal Destiny…”

It wasn’t just powerful.

It was familiar.

Too familiar.

He shut the window and leaned back in the couch, the System’s interface fading as he stared at the ceiling in silence, remembering.

Loba.

The Abyssal Monarch introduced in the final third of the novel. She was the final boss, the last gasp the Abyss had thrown at Lucian and his gang before its inevitable defeat.

A tyrannical presence with silver hair and emerald eyes…just like Gwen. A being who had the potential to rewrite causality, slow time, see into her immediately future and had exceptional affinity to the elements….just like Gwen would with this physique.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that Gwen was never seen in the Novel, due to the Abyss attacking the village, and a character with all of her powers, who looks just like an adult Gwen would existed as an Abyssal Monarch.

No coincidence could be that lucky!

At the time reading the Novel, Albedo simply thought she was an immensely OP boss added for flair, to make the final battle exciting and induce one final deus ex machina for Lucian to overcome and for the heroes to save the day.

But now…

Albedo clenched his fists.

“No… she wasn’t random. She wasn’t filler. It was Gwen.”

He looked down at his little sister, still nestled peacefully in his arms, her breathing light and rhythmic. And the pieces fell into place, one by one, like bones in a grave.

In the original timeline, there was no Albedo Neverwinter. He didn’t exist as in that timeline, whatever god sent him here hadn’t pulled the strings.

Without him existing, there was no brother to come running into the burning ruins of their home to save her. No-one to run through the forest, or two awaken their physique and kill the attackers.

Just an unguarded baby girl in a cradle.

And the Abyss attacked the village.

He always assumed the attack was just a random attack from the Abyssal Worshippers. After all, it happened all the time.

When he read the Novel, reports of the Abyss attacking villages had popped up occasionally, and living in the world, he’d heard reports of these attacks too.

But now he saw it for what it was.

A cover. A cover for their kidnapping. They hadn’t come just to satiate some lust for death and destruction, but to kidnap the person to turn into their most powerful Herald.

Eternal Destiny…

Immunity to Abyss.

Can twist the future.

Can rewrite a person’s fate.

A body like that, in the hands of the Abyss? They wouldn’t just want it. They’d mold and corrupt it, twist the soul until it birthed something like Loba.

A Monarch so unfathomably powerful, she almost decimated the entire party of heroes led by Lucian, needing a final Deus ex machina from his gift, ‘Transcendence’ to defeat her.

In the novel, no one had ever asked where Loba came from. She was just… there. As if she had always existed. Why would anyone ask where an Abyssal Monarch came from?

That’s like asking where some of the Final Boss’ right hand men came from, no-one ever did that.

But if that was true, if Gwen had been taken, then Loba wasn’t a natural being.

She was a what-if.

A tragic outcome.

And in the novel, without him alive, no one had been able to stop it.

She died alone in a blaze of glory, having been nothing but a pawn…

Albedo’s jaw tightened.

He looked at Gwen again, brushing her hair gently off her forehead. The faintest golden glow still lingered on her skin, the remnants of a life untouched by war or blood.

When raising her, Albedo had made sure to keep her as safe as possible. Since that night, he had kept her in Pantheon, behind the protection of the Imperial Police for her own safety.

But now he knew better. He had changed fate once already just by existing.

He wondered if that was why he was brought here. With no friends or family in his past life, was he brought here to protect her? To get a real family to care for?

To stop the rise of Loba before it ever began?

As he thought this, a chime echoed softly in his mind.

[ Achievement Unlocked: First Revelation – “Unwritten Pages of Fate” ]

[ You have uncovered a fragment of truth from the original timeline. ]

[ No reward granted: System compensation previously exchanged for Appraisal. ]

Albedo ignored the notification as he was far too deep in thought.

Now, this redefined a-lot of what he had thought about the Novel.

Even Raphaeline… she had known.

Not the whole story, perhaps. But enough. Enough to warn him. Enough to tell him, “Protect your sister. No matter what.”

She knows what Gwen could become… if left unguarded.

And if Raphaeline was worried, then that meant more forces were already watching.

He presumed the Abyss hadn’t attacked simply because since the initial attack, they didn’t know why they failed, and Albedo had raised her within Pantheon since that night.

And despite how strong the Abyss was, attacking Pantheon recklessly was impossible.

However, now that she was 10 years old, closing in on the time she would awaken. The Abyss wouldn’t stop. If they failed the first time, they’d try again. And this time, they might not use flames and blades.

They’d use people, manipulators and infiltrators.

Albedo leaned forward, gently lifting Gwen in his arms and carrying her to her room. He laid her in bed, tucking her in and placing her favorite stuffed bunny at her side.

She stirred slightly, mumbling, “Bedo… love you…”

His heart twisted.

“I won’t let you be Loba.”

“You won’t be a weapon. You won’t be a puppet.”

“I’ll burn the whole Abyss down first.”

He stepped out of the room, closing the door silently behind him, then stood in the hallway, heading towards the balcony and grabbing a glass of wine.

He didn’t drink usually, but he needed to tonight. A single thought had wormed its way into his mind and refused to leave.

What if Gwen wasn’t the only one?

The Abyss had attacked villages before. That much was a fact, even in the novel, entire hamlets were razed, regions depopulated in swaths of darkness.

But no one had ever questioned the purpose. Everyone believed the Abyss simply reveled in chaos, that their raids were senseless, driven by madness or hatred for life itself.

It was the Abyss after all, it was neigh impossible to comprehend.

But what if that was a lie?

What if those attacks had always had a purpose?

Albedo took a slow sip from the glass, letting the bitter taste burn down his throat. It wasn’t about the alcohol. It was about grounding himself, anchoring the rising tide of thoughts before they drowned him.

He thought back to the stories he’d heard growing up. Reports of towns reduced to ashes, of everyone dead, nothing salvageable, not even bones. Every corpse burned beyond recognition, every building reduced to char.

It was the same just like his village, everything and anything was destroyed.

Too thorough.

He clenched his jaw.

It wasn’t just about destruction. It was about erasure. Total erasure. No remains. No witnesses. No survivors.

No chance for someone to realize that maybe not everyone had died.

What if… they had taken others?

What if Gwen was just one of many?

Children with rare gifts, unawakened Physiques, divine potential hidden in their blood. How many of them had been stolen in the night, hidden behind plumes of flame and chaos?

And if that was true… how many Abyssal Monarchs were still waiting to rise? Maybe the Abyss had more than Gwen, but they simply weren’t ready by time Lucian and his gang attacked.

He shuddered.

The thought chilled him more than the night air ever could. Because it meant the Abyss wasn’t just a force of destruction, it was recruiting. Creating. Shaping weapons out of the future.

And it meant Gwen had just been another victim in a long line of tragedies.

“Damn it,” Albedo muttered, gripping the balcony railing until his knuckles turned white.

All this time, people had looked at the Abyss as unpredictable. Untamed. But in truth, it was deliberate. It had plans. And if it had already tried once to make Gwen into a living contradiction, into Loba…

Then it was only a matter of time before it tried again.

Only this time, she had him.

He took a long, final sip from the glass and set it down on the edge of the balcony, staring at the horizon where night bled into moonlight, his fingers twitching as he summoned Havoc and Ruin for a brief second.

The pistols materialized in flickers of black and red light, gleaming with silent fury as he stared at them, realizing what he had to do.

“I need to prepare,” Albedo muttered under his breath, “If the Abyss came once… they’ll come again. But this time…”

He stared out the window into the distance, toward the skyline of the Academy, the towers illuminated under magical lights, the moon hanging like a watchful guardian above.

“They’ll find me waiting.”

***

I’ve uploaded Character Arts and Descriptions in an Auxiliary Chapter!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep