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"Heavens…"
Beneath Black Swan's veil, her pale hair had already begun to cling together with sweat.
Her twilight-colored eyes flickered incessantly.
"Twenty years… how many memories have been altered by this gambler's terrifying act? How many people's fates were pushed—by nothing more than ripples—onto paths utterly unrelated to their original ones?"
"Perhaps even I myself have already been affected."
Her jet-black gloved hand gently kneaded her brow.
She had learned something truly unbelievable…
Time was not something mortals were meant to toy with. Even brushing against it casually could spell the life or death of hundreds of millions of beings.
The only thing worth being thankful for was that she had only ever crossed paths with Aventurine in Penacony.
The temporal distance was short, and there was no direct causal link—at most, she would have been affected indirectly.
Even if she had been directly connected to Aventurine twenty years ago, the consequences might not necessarily have been catastrophic. But aside from Aeons unburdened by the past, who would dare challenge the vortex of time?
As mortals, the only sensible choice was to flee as far as possible. Unless one was the very architect of history's alteration, no one would willingly be dragged into it.
And yet the protagonist of this memory—Mr. Kakavasha, the gambler whose name echoed across the universe—seemed to hold not the slightest reverence for time.
Moreover, according to what she knew, it wasn't as though there were no Aeons who actively upheld cosmic order.
Was he not afraid that something might go wrong—that he and his family would be erased together within spacetime?
"This memory… really is rather captivating."
Staring at the frozen scene before her, unease welled up in Black Swan's heart—yet alongside it came a faint spark of excitement.
Reason told her that stopping here was the best possible choice. Whatever came next would offer her little benefit, and might instead invite unknowable calamity.
But another voice echoed insistently in her mind:
Look. Even you, freed from the suffering of flesh, may only ever get this one chance in your lifetime.
If you turn away now, you'll regret it forever. And Mr. Aventurine himself is alive and well—you only wish to be a witness, a collector of memories. Nothing will go wrong.
Her slender hand, resting against the memory screen, trembled uncontrollably. She closed her eyes, exhaling a long, steady breath.
She waited for reason and impulse to settle the matter between themselves.
How much time passed—perhaps an entire Amber Era, perhaps only a single second.
Her hand clenched suddenly into a fist, then relaxed just as quickly, as if all strength had drained from her body.
Black Swan lightly tapped the memory screen and rose once more into the air.
She shook her head and smiled wryly at herself.
"Still haven't learned my lesson, have I? In the end… I couldn't resist the temptation."
"Humans really are incapable of learning anything from memory."
She lifted her chin and focused fully on this exceedingly rare recollection.
A grand gamble that crossed time itself—what chips had this gambler placed on the table? And when facing the dealer, what trump card did he rely on?
With such anticipation, the frozen imagery began to move once more.
Before long, she obtained her answer and learned of Aventurine's trump card.
Only then did she realize that the number on that card was far greater than she had imagined.
Light and shadow flickered across the screen. After testing a series of purple Curios before his colleagues, Aventurine, in a quiet moment, drew out that antique handgun. With a careless pull of the trigger—amid muddled curses—he was transported to that desolate land.
In the midst of his homesick hesitation, an inexplicable communication suddenly connected to him.
"This is…?" Black Swan frowned slightly. "A transmission from the future?"
Her intuition told her that this was Aventurine's true trump card—someone capable of traversing time, working behind the scenes to smooth out its turbulence.
And among all possibilities, the most likely candidate was undoubtedly the owner of that garbage-can shop.
Sure enough, a familiar voice entered into conversation with Aventurine.
It was Sylvester.
By mysterious means, he leapt across twenty years of time, chatting and laughing with Aventurine as if no barrier existed.
"To think… there's such a powerful human residing in the Luofu?" Black Swan murmured.
She was shaken by his strength. Even Aeons might not be capable of such a feat.
Investigating his secrets would be even more dangerous than probing Miss Acheron's.
But having come this far—when she was only one step from the end—was she really going to stop now?
It was already too late. She might as well see it through.
What she hadn't expected was that the true danger had only just begun to show itself. The moment she hesitated earlier had been her last chance to turn back.
Within the memory, Sylvester spoke a single line—one that left both Aventurine of the past and Black Swan of the present equally struck dumb.
"HooH will be watching your every move. For all you know, THEY might be spying on you from somewhere right now."
In that instant, Black Swan and Aventurine—separated by twenty years—wore almost the exact same expression.
She froze the image again.
Her pupils widened to the brink of tearing, a chill racing up her spine, prickling her entire body.
An Aeon.
An Aeon had intervened.
Black Swan instinctively scanned her surroundings, her gaze trembling.
Perhaps Sylvester could arrange for a human to traverse time—perhaps his abilities went even further than that.
But she had never personally witnessed a human in action. The reality of a human capable of smashing an Aeon was something she could not truly comprehend.
Aeons had existed since time immemorial. If such a vast being chose to sweep away the dust… what chance of survival would she have?
Perhaps even the Garden of Recollection would be implicated.
A trembling sensation spread through her mind. Though no external force acted upon her, Black Swan was reminded vividly of the fear she had felt when dancing with Acheron.
"No… calm down. Calm down. Aventurine is still alive. Still alive…" she repeated to herself.
Having entered this situation guided by emotion, she now desperately hoped reason would lend her strength.
Her expression could be controlled—but fear was far harder to contain.
Her fingers moved rapidly as the memory resumed its flow.
Now, only by seeing Aventurine wrest a path to survival from HooH, by seeing Sylvester produce yet another trump card, by confirming that the Aeon had already smoothed out time's irregularities—only then could she finally set her heart at ease.
Before long, she got her wish.
Because not much later, Sylvester delivered some good news.
Though in another sense, it left her even more shaken.
His calm voice rang out:
"HooH isn't going to make trouble for you. THEY'RE going to be your babysitter."
"W–what?!"
Black Swan felt her brain trembling even more violently.
And as Sylvester's words echoed within the memory, in a place Black Swan could not perceive, this very recollection underwent an exceedingly subtle distortion.
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