"Stop."
Inside Misaka Mikoto's mental world, Rowan Mercer's manifested consciousness cleaved through the darkness coiling around her and reached straight for her core. Psychic force surged outward, wrenching her awareness back from the brink.
At the same time, in the physical world, Rowan opened his eyes.
Matching her electromagnetic wavelength, he suppressed her continued ascent while rapidly inscribing sealing patterns across her body, locking down the energy threatening to tear her apart. With a sharp kick, he shattered the black lightning encasing them and released his control over Kamijou Touma.
"Help me."
Using suppression alone, it would take far too long to stabilize Misaka. With Touma's right hand, it could be done almost instantly.
"I'm coming!" Touma shouted.
Freed from the twisted steel restraints, he rushed forward and grabbed Misaka Mikoto's shoulder. Under Rowan's control, the black lightning no longer lashed out. Imagine Breaker activated cleanly.
Five seconds later, the black lightning armor around both Rowan and Misaka vanished. The rooftop fell quiet.
"She's in your hands now," Rowan said calmly.
He pulled two sets of clothes from his storage space, draping one over the unconscious Misaka Mikoto and putting the other on himself. Before Touma or Gunha Sogiita could ask a single question, Rowan was already gone.
His mind was still burning.
The partial ascent hadn't reached completion, but the insight he'd gained was far beyond expectations. He needed isolation. Immediately.
"Why does he always have 'something to do'?" Touma muttered, watching Rowan disappear yet again.
At that moment, Misaka Mikoto stirred. Her eyes opened slowly.
"…That was strange," she murmured. "I saw a man I didn't recognize. He pulled me out of the abyss."
The figure she remembered wasn't her own reflection. It was Rowan's original form, unfamiliar, sharp, and impossible to forget.
Back in his room within the Windowless Building, Rowan skipped reporting in and went straight into seclusion.
It didn't last long.
A tearing pain ripped through his soul.
Another split.
His consciousness awakened elsewhere.
This time, the body was human. Male. Elderly. Extremely so. More than ninety years old. But the moment Rowan fully occupied it, the frailty vanished beneath the surface. The body's essence was reforged, aligning with the same resilience and magical capacity shared by his other incarnations.
Outwardly, nothing changed.
Inwardly, everything did.
The only inconvenience was memory. Decades upon decades of it, dense and slow to digest.
"…Hong Kong," Rowan murmured. "The Yanagi household… Clow Reed?"
Understanding clicked into place.
"This is the world of Cardcaptor Sakura."
He hadn't watched much animation in his old life, but this one he remembered clearly. A rare exception. A classmate had loved it, and he'd ended up watching enough to finish the series. The magic had stood out. The world had lingered.
And now, standing within it, he understood why.
Beneath its gentle surface lay something vast. Parallel worlds. Time manipulation. Space traversal. Clow Reed himself was no mere magician. By the standards of Academy City's world, he would have stood among those who had truly grasped magic at its core.
"First things first," Rowan thought. "Let's get out of this coffin."
He opened his eyes and slowly pushed aside the lid above him.
The body he now inhabited belonged to Amagiri Rōen, a senior member of an old occult family with deep ties to Clow Reed's legacy. His talent had been unremarkable, his power modest, but his age had carried him to ninety-eight. He had died peacefully.
Today was the seventh day after his death.
If he hadn't awakened now, he would have been buried tomorrow.
Rowan sat up and surveyed his surroundings.
A mourning hall.
Rows of clan members knelt below, dressed in funeral white.
At the front knelt Yanagi Fuyuka, the current head of the family. Calm, composed, and carrying the quiet authority of someone long accustomed to ritual and responsibility.
Amagiri Rōen had never married. His younger brother had been Yanagi Fuyuka's grandfather. By seniority alone, she addressed him as grand-uncle.
That suited Rowan just fine.
He had no interest in waking up with a spouse or a sudden flood of direct descendants.
"Th-the ancestor… the ancestor has risen!" a teenage clan member screamed.
Chaos erupted.
Compasses were raised. Peachwood swords drawn. Talismans snapped open. Incantations filled the air. An ancestor or not, if a corpse had risen, it would be dealt with.
"Enough."
Rowan's voice rang out, deep and steady, carrying unmistakable vitality. The entire hall froze.
"If I were a revenant," he continued calmly, "you wouldn't be standing here debating it."
Silence followed.
They all knew it was true.
A corpse didn't speak like that.
And it certainly didn't feel like this.
...
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