Free Web NovelChapter 263: Why He seems Familiar?
I-It’ can’t be...
Aria’s head snapped up, her blue eyes widening in sheer disbelief.
"But Your Grace... wasn’t that supposed to be years from now?" she asked, her raspy voice cutting through the panic bubbling up in her chest.
"The holy scriptures explicitly state the final calamity is over a decade away."
It shouldn’t be now. We’re not even ready yet, we had loose so many in just closing those rifts caused by those demonic entities, if the judgment prevailed then...
The Archbishop slowly shook his head, his gray eyes locking onto the pale blonde girl.
"I just communed with the Divine," the Archbishop stated, unblinking, his voice was hollow. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
"The timeline has been shattered. The prophecy has accelerated. And The Great Descent will be upon us within the span of next five years... or perhaps it could even less than that."
Aria was completely speechless. The foundational truths she had been taught since she was a child were collapsing in real-time. It defied all logic, all theory, and all written scripture. It shouldn’t have been this early.
The Archbishop turned his head, looking toward the massive, domed ceiling of the cathedral with a mix of absolute terror and cold fury.
"The threads of fate have been forcibly severed," he announced to the trembling hall. "And from what I heard from the divine one... someone has changed it."
The heavy, suffocating weight of those words settled over the cathedral. The Archbishop then slowly turned his gaze back down to the kneeling Saintess-in-training. The time for battlefield triage was over. They needed to prepare for the end of the world.
"Someone? Who can change it?"
"What will be happen of us?"
"Did someone who changed it, is that an evil or ally?"
Murmurs began to spread through the hall.
The Archbishop raised his hand, silencing them all.
"Aria," he commanded, his voice regaining its harsh, dictatorial edge.
"Your frontline field work here is done. You are to pack your belongings immediately. You will resume your way back to the Royal Academy by tomorrow morning. Your influence there is now vital."
Aria swallowed the lump in her throat. She slowly pushed herself up from the marble floor, elegantly smoothing out her blood-stained white vestments.
She bowed perfectly from the waist. "As you wish, Archbishop."
Without looking back at the panicked, trembling congregation, the Saintess turned on her heel and walked out of the grand hall, her staff clicking ominously against the marble floor.
———
The next morning, the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the Central Cathedral had been completely left behind.
Aria stood in the crisp, cool air of the capital’s carriage depot.
She had stripped away her traditional, blood-stained holy vestments, replacing them with the immaculate, tailored dark-blue and silver uniform of the Royal Academy staff.
It was a stark, restrictive garment that perfectly concealed her high-ranking religious status, allowing her to operate within the campus under the guise of an administrative healer’s assistant.
Behind her, two church attendants disguised as standard porters were carefully loading her heavy leather trunks into an unmarked, armored carriage.
"Lady Aria," one of the servants spoke up respectfully, securing the final latch on the luggage. He kept his voice low, ensuring the passing merchants couldn’t hear.
"Upon our arrival at the campus... should we head directly to the Headmaster regarding this matter?"
Aria smoothed the silver cuffs of her uniform, her expression perfectly serene and composed, giving absolutely nothing away.
"Yes," Aria nodded, her bright blue eyes staring blankly at the polished wooden door of the carriage.
"The Headmaster must be informed of the Archbishop’s decree. The timeline has shifted, and the Academy’s curriculum must be quietly accelerated to prepare the students. Let us depart."
She stepped up into the carriage, taking her seat on the plush velvet cushions as the attendants closed the door behind her. The carriage lurched forward, the wooden wheels clattering loudly against the cobblestone streets as they began the journey back to the Royal Academy.
Aria rested her chin on her hand, looking out the glass window at the passing city.
The Archbishop’s terrifying revelation, that the Day of Judgment had been unnaturally accelerated to a mere five years, was a catastrophic anomaly. The threads of fate had been tampered with. Someone, or something, had violently altered the established destiny of the world.
And as her mind desperately searched for anything out of place, any variable that defied the natural order of the world... her thoughts abruptly caught onto a specific name.
Jin Raith.
Aria’s blue eyes narrowed slightly.
She recalled the quiet, unremarkable boy from this year’s incoming batch of first-years. On paper, he was nothing special, a noble with average grades.
But... she vividly remembered the incident in the medical ring.
Jin had been brought in with internal injuries, and in a moment of desperate urgency, Aria had been forced to heal him using her unfiltered, raw holy mana.
Which should have been disastrous. Raw divine mana was inherently volatile; forcing it into a mortal’s mana channels without proper chanting always resulted in a violent, agonizing backlash for both the healer and the patient.
It was a strict, unbending law for her. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
But when her raw mana entered Jin’s body... nothing happened.
There was no rejection. No holy backlash. No burning of his or her mana circuits. It was as if his body had simply analyzed the divine energy, completely dismantled its volatile properties, and seamlessly integrated it into his own system like it was nothing more than a drop of water in an endless, empty ocean.
It was a sheer, biological impossibility.
Aria subconsciously brought a hand to her mouth, her teeth sinking nervously into her lower lip.
She closed her eyes, a deep, frustrating ache throbbed near her temples. It wasn’t just his ability that bothered her.
It was something much deeper. Every time she looked at him, a strange, phantom weight pressed against her chest.
Why? Aria thought, her brow furrowing in the quiet solitude of the carriage.
Why does it feel like I have met him before?
