Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5603

Chapter 5603: Thalia! II

Noah gazed at the woman before him as she blinked and looked toward the food, almost in a daze, then down at her own mended body, and then back at him.

And he locked his gaze with hers, and read the many things moving through it!

There was pain there, and relief, and exhaustion, but the biggest of them, the one that pulled at something in his existence, was a longing for a thing that did not seem to exist.

She was looking at him the way a person looks for someone in a familiar face and cannot find them. Searching him and not finding whoever it was she searched for.

She spoke, and her voice came out soft, and low, and carried a strange composure even soaked in her own dried blood.

"You haven’t cooked for me in this place for a long time. I missed it."

...!

Once more, she talked as though she knew him unfathomably well!

Was this truly someone he was with in the future? He could believe it of himself, oddly. He did not doubt that the man he was becoming might stand at a fire cooking for a woman like this. But belief was not knowledge, and there were far too many empty spaces in this, so he asked.

"Before anything else." His voice stayed level. "Is there immediate danger. Right now?"

She closed her eyes, as though searching somewhere deeper than the Realm around them, and when she answered, the softness had a certainty threaded through it.

"There should be some time. And leeway." Her eyes opened. "No matter how powerful a thing is, Existence does not like things moving backward. Me included. THE Sealed One included. Existence is forward looking. I panicked, a little, when I arrived here. That was... unbecoming of me. But there should be some time."

Noah nodded slowly.

And he waved his hand, and offered her the food.

Vibrant grilled and cooked meats arranged themselves on shimmering plates of blue light, drifting toward her across the trembling grass, sweet smoke curling off them, and as they settled before her, he spoke.

"Then tell me if I get anything wrong." He watched her face.

"You and I...are close, in the future. You are a Provenance Lifeform. Something catastrophic has happened in that future, where THE Sealed One somehow obtains IT, and his actions afterward forced you to traverse across time itself. I-"

"You and I are not close in the future."

BOOM!

She interrupted him with those heavy words, and Noah looked at her, and she was smiling. A smile full of pain!

"You were. You are...my Provenance. It is, as you would put it, far more quintessential than any closeness."

The smile turned faintly wry.

"I did not traverse across time on purpose as my Provenance saught to warn you. And THE Sealed One does not obtain IT by mistake. The hands of Those Who Remain are steeped in it. But..."

Her face went pale as she spoke.

Noah frowned, watching the color drain out of her cheeks mid-sentence, watching a fresh thread of stellar blood well faintly at the edge of her half-closed wound!

"Moving across Time of such pivotal weavings is not without cost," she said, quieter now, pressing her hand lightly to her chest.

"Especially for lifeforms of our kind, and our level. Anything I say, anything I reveal, it hurts my Provenance. It hurts what I am. So I must be very selective in what I tell you, because if I reveal something too heavy...I pay dearly. I fainted for hours, just now, on what little I said when I panicked."

She drew a slow breath, and steadied.

"What you began to do is good, actually. Asking me to correct you when you are wrong. The less I speak of the future, the more I am able to do within it."

"Was THE Sleepless Fiend one of Those Who Remain who helped THE Sealed One obtain IT?" His gaze sharpened on her.

"Do I offend them enough, by the time this future comes, that to be rid of me... they allow it? Aid it? They let THE Sealed One reach IT?"

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