Evelyn woke up feeling more refreshed than she had ever been in her whole life. Her senses came online one by one in succession as she was lying in a bed of soft emerald moss. Not moss growing thick in the ground, but a literal human bed that had been engulfed by the hyperactive life that surrounded her.

Her body was charged with so much energy, Evelyn felt like she could achieve anything. Like she was unstoppable.

She could taste the purity of the air in her mouth, the freshness around her that spoke of wild nature. Her vision cleared, looking at the bluest sky she had ever seen. Eyes darting around, she studied her surroundings for a moment as she adjusted to how green everything was. This was some sort of ruined house, that much was easy to ascertain. Almost every surface was covered in the same emerald green moss.

Something about it felt off, but not necessarily in a bad way. Her human hand caressed the moss-covered bed she was in, relishing in the sensation of life at her fingertips.

It had been so very long since she could touch green like that. Even if it was just moss, Evelyn couldn't help but let a tear start to form at the corner of her human eye.

Rejecting the impulse to cry that her still recently recovered emotions were giving her, she got out of bed, reeling from vertigo almost immediately.

Her hearing hadn't come back yet, affecting her balance after so long depending on her acute Awareness. She almost fell on the soft floor, but caught herself on a short, broken pillar with a couple of protuberances of some sort. The shape of it as her hand touched it was... strange. Too uneven.

She was in what once was a bedroom, probably where an entire family had slept, by the presence of a litter bed placed at the opposite side of the room. The deformed pillar made no sense in the room's architecture, which only added to the sensation of wrongness it gave her.

Evelyn squinted her eyes and looked at the moss-covered form again before opening them wide. It wasn't a pillar.

It was a person.

One that had been covered in so much moss that its legs had fused to the floor.

Moss covering a ruined house was one thing, but no normal moss would cover a person standing before they could move out of its way. Evelyn no longer felt safe about touching the moss, even if her Awareness didn't flare up about it.

Suddenly, her ears started working again, capturing a conversation that was happening at the other side of the wall where she had been resting. The voice sounded masculine, kind of young too, with that certain irritability that late teenagers get when they believe themselves to be adults.

"I believe we ordered you to kill this rootworm, Marrow. Do you really care that little about your pet or your own Core for that matter? Be reasonable, she's as good as dead. Now, I would really like to know what in the hells happened in that sanctuary. What was that darkness that surrounded it? I couldn't see or hear anything in there until it went away. And who is that woman that you were carrying? You surely are not gonna tell me that she actually managed to make a summon, cause that would make you a dead man walking. And the dead have no need for beautiful companions..."

Another voice answered him, male, too, though softer and attempting to force a calm tone of voice to bury a rumbling fury underneath.

"This doesn't need to go any further, Brother. We can stop this lunacy right now."

A third voice, this time female, came out coarse and annoyed.

"You extremists are all pathetic. What do you really expect to get out of this? Getting rid of me is not gonna make one of you suddenly win the Cycle Saint Selection. If you had spent more time actually training to be better druids than trying to bring down those that didn't agree with you, maybe you wouldn't need to resort to this kind of tactics."

"Be silent, blasphemer, or I'll finish you myself." Demanded the first angry voice. "You and your ideas are dangerous, a weed that needs to be removed from the garden so it doesn't spread where it doesn't belong. Did you really expect nothing to happen after you started opening your mouth to spew your poison? The way your paltry achievements in the Hunter's Circle have gained you the favor of the Elders so far is preposterous. You should have been trialed as a dark druid already!" There was a shift in his voice, a much crueler and self-satisfied change to his demeanor. "Thankfully, not all are so blindly impressed by your supposed talents. We have support in high places. You pushed things too far. Now there's no place for you to return to, Cloud."

"It's Sister Cloud to you, rootworm." Replied the girl with a snarl.

"Silence! Now, Brother Marrow. You can still earn your redemption after your many affronts against the real values of our kind. Not only have you been confraternitizing with this shame to our order, but you have pursued a most reprehensible carnal relationship with a Classer, attempting to dilute the great purity of your ancestry as a descendant of the first Cycle Saint! If you weren't the last of your line, we would have ended you along with her many months ago. We gave you many chances, but you had to keep denying our support! We could've made you the next Saint if only you were faithful to your legacy!"

Evelyn was getting fed up with every word. She didn't need her Awareness to know who to root for at the moment.

She pulled out her metalwood staff from her inventory, and as she got ready to join the scene, she suddenly noticed the absence of something important.

The spear was gone. The one that she had used to go through the portal.

Her one way back.

"Dust me." She whispered, fighting against panic.

When had she seen it for the last time? She got through the portal and arrived somewhere where there were two people. One had a bloody weapon, and the other was on the floor. Then... nothing.

There was only fog after that.

Evelyn had no idea how she had ended up there in that ruined house. Or where the spear was.

Considering her next move, she heard the other male voice again, finding it familiar.

"I've made my peace with my family line. It won't dictate how I live my life or who I choose to share it with any longer. If you people have a problem with that, you bring it to me. But you decided to go after my beloved." The hidden fury was coming out from under his cover of calmness. "You have made a grave mistake."

The dusting cretin spat on the ground in disgust at that.

"Enough! Do as you are told, or you will break the Core oath. If you don't want to become a meat puppet forced by your own Core to kill that sorry excuse of a Classer you've decided to throw away your legacy for, then I suggest you kill the filth in front of you already!

There was a brief pause before it was broken by a slight growl coming from the threatened man. The prison of his anger had burst open, not letting out fire and brimstone, but instead the deep coldness of the underworld, inviting a new resident.

"Gladly. Sister Cloud, fade."

"What are you...?" Asked the corpse before a deep growl was followed by a few fast stomps, the wet tearing of flesh, and then a crash against a wall as the whole ruined house trembled.

Evelyn came out of the room, wielding her staff, channelling her mana into making some cable vines to join the fight, but it was all over.

There was a figure wearing a bone mask that covered his entire head. It was a very elaborate mask, carved to minute detail into the form of a beast. Sharp fangs, mane of hair, and a savage expression of beastial fury, all of it captured in ivory. Evelyn was reminded of someone dear to her, but the low stature of the scrawny man before her took her out of her momentary lapse in judgment.

He was wearing a simple beige tunic that covered his entire body with a hood over the bone mask. His arm was piercing the torso of another with a very similar tunic, this one in green. Evelyn figured it had been the rude one who kept asking for it.

There was no sight of the third person anywhere.

The beige tunic was splattered in blood, but this only lasted for a moment before the blood was absorbed by the fabric itself, leaving no trace on him.

"A druid should know better. Don't threaten a predator that is allowing you to live."

"But... how?" Asked the dying young man in the green tunic, gurgling blood. "You are under a Core oath. You must kill her..."

"That's the thing." Said an incorporeal female voice in the room. "He already did."

Evelyn noticed a slight fog floating around, dispersed over their heads. It moved into a spot next to the bone mask guy, coalescing into the form of a person until the vapor transformed into one. Wearing a light purple tunic with white accents.

"Curse you, Cloud! You were supposed to be too hurt to use your primal form...!"

"Once again. It's Sister Cloud. Who were you again?" She asked sarcastically.

"I'm Brother..." He started saying, but was interrupted when she put her hand on his face and exploded it into mist.

The now headless body hanging limp on the arm that Evelyn assumed to be the one called Brother Marrow.

"You didn't need to do that. We could have asked where they were holding her." Reprimanded the much shorter man, pulling out his arm from the corpse with a wet squelch. The blood in his tunic's sleeve was just as easily absorbed by the fabric, cleaning itself slowly towards being once again spotless.

Evelyn noticed that his arm had an unnaturally long and pointy shape as he retracted it from his victim's torso, changing back into a normal arm as he did. It was only visible for a moment, but Evelyn was sure of what she had just seen. He had transformed his arm to attack, just like the girl had turned into vapor. But unlike a chimera, they had transformed back to normal right after.

"We both know he wouldn't have said a thing. That's the one compliment I can give to zealots: they will endure whatever is thrown at them until they die. And let's be realistic here, you can kill as ruthlessly as you want, but you've got no stomach for torture."

"You'd be surprised what I can stomach with the right motivation..." He replied darkly.

"He sounded like his brain was dust. I doubt a guy like that would've been told important information if there was risk of him getting captured, so no big loss for you, really." Reassured Evelyn behind them.

They both seemed startled by Evelyn's presence and turned around with a snap to look at her.

The woman also wore a mask, but this one was made of a beautiful confection of different feathers, mostly white, arranged in an exquisite fashion to make it look like a bird's head.

They got stuck in a sort of standoff as no one dared to say a word for almost a whole minute.

"Where's my spear?" Asked Evelyn, tired of wasting time. "I need that spear."

The other two looked at each other, heads fully turning along with the masks, before turning again to look at Evelyn and tell her the reality of her situation to her face.

"It crumbled into dust." Answered the man. "Sorry."

Evelyn's determination was shaken, but not broken. Her Awareness told her he was not lying, so she pushed annoying feelings like fear or panic aside and decided to focus on the facts for the task ahead.

"Fine. It did its job bringing me here. I'll find another way back. Now, I'm gonna give you a quick speed run of keywords, and I want you to nod to them if they mean anything to you, okay? Just nod, nothing more." She asked, waiting for some uncertain nods before starting.

"Druids."

Nods.

"Classers"

Nods.

"Runicrons?"

Nothing.

"Chimeras"

A pause, then a pretty unsure slow nod from the man, followed by a dejected retraction from that answer with a shake of his head.

"Giant tree?"

Enthusiastic nods.

"Tetracrown"

Nothing.

"Runitronics"

More nothing.

"Okay, that's pretty good so far. What else...?" Evelyn thought about what would be right to ask, what could give her the most information by sharing the least amount herself. Then she realized that if what she had been told before arriving was true, then she was in the distant past.

"Neo Vorath City"

To this, they both looked at each other again, confused. Then they nodded.

Evelyn's heart skipped a beat.

"You know what Neo Vorath City is?" She asked, giving a step forward. "You can speak now."

The girl in grayish blue coughed a bit to clear her throat before following through with the permission.

"First of all, allow me to offer you a warm welcome to our world, traveller from Earth. What you've seen may surprise you, but don't fret, for you are in a world of magic!" She said with no little theatrics.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow, then pointed her metal arm towards the corpse on the ground.

"[Hylosynthesis]." She said, activating her Skill. The cable vines erupted from her crimson limb with their sharp amber blades like snakes with readied fangs. They pierced the dead flesh like it was nothing, cutting away at him with gusto. Retiring them just as fast, Evelyn commanded the cable vines to coil comfortably around her runitronic arm.

Crossing her arms, which was a little harder with the cable vines there, she squinted hard while studying their reaction. They didn't seem to be super surprised, perhaps just a little rattled.

"Nothing? No reaction? I expected more than that, to be honest."

"You..." Started bird mask girl. "You have your first Skill already? That's... awesome!"

Evelyn got dumbfounded by such a response to what should have been shocking.

"I'm sorry, what? You seriously have no questions? Are you for real?"

"Oh, we have a million questions. But I have one that I need you to answer first. Are you from Earth?"

"Yes, technically."

"Great! Then, by the authority given to me by the Hunter's Circle, I compel you, Blacklight, to form a covenant with me. Let's recite the Psalm of the Hunted Goddess to seal our agreement and let us see this partnership blossom into something greater than ourselves."

The classer wasn't sure if the girl was deluded or if her brain hadn't completely turned back from being a bunch of mist, but Evelyn wasn't feeling particularly compelled at the moment.

"I'm sorry, is this when something is supposed to happen?" Asked Evelyn, both curious and offended at the same time, that this girl had just tried to take control of her.

"That's not possible. I summoned you; you should already be bound to me, ready to complete the covenant contract." She complained, more interested than annoyed, as if she was almost expecting some sort of trouble.

"Of course it didn't work," said the other guy in a tone of reverence. "It would never work on her."

Evelyn felt weirded out by that at a deep level for some reason she couldn't explain.

"Okay, I'm gonna address that later. Now tell me, why do you know Neo Vorath City?"

"Well, I don't know about the Neo part, but Vorath City is where we are from."

"I see... are you... druids?" Evelyn asked, hopeful of having heard them correctly before.

"We are. But how did you know that? You seem pretty comfortable for someone who was just summoned. Who are you?"

Evelyn considered her possible answers, pondering the potential ramifications derived from her every interaction if this truly was the past. Every choice, every decision, every step, every little interaction with this version of the world and its inhabitants could potentially change her own present, their future, with catastrophic consequences.

Then again, the world was ending anyway. It was hard to go worse than that.

"You can call me Blacklight for now until you earn the right to know me as anything else. Where I come from may not be the right question here. It's more of a matter of when I come from."

"Apologies, but I'm not following." Said the short guy in the beast mask.

The girl said nothing, her bird mask staring at her intensely.

Puff it.

"I come from the future. This world is gonna end, and I need your help to change it."