Chương 263: Chapter 262 - To You From Tomorrow

"What is this?" Alice asked. Her divine presence flared with sudden, intense confusion.

"I cannot read this script at all. The syntax does not match any known language documented within the scattered realms, so far from what I have seen." Lucid stood completely frozen. He stared down at the deep engravings. The letters were not alien to him in the slightest. They were perfectly, undeniably familiar. He recognized the distinct shapes of the English alphabet immediately. The words formed clear, structured sentences. He could read the message without any magical translation.

He leaned his body closer to the stone. He read the text in absolute silence. To the one reading this. So, you actually found this place. Curious. Or reckless. Maybe you do not know the difference yet. You walk a path unlike the people of this world. You are not woven into their dawns or their dusks. Whatever thread guides them, it never reached you. Do not let the light here fool you. It is warm enough to make you stop asking questions. That is what it is for. Look beyond it. Find a light brighter than this one.

Chase an ambition that scares even you. Seize the day before someone else decides what your tomorrow should be. And if, someday, you begin to understand why I wrote this. I only ask that you do not make the same mistake I did. Lucid traced his bare fingers slowly over the carved letters. The rough edges of the stone bit into his skin, grinding away the last remnants of his defensive disbelief. The entire reality of his situation shifted completely in that single moment.

The English alphabet sat embedded in the ancient rock, undeniably real and deeply unsettling. He possessed only one logical thought. Someone else had left this specific message behind. Given the mythological age of Celestia and the layers of dust coating the plaza, this unknown person might have carved these exact words millennia or even entire eons ago. Another human being from his original world had been transported to this exact realm. He looked to his left.

A poker card jutted out from the golden puddle a spade. It looked ancient. He stepped closer and picked it up, but it disintegrated instantly in his hands. He had never actually considered the possibility before this exact second. He always assumed his arrival was an isolated accident, a unique curse designed specifically to punish him. If another person existed here, he was not alone in his displacement. That realization immediately spawned a much darker, far more terrifying conclusion within his racing mind.

He remembered the exact moments before his transportation. He remembered the brutal, agonizing sensation of being torn from limb to limb by a vicious mob. He remembered the smell of copper blood filling his nose and the sound of his own bones snapping under the pressure of countless hands. He remembered the twisted faces of the people who murdered him with absolute clarity. If the universe could pull his shattered soul across the void and deposit him in this magical realm, it could easily do the same to them.

Maybe his killers had also been transported here. That specific idea made his legs go entirely weak. A sudden, violent wave of hot rage flooded his chest, burning away the cold dampness of the cavern. His breathing turned shallow and incredibly rapid. He pictured those familiar, hateful faces walking through these very same magical streets. He imagined them living comfortably, perhaps amassing wealth and power, while he suffered continuously in dark dungeons and cursed towns.

The sheer injustice of the hypothetical scenario threatened to tear his sanity apart. He had allowed his thoughts to drift completely out of his own control. His mental barriers dropped entirely, leaving his deepest traumas and most violent urges exposed for his divine passenger to observe. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Alice did not offer any commentary. She remained completely silent within his mind.

She watched the raw surge of his panic and fury without uttering a single word of judgment or comfort. Her divine presence simply absorbed the emotional data. Lucid swallowed hard and forced his breathing to slow down to a manageable rhythm. He needed to lock those memories away before they paralyzed his physical body. He tried to brush the horrific revelation aside and focus on the immediate environmental threat standing directly in front of him.

"So this place," Lucid ventured, his voice sounding incredibly hollow as it echoed across the massive, empty plaza.

"This is the legendary Celestia."

"It is merely an imitation of its former glory," Alice quickly chimed in, her tone shifting back to clinical, detached instruction.

"Activate your perception trait right now. Look past the surface presentation." He followed her directive immediately. He channeled his internal energy and activated the Chain of Heart. The world around him dissolved in an instant. The vibrant marble pillars, the flowing fountains, and the flawless statues vanished completely from his vision. The illusion gave way to a perfectly dark canvas.

Faint golden motes of raw essence collected in the empty space, outlining the basic architectural wireframes of the structures. It resembled a massive, unrendered blueprint floating in a dead void. The structural lines pulsed with a steady, mechanical rhythm, completely devoid of actual life. He released the magical technique. The sprawling city snapped back into existence with a jarring flash of vibrant gold and pristine white stone. The illusion was flawlessly detailed and entirely fake.

The water in the fountains sparkled perfectly, but it carried no actual scent of moisture. He tried to take a single step forward to investigate the carved pedestal further. His heavy boot struck something completely solid, though the air ahead appeared perfectly empty. He reached his hand out and pressed his bare palm against an invisible, unyielding wall. The surface felt entirely smooth and completely devoid of temperature.

"I guessed as much," Lucid murmured, pressing his full body weight against the unseen barrier to test its structural integrity.

"There is a boundary wall here."

"We are currently trapped within a domain after all," Alice stated plainly.

"The structural rules governing this space are absolute and entirely rigid." Lucid thought about the fundamental nature of domains and the ancient beings who created them. The Monolith clearly mused over his past and experimented constantly with his creations. This entire fake city was likely a desperate, monumental attempt at reminiscing about his distant, lost home. Lucid recalled his previous experience trapped inside the domain of Neptune.

That entire spatial dimension had been constructed as a massive, endless ocean filled with terrifying pressure. He deduced that even these supreme divine beings possessed simple personal desires and aesthetic tastes. They built domains to simulate the specific places and environments they missed the most. He found he could not entirely blame the Monolith for the grand deception. Lucid stared at the pristine, fake architecture and felt a deep, unexpected pang of empathy strike his chest.

He started to miss his own home just as much as this poor, immensely powerful deity missed Celestia. The feeling was heavy, exhausting, and entirely useless in his current survival situation. He looked down at the flat stone pedestal engraved with the familiar runes. He wanted to pry the rock from the ground and take it with him as proof of his own sanity, but he knew he lacked the tools and the time.

"I am sensing a completely different source of energy emanating from this general area," Alice spoke up suddenly, breaking his melancholic train of thought. Her statement made absolutely no logical sense based on his understanding of magic. Everything contained within a domain always had to stem back directly to the rightful owner. The Monolith controlled every single mote of dust and drop of water inside this space.

Foreign energy signatures simply could not exist here without the deity granting explicit permission or direct involvement in the anomaly.

"It is highly familiar," Alice added, her voice echoing with a strange resonance.

"Yet I do not know exactly why." Lucid frowned deeply. He kept his hand pressed firmly against the invisible wall, staring at the empty space beyond.

"Familiar in what specific way?"

"It just feels familiar to me," the divine voice answered, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain and slightly frustrated. He did not bother pressing her for morea specific details. If an ancient deity could not articulate a feeling, a mortal had zero chance of solving the riddle through casual conversation. Lucid closed his eyes tightly and activated the Chain of Heart once more.

He deliberately ignored the glowing wireframes of the fake city ahead and focused his perception directly downward, scanning the physical foundation located beneath his heavy boots. He spotted a distinct blind spot located somewhere far below the surface layer. Amidst the dark, empty void of the domain's magical underbelly, a cylinder-shaped hole plunged straight downwards into absolute nothingness. The magical anomaly completely bypassed the established rules of the environment.

He tracked the spatial coordinates carefully, opening his eyes to match the physical terrain with his magical perception. He located the entrance point. It sat near the extreme edge of whatever invisible force held him trapped between the massive iron gate and the promised vision of the fallen city.