[You have received a new ability: Dimensional Step]
A sudden laugh escaped his lips, like a mad scientist who found something he shouldn’t have, as sweat beaded at his temples.
In only a matter of ten seconds, nearly all his mana was gone.
He, of course, ignored the gnawing sensation in his abdomen and looked around as if awaiting applause.
Around him, the Dark Knight and the Naga Serpent stood there motionless, uncaring and unaware of what he had just managed to achieve.
Damon looked down at his hands for a moment.
The mana reserves that had felt bottomless for months now sat at a fraction of what they were, and the cold of his domain felt sharper because of it.
He didn’t wait for them to recover.
He reached for the new ability the way he reached for Shadow Step, except this time, instead of a visible destination, he reached for a place deep inside his memory.
The citadel. Not the one they had taken over during the war of three citadels, but the one they called home. He began to remember its stone floors and the air that tasted a lot lighter than what he had grown used to in Ayame’s world.
Dimensional Step responded instantly.
The domain dissolved.
For a fraction of a second, there was nothing, not darkness or cold, just an absence of everything, as if he ceased to exist for a second before the world snapped back into place around him.
His surroundings appeared just as his memory would’ve had them. Cold stone floors under his boots, thin air that lacked the density of other worlds and most of all, the grand hall which buzzed with life as it normally did.
[Time Remaining: 29 Days 11 Hours 37 Seconds]
The notification appeared without being asked for, as though the system wanted to make sure he hadn’t forgotten.
Less than thirty days left.
To him, it felt like all the time in the world, but to those around him, it was a cruel reminder that their lives were ticking away.
He stood still for a moment, taking in the familiar ceiling of the main hall, the torchlight, the distant sound of people moving through the citadel’s corridors.
Then, approximately four seconds after his arrival, people began to take notice of him, scattering away as if expecting him to attack.
"Seems like the news of my return made its way here," he thought, realising that they probably already heard of his sudden appearance in the once enemy citadel.
Luckily, it didn’t take long for someone who wasn’t burning with hatred, anger, or fear to appear in the grand hall.
Nyla came around a corner at full speed, barely able to stop as she entered.
She froze the second her gaze landed on him, a mixture of emotions flashing across her face as she studied him for a long moment.
"You look terrible," she finally said.
"Good to see you too," Damon replied, still keeping an eye on people around him as some of them grabbed the hilts of their weapons.
She crossed the distance between them and looked him over with the kind of assessment that had nothing to do with sentiment. She catalogued every change she could see. Her eyes lingered on him a second longer than necessary before she spoke again.
"Damon..." she said more quietly this time. "The quest, it’s..."
"I know," he cut her off.
She looked up.
There was something cold in his gaze that she did not recognise, something that was not there before.
A moment of silence passed as Damon matched her gaze.
Nyla was the one to break the silence again.
"We should go somewhere more private..." She looked at the uneasy crowd circling around them. "The others will want to see you. Victor has been insufferable..." She shook her head, as if recalling the healer’s recent behaviour and not believing them to be true. "Hana hasn’t slept properly in weeks, and don’t get me started with Ning Xiaoyu..."
Damon raised a brow. "What’s wrong with Ning Xiaoyu?"
"She has filled who knows how many notebooks with contingency plans, and they all end up with the same problem."
"What problem?"
"You." Her flat response seemed almost comical given the context.
Damon took one last glance at the crowd around them before turning back to Nyla. "Lead the way."
***
The council room felt smaller than he remembered.
Or maybe he had just spent too long in a world where dragons roamed free.
They reacted to him the way people react to something they had half-convinced themselves wasn’t coming back.
Victor covered it with a comment about his timing, though Damon barely registered the words. He was too busy noticing that Victor had picked up a considerable amount of muscle since he last saw him, the kind that came from months of hard fighting rather than training.
Ning Xiaoyu’s hair was shorter, and she sat with the posture of someone who had been running things in his absence and had quietly gotten used to it.
Eve looked somehow more mature, not in age but in the way she held herself. Her hair was long now, and tied back in a high ponytail that hadn’t been there before.
Hana remained quiet throughout the reunion, though judging by the reaction on her face, she was in the middle of running through Damon’s memories to see everything he had been through.
And then there was Nyla, who looked exactly the same as the day he left. There was something unexpectedly calming about that. In a room full of people who had visibly changed, she was the one constant he was glad to see.
But among all of them, there was something similar. A look behind their gaze, which spoke of how much the quest weighed on them.
Nobody named it directly, but nobody needed to. A quiet understanding passed between them.
After a while, when the initial noise settled, Damon looked around the table.
"Where’s Ivy?"
The room shifted slightly.
Nyla was the one who answered. "Ivy left three days ago... " She paused for a second. "She didn’t say where she was going..."
Damon looked around the room, noting that every member of the council was present.
"Who went with her?"
"She went alone." Nyla’s expression didn’t change, but something behind it did. "She just left and refused to give a reason."
Damon’s gaze trailed to the empty chair beside him, the seat where Ivy always sat. He didn’t know how they handled things where he or she was gone, but from what he last remembered, it wasn’t like her to skip a meeting, let alone disappear alone without a reason.
He lingered on that thought for a moment.
Then, he stood up, his eyes shifting between everyone present.
"The quest," he began, his tone even. "I’m going to end it."