Chapter : 1993

  He shivered. The rain was warm, but his body was cold from the shock. He hugged himself, looking at the wreckage of his masterpiece. The Aegis Mark I, the weapon built to kill gods, looked pathetic here. It was covered in mud and vines, a dark scar in the vibrant green of the jungle.

  "Ken?" Lloyd called out. His voice was swallowed instantly by the roar of the rain. "Jasmin? Iffrit?"

  No answer.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sense his spirits. He reached out for the bond with Fang Fairy, the connection with Atlas.

  It was like reaching for a phantom limb. He knew the connection should be there, but he couldn't feel it. It was faint, distant, like a radio signal that was almost pure static. They were there, somewhere deep inside his soul, but they were dormant. Sleeping.

  "Mana density is too low," Lloyd realized, speaking aloud to keep himself calm. "They can't manifest. There’s no fuel here."

  He was alone. Truly alone.

  He looked at his hands. They were shaking. For the first time in a long time, Lloyd Ferrum—the man who had stared down Demon Kings and corporate hit squads—felt a flicker of genuine fear. Not the tactical fear of a battle, but the primal fear of a castaway.

  He patted his pockets. He had his belt knife. He had his clothes. And he had the ruined suit behind him. That was it.

  "Okay," Lloyd said. "Assess. Survive. Adapt. Major General protocol."

  He wiped the rain from his face and looked at the environment again. He needed to know where he was. The trees looked familiar, but not from Riverio. They looked like Teak. He saw a cluster of bamboo swaying in the wind nearby.

  "Bamboo," Lloyd muttered. "Teak. Heavy monsoon rain."

  He looked at the ground. The mud was red-brown, clay-like.

  His mind, which held the knowledge of an eighty-year-old Earth genius, started to connect the dots. This biome wasn't alien. It was tropical. It was Earth-like.

  He turned back to the Aegis suit. He needed data. The main computer was dead, but there was always a backup. The suit had a "Black Box"—a hardened recorder for emergency diagnostics. It had its own tiny power cell, designed to last for a few minutes after a catastrophic failure.

  Lloyd climbed back up the slippery leg of the mech. He jammed his upper body back into the cockpit. It was dark, and water was pooling in the seat. He reached under the dashboard, his fingers searching for a small panel.

  He found it. He ripped the panel cover off.

  There was a small, dusty screen, no bigger than a playing card. Next to it was a red button.

  "Please," Lloyd whispered. "Just give me something. Give me a map. Give me a star chart."

  He pressed the button.

  The screen flickered. It was dim, barely visible in the gloom of the storm. Static danced across the glass. Then, green text began to scroll.

  SYSTEM REBOOT... FAILED.

  MAIN POWER... OFFLINE.

  MANA CORE... DISCONNECTED.

  EMERGENCY SENSORS... ACTIVE.

  Lloyd held his breath. The emergency sensors didn't use magic. They used passive reception. They looked at the stars, the magnetic field, and the atmospheric composition.

  ANALYZING ENVIRONMENT...

  ATMOSPHERE: NITROGEN 78%, OXYGEN 21%.

  GRAVITY: 1.0 G.

  Lloyd stared at the numbers. It was Earth standard. Exactly Earth standard.

  MATCHING STELLAR PATTERNS...

  WARNING: CLOUD COVER OBSTRUCTING VISUALS.

  SWITCHING TO MAGNETIC GEOLOCATION.

  The screen blinked. It was thinking. Lloyd waited, the sound of the rain drumming on the hull above him.

  CALCULATION COMPLETE.

  LOCATION IDENTIFIED.

  A map appeared on the tiny screen. It wasn't the map of the Northern Territories. It wasn't the map of the Devil Region. It was a jagged, triangular piece of land surrounded by water on two sides.

  Lloyd recognized the shape instantly. He had studied it in geography class a lifetime ago.

  It was the Indian Subcontinent.

  The blinking green dot was on the western edge, in a mountain range that ran parallel to the coast.

  "India," Lloyd breathed. "I'm in India."

  But that didn't make sense. He had fallen through a dimensional rift. Had he been sent back to his original world? Was this the future? The past?

  He looked at the bottom of the screen. The date.

  The sensor was trying to calculate the date based on the position of the magnetic poles and the slight drift of the continents. It was imprecise, but it was usually close.

  ESTIMATED DATE:

  The numbers rolled like a slot machine.

  1... 4... 7... 3...

  YEAR: 1473 AD.

  Chapter : 1994

  Lloyd froze. The rain seemed to stop. The noise of the jungle faded away. All he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears.

  1473 AD.

  He wasn't in the 21st century. He wasn't in the future. He was in the past. The 15th Century.

  The Middle Ages.

  The screen flickered again. The battery was dying. The green light started to fade.

  BATTERY CRITICAL.

  SHUTTING DOWN.

  "Wait!" Lloyd shouted at the screen. "No! Don't turn off!"

  But the machine didn't care. The light shrank to a single dot, and then vanished. The cockpit was dark again.

  Lloyd slowly pulled himself out of the machine. He sat on the edge of the open hatch, his legs dangling in the rain.

  He was in India. In the year 1473.

  This was before the industrial revolution. Before electricity. Before the British Empire. This was the time of sultans and rajas, of swords and elephants.

  And he was here, a man who knew how to build robots and railguns, trapped in a time where gunpowder was barely a rumor.

  Lloyd looked out at the jungle. Through the grey curtain of rain, he saw something he hadn't noticed before.

  On a distant hill, poking out above the treeline, was a stone structure. It was a tower, intricately carved, dark and wet with rain. It had a curved top, distinct and unmistakable. A temple. It stood silent and ancient, watching him.

  It was real. The architecture confirmed what the computer had said.

  A wave of dizziness hit him. He wasn't the Lord of Ferrum here. He wasn't a General. He wasn't a husband to three queens.

  He was a ghost from the future.

  The realization hit him harder than Anthony’s punches. He was completely, utterly off the map. His money was useless. His titles were meaningless. His magic was gone.

  Lloyd Ferrum sat in the pouring rain, on top of a dead robot from another world, and for the first time in two lifetimes, he had absolutely no idea what to do next.

  ________________________________________

  The rain didn't stop. If anything, it got heavier. It felt personal, like the sky was trying to wash Lloyd off the face of the earth.

  Lloyd slid down from the Aegis suit again, his boots splashing into the mud. He needed to get away from the crash site. The giant black robot was a beacon. Even in 1473, a twelve-foot metal giant falling from the sky would attract attention. And attention was the last thing he needed right now. He was unarmed, exhausted, and magically bankrupt.

  He looked at the Aegis one last time. It was a heartbreaking sight. The matte-black armor, forged from Star-Frost Ore, was dull and lifeless. The railgun on its back was bent. The cockpit was open to the rain, flooding the delicate controls. His masterpiece, the weapon he had built to save his world, was now just a very expensive piece of lawn art in a jungle halfway across the universe.

  "Stay here," Lloyd whispered to the machine, feeling foolish. "Don't go anywhere."

  He turned and started walking.

  Moving through the jungle was a nightmare. The ground wasn't solid; it was a soup of mud and rotting vegetation. Every step was a battle. Vines snagged his clothes. Thorns tore at his sleeves. The air was so humid it felt like he was drinking it rather than breathing it.

  He headed toward higher ground, toward the stone temple he had seen in the distance. High ground meant safety. It meant a vantage point.

  As he walked, his mind—the mind of KM Evan—started to reboot. The shock was fading, replaced by the cold, hard operating system of a soldier.

  Situation Analysis, he thought.

  Location: Western Ghats, India.

  Time: 1473 AD.

  Status: Separated from unit. No communications. No supply drops.

  Objective: Survival.

  He knew a little about this time period from his history books on Earth. The 15th century in India was a chaotic time. The north was dominated by the Delhi Sultanate. The south was ruled by the Vijayanagara Empire—the "City of Victory." The Bahmani Sultanate was somewhere in the middle. It was a time of constant war, shifting borders, and immense wealth.

  But Lloyd wasn't near a city. He was in the wild. And the wild in 1473 India was a dangerous place. There were tigers here. Leopards. Elephants. Cobras. And he didn't have his Spirit Force to protect him.

  He reached for a tree branch to steady himself and stopped. He looked at his hand.

  Chapter : 1995

  Without the constant hum of mana in his veins, he felt... light. Frail. He flexed his fingers. He was just a human male, in decent shape, but nothing special. If a tiger jumped him right now, he couldn't use [Steel Blood] to harden his skin. He couldn't summon Iffrit to burn it. He would just be lunch.

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  "Back to basics," Lloyd muttered.

  He reached down and picked up a heavy, broken branch. He tested the weight. It was heavy, solid teak wood. He pulled out his belt knife—a small, utilitarian blade made of high-quality steel from Riverio. He started to sharpen the end of the stick as he walked.

  A spear. The first weapon of mankind. It wasn't a railgun, but it was better than nothing.

  He trudged uphill for an hour. His legs burned. The rain soaked him to the bone, chilling him despite the heat. He was thirsty, but he knew better than to drink the muddy water from the ground. That was a quick way to die of dysentery.

  Finally, the trees began to thin. The ground became rockier. He climbed over a ridge and saw it.

  The temple.

  It was closer than he thought. It was a small, ancient structure made of dark stone, overgrown with moss and vines. It looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. The roof was a curved stone tower, carved with intricate statues of gods and animals, though many were eroded by time and rain.

  It offered shelter.

  Lloyd moved faster, slipping on the wet rocks. He reached the entrance—a simple stone archway. He peered inside.

  It was dark and dry. The smell of wet earth was replaced by the smell of cold stone and old incense.

  He stepped inside, shaking the water from his hair. "Hello?" he called out.

  His voice echoed. No answer.

  He walked deeper into the small sanctuary. In the center was a stone lingam, a symbol of Shiva. There were dried flowers at its base, old but not ancient. Someone had been here, maybe a few weeks ago.

  Lloyd collapsed against a dry wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the stone floor. He dropped his makeshift spear. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  He was safe from the rain. He was safe from the predators. For now.

  But as the adrenaline faded, the reality of his situation crashed down on him.

  He thought of Mina. She was waiting for him to come back from the desert. She didn't know he was gone. She didn't know he was... when he was.

  He thought of Rosa, frozen in the north, waiting for a husband who had just vanished from the timeline.

  He thought of Amina, Faria, Seraphina. He thought of his parents. He thought of Ken Park.

  They were all gone. They weren't just far away; they were in a different dimension. A different reality.

  "Did I die?" Lloyd asked the empty temple.

  It felt like death. He had been ripped out of his life, leaving everything unfinished. The war with the Fire Fly Corporation, the battle against the Devils, the Aegis project—it was all hanging in the balance, and he wasn't there to tip the scales.

  He clenched his fists. No. He wasn't dead. He was breathing. He was thinking.

  "The orb," Lloyd muttered. "The Reincarnation Orb."

  Anthony had triggered it to send data back to his HQ. Lloyd had kicked it. The resulting instability had acted like a wormhole.

  If there was a door in, there had to be a door out.

  The Fire Fly Corporation had mastered interdimensional travel. That’s how they got to Riverio. That means the physics existed. The math existed.

  Lloyd opened his eyes. In the dim light of the temple, his face hardened. The sadness was pushed aside by the cold, hard resolve of the engineer.

  He was stranded in the 15th century. He had no tools. He had no magic.

  But he had his mind. He had the knowledge of the 22nd century. He knew how to build steam engines. He knew how to make electricity. He knew chemistry, metallurgy, and ballistics.

  He was a time traveler with a head full of blueprints.

  "I built an empire out of soap," Lloyd whispered to the stone gods watching him. "I built a god-killing robot in a cave. You think a little thing like 'time' is going to stop me?"

  He looked at his hands again. They weren't shaking anymore.

  "I need resources," he planned. "I need metal. I need a workspace. And I need a way to detect dimensional rifts."

  He looked out the temple door at the rain-soaked jungle. Somewhere out there were people. Civilization. Kingdoms.

  He would find them. He would infiltrate them. He would build what he needed.

  If he had to industrialize the entire 15th century to build a door back home, he would do it. If he had to conquer an empire to get the funding, he would do it.

  Lloyd picked up his wooden spear. He stood up.

  The rain outside was beginning to slow. The monsoon was taking a breath.

  Lloyd Ferrum walked to the edge of the temple and looked out over the vast, green, ancient world.

  "Round two," Lloyd said. "Let’s get to work."

  Chapter : 1996

  The blinding, blue-white light of the Kohinoor Diamond didn’t just fade; it seemed to evaporate like mist in the morning sun. The Ferrum Estate was empty, a cavernous space of cold marble and silent shadows. Suddenly, the air warped and twisted with a sound like a thunderclap trapped in a jar.

  When reality snapped back into place, two figures stood in the center of the room.

  Lloyd Ferrum let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for days. He stood tall, but he looked like he had walked through a war zone. The Aegis Mark I suit—or what was left of it—clung to his body. The matte-black armor, forged from Star-Frost Ore, was tattered and scorched. Wires sparked faintly near his shoulder, and the smell of ozone and burnt oil radiated off him. Despite the damage, the suit hummed with a low, steady vibration. It wasn't the erratic, dangerous energy of the battle in India; it was a stabilized resonance. Lloyd had used his [Spatial Power] to anchor the chaotic energy of the diamond, forcing the universe to accept their location. He was no longer lost in time. He was home.

  Beside him stood Rosa Siddik.

  She didn't look like the woman who had fled this house months ago. The heavy, suffocating aura of the "Ice Queen" was gone, replaced by something far more fragile but undeniably real. Her silver hair, once a symbol of her isolation, now caught the light of the chandeliers above. She wore the clothes of a distant land, the silk torn and stained with the dust of a foreign road. She stood with a quiet grace, her eyes wide as she took in the familiar surroundings of the Ferrum estate. She wasn't standing in a defensive posture anymore. She was simply standing.

  The silence in the hall lasted for exactly three seconds.

  Then, the doors to the inner solar burst open.

  Mina Siddik stood in the doorway. She was holding a bundle of blankets tight against her chest—her son, Sullivan. Behind her stood Lady Nilufa, Rosa and Mina’s mother, leaning heavily on a cane but looking more alive than she had in a decade.

  Mina froze. Her eyes locked onto the silver-haired figure standing next to Lloyd. The basket of linens she had been instructing a maid about dropped from her free hand, spilling white cloth across the floor.

  "Rosa?" Mina whispered. The word was barely a breath, too scared to be loud.

  Rosa turned slowly. When she saw her sister, the composure she had held onto through battles, time travel, and heartbreaks finally cracked.

  "Mina," Rosa said, her voice shaking.

  That single word broke the dam.

  Mina handed the baby to a startled nursemaid with frantic speed and ran. She didn't run with the dignity of a Duchess; she ran with the desperate, stumbling speed of a little sister who thought she had lost everything.

  She crashed into Rosa, throwing her arms around her neck. The force of the impact nearly knocked them both over, but Lloyd reached out a steady hand to the back of Rosa’s armor to keep them upright.

  "You're alive," Mina sobbed, burying her face in Rosa’s neck. "You're really here. I thought... we thought..."

  Mina couldn't finish the sentence. The weight of the secret pregnancy, the birth of Sullivan, the terrifying lie that they had annulled Rosa’s marriage—all of it came pouring out in a storm of tears. For months, Mina had lived with the crushing guilt that she had stolen her sister’s life while Rosa was out in the cold, dying. Seeing Rosa here, breathing and warm, was a relief so violent it bordered on hysteria.

  Lady Nilufa moved slower, but her emotion was no less intense. She had spent ten years in a cursed coma, missing her daughters' lives. When she woke up, she found out her eldest, her "Winter Flower," had exiled herself to the frozen north to die. Nilufa had lived with the knowledge that her recovery had cost her daughter’s sanity.

  Now, seeing Rosa returned from the dead, the matriarch let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. She reached them and wrapped her arms around both her daughters. Rosa, who had spent years flinching away from touch, melted into the embrace. She clutched her mother and sister as if they were the only solid things in a world of ghosts.

  "I'm sorry," Rosa wept, her voice muffled by Mina’s shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

  "Hush," Nilufa said, stroking Rosa’s silver hair. "You are home. That is all that matters."