Chapter 1248: Vanished Hours and a Kept Promise

The sentence struck somewhere deeper than the words themselves, and Phei’s thoughts immediately seized upon the one thing Eira had mentioned without intending to give him another idea: the ring. The Spiritual Bond Ring would have created a direct connection between him and Althea, something that did not depend upon geography, history, lingering traces or whether the world itself still remembered where she had gone. His thoughts accelerated so violently that even Eira felt the change.

"That’s it."

[What?]

"The ring. If I’d marked her with it, I could’ve followed the bond regardless of whatever the hell is hiding her."

[Master, how? You never met her while you possessed the ring.]

"I know, but that’s not the point. If the ring could’ve done it, then the important part isn’t the ring itself. It’s the connection..."

Phei stopped halfway through the thought as another possibility opened behind it. He already possessed connections of his own, marks engraved into souls that recognized a person without needing ordinary distance to remain meaningful. If one fixed spiritual connection could pierce whatever had made Althea disappear from the world’s sight, perhaps another could do the same if he only understood what to search through.

His awareness sharpened inside their shared consciousness. "Wait. With the ring, I could’ve... and if the same principle works through one of my existing bonds..."

Eira understood what he was reaching for almost immediately and the Void understood even faster but they didn’t have the time for this.

Phei felt both of them react at the exact same moment, and that should probably have warned him before everything went black.

There was nothing natural about the way his consciousness disappeared. He had not exhausted himself into sleep and his wounded soul had not finally collapsed. Phei was halfway through what might have been the first genuinely useful idea they had found in hours but Eira and the Void struck at his consciousness together with all the tender consideration of two kidnappers silencing an inconvenient witness before he could ask one question too many.

His final coherent thought before darkness swallowed him was wonderfully profound.

"Those fucking bastards."

***

Three hours vanished from his life.

Phei returned to himself with his entire body arching violently from the mattress, pain crashing through him so suddenly that his breath tore from his lungs while every muscle seized at once. His fingers clenched hard into the sheets, his chest lifted and something buried deep inside his soul gave one final brutal throb before settling into an aching silence that felt less like recovery and more like whatever remained of him finally deciding it had suffered enough for one night.

The control of his body returned completely, and the difference was immediate. His arms moved because he wanted them to. His lungs answered his own breathing. His eyes belonged to him again, his senses no longer shared with something immeasurably greater, and Eira’s hidden cultivation was no longer flooding through his body with enough force to make his ordinary Master Stage foundation feel embarrassingly small.

Was he still a Master Stage though? Not ever close!

Phei fell backward against something warm before a hand immediately caught his shoulder before he could collapse awkwardly into the pillows. He opened his eyes to find violet staring back at him.

Sienna sat beside him upon her bed with her dark hair spilling loosely around her face and shoulders while the usual cold perfection of her expression had fractured just enough for him to see the worry underneath. One hand rested against his chest as though confirming his heart had remembered its duties, while the other supported the back of his head. Black-violet Nether moved restlessly beneath her skin, carrying the very distinct impression that it had spent the last several hours being ordered not to murder whoever had reduced him to this condition.

Phei stared at her for several seconds before Sienna’s eyes narrowed.

"You look terrible."

His lips slowly curved. "That’s cruel. I’m injured."

"You nearly died."

"Am I still handsome?"

The look she gave him could have frozen a lesser man where he lay, which naturally only made Phei’s grin widen. There she was.

Before Sienna could decide whether strangling a recently returned patient counted as poor bedside manners, Phei pushed himself upward and kissed her. Her irritation survived perhaps half a heartbeat before the hand behind his neck tightened gently, keeping him close for another second before she finally allowed him to sink back into the pillows.

That was when blue light flooded his vision.

Phei blinked as System notifications unfolded one after another until they nearly covered Sienna entirely.

[Ding! Mission Completed...]

[You have obtained...]

[Your soul has undergone...]

[Due to prolonged exposure...]

[You have awakened...]

[Your soul has...]

[Reward Acquired...]

[Your Void has...]

[You have gained...]

He had barely managed to focus on the first group before another wave appeared over them.

[Ding! Your cultivation has...]

[New Element Awakened...]

[Your Primordial Blood has...]

[Your Soul Realm has undergone...]

[Possession Ability has evolved...]

[New Ability Acquired...]

[Your soul has successfully...]

[Due to...]

The windows multiplied until half of Sienna’s face disappeared behind glowing blue script, and normally that alone would have been enough to drag every remaining fragment of sleep from Phei’s mind. New abilities, a changed cultivation, something happening to his soul, a new Element and whatever the hell had happened to Possession would ordinarily have kept him awake until morning simply from curiosity.

Tonight, exhaustion won without even making the contest interesting.

Whatever Eira and the Void had done during those missing three hours had left behind far more than pain.

His cultivation felt subtly wrong in a way that suggested it had changed rather than broken, his soul possessed depths and sensations he could not remember having before, and somewhere beneath his familiar powers moved something entirely new, strange enough that even in this miserable condition Phei could tell it had not been there before he lost consciousness.

Sienna noticed his focus slipping before he could pretend otherwise.

"What happened?"

"Tomorrow."

"My love." She called softly.

"Definitely tomorrow."

Her eyes narrowed further. "You disappeared for three hours."

That managed to wake him.

Phei’s gaze sharpened. "Three?"

Sienna did not need to answer. The expression on her face was enough.

His attention returned slowly to the notifications hovering above him as the implication settled in.

Three entire hours had passed after Eira and the Void knocked him unconscious, and before doing so the two of them had openly admitted there was something they wanted to revisit while this impossible state still remained available.

’Those two bastards have absolutely done something with my body.’

Under ordinary circumstances, Phei would already have been interrogating both of them, searching himself for changes and demanding to know precisely what could possibly require stealing three hours of his consciousness. Instead, exhaustion wrapped around him again before suspicion could gather enough strength to become useful.

He reached for Sienna, pulled her closer and stole another softer kiss from her lips. She allowed this one without the earlier glare, her fingers settling against his cheek as his forehead rested against hers.

"I kept your promise, here I am... I told you I’ll be back."

Something in Sienna’s eyes softened immediately. She did not ask why, after disappearing for three hours, nearly ruining his soul and waking beneath an avalanche of impossible System notifications, the missing child remained the first thing he cared to know about.

"Sleep."

"Sienna..."

"Mhm~"

"Sienna..." he called again.

"Yes my love?"

"I was FREAKISHLY powerful today! You should’ve seen what I—"

Phei fell asleep.

His consciousness sank almost immediately, his breathing becoming deeper against Sienna while one hand remained loosely around her waist. Above them, the unread System notifications continued glowing in patient layers, carrying answers about his cultivation, his soul, the strange new Element and whatever Eira and the Void had accomplished while their stubborn little Dragon was unconscious.

For the first time since Anarctica, the pain inside Phei’s soul began to quiet inside the arms of Sienna.

He still had no idea where Eira and the Void had gone during those missing hours and what they’d had used his body to revisit, what had awakened inside him or why warnings were mixed among the rewards waiting in his vision. More importantly, as sleep finally claimed him, Phei still believed Althea Ashford remained somewhere not so far beyond his reach.

That belief would not survive his next awakening.