Moon had always been the one who couldn’t hide her emotions, ever since she was little. That’s just the way she was.

The moment she saw Leon, she didn’t hold back her emotions like her younger sister, Aurora, who calmly proved her identity. Nor did she go up and punch their father straight in the gut like her older sister, Noa.

Moon’s way of expressing emotions was always simple and sincere.

She practically threw herself into Leon's arms with all her strength, tears flowing like a flood, uncontrollable and overwhelming.

Emotions can spread like a bomb, and Moon was the fuse that set it off.

As Leon and Moon hugged, crying together after twenty years apart, Aurora lowered her head, took off her glasses, and silently wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. Noa, on the other hand, kept her hands in her jacket pockets, biting her lip as her pupils flickered, before she turned her head away.

Leon gently patted Moon’s head, just like he used to when she was a child.

Her hair still stuck up a little, and her features were just as delicate as Noa's. The two sisters had the same face, but while Noa looked like a mature, elegant beauty, Moon had a more approachable, girl-next-door charm.

Unlike Noa, Moon hadn’t cut her hair short. She kept her long hair, just like Rosvisser’s flowing silver locks that shimmered like the Milky Way.

After crying for a while in her father’s arms, Moon stepped back, sniffling, her little tuft of hair bouncing with the rhythm of her sobs.

Leon smiled and patted her shoulder. “You’ve gotten so beautiful, Moon.”

“Dad, you haven’t changed much at all... still the same as twenty years ago,” she replied.

Aurora, the pink-haired troublemaker, having gathered herself, put her glasses back on and jumped in, “Hey Dad, why are you only complimenting Moon on her looks? What about me and Noa? Don’t we deserve some praise too?”

"Ah...," Leon immediately realized she was stirring things up.

Noa, leaning against the stone wall, played the cool older sister role seriously. “Moon and I are twins. Complimenting her is the same as complimenting me. So, the only person left out is you, Aurora.”

Aurora froze. Noa had a point.

And just like that, the one who had been stirring the pot turned beet red. “Alright, you old bastard! Looks like one uppercut wasn’t enough to remind you of your love for your youngest daughter, huh?”

Leon scratched his head with a chuckle and quickly tried to patch things up. “You’re all beautiful! I passed out as soon as I saw you two, didn’t I? I didn’t even have time to say it.”

Moon blinked her pretty eyes and looked at Leon. “Dad, why did you faint?”

"..."

Sweetheart, you still love to ask endless questions, just like before.

“Oh, it was nothing, I was just a bit tired,” Leon lied without hesitation.

Being knocked out by your daughters... yeah, that’s not a story worth spreading.

Still, Leon was glad that Moon didn’t punch him like her older sisters. See, now this is what a true ‘daddy’s girl’ is. The other two... pure thorn-covered armor.

“Alright, Dad. Next, it’s time to see her.”

Leon’s smile faded, his expression growing serious. He knew exactly who Aurora was talking about.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Mom’s in the innermost room. Let’s go.”

The three sisters led the way, and Leon followed behind them.

It wasn’t far from the entrance to the innermost room. The underground space wasn’t large, just enough for one or two people to live in daily. But with each step Leon took, his heart grew heavier.

Even though he was so close to Rosvisser, his unease only intensified.

Suddenly, he remembered something Moon had said earlier as they entered the underground space: “Mom’s the same as always. I’ve kept her company and talked to her every day.”

“The same as always”? And what did she mean by “talking to her”?

What’s happened to that foolish dragon...?

The mountain of questions in his heart was about to crush him.

Leon struggled to steady his breathing, trying to calm himself.

“We’re here.”

The three sisters stopped in front of a stone door.

This time, the stone door wasn’t enchanted with illusion magic. Aurora raised her hand and triggered a hidden mechanism in the wall. The door slowly slid open to both sides.

Beyond the door was a small room, with torches burning on the walls.

In the center of the room was a chair.

In front of the chair lay a crystal about two meters long.

The dim light at the doorway made it hard for Leon to see the details.

However, as his daughters led him into the room, and he saw the crystal clearly, it felt like he had been struck by lightning. He froze in place.

Inside the crystal lay a beautiful silver-haired woman, her eyes closed, her hands resting on her abdomen, holding a photo beneath her palms.

She was so still, as if peacefully asleep.

But who would just be sleeping inside a crystal like that?!

The unease in Leon's heart finally exploded, washing over him completely.

His body grew cold, and his spine felt like it could no longer bear his weight, as if he might collapse at any moment.

He stared wide-eyed at his wife inside the crystal, his mouth opening, but the countless words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat, like stones he couldn’t swallow or speak.

He was nearly suffocating.

Leon reached out a hand, trembling uncontrollably.

Just placing his palm on the crystal took all the strength he had left.

The crystal was cold, just like his heart, which was gradually freezing over.

“Rosvisser... Rosvisser...” His voice trembled.

Noa stepped forward, looking at her 'sleeping' mother, and slowly began to speak.

“You disappeared into the spatial rift, with no word of whether you survived, to stop that disaster.”

“After that, Mom became depressed, sinking deeper into despair every day, using alcohol to numb herself.”

“Watching her like that reminded me of how she was after she gave birth to Moon and me. She was just as lost, staring blankly at your unconscious body for days on end.”

“But this time, it was different.”

“There was no one for her to stare at. She didn’t even know if this long wait would ever end.”

“No one understood Mom’s sorrow and grief at losing you. Aunt Anna said that without you, Mom became the loneliest queen on the throne.”

Noa calmly revealed the truth, her words practiced in her mind every day for the past twenty years, all for this moment when Leon would return, so she could tell him everything.

“Later, Mom stopped drinking and threw herself back into her work.”

“We thought she had finally moved on from the pain, but the truth was, she hadn’t.”

“She worked like a maniac, sleeping less than six hours a week, no makeup, no diplomacy, refusing to even talk to Aunt Isa. She rejected everything from the outside world.”

“That’s when we realized she hadn’t recovered at all. She was sinking even deeper. Alcohol no longer worked for her. She could only use work to distract herself.”

Noa paused and turned to look at Leon.

The man’s face was already full of regret and guilt.

He was on the verge of collapse, so Noa slowed the pace of her story and brought up something else.

“Do you know why I pushed myself so hard to become stronger when I was little?”

Leon looked at her, shaking his head.

“For you.”

Noa said, “I thought if I became stronger, you wouldn’t leave us, and Mom wouldn’t have that sad look on her face. But in the end, I couldn’t achieve either of those goals.”

“You disappeared into the rift, and Mom cried every day.”

“All my life, I’ve been afraid of this family falling apart, even if it was just a fragile facade.”

“But like you once said, the appearance of a family might be a lie, but the love between us is very real.”

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in and slowly letting it out, as if trying to calm her emotions.

“Six months after you disappeared, the Silver Dragon Clan was attacked again.”

“Two Dragon Kings and a human named Nacho Salaman attacked us day and night.”

“Aunt Isa was surrounded as well and couldn’t help us.”

“In the end, Mom killed one of the Dragon Kings, but she was too exhausted to face the other.”

“But miraculously, in the last moment, she unleashed an overwhelming amount of power, wiping out the careless Dragon King in one strike.”

“However, that strike didn’t come from the energy of her Heart-Protecting Scale. She didn’t sacrifice herself, but she was left too weak to even get out of bed.”

“She realized that this wasn’t the Empire’s last attempt to wipe out the Silver Dragons, but as a Dragon Queen, she was no longer able to fight, and there was no one left to inherit the throne.”

“So, Mom disbanded the clan, sending everyone off to escape, hoping that most would survive. But Anna and Shirley stayed. They said they would stay with her until the very end.”

“While she was bedridden, she told us sisters the story of you and her. How you met, got to know each other, and eventually... fell in love.”

“She said she didn’t really understand love between a man and a woman, but she thought she probably loved you.”

“She said she would wait for you to return, to hear you say it yourself.”

“She wanted to hear your confession, face to face, not some heartfelt words in the heat of life-and-death moments.”

“But...”

Noa gently placed her hand on the crystal.

“She didn’t get to hear it. The sun and moon took turns at her window, but the you she was waiting for never returned. That powerful strike didn’t come from her Heart-Protecting Scale; it was the miracle of a mother on the brink of death.”

“And the price of that miracle was her falling into a deep sleep.”

“Her last words to us were to keep living, no matter what, until you came back.”

“Because she believed that as long as you were here, everything would change.”

“Later, Great-Grandmother came and created this crystal for Mom. It can keep her body functional, and as long as Mom wakes up and uses just a little of her strength, the crystal can be broken from the inside.”

“Of course, a specific external magic command can break it as well.”

“Great-Grandmother said that even though Mom is in a deep sleep, she should be able to hear us.”

“So Moon has been talking to her all this time, not wanting her to be alone in her dreams of waiting for you.”

“For the past twenty years, Great-Grandmother and Aunt Isa have been searching for a way to wake her, while we’ve been waiting for you, hoping that you could change everything.”

Moon moved the only chair in the room behind Leon, tugging at his sleeve to guide him to sit down.

He slumped into the chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut, completely drained.

Noa sniffled, waiting for a while, then asked, “Are you feeling better? If you are, Aurora will explain the method we’ve come up with. Time is tight, and we don’t have much left to mourn.”

Leon blinked hard, squeezing the web of his left hand to clear his head with the pain.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

Aurora walked over to Leon and spoke slowly.

“First of all, let’s correct a misunderstanding, Dad. You didn’t ‘sleep’ for twenty years in that spatial rift before waking up.”

“No spatial magic can last that long.”

“In that battle, Ravi used his Heart-Protecting Scale to forcibly alter the nature of the spatial magic, causing an uncontrollable change.”

“And that change is what ‘transported’ you to twenty years later... here.”

Leon listened carefully. “Transported... here?”

Aurora nodded. “Yes. ‘Here’ is just a simple term. You can think of it as a ‘point in time,’ or ‘space-time,’ or more accurately—”

“A world twenty years in the future where Leon Cassmod no longer exists.”

“For you, it’s only been a few hours, but for us, in this world where you didn’t exist, it’s been a full twenty years.”

“To give you a simple example:”

“The world is like an assembly line, and each person is a cog in the machine.”

“But one day, you, a cog, were removed from the assembly line.”

“That didn’t cause the machine to stop working, but everything connected to you was changed.”

“For instance, Noa, Moon, and I. Without you, we became the people we are today. But if you had been here, I’m sure we wouldn’t be like this.”

Aurora paused, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere. She glanced at Noa.

“At the very least, Noa would probably have long hair.”

Leon quickly processed what Aurora was saying. He understood the reasoning, and also the humor in her joke.

The idea of Noa changing from a short-haired cool sister to a long-haired beauty was just a metaphor. His absence from their childhood had affected far more than their appearances.

He and Rosvisser had made a pact to raise their children in a loving, balanced environment with both a father’s and a mother’s love.

A childhood without a father was incomplete.

Aurora was right—if he had been there, they wouldn’t have turned out this way.

Even though they had become strong, there was no doubt that their early years, if guided by Leon, would have made them even greater than they were now.

It was certain.

And that also explained the sense of displacement Leon had felt ever since he regained consciousness.

He didn’t belong ‘here.’

He didn’t belong... in a world where ‘Leon Cassmod no longer existed.’

“Now that we’ve corrected that understanding, here’s the key point,” Aurora said.

“For the past ten years, I’ve been studying Ravi’s space magic, trying to reverse it.”

“Reverse magic?” Leon’s thoughts raced. “Are you talking about... time travel? Going back to the past?”

“No, no, Dad, time doesn’t work like that,” Aurora quickly corrected him.

“Through a series of coincidences, you were sent twenty years into the future. We see that as ‘moving forward.’”

“But in the rules of time, you can’t ‘go backward.’”

“All events can only progress forward as time flows. No magic, no matter how powerful, can change that. Even with Ravi’s Heart-Protecting Scale, the uncontrolled magic could only send you forward, not backward.”

Hearing this, Leon frowned. “So, there’s no way to change any of this?”

“Don’t be so quick to give up, Dad. Even though the rules of time are set in stone, I’ve found a loophole in those rules,” Aurora said, flashing the confident smile of a scientist.

“It’s what I mentioned earlier: reverse magic.”

“We can’t go back in time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reverse known magic.”

“For the past ten years, I’ve been studying Ravi’s space magic, and I’ve managed to create the prototype for reverse magic.”

“If I complete it, you can go back and correct everything, change everything.”

Leon lowered his head, his mind racing.

After a moment, he asked, “I think I understand. But I remember you said earlier that we only have six months left. What does that mean?”

“That battle that put Mom into this deep sleep happened six months after you disappeared into the rift,” Noa explained.

“But what does that have to do with Aurora’s research? Once reverse magic is perfected, couldn’t it send me back to the exact moment I disappeared?”

“No, Dad,” Aurora said.

“For example, from the moment you woke up until now, about eighteen hours have passed.”

“That means time has already passed for you by eighteen hours. So even if I complete the reverse magic right now, it could only send you back to eighteen hours after you first entered the rift.”

“Time moves in a straight line, and it affects the world, and it affects you.”

“If you went back to ‘eighteen hours ago’ in your current state, no one knows what would happen. It might tear your body apart.”

“Do you understand now, Dad?”

Leon shook his head, confused. “Not really.”

Aurora expected this, and turned to Moon. “Moon, can you explain it in simpler terms?”

“Oh, sure.” Moon stepped forward, looking at her father.

“Let’s say you ate a big steak at noon, stuffed yourself until you were full, and it took you until 12:30.”

“Then, using reverse magic, you go back to noon. If you tried to eat the same steak again, you’d definitely burst your stomach.”

“That’s pretty much the principle.”

Leon: “Now I get it.”

“One last thing, Dad,” Aurora said, stepping in front of Leon.

Noa and Moon stood beside her.

The three sisters looked at their father, their expressions serious.

“You’re the only one who can go back using reverse magic.”

“This world is like a chessboard, and you’re the only piece that can move outside the rules.”

“You’re the variable, Dad, and you’re the key to saving everything.”

“In six months, I’ll complete the reverse magic,” Aurora continued.

“And you, Dad, need to become as strong as you were before.”

“Only the strongest version of you will have the power to reverse everything and reshape the future.”

Moon stepped forward, kneeling in front of Leon, wrapping her arms around him.

“Mom and all of us... we’ll be waiting for you, Dad, in the real future.”