It took Elowen two hours to summon her… beast.

  And unfortunately, it was exactly as I feared.

  It was predestined.

  What appeared beyond the Gate did not arrive with thunder or light. You blinked, and it simply came into existence, as though it had always been there and we were only now being allowed to notice it.

  A single, massive eye floated within the balcony through the Gate, suspended in the air, while twelve pairs of white wings surrounded it in an uneven orbit, its feathers pristine and luminous.

  The pupil locked onto Elowen the instant it manifested.

  There was no curiosity in its gaze. No warmth. Only a ferocity so alien it made my skin prickle, as if something otherworldly appeared before us.

  But besides my poor joke, the eyeball was a creepy thing, really.

  Biologically speaking, the thing was an abomination. Nothing about its structure suggested it should exist, let alone breathe.

  And you truly didn’t want to know where its mouth was.

  For what hovered before us was one of the rarest Feralium beasts known to history.

  A fetal Angel who, if the novel had its way, would grow into the greatest enemy Valen would ever face.

  Its magic was immense, and the power it would grant Elowen would match it in scale. But that was not what truly terrified me.

  In time, as it grew, it would awaken a special ability.

  One that would ruin me without me even realizing it.

  That knowledge made one thing painfully clear. It was no longer enough for Elowen to simply tolerate me. Making her stop hating me was the bare minimum.

  If this future truly was predestined, then my finish line had just moved farther away.

  I needed her trust. I needed her loyalty.

  And eventually…

  I needed Elowen to fall in love with me.

  Because I didn’t just need her by my side. I needed that thing there as well.

  After feeding the beast the dragon heart I had prepared, and nearly puking at the sight of the Angel consuming it, Elowen threw the flower seeds out through the Gate.

  The Sunstone and the sulfuric ore followed, both crumbling into fine dust the moment she got to her feet and the Corridor closed, the remnants of the two carried away by unseen currents through the Gate and into the world below.

  Then she began climbing the stairs, fruit still in hand, and turned her head toward me.

  “My bonding begins now,” she said.

  The eye drifted close behind her, hovering just over her shoulder, its massive pupil fixed on me with unsettling intensity.

  “Best of luck,” I replied, ignoring the beast. “How did it go so far?”

  “She is willing,” Elowen nodded as she stepped out of the pool. “However… she wishes for the negotiations to continue.”

  “She?” I repeated, frowning.

  Something was wrong.

  In the novel, I remembered it clearly; this thing had been referred to as a ‘he’. Always. Without exception.

  So what did this mean?

  Had I been wrong? Or was this not as predestined as I feared?

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  Before I could chase the thought any further, Elowen spoke again.

  “A ‘she’, indeed,” she said with a small smile, glancing back at the floating eye, somehow looking almost fond of it. “Do you need my help with the materials?”

  "Oh?" My eyebrows shot up.

  The sudden shift in mood was suspicious enough to put me on edge.

  “What?” She frowned at my hesitation. “You helped me. I’m not petty enough to not at least ask.”

  Ah. There she was.

  For a second, I’d been worried the Angel had already started messing with Elowen's mind.

  “No need,” I waved her off, crouching beside the chest. “Start your bonding. That’s more important, isn’t it?” I looked up just long enough for our eyes to meet.

  She studied me in silence, suspicion flickering across her expression, before finally exhaling and nodding.

  “So be it.”

  She moved to the far corner of the balcony to avoid disturbing my own summoning, sat down, and closed her eyes. The fruit rested between her palms as she steadied her breathing.

  The Angel’s eye drifted closer, then stopped, suspended in the air barely a foot from her face. Watching her.

  The materials I prepared for the summoning were more or less the same.

  A dragon’s heart, rare flower seeds, Sulfur, and a Soulster fruit.

  The only difference was the Elemental ore Valen chose for himself: a Quartz.

  If I remember correctly, that shitty stone was the most expensive elemental ore on the market even during the novel’s time. Meaning that the stone had cost Valen a pretty penny.

  As for the arrangement, all five materials were placed in the same order and the same way I did for Elowen. After all, there was no mistake to be made.

  So I sat down cross-legged, waiting for the Corridor to form.

  My heart, despite all that had happened, was calm.

  But my mind… my thoughts were a storm, a combination of my own previous life, blurry memories of Valen’s own, the novel’s plot, and plans on how to survive all the fiancées I inherited.

  No matter how much I tried to, no matter how much I tried to change my thoughts by staring out the Gate, I couldn’t manage to clear that storm.

  That was when I realized why.

  That was when the Corridor formed, and the summoning began.

  My vision blurred in an instant, feeling my consciousness being dragged away through the horizon I was seeing through the Gate.

  I felt as if I was flying across fields, lakes, mountains, battlefields, violent oceans, and endless seas of sand.

  I felt as if I was flying for months and seconds at the same time.

  But far across a place of great coldness and endless white, lay a piece of land high into the sky. There, coiled casually on a tree that looked as if made of glass, a small dark-blue beast stood sleeping, its body long and armless.

  When it felt me watching, it looked upward to where I thought my eyes were.

  It… apparently a ‘she’ by her voice, asked directly into my head, her mouth remaining unmoving.

  For a moment, I stood silent, unsure if I should utter my real-life name or this one. But… I was dead back home. There was no point in fooling myself otherwise.

  “Valen Ashmoor,” I replied.

  she asked.

  “I am not a cheap man,” I felt myself smiling.

  The moment she spoke, she untangled her long body from the glass tree, her dark-blue eyes locked onto mine. She was fascinating to look at.

  “What are you?” I asked next.

  I felt her sigh, as if she sighed straight out of my chest, using the air out of my lungs to breathe,

  “What do you mean?” I questioned.

  “Does this mean you accept?”

  “I’ve got a Dragon Heart.”

  The little beast’s mouth opened, eyes widening.

  “Of course,” I smiled to her, “I told you I am not a cheap man. But…”

  She sighed yet again, still using my air.

  “If I promise to buy you more dragon hearts later, will you…”

  “Well, hold on now, you are reaching too far. I have gold, but not endless gold. We can negotiate that as well. But what I wanted from you is not to judge whatever you see, and… offer lenient terms during the negotiation.”

  The beast stared at me for a second.

  From the headache I was currently feeling because of the bastard’s body, perhaps too much. Not to mention, I was now worrying if the beast could see my former life. But honestly, I felt like that would be easier to explain than explaining Valen’s crimes and atrocities that he may or may not have committed.

  “Whatever it is, just know I am a changed man,” I replied.

  At my words, she blinked, but after a moment, she began coiling her body through the air as if it were swimming.

  she muttered, but the next second, the sky darkened as if a storm would follow. Then, as a clap of thunder echoed straight abovehead, the beast vanished.

  I panicked.

  “Where are you?” I asked, still in that place.

  But her voice echoed in my head all the same,

  In that fraction of a second, I felt my consciousness rushing back from that place in the sky past the place of coldness, the seas of sand, the violent oceans, the battlefields, the mountains, the lakes, the fields, all the way back into my body inside the balcony.

  When I opened my eyes, the same small but long beast was coiling through the air, inches away from my eyes.

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  -Wulibear