Lilia's Tale: Freyja's Endeavor

Chapter 29: Eyes

I looked back at the students in the dormitory as they gave me a confused glare. My previous anger had subsided, though not in any positive way. Heaven's Rift has disappeared, yet here I stood, away from where I first was.

I didn't dare go back to the dormitory, instead choosing to go directly to the library. Regardless of what thought I could muster in this bottomless panic I felt, there was no answer.

There were some students who took refuge in there as well, very few daring to go look at the books, letting me pass through undisturbed. I looked around hoping to find an adult, praying for them to be the librarian. Nobody even looked adult.

"Tch," I exclaimed loudly before running up the stairs.

I wasn't quite sure what I was searching for, let alone where it would be, but I was determined to find something. After a bit of searching on the third floor, I figured I would be more likely to find information on the last floor.

I headed up there and started looking at every single research paper I could find, one after another. I didn't want to give up until I had at least some information on...whatever it was I was searching for.

Evening became night, and night became day. I had not relented, tirelessly searching research paper after research paper. I had almost finished what I was trying to do, looking over every single one of them. Yet I had nothing.

Near the end, I had found a set of theories pertaining to illusion magics. It intrigued me, reminding me I had to teach Alice some of them. I set it aside on a place I would remember and continued my search.

...Every single one. Every single paper looked over. Not a single one had anything to do with Heaven's Rift. I wondered why that even was the case considering it's such a poorly understood phenomenon here. Why would nobody even attempt to look into it?

I sighed and went to sit on some random table nearby, hoping to use the despair to calm down and gather my thoughts. It wasn't effective, but sufficient and manageable. I ran over the recent events again in my mind.

Intentionally putting aside the situation with illusion magic and having to learn it, there was little to think of, only one thing. The odd appearance of Heaven's Rift. Why was she silent once again, just like when the town burnt down, and why did I not go back in place?

Every other time, at the end of Heaven's Rift, I would be forcibly placed back in the exact same position as I was before time stopped, likely in an effort to keep things consistent once it wore off. So what exactly could have happened that it didn't do it this time?

Could the two abnormalities, being silence and lack of backtracking, be related? There was another time where she stayed silent, but I cannot remember whether I was sent back or not...

In the end, regardless of how much I tried to find the answer, I was unable to. An increasingly strong headache slowly settled in, so I gave up on trying to get anymore information for the day. Something weird happened, something that deeply worries me, but I could not figure out what, let alone why.

I looked outside and found the sky to be of purer black than anything I had previously seen, almost as if it replied to my fear directly. I stood up and went back down, surprised there were no students around. Mayhaps they had already gone back to the dormitory?

...Considering the locked front door, this was a very likely possibility. Not only was I trapped in here, but it also meant the black sky wasn't merely the start of the night. It was deep within it.

I went to a window to look over at the sky. My initial thoughts regarding the landscape were right: a starless sky, devoid of even a moon. The more I looked into this void, the more enthralled I became in it, and the more my body instinctively told me to run away and hide.