📅 July 4, X791
📍 Mercurius Castle, Throne Room – Crocus
The marble halls of Mercurius Castle thrummed with hurried footsteps and a tension so thick it seemed to press against every wall. Royal guards, magisters, and attendants swept through corridors, heading toward something that dared not yet be named—only that whatever was coming felt like the future itself bearing down on the present.
Through the center of this tide of anxious movement emerged Fairy Tail's rescue team, escorting Future Lucy through the castle's grand royal wing. She clutched her younger self's hand as though afraid that if she blinked, this fragile reality—hopeful, recent, living—would vanish into smoke and dust.
As the doors of the great throne room swung open, golden light spilled through. Chandeliers strung with lacrima hummed softly, casting shimmering reflections across polished floors. Heavy tapestries draped the walls—once proud scenes of conquest and praise, now overshadowed by prophecy and dread.
At the far end of the chamber, Chancellor Arcadios stood firm in ceremonial white armor, its surface scarred by recent battle. His stern expression carried solemnity—but the resolve behind it was unbroken. With a raised hand, he bid his guards aside. "Let them through," he ordered quietly.
Weapons lowered. Eyes widened.
Princess Hisui stepped forward, her jade eyes heavy with burden. The gown she wore shimmered, regal in every fold—but comfort lay absent in its silken weave. Her fingertips trembled, betraying the battle she'd fought in secret, the choices she'd made to save, and the price she'd paid in fear.
"Lucy…" Arcadios began quietly. His tone was gentle. "You survived."
Lucy swallowed, voice trembling with pain and relief. "We all did," she replied. "Barely."
Hisui's gaze flicked to the stranger at Lucy's side. Future Lucy took a slow, uneven step forward, knees shaking. She spoke with a trembling strength: "Your Highness… I came back to change everything. In my time… dragons returned. They burned everything."
The mention of dragons silenced the grand hall entirely.
Silence that so few words could shatter.
Hisui swallowed audibly. "You mean the Eclipse Gate... it failed?"
Future Lucy shook her head, desperation sliding into every tremor of her voice. "No. It worked. But instead of protecting us, it welcomed them. The gate became a doorway—for death."
A chill passed across the throne room.
Even Natsu—fire incarnate—stilled, flames easing back as his skin strung tension through muscle.
Mirajane stepped forward, gentle but resolute. She placed a hand on Lucy's shoulder. "Then we stop it now. We end this before it begins."
Hisui's shoulders sank with the weight of her apology. "I'm the reason you'll die," she whispered.
"No," Lucy responded firmly. "Not yet. We still have time."
Future Lucy exhaled, haunted but earnest. "I just wanted to remember what hope looked like again."
"You're here now," Lucy said softly. "We'll walk forward with hope, not backward through fear."
Natsu stepped forward, flames blistering up his arms. "If dragons come, we'll burn them back into the abyss!"
Wendy's voice was steadier than ever. "Together."
Panther Lily rested a massive paw on his sword's hilt. "Even if fate has chosen doom, Fairy Tail refuses to yield."
Happy squeaked in support. "Even the future can't beat us!"
Arcadios rose and knelt before Hisui. "Allow us to make things right, Your Highness."
Her gaze turned inward, voice trembling. "How do I undo what's already begun?" she asked.
Lucy interjected gently. "We rewrite what comes next."
The elders exchanged solemn bows.
"We'll warn the city," Arcadios said slowly. "Knowledge buys time, and time may yet buy survival."
Hisui clenched her fists. "Then we act before the gate opens wider."
Mirajane nodded. "Then we begin now."
Future Lucy's eyes shimmered with sorrow and faint hope. She looked at each of them—friends she'd once lost, now alive again. "I failed before," she admitted quietly, "but maybe... maybe I've come back so you don't."
High above, on a cool balcony gilded by moonlight, Teresa observed silently. From afar, she seemed no more than a still statue draped in a Valkyrie's white cloak. The Fairy Tail emblem on her back gleamed dark against the night. Though her sword was absent—replaced by controlled readiness—her posture spoke of tempered steel and quiet vigilance.
From her vantage, she felt the magic in the throne room warp. Bonds and voices and prophecy collided. Love radiated, fierce and flawed. She inhaled: it lingered in the air like smoke from a hearth fire.
"They cling to echoes," she murmured. "Even as worlds fracture around them."
Though her face didn't betray it, her mind wrestled with this dynamic she neither trusted nor dismissed.
"Dragons," she whispered under her breath. "An ancient call returned not for dominion—but for ruin."
Back in the chamber, as alliances formed and strategies began to spark into motion, Natsu clenched his fiery fists. He glowed with conviction. Wendy's eyes stung proudly with tears. Lucy looked fierce, resolute, hope rekindled in her gaze.
Princess Hisui squared her shoulders yet again. "I will stand with you."
Arcadios nodded, relief and fear mingling in his glance. "Crocus readies—with Fairy Tail standing beside us."
Future Lucy looked across to her younger counterpart. "Thank you… for believing."
Lucy squeezed her hand. "We already are."
Above, Teresa touched the stone railing with inscrutable calm. Her fingers tightened for a half-beat—uncertain what kind of shift she felt. Her eyes softened, but only at the edges—as if a memory flicked within. Not sentiment, not regret—something more complicated.
Edge and echo. Flame and fracture. She pondered the paradox.
She turned from the balcony, sword reappearing from Requip with a soft metallic sigh. The future lies ahead—shapes shifting. The fabric of time is fraying.
She whispered to no one. "Perhaps you will prove me wrong."
And then she vanished into the castle shadows, unseen by those forging new hopes below.
In the glowing anticipation of what must come next, the unified plan began to form: warnings to the city of Crocus, alliances to be forged, magics to resist—not just fate unfolding as prophecy dictated, but fate tested, reshaped, rebuilt.
No one saw Teresa slip away.
But a quiet promise lingered in her mind.
She would watch.
This time, not as a judge—but as a ghost once accustomed to prophecy, now possibly becoming something more.
Because even in the darkest timeline, an echo carried hope.
And hope was worth fighting for.