Madelina didn't respond immediately.
Her arms were still folded, but her eyes had shifted — not in emotion, but in computation.
She was deep in the model now. Already stripping apart the impossibility of his words. Rebuilding it layer by layer.
She blinked.
"The theory is sound,"
She said at last.
The others turned toward her.
"If we assume a soul's waveform exists along a fixed axis of individual identity, then two identical waves in the same frequency range would force collapse into a single stream. Merging, not duplicating."
She took a breath.
"Temporal refinement through death isn't new. But using the collapse of consciousness as the trigger is…"
Her voice softened, not in tone — but volume.
"Unnatural. But logical."
Westen just listened, unbothered.
"Assuming the time machine stabilizes the soul tether and aligns it to the correct anchor… and assuming the future consciousness is overwritten in just enough layers not to destroy the host…"
She paused again.
"Then yes. It would work."
The room was silent. The others watched her, but no one interrupted.
"The transition would be violent,"
She added.
"Painful. Possibly incomplete in lower-ranked minds. But for S and SSS ranks, the natural soul elasticity should compensate."
Her voice dropped another octave.
"We wouldn't regain everything immediately. The memories might come in waves, dreams, instincts."
"But in time, the full regression would stabilize."
She unfolded her arms slowly. Walked up to the console. Ran a few commands without looking at anyone.
The room hummed louder now. The mana channels were beginning to sync.
"The plan is risky."
She didn't look at Westen.
"But if the math is correct, then this isn't time travel. This is… retrograde continuity."
"We don't replace the past."
She finally turned toward the others.
"We become it."
No one spoke.
Not even Westen.
For a long moment, the hum of mana was the only sound in the lab.
Then Madelina exhaled and looked at him again.
"It'll take twenty more hours to prepare the chamber for soul slicing. I'll need to recalibrate the particle lattice to recognize death as the keyframe for regression."
She closed the console.
"You've convinced me."
Her tone was flat.
"But that doesn't mean I forgive you."
Westen didn't answer.
Didn't nod.
Just offered a single word.
"Fair."
The moment was still lingering when Westen spoke again.
"You're calibrating everything manually,"
He said quietly.
"That's going to leave variable lag between pulse registration and soul detachment."
Madelina glanced at him. She didn't answer right away.
"Do you have a better way?"
She said.
He nodded.
"Yeah. Let me help."
That made her pause. And raise an eyebrow.
"You want to help me build the machine that sends you back to die?"
"That sends us back to die,"
He corrected. Calmly.
"Aren't you supposed to be the villain?"
She added, still skeptical.
Westen didn't flinch.
"Villain, sure,"
He said.
"But not stupid. You think villains don't have brains?"
He looked around the lab. At the girls who were still watching from behind the secondary array. They weren't pretending to hide their suspicion. Not anymore.
"They're going to stare holes into the back of your head the whole time."
Madelina turned slightly, seeing the truth in that.
"I'd prefer not to get vaporized by instinctive trauma reactions."
He turned to the five and lifted his hand lazily.
"Leave."
Nothing more. Just that.
Their expressions hardened instantly.
"No,"
Kyra said.
"We're not letting you—"
"Get out."
Madelina's voice cut through them like a quiet blade.
She didn't raise her tone. She didn't argue.
She just… said it.
"I need silence. Go."
There was a pause. The kind that could've broken into violence a few weeks ago.
But not now.
Eventually, slowly, they filed out — not because they agreed, but because they knew Madelina wouldn't budge.
The door sealed behind them.
Now it was just two people. One terminal. One
world on the edge of regression.
Westen sat back down, already glancing through the stream of code on the main screen.
"The lattice is reacting fine, but your anchor pulse is too delayed. The moment of death needs to be synchronized with soul flicker—right now you've got it trailing two milliseconds late."
He typed something. Adjusted the core spin algorithm.
Madelina watched his hands.
They weren't rushed. Not mechanical. Just… precise.
"You memorized the anchor's code after reading it once?"
She asked.
He didn't look at her.
"What's the problem? You can do it too."
He said as if no big deal.
"Right."
For the next few minutes, there was only quiet coordination. Small corrections. Fast patchwork. Dynamic recursion on a layer she hadn't even built herself.
Then he said something that made her blink.
"You're using internal mana channels to stabilize the regression scaffold."
She nodded, slightly thrown.
"Yes. Why?"
"Then you're not using soul-spill reflections."
She stopped typing.
"What?"
He turned slightly.
"You're not extracting passive soul imprint data from the channel bleed. You're stabilizing it manually. Which is inefficient."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a simple drive.
"Here. Patch this in. It's a passive stabilizer I made last year for something else, but it'll work."
She stared at it, not moving.
"You made a soul stabilization module for fun?"
"Not fun. Necessity."
He slid it closer on the desk.
Madelina took it. Slowly plugged it in. The screen adjusted instantly. The pulse readings became cleaner. The core rotation tightened by 12%.
She kept watching the numbers.
And realized something.
She hadn't predicted a single one of them.
Not one of his inputs. Not one of his optimizations.
He wasn't guessing.
He understood the system better than she did.
Her hands paused over the keyboard.
She didn't look at him.
She just thought.
'The world thought Nightmare was strong. But they were wrong. That wasn't the terrifying part.'
Her throat felt dry.
'It was this. The mind behind the power. The kind of mind that learned how to bend soul systems, collapse temporal defenses, and master an ability the world thought untamable...without help. Without a lab. Without anyone.'
She looked at him — this calm, quiet man in a black shirt, sleeves rolled up like an intern, typing casually like none of this meant anything.
And for the first time in her life…
Madelina felt genuinely afraid of intellect.
Not because it was cruel.
But because it was absolute.
The lab was dim. The only light came from scattered monitors flickering across the reinforced walls. Code ran in silence. For hours, Madelina and Westen had worked without a word—focused, sharp, synchronized.
But then, without warning, Westen stopped typing. His head tilted slightly, and he raised a single gloved hand.
"Shh."
Madelina froze, watching him.
Something had shifted.
"I didn't want to reveal this,"
He muttered,
"but this is getting troublesome. Let's evaluate our success rate to 100%, so there won't be any hard feelings."
He moved his hand again—slow, precise. The black fabric of his gloves glinted faintly, and the spatial ring on his finger pulsed with a cold glow.
In a seamless motion, seven perfectly round crystals appeared in the air beside him. Each no larger than a pigeon's egg. Each smooth, glass-like, with soft white mist swirling slowly inside—dense, controlled. Not random.
Madelina tensed.
"What are those?"
"These are my personal bests,"
Westen said.
"I call them soul crystals. They can store and carry souls in perfect condition for one year. Later, they can be transferred to a body with similar wavelength—for partial resurrection."
The words hit like a slap. But Westen remained calm, leaning back in his chair like he'd just commented on the weather.
Madelina stared. Her eyes locked on the crystals—their faint hum, the slow swirl of mist. She couldn't look away.
"Store, carry... transfer?"
It didn't make sense. No one had even proven the soul could be isolated, let alone moved.
But here he was.
"Why did you make them?"
She asked.
Westen didn't answer right away. One of the crystals floated closer to her, stopping a few inches from her forehead. She instinctively pulled back, but it hovered still—watching, almost.
"You don't need to know,"
He said calmly.
"All you need to know is that after soul synthesis is done, when the soul leaves the body, the crystal will absorb it. No harm. No loss.
It'll refine it cleanly, without outside interference. For synthesis, all you need to do is hold these on your glabella. With for few seconds for the crystal to sync with you soul wavelength, and done."
His tone didn't change. As if this was routine.
But Madelina was already piecing it together. The language. The way he avoided eye contact. The distance.
"You torture people with it, don't you?"
"Why ask when you know?"
Westen replied, unfazed.
"Anyways, are you going to keep exploring my intentions, or do some actual work?"
Her lips tightened. She returned to the terminal, but her eyes kept drifting to the hovering crystals.
Then she spoke again.
"I don't understand one thing. You could've done this sooner. Don't tell me you thought it was a waste. You know that's stupid, right?"
Westen rolled his sleeves back, casual and smooth.
"I just wanted to know what kind of technology the smartest mind had built for herself,"
He said.
"But realized it wasn't worth the effort. What am I even going to do with that information?"
He didn't say it like an insult.
He said it like fact.
And that, more than anything, made her realize—
the world was wrong.
Nightmare wasn't terrifying because of his strength.
He was terrifying because of how far ahead he really was.
-To Be Continued