Rea stood at the edge of the forest.
Before stepping in, she had already placed a mark outside using Order magic a guiding point to lead her back. Without it, even she could wander endlessly, lost in some unknown corner of the world.
She had long since learned not to rely on the sun or the stars. Direction was not her strength. Without guidance, she would likely walk in circles, never finding her way back to Horgaz.
Yet while her sense of direction failed her, her memory did not.
Every moment of her long existence remained vivid preserved like paintings that time could never fade.
Before her, the forest rose like a natural wall. Towering trees stood densely packed, their canopies swallowing the sunlight whole.
The air within was cooler, heavier laden with the scent of damp soil and decaying leaves.
Rea took her first step inside.
Dry twigs cracked softly beneath her handmade leather boots. Above, the thick canopy fractured the sunlight into thin, drifting strands that danced through the air.
The forest was quiet. But not empty. Life stirred behind every shadow.
A small bird took flight as she passed a massive tree, its roots clawing into the earth like the hands of a giant. In the distance, insects hummed, and leaves whispered as the wind brushed through them.
But Rea had not come here to wander.
She had come to find something.
The sacred beast, Mewa.
After a few steps, she stopped beside an ancient tree, its bark blackened by age.
In her palm, a sequence of Order magic formed.
With her eyes closed, Rea followed a faint trail of light.
This was Perception Order magic a fundamental technique used by Order wielders to sense life itself.
"…So it's true," she murmured softly. "Something powerful resides there… but what is this feeling?" Her thoughts drifted.
If this forest, the hills, and the village of Horgaz were truly places she once knew…
Then a thousand years had changed everything.
After all, she had awakened in the heart of this forest.
The land had been reshaped twisted by the aftermath of the great war long ago.
A war she herself had ended.
Rea stood still among the towering trees as a gentle wind slipped through the leaves, carrying whispers of the past.
She closed her eyes.
The memory surfaced instantly clear and sharp, as if it had happened yesterday.
Her fingers brushed against the damp earth, now blanketed in roots and moss.
It was hard to believe…
This peaceful ground had once been a place where the sky itself collapsed.
This forest… Had never existed.
Long before Horgaz, before the trees claimed the land, this had been a simple village fields stretching wide, with only a handful of homes scattered across the plains.
Then the sky darkened.
Smoke choked the heavens. Tens of millions of soldiers raised their weapons, while monstrous beasts roared like chained livestock, driven forward under banners of conquest.
They had come to destroy.
The world stood on the brink of annihilation.
And Rea came to judge them.
Long before humanity rose to dominance, they had been weak fragile beings struggling to survive.,
It was Rea who had given them knowledge.
Who had taught them science.
Who had granted them Order magic to protect themselves.
And for a time, they flourished.
But over thousands of years, growth gave birth to arrogance.
Greed blinded them.
The Solman Empire rose above all.
With Order magic and advanced knowledge, they conquered the demon race, slaughtered the beastmen, seized the dwarves' technology, burned the forests of the elves, and enslaved dragons.
They came to believe themselves the absolute rulers of the world.
Until, at last...
They sought to challenge the True God.
And so Rea stood before them.
Tens of millions of soldiers of the Solman Empire an army that had claimed three-quarters of the world.
She remembered it clearly.
The moment she invoked a level of Order magic beyond all living beings.
The sky, once blue, twisted into a vast vortex of black clouds.
Cosmic Order energy gathered above a massive spiral so immense that its shadow swallowed the entire land below.
The people looked up in terror.
But it was already too late.
The first meteor fell like a burning star.
Then another.
Then dozens more.
The sky became a storm of fire.
Each impact tore open the earth, forming colossal craters, hurling stone and soil skyward before raining destruction in every direction.
Half the army vanished in an instant.
Tens of millions of soldiers, mages, even those far from the battlefield entire cities were consumed in the inevitable devastation.
And still...
It did not end.
Rea raised her hand toward the distant mountains.
A surge of high-order magic split the sky like a fracture of light.
The force struck the mountain range with a deafening roar.
Mountains that had stood for millennia collapsed sinking as the sea rushed in to claim them.
Massive rock formations crumbled like sandcastles.
The very spine of the earth cracked open. Valleys were carved in a single motion.
Rivers changed course.
Winds howled like raging storms.
Vast plains collapsed into enormous chasms.
Nothing remained.
Only fields of the dead.
Had Rea not remembered her eleven disciples…
The world would have been reduced to a lifeless wasteland.
Because of them, She stopped.
With what remained of her power, she restored the broken world.
She revived the innocent.
She granted life a second chance.
And time moved forward.
Rea slowly opened her eyes.
Before her now stood only a silent forest.
Towering trees covered the hills. The once broken earth was now bound together by roots that reached deep below.
Nature had healed itself.
As if everything that had happened were nothing more than a distant nightmare.
But Rea knew the truth.
She had witnessed a world destroyed by human greed.
Her gaze lifted once more into the darkening forest.
If her memory was correct…
Something from that time still remained.
Something that should have been buried by time.
Yet even a thousand years had not erased it.
A house.