Chapter 17: “Those Who Sleep, and Those Who Cross Time”
Chapter 17: “Those Who Sleep, and Those Who Cross Time”
—As my own record.
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That night, the sky over Sanctum Noctis was filled with light.
But it wasn’t stars or angels—it was the choreography of a drone show.
The people didn’t know.
They didn’t know about those who, beneath that sea of light, began to move in silence—and with resolve.
This is the story of just seven who acted to save the future—no, to carve truth into the future once again.
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I wasn’t on the surface then.
But later, Dan—Professor Burns Dan—told me everything.
They slipped through the cordoned zone of the old National Assembly beneath the underground city.
The timing hinged on a blind spot in the sensors caused by the drone show.
They had to reach the Vault of Truth within ten minutes.
Professor Dan took the lead. I can’t even imagine that man walking behind anyone.
Wearing the recorder on his back, he advanced without a word—and without a hint of hesitation.
Someone is said to have spoken:
“The time has come to set truth free.”
We still don’t know whose voice it was.
Only those words remained—faintly—on the recording medium.
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When they reached the deepest level, the one who blocked their way was—
Magnus Cain.
I would later speak with this man, briefly, but at this point we had never met.
Chief of Security in the Hibernation War. A demon of enforcement.
He raised a gun at Professor Dan—or so it seemed—but then turned the muzzle to his own neck and fired the sleep gun.
“…Even in the days of the Old Testament, I’ll go wherever. I’ll be following your back.”
He wanted to follow Professor Dan’s back—without a fight.
Cain’s adjutant—a woman with long black hair, they say—caught him in her arms, crying.
This scene remained on the recording. Her voice was trembling.
“He chose a future where he wouldn’t have to fight…”
Those words moved my heart again and again.
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Beyond the vault door lay the truth of the war.
There had been no dead.
The hero “Las” was a manufactured idol.
Professor Dan transmitted the data to Vermilion.
“Next is your turn. Record the truth.”
—At that point, even Vermilion wasn’t entirely clear as friend or foe.
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In Cain’s breast pocket, a small letter from Professor Dan had been slipped.
“Let’s meet again in the days of the Old Testament.”
Quiet, but unmistakable—so like him.
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Then came the escape.
Dodging pursuit, they made for the Crystal Gate.
At that moment, I was—standing before the gate.
At twenty-one, carrying everything I had learned from him since I was three, I stood there to see him off.
In my hand were the keys to that Harley—the water-powered bike Professor Dan had given me.
“It’s yours. Take this and go to the future—so that you can become the ‘teacher’ who taught me everything.”
Beside me was Hachikō.
In his eyes—eyes that remembered my mother Hera’s death—he looked straight at Professor Dan.
Barked at by Hachikō, Professor Dan looked a little troubled.
Then he said:
“Las is always in the hidden chamber of the northern temple. You came to fetch her, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“To protect the future you built. This time I’ll go carve the foundation.”
White light wrapped around him and the bike.
As the gate closed—at that very instant—another fragment of my childhood time slipped back into the past within my chest.
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After the gate sealed, I started walking.
Rafaella.
The one I had searched for all this time—the woman I love.
Called “Las,” turned into an emblem, and nearly used.
She stood on the shore of the northern temple, smiling quietly.
“…You’re late, Oliver Jones. Your hair color has changed, hasn’t it?”
The moment I heard her voice, it felt as if the whole world returned to me.
I reached out to the cheek down which her tears were falling.
—And in that moment, myth became reality.
(End of Chapter 17)
