Nyx’s chest tightened. For a moment, she couldn’t move.
He refused to leave, just like before.
Even before the apocalypse, Lucian had always been like that: quiet, withdrawn, and uncomfortable around people. But whenever something happened to Nyx, he stayed close. She had never realized how precious those small things were until she had lost them.
"Take me to him."
The nurse stared at her. "Miss Arden, you have a fractured arm, and you’ve only just regained consciousness. You need to rest."
"I’ll rest after I see him."
"But—"
"Please."
The single word came out softer than the others. The nurse fell silent. Something about Nyx’s expression made further protest feel cruel.
After a moment, she sighed. "At least let me call someone to bring a wheelchair."
Nyx nodded. She didn’t care how she got there. She just needed to see him.
The nurse stepped into the corridor to call for assistance. Nyx remained beside the bed, staring at the doorway. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could feel it in her throat.
Her little brother was alive and well. Lucian was perfectly fine.
She had watched his body being torn apart. He hadn’t even gotten a burial, and yet he was here, waiting for her.
Nyx closed her eyes. Another tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away before the nurse returned. She had cried enough in her first life. She wouldn’t waste tears on the past anymore, not when she had been given another chance.
The wheelchair arrived a few minutes later, and Nyx hurriedly sat down. As the nurse pushed her toward the elevator, the hospital seemed strangely unfamiliar despite how ordinary everything looked.
People walked through the corridors carrying coffee. Doctors spoke quietly to one another. A child cried somewhere nearby, while a television played in the corner of a waiting room. Outside the tall glass windows, sunlight glimmered against rain-soaked streets.
Everything was normal.
Nyx stared through the glass.
But in thirty days, it would all be gone.
A strange energy would descend upon Earth, an energy later known as Realm Essence. At first, no one understood what it was or where it had come from. It would seep into the atmosphere, the soil, the water, and living bodies. Humans exposed to it would either die, become immune to its effects, or undergo changes that would eventually allow some of them to awaken abilities.
Then the dead would begin to rise.
That would be the beginning of the apocalypse.
But the undead were only the first disaster. As the Realm Essence continued to spread, fractures would begin appearing in space, connecting Earth to three other realms: the Underworld, the Arcane Realm, and the Beast Realm. No one knew where they originated from, whether from another world or dimension.
The Underworld, also known as the Netherworld, was a realm saturated with death and corruption. Its influence brought undead creatures, deathly phenomena, and terrifying forms of decay that could spread through living things.
The Arcane Realm had its own extraordinary energy and unstable natural laws. Its influence caused strange phenomena, distortions in reality, and changes in the environment that defied everything humanity once understood about nature.
The Beast Realm was exactly what its name suggested, a world dominated by monstrous life. Beasts of various forms would emerge from its fractures, ranging from creatures that could barely be distinguished from mutated animals to terrifying entities powerful enough to destroy entire settlements.
The arrival of the three realms would transform Earth completely. Plants and animals would mutate. Weather patterns would become increasingly abnormal. Areas affected by different realms would develop their own dangerous environments, and creatures from those realms would begin appearing across the world.
Nyx had survived three years of it.
Calling it survival almost felt generous.
For three years, she and Lucian had rarely eaten until they were full. They had searched through abandoned buildings for food, fought over scraps with people, and watched hunger strip away whatever humanity some people had left. She had seen parents turn against their own children, friends betray one another, and strangers kill for something as insignificant as a single can of food.
She had fought undead and monsters until her body was covered in scars. She had been injured countless times and came close to death more times than she could remember. There had been moments when she survived only because of luck, moments when a monster had missed its strike by a fraction of an inch or another person had happened to arrive at exactly the right time.
It had also been three years of watching the strong decide who deserved to live.
The elevator doors opened, and the nurse pushed her inside. Nyx looked down at her injured arm, then at her reflection in the polished elevator doors.
The girl staring back at her was younger—much younger. Her face was fuller, her skin had color, and her eyes lacked the exhaustion that had once settled permanently beneath them.
Nyx almost didn’t recognize herself.
Then the elevator doors opened again, and the waiting area came into view.
There he was.
Lucian.
Nyx stopped breathing.
He was sitting alone in one of the chairs near the windows. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and his clothes were wrinkled as though he had been sitting there for hours. His head was lowered, and his hands were clasped together between his knees.
Alive. Whole. Uninjured.
Nyx stared at him, and her vision blurred. She had seen that face covered in blood. She had watched those eyes lose their light.
And now...
He lifted his head.
Their eyes met.
Lucian froze. For several seconds, neither of them moved. Then he stood so quickly that the chair scraped loudly against the floor.
"Nyx?"
That voice.
Nyx’s lips parted, but no words came. Lucian crossed the room and stopped in front of her, his expression filled with worry.
"Why did you get out of bed?"
Nyx stared at him. Then, without thinking, she reached for him. Her fingers caught the fabric of his shirt, and she pulled him into her arms.
He went completely still.
She held him tightly, almost desperately. Her uninjured hand pressed against his back as she buried her face against his shoulder.
He was warm. He was breathing. His heart was beating. He was alive.
Nyx’s eyes burned. Since he had died a few days before her own death, she had dreamed of hearing his voice again. Now he was standing in her arms.
Nyx tightened her embrace. Lucian slowly raised his arms and hugged her back. His voice was quiet against her hair.
"Nyx... what’s wrong?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
Her voice cracked. "I’m just glad you’re here."
Lucian didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t. To him, she had only been unconscious for a short time. He didn’t know that she had watched him die. He didn’t know that she had died too.
Nyx pulled away slowly, but her eyes remained fixed on his face. She memorized every detail: his eyes, his hair, the small scar beneath his chin, and the faint crease between his brows.
Everything.
She would never forget them again. And she certainly would never forget to repay their ’family’ properly.
A faint beeping sounded from somewhere behind her. The translucent System panel appeared once more.
[Emotional fluctuation detected.]
[Host synchronization is increasing.]
[Current Synchronization: 15%.]
Nyx glanced at it, then back at Lucian. Her expression slowly hardened.
Damn Livia for pushing her down the stairs.
Nyx had to repay her for making her spend half of the precious time she had left preparing for Realmfall with her arm in a cast. Thirty days had already been painfully short. She couldn’t afford to waste even a single one.
But revenge could wait.
First, she needed to write down everything she remembered.
Every event. Every resource she had discovered. Every piece of information she could remember about the three realms and the changes they brought to Earth.
She needed to record everything down to the smallest detail before time or exhaustion caused any of it to slip from her mind.
With that decision made, Nyx smiled at Lucian and reached for his hand.
"Come on. If you want to wait for me, then you can do that by my bed."
Lucian stared at her nervously, his expression almost apologetic.
"I-I didn’t want to disturb you."
Nyx sighed.
He was always like this.
Even when he was worried about her, he seemed afraid that his presence might somehow become a burden.
She had never understood how someone could grow so accustomed to making himself small.
Nyx tightened her grip around his hand and gently pulled him along as the nurse returned. The nurse glanced between them but said nothing. She stepped behind the wheelchair and turned Nyx around before pushing her back toward the elevator.
When they returned to the room, Nyx thanked the nurse before she left.
The door closed behind her.
Nyx sat on the bed while Lucian remained standing beside it, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do now.
Leaning back against the raised pillow, Nyx studied him.
He looked so young.
Not merely because she had spent three years watching him grow thinner and more exhausted as the apocalypse dragged on, but because she could now see just how young he had actually been. Fourteen years.
Her gaze softened.
Nyx lifted her hand and placed it gently on his head, brushing his dark hair away from his forehead and toward the side of his face.
Lucian went still.
He didn’t move away.
He simply stared at her, allowing her to touch him.
Their father, Edmund Arden, had always been a lustful bastard.
Nyx’s mother had died when she was seven. A few months later, Edmund brought his mistress into the Arden household with a daughter who was only a year younger than Nyx.
Then he married the woman as his second wife.
Her name was Camilla.
Three years after Camilla and Livia had entered the Arden household, Edmund brought Lucian home.
As expected, Camilla had been furious when she discovered that her husband continued keeping other women outside the marriage. But rather than direct her anger toward the man who had betrayed her, she took it out on the people who were easier to target.
One of those people was Lucian.
His mother had been another one of Edmund’s mistresses. She died when Lucian was still a baby, leaving him behind with a father who was never once interested in his existence.
Camilla had hated the child from the moment she saw him and the maids quickly learned to follow suit.
Nyx had been ten years old at the time.
She had already experienced enough neglect to understand what it felt like to be unwanted, but she was still only a child herself. When she saw the tiny baby being treated as though he were responsible for his father’s infidelity, she couldn’t bring herself to ignore him.
He was small.
Helpless.
And, to Nyx, unbearably cute.
So she began taking care of him whenever she could.
It wasn’t as though she had suddenly become his mother. She had her own troubles, and there were plenty of things she didn’t understand. She was only a ten-year-old girl trying to protect another child who seemed even more helpless than she was.
But when Lucian started walking, an accident changed everything. After that, Nyx could no longer leave his care entirely to the household staff.
She started watching him more closely, making sure he ate, helping him when he fell, keeping him away from the places where she knew the maids would deliberately leave him unattended.
As he grew older, Lucian became excessively withdrawn and quiet.
Sometimes Nyx wondered if part of that personality came from the environment he grew up in or if he inherited it from his mother.
Either way, she never saw it as a problem.
There was no reason to make him be someone he wasn’t. If he preferred silence, she let him have it. If he wanted to be alone, she let him.
But that was before the apocalypse.
Back then, being quiet and withdrawn was just a personality trait — hospitals, schools, electricity, supermarkets, clean water, and enough food to complain about how it tasted.
[Current Synchronization: 20%.]
Nyx lowered her hand slightly, her fingers brushing Lucian’s hair.
After everything she experienced in her past life, she couldn’t let him stay the same.
Not because there was anything wrong with him, but because the world to come would punish weakness without hesitation.
She couldn’t keep shielding him with her body like before. She tried that once, spending years putting herself between Lucian and every danger, taking injuries that could have killed her, believing that if she endured enough, he would survive.
But it wasn’t enough. In the end, she watched him die anyway.
This time, she would protect him differently.
She would make sure he had the strength to protect himself.
And she would never again let anyone decide if either of them deserved to live.
Nyx withdrew her hand, gave his hair a gentle final stroke, then rested her palm on his shoulder. "Go and rest on the couch over there."
Lucian nodded obediently.
He went to the couch and sat down, still watching her from across the room.
Nyx picked up her phone. The screen still displayed the date. March 3, 20XX. She opened the notes app. Her fingers hovered over the screen for a few seconds before she started typing.