(The Land Of Fate, Leo’s POV)
Seeing Leo’s confused expression, Lady Destiny elaborated on what she meant when she referenced the Cult’s Great Prophecy.
"The Cult’s Great Prophecy. The true one...."
She paused, giving the words time to settle before continuing.
"It goes something like this."
Her gaze lifted toward the sky as she spoke.
"When silence reigns and stars grow dim,
When gods grow frail and light grows thin,
His blood will stir, his kin will rise,
With shadowed blade and ageless eyes.
From fractured time and shattered glass,
Will walk the heir of what once was.
The Timeless Assassin’s whispered breath,
Will break the chains of godless death.
No banners raised, no armies sworn,
He’ll walk alone where light is torn.
Yet empires vast will bow and break,
As heavens tremble, as kingdoms quake.
No throne shall stand, no crown remain,
When his descendant walks again.
For gods will weep, and time will break,
When vengeance stirs and heavens quake."
Silence followed.
Leo’s eyes narrowed slightly as he replayed the verses in his mind, comparing them against memory, against the fragments he had read inside the Cult before nodding once in acknowledgement.
"I’ve indeed heard it before."
He said, as a small, knowing smile curved on Lady Destiny’s lips.
"It is not easy to imprint a prophecy into the collective consciousness of billions of souls."
She said, as she took a single step forward towards Leo.
"But when enough of them start to believe....
A prophecy ceases to be merely words and instead becomes a self-fulfilling destiny."
She explained before giggling mischievously, as if to show how proud she was of her work.
"Across the aeons since the universe has been created, I’ve dropped such prophecies into the collective consciousness of sentient creatures, to ensure that the universe survives its own cycles of arrogance, decay, and rebirth."
She began, as she started to stroll casually around Leo.
"History, when left unchecked, has a tendency to repeat itself.
When the lessons of the past are forgotten, the same mistakes resurface again and again, dressed in different names and justified by different beliefs, yet always leading to the same conclusions.
Power centralizes.
Arrogance follows.
Gods overreach.
Civilizations decay.
And the universe suffers until it forgets why it suffered in the first place."
She explained before pausing, as she let Leo process the weight behind those words before continuing.
"That is how dread loops are born.
They emerge from forgetfulness, from civilizations losing sight of why past suffering occurred in the first place.
And hence, to prevent stagnation from becoming permanent, I intervene.
I introduce a prophecy for the age.
A possibility seeded into the collective consciousness that grants its chosen protagonist the chance to see beyond the assumptions of their time, to act where others hesitate, and to choose differently when history pushes them towards familiar mistakes."
She explained, as she looked into Leo’s eyes expectantly, as if implying ’And you’re that chosen protagonist now’, however, never saying it explicitly.
"Out of the seven ages that have passed since the universe’s birth, the cycle of history has only been truly broken once.
That singular fracture reshaped everything. Progress accelerated. Technology advanced. The lives of common people improved within generations rather than millennia.
And since that moment, despite factions rising and falling, despite eras changing their names and banners, the universe has remained fundamentally the same place.
Different actors.
The same script."
The words lingered between them, heavy with implication, as Leo felt the weight of the age slowly tilt toward him.
"Those loops do not exist on their own," Lady Destiny continued.
"They persist because something enforces them.
History does not repeat itself out of habit, Leo, it repeats because consequences are never fully resolved.
Every era leaves behind unpaid debts, unfinished reckonings, and choices made for convenience rather than resolution, and those unresolved threads do not disappear when civilizations fall. They accumulate."
She let that thought settle before continuing.
"Karma exists to preserve consequence.
Where I allow divergence, Karma enforces continuity. Where I introduce possibility, Karma ensures cost. Every action taken in defiance of the past gathers weight, and that weight must be carried by someone, somewhere, eventually."
She did not look away from him as she spoke.
"Karma favors cycles because cycles are efficient. Unpaid debts resurface. Unlearned lessons return. When civilizations refuse to confront the reasons they collapsed before, Karma simply guides them back to the same crossroads, again and again, until the lesson is paid for in full."
Leo felt a slow, uneasy clarity settle in his chest.
"So history looping is not a flaw," she continued. "It is Karma functioning exactly as intended. A ledger balancing itself across time."
Her gaze sharpened slightly.
"But balance achieved this way comes at a cost. Progress slows. Innovation stagnates. Lives become fuel for repetition rather than foundations for growth."
She paused, letting the silence do its work.
"And that is where I intervene," Destiny said.
"Not to erase Karma, and not to defy it, but to give history a chance to confront it consciously.
For that is how my prophecies work.
They do not remove consequences, but rather concentrate them."
She explained, as Leo suddenly felt as though the air he was breathing at this moment became much heavier than before even though nothing around them changed.
"When a prophecy is believed, every choice made in pursuit of that prophecy carries greater weight, greater risk, and greater consequence.
It’s like the universe watches every action linked to it more closely.
And hence the price for any deviation becomes steeper."
Her expression softened, though the meaning of her words did not.
"I can see from your thoughts that you finally have an idea as to where I’m going with this explanation....
So let me remove the last layer of ambiguity and leave no space for misinterpretation.
You are not outside Karma.
You are not above it.
And you are not protected from it."
She held his gaze without blinking.
"If anything, you are closer to it than anyone else alive.
Every step you take will accumulate consequence faster.
Every victory will demand a price sooner.
Every compromise you make will echo louder than it would for another soul.
Karma will not wait generations to collect from you.
It will collect immediately, precisely, and without mercy."
Her words did not accuse him.
They simply were.
"That is the burden of being a divergence point," she continued.
"When history is offered a chance to change, the universe tightens its accounting. There is no room for excess, no tolerance for waste. Balance must be paid for in real time."
She said as she let out a quiet breath.
"You have been given a role that allows the cycle to be confronted rather than repeated, but whether it breaks or reinforces the loop depends entirely on how you carry that weight.
For although Prophecy opens the door.
Your choice is ultimately what decides what lays beyond it."
Her expression softened, though the gravity of her words did not.
"You may fail,"
She said plainly.
"Many before you have...
And when that happens, Karma simply resumes its work, and history continues as it always has, grinding forward, fed by lives and regrets."
She took a small step back, giving him space.
"But if you succeed... if you truly resolve what others only delayed..."
The reflected sky beneath them rippled once.
"Then this age will not merely end differently," Lady Destiny finished. "It will move forward."