Chapter 340: A Necessary Conversation [II]

For the first time since she began explaining, Rhosyn looked away.

"Because you already know the answer," she said after a moment. Her voice carried no defensiveness, only something worn. "You know the history of this world." She looked back at him. "The Primordial Bloodline was broken long before you arrived. What power we had left was fragmented, unstable. What you call miracles were once routine."

She paused.

"By the time it happened, we could no longer act on that scale."

Trafalgar didn’t look away. "Then why act at all?"

"Because there was still one thing that could be done," Rhosyn replied quietly. "And only one."

She exhaled. "Moving a soul. Moving an existence. Not creating nor restoring. Just... relocating before it was lost."

Trafalgar’s eyes narrowed a fraction. "We?"

Rhosyn didn’t deny it. "I say ’we’ out of habit." Her lips curved into something that wasn’t a smile. "In truth, I did it alone. There aren’t many of us left. Fewer than you’d expect. Fewer than the world could afford." She steadied herself. "Saving him here was beyond us. Preserving you wasn’t."

The room felt smaller after that, the weight of what hadn’t been possible pressing in just as hard as what had been done.

Trafalgar did not let the silence stretch any further."Then tell me," he said, his voice low but steady. "What actually happened back there."

Rhosyn’s gaze sharpened, clarity replacing hesitation.

"You were at the academy in your world," she said. "Skipping class." A brief pause followed. "Away from where you were supposed to be." Her eyes never left him. "Your focus was elsewhere, fixed on something that felt more immediate than the lecture you were avoiding."

Her expression remained unchanged.

"There was a moment," Rhosyn continued, her voice precise. "A brief disruption. Your body faltered, your consciousness loosened." She tilted her head slightly. "Not death. But separation."

She did not dramatize it.

"There was no ritual. No sign. No meaning attached to the moment itself," she said. "Just an opening created by instability."

Trafalgar remained silent.

"You did not die there," Rhosyn said, holding his gaze. "But you were approaching a threshold. One that, once crossed, becomes fixed."

She inhaled slowly.

"That instant—when your existence detached without settling—was the opening I needed."

Her voice steadied.

"I was searching," she said. "For a compatible candidate."

She did not look away.

"In that moment of disconnection, your existence was selected." A brief pause followed. "Taken. Transferred. Entirely. Body and soul."

She met his eyes again.

"That is why nothing was left behind."

The silence thickened between them.

"Your world required an explanation," Rhosyn added quietly. "So it created one."

Rhosyn met his gaze fully now.

"No heroism. No prophecy. Not even destiny at that point." Her tone was calm, almost merciless. "Just a choice made before something valuable disappeared forever."

Trafalgar didn’t speak for a while. When he finally did, his voice came out lower. "My parents," he said. "In my world." His eyes didn’t leave hers. "What happened to them?"

Rhosyn didn’t answer immediately. Not because she hesitated, but because the answer required precision.

"They’re alive," she said at last. "But not in the way you’re thinking." She watched him closely. "To them, you never existed."

The words landed silently, heavier than any declaration of death.

"There was no accident tied to you," Rhosyn continued. "No funeral or records that could be traced back to a missing son." Her tone remained even. "Your existence was removed cleanly. Memories. Documents. Digital traces. Even the small inconsistencies people overlook." She shook her head slightly. "The world adjusted itself around the absence."

Trafalgar’s expression didn’t change, but something in his gaze did.

"They never lost you," she said. "Because as far as that world is concerned, there was never anyone to lose."

He breathed out slowly. "So there was no goodbye."

"No," Rhosyn replied. "And no grief. No questions. No hole left behind." Her voice softened just a fraction. "It was the only way to prevent collapse. A disappearance creates fractures. An erasure does not."

Trafalgar’s fingers curled slightly against his palm. "And there’s no way to speak to them," he said. It wasn’t a question.

"There isn’t," Rhosyn confirmed. "There’s no bridge between worlds. No echo left to answer. Even if you stood where you once lived, nothing would recognize you." She met his eyes fully. "You are not missing there. You were never written into that reality."

He was silent again, longer this time.

Then he asked the last question.

"Can I go back?"

Rhosyn didn’t look away. She didn’t soften her answer.

"No," she said. "Not because I refuse. Because it isn’t possible." She drew a quiet breath. "What happened to you wasn’t a passage. There’s no synchronization left between the worlds. No return point."

She paused, letting the meaning settle.

"The Primordial Bloodline didn’t open a door," Rhosyn said. "It rewrote placement. And once that’s done, there is no reversal."

Her gaze held steady, unwavering.

"This reality isn’t something you stepped into," she finished. "It’s the only one that acknowledges you now."

Trafalgar didn’t respond.

He sat there without moving, the silence pressing in from every side until it became hard to breathe. The weight of what she had said didn’t arrive gently. It crashed down all at once, leaving him disoriented, his thoughts scattering without order.

The world he had lived in was gone.

Gone in a way that stripped it of meaning, as if it had never been allowed to belong to him in the first place. His parents. His life. Everything he had been before. Removed so thoroughly that even remembering it felt wrong, like touching something that no longer existed.

He would never see them again.

The realization twisted inside his chest, sharp and sudden, forcing the air out of his lungs.

"That’s..." His voice came out fractured, barely more than a breath. He swallowed. "That’s cruel."

The word stayed there, thin and insufficient, unable to carry what he felt.

A bitter laugh escaped him, hollow and uneven. He dragged a hand down his face, disbelief curdling into something harsher.

"You have to be fucking kidding me," he muttered. "All of this..." His jaw tightened. "Because of that?"

The memory surfaced uninvited. The stall. The smell. The sheer stupidity of it.

A life severed by something so absurd it felt like mockery.

Fate.

Trafalgar stared at the floor, fingers digging into his palm, breath uneven and shallow.

The delayed realization that everything he had been was gone, and there would never be a moment to face it properly.

And the world he now stood in offered no space to slow down for grief.