I had just returned from the catacombs with more questions than answers, when the palace healers summoned me in a panic.
"It's the princess," they said. "She's dreaming."
That shouldn't have been alarming.
But it was.
Because my sister, Aelya, was barely five months old. And no infant of her age—not even royal blood touched by magic—should be channeling mana in their sleep like a living beacon.
I rushed to her chamber, still wounded and still vibrating from my encounter with the Watcher.
The room was glowing.
Dim silver threads laced the air like stardust in motion. The light didn't burn. It hummed.
The nurses bowed quickly and left, too shaken to stay.
I stepped forward.
Aelya was still asleep, her hands clasped gently above her chest like a dreaming saint. Her eyes darted beneath her lids. Her mana signature—raw and untrained—was expanding, brushing the edges of my own perception.
And then the System chimed.
[New Entity Detected: Aelya Virel – Threadlink Confirmed]
Mana Core Status: Unknown Class – Thread Saturation: 12%
Phenomenon: Shared Dream Detected.
Would you like to synchronize dream-state? Y/N
"Y."
My vision dissolved.
I stood on metal.
A ship's deck—massive, ancient, burning through the sky above a blue-white planet.
Engines roared in the distance, not like propellers or rockets, but foldrives, humming with tech centuries ahead of anything this realm should have known.
And standing at the helm…
Was my sister.
Older—maybe ten years old, wearing silver armor shaped like flowering circuitry, her dark hair tied back in a braid streaked with light.
She turned slowly and smiled.
"Brother," she said calmly. "We're losing altitude. Give me two engines."
I was stunned.
"Aelya… how do you know this?"
Her eyes shimmered—not with innocence, but clarity.
"I've always known. You weren't the only one given memories before birth. Mine just… came later."
The ship shook violently.
Warning klaxons flared in unknown languages.
Below us, I saw it—a black world, not the one I had seen in catacombs, but another. One that looked alive with spires and red skies, screaming with digital storms.
I realized something terrible.
This was not her imagination.
This was a future.
A possible one.
"I can't stop it yet," she said, gripping the controls. "But I can remember it now."
I looked at her—really looked—and saw something buried beneath her skin. A lattice of gold symbols, microfractals of the same ∞ mark I saw on the Earth vault door.
"You're connected to the Project too," I whispered.
Aelya nodded.
"I think I'm part of it. Not the Harmony girl, but the opposite."
And then everything started to shake—like the dream couldn't contain the truth anymore.
She turned to me one last time as the ship fell toward the storm.
"Don't try to protect me from what I am. Build the future anyway. I'll meet you there."
I woke up gasping, on the floor beside her cradle.
Aelya was sleeping peacefully again.
No light. No hum. Just a baby's steady breath.
But my System flickered wildly.
[Threadlink Confirmed. Shared Dream Logged. Sub-Project Awakened: PRINCESS NODE: THREAD OF THE OPPOSITE]
New Objective: Construct Fold Engine Prototype before Age 12 – Synchronization Required for Future Path Activation.
I sat there in silence, heart pounding.
My little sister wasn't just gifted.
She was the key to a divergence in fate. A fork between salvation and collapse. Between ruling this world, and defending it from the next.
And she was already remembering more than I had ever planned.
So now I needed to accelerate the timeline.
Level Up!
Level: 30 → 31
+5 Stat Points – Assigned: Mana +5
I stood and left her chamber quietly, whispering only one promise as I closed the door behind me.
"I will build that engine, Aelya. And whatever you become… I'll meet you there."