Banished to the Abyss After Defying the Author-Chapter 12: When Time Chooses a Side

The Sofail World did not welcome them.

It endured them.

Fragments of frozen time drifted across the blackened sky—crystalline shards holding moments that never reached conclusion. The ground beneath them was neither past nor present, but something caught between decisions.

Zelforna stood before Nostradus.

Her wings trembled—not from fear, but restraint.

"So," she said quietly, annoyance barely masking what had never left her voice, "you finally came."

Nostradus did not smile.

"Zelforna," he said, stepping forward, authority folding space around him instinctively. "Move aside. I’m here to seal Noah."

Noah watched from the displaced kingdom, his presence folded into a black dimension like a thought not yet spoken.

Zelforna took another step—blocking the path.

"You can’t," she said.

Nostradus’ eyes hardened. "You don’t understand what he is provoking."

"I understand perfectly," she replied. "If Noah is sealed, Dragonforce will tear the Book of Worlds apart page by page."

Silence stretched.

Then Nostradus’ patience cracked.

"Even if you are my lover," he said, voice dropping, "you will not stop me."

He moved.

Time screamed.

Zelforna raised her hand.

The Sofail World twisted violently as timelines overlapped—past colliding with future, causality folding into knots. Seconds shattered. Centuries bled into instants.

Noah smiled faintly.

"Good," he murmured. "Do it, Zelforna."

Symbols ignited across the false sky—runes formed from compressed histories. Above them, the real sky peeled open: endless darkness scattered with distant stars.

Zelforna grasped the impossible.

Time itself condensed into her palm—an infinite spear forged from futures that never happened and pasts that refused erasure.

She held it shaking.

Nostradus stopped.

"You know you can’t hurt me," he said quietly. "You love me. And rejection answers to me."

"I know," she whispered.

Then she hurled the spear.

Nostradus vanished.

The spear followed.

He tore through dimensions—stacked realities ripping open as he fled. Worlds flashed past: civilizations mid-birth, planets mid-collapse, stories interrupted mid-sentence.

The spear did not miss.

"Zelforna!" Nostradus shouted, voice echoing across realities. "That’s an order. Recall it!"

"No," she replied, voice steady despite the strain carving lines of blood at the corner of her lips. "I won’t let you end everything for pride."

Nostradus caught the spear.

Reality froze.

The spear collapsed—reforming into Zelforna herself.

She gasped as gravity reclaimed her.

"You forgot," Nostradus said softly, holding her wrist, panic breaking through his authority, "your essence is time. You are the weapon."

She struggled. Failed.

Noah stepped forward.

"Zelforna," he called, voice cutting cleanly through dimensions, "love doesn’t mean surrender."

She turned her head slightly, glaring despite the pain.

"Noah," she snapped, "you don’t get to lecture me about sacrifice."

Nostradus tightened his grip. "Please. Don’t do this. You’ll hurt yourself."

She smiled at him—tired, genuine.

"For you," she whispered, "I already have."

Time collapsed inward.

A prison formed.

Not around Nostradus.

Around both of them.

The spear dissolved back into her body as the prison sealed—time locking itself from the inside.

Nostradus’ composure shattered.

"Stop!" he said, voice raw. "You’ll—"

A void spear tore through the prison.

Blood spilled from Zelforna’s mouth.

Nostradus screamed her name.

Noah stood there now—fully present.

"I warned you," Noah said calmly. "I don’t negotiate when lives are used as leverage."

Nostradus turned, fury shaking the Sofail World itself.

"In the past," he roared, "you erased my first love. And now you try to take the second?"

Noah met his gaze unflinching.

"I’m offering you a choice," Noah replied. "Return my authority fragment and she lives."

Nostradus raised his hand.

The void spear was rejected.

It unraveled backward, snapping out of existence as causality refused it.

Zelforna stabilized and alive.

Noah’s eyes narrowed.

"...You used Rejection on yourself," he noted. "Careless. One mistake and you’d have erased her."

Nostradus did not answer. He cradled Zelforna protectively.

Noah attacked again.

The void spear shattered mid-flight.

"Outside normal causality," Noah said softly, smiling. "And random causality too. You’re desperate."

Nostradus felt it then.

Noah’s gaze—reading thought, not future.

"I know what you’re thinking," Noah said. "You can’t fight while protecting her."

The Sofail World shook violently.

Noah lifted one hand.

The tremor died.

Two of his fingers crumbled—overloaded by the resistance.

He didn’t look at them.

"I’ll let you live freely in the Abyssal World," Noah said. "No pursuit. No chains."

Nostradus looked up slowly.

The sky split.

A planet fell.

Fire and gravity screamed downward from the false heavens as Nostradus spoke coldly:

"I won’t fall that easily."

Nostradus moved.

Space folded inward, a gateway forming behind him—an exit woven from rejection and desperation. He reached for Zelforna.

Noah appeared behind him.

Instant.

His hand closed around Zelforna’s arm, pulling her free.

For the first time, Nostradus screamed.

"No—! My love—!"

Something answered that scream.

Not an attack.

Not authority.

A backlash.

Noah felt it bloom inside him—foreign, violent, intimate. Before he could anchor himself, the force struck him head-on and hurled him backward.

He slammed into the descending planet.

The impact obliterated it.

Stone, fire, gravity—erased into incandescent fragments as Noah tore through them, momentum carrying him deeper, farther, past the false sky itself.

Layers peeled away.

Sound vanished.

Then—

He fell into memory.

Not his.

Nostradus’.

Creation unfolded around him.

Existence and non-existence still unfinished, raw and fluid. Noah saw himself—the first Noah—standing in white void, shaping kings from intention alone. Authority poured from him like breath.

Nostradus stood among them.

Younger. Whole.

Eager.

Happy.

He watched the past-Nostradus accept the Abyssal Crown, pride and excitement unguarded. He saw laughter. Saw trust.

Then he saw her.

The first Goddess of Time.

Not distant. Not abstract.

Alive.

She and Nostradus walked worlds together, argued, learned, grieved. They shared silence. Shared fear. Shared hope.

Noah felt it.

The warmth.

The attachment.

The unbearable weight of watching everything decay while time marched on.

Then—himself again.

The past Noah stood before the Goddess of Time, expression unchanged.

She begged.

Time slowed around her refusal.

And Noah ended her.

Cleanly. Absolutely.

No trial. No compromise.

Noah watched Nostradus break.

Saw hatred bloom where love had been.

Saw questions rot into vengeance.

Why didn’t you let me speak to her?Why did you decide alone?Why was optimization worth her life?

Noah stood frozen within the memory.

"So that’s how you felt," he whispered.

Before the memory dissolved.

Victoria’s face surfaced unbidden. The way she’d said "I want a choice." The way she try to defy her own fate, even when everyone was aganist her.

She hadn’t begged. She hadn’t wept.

Noah closed his eyes.

"...I understand now," he said quietly. "Why you hate me."

Noah opened his eyes.

He was suspended deep within the Real Sky—a place beyond false sky. No ground. No stars.

Only depth.

For the first time since his fall, Noah did not move.

Not because he couldn’t.

Because something inside him had shifted.

"...I chose the optimal path," he murmured to the emptiness. "I always did."

But the words didn’t settle the way they used to.

He had ruled without emotion.

Judged without hesitation.

And now—only now—did he understand what that judgment had cost someone else.

No regret.

No apology.

Just awareness.

And awareness, Noah realized, was far more dangerous.

The Real Sky watched him in silence.

And for the first time, Noah was not sure whether he was moving toward reclaiming his throne—

—or toward rewriting what it meant to sit on it.