In the future of fire, the world is burned up.

The flames are not eternal, and the firewood in the shelter has its limits. Beyond the reshaped land and sea, the eternal curtain still binds the entire world - and when everything within the curtain turns to ashes in the flames, the world ends in a long cooling down.

It is said that this "cooling" lasted for a full four hundred years, and finally, the age of embers arrived - cold ashes covered the entire world, no new flames rose, no living creatures cried and breathed, the world stagnated in this pile of cold ashes, no new things were born, and no old things died.

In a sense, this shelter that had experienced the great annihilation had finally ushered in eternal peace. Ashes would eventually return to ashes - the end of the world was permanently frozen at this moment, and no new suffering would befall this land.

Duncan came to a big rock and sat down without any concern. He didn't care about the ashes everywhere. He looked at the city ruins on the plain that were still weathering and collapsing, and constantly turning into ashes. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly said: "In other words, there is no turning back for this option."

"You can reshape everything," Crete said as he came to Duncan's side. His thin body stood like a bent branch in the cold wind. "But there is only one exception."

"Myself," Duncan came to his senses and whispered, "I can't redefine myself..."

Crete remained silent for a long time before speaking: "If there is really no way, the future of the flame can at least be a continuation - but I hope you can be cautious and cautious. Time is like a river, and many of its tributaries can be rewritten, but only the main trunk that crosses the end, once it flows past, there is no chance to turn back."

"Don't worry about that. The moment I rejected Pilot One's proposal, I had already figured out all these things. What you showed me only further improved my original speculation." Duncan shook his head gently. "Compared to these, my real gain is that I finally confirmed one thing..."

As he spoke, he stretched out his hand and slowly clenched it in the air. Immediately, a dark green spiritual fire burned between his fingers, expanding and jumping in the air like a phantom.

The world of ashes seemed to be touched by this ray of flame. The wind on the top of the mountain suddenly became a little agitated, and even the nearby ashes began to fluctuate abnormally - but this was only a momentary illusion. The next second, the wind and the ashes returned to their original state.

In this ended branch of history, there is nothing left to push it forward.

Duncan stared quietly at the flame in his hand, then turned his palm over casually.

The spirit fire was instantly extinguished, and the flames that shattered silently turned into many tiny sparks that flickered briefly at his fingertips. For a moment, they looked like phantoms of distant stars.

Duncan looked at this scene with a serious expression, thinking: "These 'fires' are really just appearances."

Then he turned his head and looked at Crete who was still standing quietly beside him: "You can see this branch of history, but can you see my other choices?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't." Crete met Duncan's gaze calmly. "We are ghosts trapped in the time loop inside the shelter. We can only see everything within the scope of this time loop, and your other choices are all outside the loop. To us, it is like a huge hole in the night, and my eyes cannot go beyond that vast darkness."

"Outside the loop... In other words, outside the 'known world' of the shelter?" Duncan immediately realized, "So we still need to find a way to break through that eternal curtain?"

“…I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

"Really?" Duncan nodded slowly, and suddenly he felt emotional. "Now I am somewhat envious of Duncan Abnomer from a century ago. You revealed the future to him. Although it was an accident, at least he knew where he should go."

"It is suffering to grope in the dark, and it is also suffering to know one's fate. There is no peace at the end of time. I'm sorry, but we have no good news, not since the day we set out."

"It's not a big deal. I didn't expect any good news. It's enough to get some inspiration this time." Duncan stood up from the big rock without any ash on his body. "It's time to leave here."

He looked up at the sky and the earth for the last time, his eyes sweeping across the faint sunlight behind the clouds and the towering spires of the cathedral in the ruins of the city. He did not ask Crete about the future of the others or their whereabouts at the moment, but turned away without any reluctance.

This branch of history collapsed behind him, just like the fire in Pland.

The light and shadows were reorganized, things returned to their original places, and the dim and closed cabin appeared in Duncan's sight again. The door to the subspace still stood quietly at the bottom of the cabin - as if nothing had happened here.

Crete was still standing next to the door, still in the posture of reaching out to hit the door frame.

Then he withdrew his hand and bowed slightly towards Duncan: "I hope this doesn't bother you."

"It's not a big deal. I'm already troubled by enough things, not even this one," Duncan said casually. "At least now we've confirmed that one road is really bad."

"The shelter is in ruins. There's no need to repair it. I shouldn't say that," Crete sighed, "but its destruction is already doomed. Doomsday has been chasing this world in the long river of time since the moment of the Great Oblivion. Now it has really caught up with it."

"...Doomsday theory. This is the theory that the End Preachers have been promoting. People have always thought that this is just your crazy talk after going crazy."

"There is only a fine line between madness and reason, and the 'truth' never cares about the difference between the two," Crete said calmly. "Perhaps from another perspective, my companions have never been truly crazy. They are just... a little tired, so they choose to embrace all the truth and become crazy people in the eyes of everyone."

"Will you become like that?" Duncan suddenly became curious, "In a certain time branch, or in the near future..."

"...I don't know," Crete hesitated and shook his head slowly. "Dusk has come, but this world will not suddenly go out. I still have a short journey ahead of me. In order to communicate with you within this window period, I can only capture the most stable 'part' of myself to come here. So now I don't know what I have seen at the end of the journey. Perhaps..."

He paused for a moment and continued, "Perhaps one day in the future, we will meet again. By then, the person who appears before you may be a deranged lunatic or a twisted and invisible monster. That means I have reached the end and have wandered in the darkness for too long. Or maybe..."

Crete suddenly stopped talking here, and then his eyes changed slightly, as if he suddenly saw a direction in the long darkness, and suddenly thought of something. The deep wrinkles on his face stretched out, and his eyes looked at Duncan: "By the way... I will try my best to see you again, whether I am sober or crazy, I will definitely appear in front of you - I am afraid that there will be no suitable window period at that time, so I will probably not be able to talk to you directly like now, and you may not even be able to see me... But I will definitely find a way to leave something, you can..."

The old man's voice stopped abruptly.

In the dim and empty cabin, only Duncan was standing alone in front of the warp door.

He stood there like a sculpture for a long time, then finally turned around, picked up the brass lantern hanging not far away, and slowly walked towards the exit of the bottom cabin.

※※※

It was now twelve hours after nightfall.

Just as the scholars had warned—the sun did not rise, and the morning glow did not appear above the sea level.

If there were still some people who had illusions and hoped that the dusk that lasted for 72 hours was just an "isolated anomaly" and that the sun would still rise on time the next day, then this hope has now been completely extinguished.

The long night has become a fact.

Near Breeze Harbor, four giant Ark ships were still docked near the coastline, and the "luminous geometric body" located near the east coast continued to emit soft, pale golden "sunlight" as usual, preventing the entire city-state from falling into complete darkness.

The lights on the Academy Ark were bright.

The short and fat Rune stood in the "Temple of Knowledge" on the top floor of the Ark, praying devoutly before the statue of Lahm, the god of wisdom.

The prayer, made up of "0" and "1" and with an extremely strange rhythm and pronunciation, is gradually coming to an end.

The smoke of incense rose in the temple, and the statue of Lahm stood silently in the smoke. The statue had no human form, but was a dark rectangular stone tablet. The rune of "Eye of Wisdom" was engraved on the top of the stone tablet, and there were dense symbols and fine lines all over the tablet.

As Rune prayed, the symbols and patterns began to slowly flicker, as if they were injected with life.

But with the end of the prayer, the stone tablet's brief "life" also dissipated.

Rune turned his head and looked at the Priest of Truth who had been waiting beside him: "What's the situation now?"

"The bad news is that the sun has not yet risen, and the night will last for a very long time. The good news is that according to the monitoring data sent by various city-states, the temperature drop is gradually slowing down. According to the current cooling curve, it seems that the extreme low temperature of each city-state during this night will not be lower than the lowest value in historical records. The world will not completely freeze in the long night as you worry... The 'cold disaster' will not happen."

After listening to the priest's report, Rune finally relaxed a little, but soon frowned again: "...Is this really good news?"