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Chapter 284: Chapter 284: Predicting The Disasters

Not believing something so incredibly strange could be true without absolute, undeniable confirmation, Sol turned fully toward Kira. The romantic tension was completely gone, vaporized by a burning, insatiable, scientific curiosity. He decided to stop probing carefully. He needed to ask the question openly.

“Kira,” Sol said, his voice dropping its casual, conversational tone, replacing it with a quiet, intense seriousness that made her instantly stand a little straighter. “I need you to look up at the sky. Tell me exactly what you see. Describe it to me.”

Kira blinked, her golden eyes wide. “Sol, are you alright? You’re acting strange.”

“Just humor me. Please. Describe the sky.”

Kira let out a small, nervous breath, turning her gaze upward. “I see the stars. The Great River of light stretching across the black. And I see the moon. It’s a waxing crescent tonight. Silver and clear.”

Sol stepped closer, raising his arm and pointing directly at the massive, blood-red sphere that was looming so large to the far left that it felt like it was generating its own gravitational pull.

“Look exactly where I am pointing,” Sol instructed, his voice tight. “Do you see anything there? Something other than stars and silver moon.”

Kira squinted, following the line of his finger into the dark expanse. She stared for several long seconds, her brow furrowing in concentration. Finally, she looked back at him, a deep, worried crease forming between her eyes.

“I see the constellation of the Hunter’s Spear,” Kira said slowly, cautiously. “Just stars, Sol. There is nothing else there. Why? What do you see?”

Sol slowly lowered his arm. The revelation hit him hard, I mean he had some inkling but still.

She literally cannot see it. It wasn’t a trick of the light. It wasn’t a cultural idiom. The natives of this world seem to be living under a planetary illusion. Or, maybe he was operating on a higher dimensional wavelength. His ’True Sight’… likely a byproduct of his transmigration or maybe some other unknown reasons… allowed him to perceive the unvarnished, terrifying reality of this world..

“Nothing,” Sol lied smoothly. The tense, urgent edge instantly vanished from his voice, replaced by a warm, melodic chuckle. He expertly masked the paradigm-shifting shock churning in his gut, forcing a relaxed, easy smile onto his face.

He stepped a fraction closer, his silver-crimson eyes softening as he looked down at her. “It’s just an old superstition from my homeland. A myth the elders used to tell around the fire.”

Kira blinked, the worry in her golden eyes giving way to genuine curiosity. “A myth about the night sky?”

“About the sky, and the women who look at it,” Sol said smoothly, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur. “The legend says that if a woman is truly blessed…if she possesses a peerless, undeniable beauty….her eyes can pierce the veil of the dark and see hidden, invisible mysteries that ordinary people can’t perceive.”

Sol reached out, gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His fingertips briefly, warmly brushed against her jawline. “I was just testing to see if the story was true. Because honestly, Kira… you are easily one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. I figured if anyone in this entire world could see the hidden magic in the sky, it would have to be you.”

The effect of his words was instantaneous and utterly devastating to her Vanguard composure.

The realization of the blatant, heavily romantic compliment hit Kira like an arrow straight into the heart. The deep, worried crease between her brows vanished, instantly replaced by a brilliant, burning crimson blush that spread from the bridge of her nose all the way down to her collarbone.

Her breath hitched, her stormy feline eyes widening in pure, unexpected fluster. She wasn’t used to this. In the brutal reality of the Great Orrath, warriors spoke of blood, essence, and survival… not poetry and beauty.

She opened her mouth to speak, but only a soft, embarrassed squeak managed to escape. She quickly averted her gaze, staring intensely at the wooden planks of the ramp as a shy, incredibly radiant smile broke across her lips despite her best efforts to suppress it. Her heart was hammering wildly against her ribs, completely drowning out the distant tribal drums.

Kira exhaled a long, shaky breath, her shoulders completely dropping as the last remnants of her earlier tension melted away into a giddy, fluttering warmth.

“You…” Kira stammered, entirely disarmed. She playfully swatted his arm, though her touch was incredibly gentle, lacking any of her usual warrior’s strength. She was desperately trying to hide her overwhelming, shy happiness behind a mask of mild annoyance. “You are really infuriating. I thought you were having a terrible vision from your Sovereign spirits! Do not play tricks like that in the dark. The jungle has enough surprises without you inventing invisible moons just to…”

She trailed off, biting her lower lip as her blush deepened even further.

“Just to what? Tell the truth?” Sol chuckled, his eyes crinkling with genuine amusement. He stepped back, giving her space to recover, and gestured gracefully up the ramp. “My apologies. I couldn’t resist. Lead on. It’s been a long day.”

They resumed their walk up the sweeping wooden ramps, but Sol’s mind was moving at a million miles an hour.

He seamlessly connected this new, terrifying celestial revelation with the vast amounts of data he had absorbed in the Vault of Ancestors earlier that day.

In the library, he had read extensive, terrified accounts of the Red Sky phenomenon… a cosmic tide of corrupted, dense essence that periodically swept across the continent. The ancient scrolls described it as a mysterious, atmospheric weather event that drove lesser beasts to absolute, rabid madness and forced apex Sovereigns to aggressively migrate out of their territories. It was the exact phenomenon that High Shaman Zephyra had theorized caused the Lord Dreadwing to abandon its natural habitat and stumble into the Great Badger’s valley.

But looking at the massive, pulsing, blood-red moon hanging in the sky… a moon the natives couldn’t even see… Sol realized the horrifying truth.

It’s not an aurora. It’s not a weather pattern, Sol thought, his silver-crimson eyes darting up to the red sphere. It’s an orbital cycle. When that massive red moon shifted its orbit, drawing closer to the planet, it likely bled its corrupted, highly dense essence directly into the atmosphere. The humans couldn’t see the moon, so they just perceived the sky turning red and the ambient energy turning toxic. But the beasts… the beasts of the Great Orrath were far more attuned to the raw essence of the world. They could feel the gravitational and spiritual pressure of the red moon, even if they couldn’t see it either. It drove them insane.

This realization gave Sol a massive, unfathomable tactical advantage. The entire history of the Veynar tribe was written by scholars who were biologically blind to the reality of their own world. They only understood the symptoms of the world’s disasters. Sol now understood the cause.

If he could map the orbital trajectories of these nine moons, he could perfectly predict the ’random’ monster stampedes, the essence tides, and the Sovereign migrations. He wouldn’t just be reacting to the Great Orrath, he would be reading its source code.