Chapter 58: Variables and Singularities

The day Cassie awakened the power of foresight, her life turned into a living hell.

The servants who once greeted her with warm smiles now had the potential to kill her.

Even her family carried the possibility of betraying or murdering her.

Though such events might occur only once in thousands of futures, just witnessing them once was enough to erode all trust.

But the world didn’t leave her alone.

Whether by coincidence or fate, one of the many futures became reality.

In this timeline, her own elder brother attempted to take her life.

By sheer luck, her companions managed to save her. However, the relief was short-lived.

Through Amon, she learned of her mother’s heinous actions.

She broke down.

Reality felt like a cruel joke.

‘Why does the world I live in have to be like this? Is there even a world where I can truly be happy?’

Turning away from her reality, she began to imagine countless parallel worlds.

But that too was just an excuse.

If she ever glimpsed a future where her companions betrayed her, she wouldn’t have the will to go on.

So, she secluded herself in her room, refusing to meet anyone.

***

[Cassie, come eat!]

The kind voice calling her in the morning brought tears to her eyes.

The gentler they were, the more terrified she became of the future she might see.

But her companions were beyond ordinary in every sense.

Crackle!

The familiar sound of a fuse burning snapped her out of her daze.

Boom!

Before she could react, her companions burst into her room and grabbed her.

Even when she shut her eyes tightly, they held her chin, forcing her to look at them.

Before her eyes, the threads of connection between her and her companions unfurled.

The foresight ability of the Reketio family might seem invincible at first glance, but it had too many weaknesses.

Take her father, for example.

He could hear conversations from the future.

To be precise, he could hear whatever his future self heard.

This meant he couldn’t know anything his future self didn’t already hear.

Cassie was no exception.

She could read the threads of connection between herself and anyone she met, understanding what kind of future bond they would share.

Once she locked eyes with someone, she could predict their actions perfectly.

But if she didn’t meet them, she couldn’t see their future.

This was why she failed to foresee her brother’s assassination attempt or the chef being bribed to kill her.

Unlike her father, Cassie had to meet her target at least once.

However, she quickly overcame this limitation.

Threads could be woven into fabric.

And threads of connection were no different.

By reading the threads of individuals and weaving them together, she could indirectly discern the futures of people she hadn’t met.

For instance, by reading the threads of the assassins her brother hired, she uncovered his actions.

So, when she locked eyes with her companions, her instincts compelled her to weave countless fabrics from their threads.

But the resulting fabric was strange.

It was full of holes, as if parts were missing.

Some aspects were clear, while others were completely obscured.

Yet, she didn’t have the energy to question this oddity.

‘Nothing…’

The futures she dreaded weren’t there.

‘None of them… None of them betray me.’

In no future did her companions betray her.

Their destinies diverged into two paths.

In one, they lived alongside her.

In the other, they died saving her.

Cassie’s gaze naturally gravitated toward the tragic futures rather than the happy ones.

In those futures, she couldn’t bring herself to trust her companions and abandoned them.

But they willingly sacrificed themselves for her.

***

The first to die was the dual-attribute mage.

“Ha-ha. I wonder if history will remember me as the genius who outsmarted a corporate giant.”

Discovered while manipulating illusions on her behalf, they were taken out by a sniper.

The second to fall was the ogre.

“Valhalla!!”

He held back the pursuing assassins, flamboyantly self-destructing alongside a tunnel.

The third was the mute sniper.

Spit!

Before they could capture him and read his mind, the mute sniper flipped off the security team, shoved a gun into her mouth, and pulled the trigger.

The last to die was the buffalo tank.

“This is for not trusting you in the dungeon last time.”

He took Cassie to the airport, handed her a decoy doll in her likeness, and ran in the opposite direction to mislead their pursuers.

Infuriated at being played by the group, Owen cemented their corpses into concrete and threw them into the sea.

Thus, the four companions vanished without leaving a trace or a tombstone.

***

But something was odd.

In this tragic future, Amon was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t just that he wasn’t present—it felt as though the futures where he should have been were cut off entirely.

In the fragmented threads, Cassie sometimes found herself holding an airplane ticket she didn’t know who had given her.

In others, she clutched Amon’s sword, crying on a hillside.

In one future, she used the alias “Amon” to work as a mercenary.

But no matter the timeline, Amon himself was absent.

As she realized this, Cassie’s gaze instinctively locked onto Amon’s eyes.

It became an obsession.

Partly because she couldn’t believe in the tragic futures.

Partly because she wanted to confirm them.

And most of all, because her desperation to find assurance in him overwhelmed her.

In Amon’s ordinary eyes, she saw her own reflection.

The Cassie in his eyes met her gaze.

It was like falling into a hallucination.

She stared into the eyes of her reflection, then into the reflections within those reflections.

‘What… what is this?’

She was bewildered.

Like mirrors facing each other, infinite images cascaded into one another.

Cassie glimpsed all of them.

Yet, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing—it wasn’t within the limits of her vision.

And yet, she saw it.

Among the endless reflections, Cassie spotted something unique.

It wasn’t her.

It wasn’t Amon.

It was a woman she had never seen before.

And yet, despite never having met her, Cassie felt a warmth blossoming in her chest.

She couldn’t describe it, but it reminded her of being held in her mother’s arms as a baby.

The unknown woman opened her mouth, her face graced with an endlessly compassionate smile.

[Spinner of threads, why do you peer into this place? Did I not warn you of the taboo when I blessed your bloodline?]

Cassie didn’t know what taboo the woman was referring to.

But her lips moved on their own, as if possessed.

“To complete the fabric I must weave with the one most precious to me.”

[Oh child, burdened by the future. What is this person to you that you defy the taboo?]

“They are everything to me.”

[Daughter afflicted with fever, do you understand the weight of love as you speak of it?]

“I swear upon my heart.”

The mysterious woman smiled in satisfaction and nodded.

[Blood of David, descendant of Solomon, I permit you to open the door and step inside.]

With those words, the woman vanished.

Before Cassie could wonder who she was, the memory of their conversation began to fade from her mind.

As if it had never happened, the severed threads of Amon’s future became visible once more.

Amon charging into an army for her.

Amon forging a fake identity for her.

Amon creating a resistance movement with her and avenging their fallen companions thirty years later.

In no future did Amon betray her.

Even at the end of what she thought were tragic futures, there was still hope.

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Returning to the present, she looked into the eyes of her companions.

Somehow, she had gained control over her ability.

But she didn’t stop using it.

Instead, she turned her gaze away from the tragic futures.

It wasn’t about denying them.

It was about avoiding the mistakes in the present that would lead to them.

Every tragedy began because she failed to trust her companions.

Erasing those futures started with something simple.

“Thank you.”

That one phrase erased countless tragedies.

And when she hugged her companions, most of the remaining misfortunes vanished.

Finally, she said:

“It’s selfish, but I’m asking for your help. Please.”

With that, even the future where she sacrificed herself alone disappeared.

Looking forward into the future, she smiled.

“I’ll make sure we all have our happy ending.”

***

Unlike the power to foresee the future, a computer calculating future outcomes is far from perfect.

If any variable is unaccounted for, the results can be wildly inaccurate.

Thus, when Owen received the report of Cassie’s assassination failing, he wasn’t surprised.

“I expected this outcome. I’ll forgive your failure, Captain.”

After all, there was little else he could do.

The team he had sent with the captain was completely wiped out.

Leaning back in his chair, Owen closed his eyes.

He added the variables of the team’s annihilation and Cassie’s companions to the computer’s calculations.

Dozens of futures unfolded, probabilities attached to each.

No one can prepare for every possible future.

In the end, the future is a choice.

To choose a future with a 0.01% probability is to abandon all others.

Reasonably, Owen devised his plans based on probabilities.

Plan A had the highest chance of success, followed by Plan B…

He prepared for up to twenty scenarios.

‘This should be enough.’

He contacted the security team and the external intelligence department.

Within hours, a hunting team was assembled to track down Cassie and her companions.

“Move out immediately.”

Owen had no doubts about their success.

Six people couldn’t possibly stop them.

But that belief lasted less than an hour.

[Chairman! Intruders!]

It was incomprehensible that the prey would attack the hunter’s base.

[There are seven of them!]

He hadn’t anticipated Sonia, whom he assumed to be Amon’s wife, joining as a new variable.

[The enemy is breaching rapidly! Evacuate immediately!]

He couldn’t believe they were overpowering the security team.

Variables upon variables upon variables.

‘Why? How?’

Owen never assumed they’d sit idly and let themselves be hunted.

He even calculated for the possibility of them attacking during the hunt.

That’s why he had left a significant portion of his forces behind and arranged for the hunting team to return quickly if needed.

Despite these precautions, the low-probability scenario was now reality.

And they were dismantling his countermeasures with terrifying precision.

‘How is this strategy… succeeding?’

He couldn’t comprehend how a seemingly suicidal tactic worked or how they had such formidable strength.

The only thing he knew was that the computer’s calculations were now entirely useless.

Frantically, Owen input new variables into the computer.

The analog system whirred loudly as it processed the data.

As he waited, Owen recalled a question he once asked his father.

“If two prophets look into the future at the same time, what happens?”

At the time, his father had replied:

“The one with more singularities wins.”