The next morning arrived sooner than Logan wanted.

The moment his eyes opened, cold air brushed against his bare skin. He squinted, still disoriented, and lay still for a breath. Gradually, his gaze moved across the room. His expression shifted.

Then the memories of the previous night crashed down.

Logan’s eyes widened. He sat up slowly and let the blanket fall away from his body.

Daenerys was gone. But the memory of her wasn’t.

He caught his reflection in the wall mirror and stilled. A mark sat at the side of his neck, unmistakable. Daenerys had left it behind deliberately.

Logan’s expression turned somber. He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers dragging slowly from root to end.

"Logan... What have you done?"

The regret hit him like something physical. He couldn’t believe how easily he had surrendered to his desires. How easily he had betrayed Evelyn.

He stood there breathing, staring at his reflection in silence.

"What do I do now?"

The question hung in the air unanswered.

Until something else answered instead.

[Congratulations, master, on completing the mission and initiating a sexual bond with the second heroine’s mother!]

[You have received 2000 system points, 50 free attributes, and 1x teleportation Origin rune!]

[Daenerys belonged to the summoning Origin Path, beginning the awakening of an SSS-rank summon!]

Despite the anger burning through him, Logan’s eyes moved to the system’s information almost against his will.

’Wait, Astra.’ He halted the summoning. A suspicion had been sitting quietly in the back of his mind and now he gave it voice. ’Did you have a hand in what happened between me and Daenerys last night?’

[No, master. That’s the kind of woman Daenerys is. The more you resist her, the more she wants you. And now she’s set her sights on you...]

Logan didn’t know why, but he could sense something that felt almost like pity woven into Astra’s tone.

’A yandere? Or something worse?’ The thought settled in his chest with a tired, hollow weight.

He stayed quiet for a while after that.

Then he looked at himself in the mirror again. Really looked.

There was no point in dwelling. The faster he could build enough strength to bring Evelyn back, the better. That thought didn’t erase the self-contempt, but it dulled the worst edges of it. He held onto it.

He gave Astra the command to continue the summoning.

Runes flared to life across the walls of his room instantly. Logan’s eyes widened as multicolored light split across his vision, and alongside it, a silver glow erupted so blindingly that he raised a hand against it.

The outside world reacted.

The sky darkened without warning, the way skies darken before something the world was never meant to witness. Lightning split between the clouds in sharp, erratic arcs.

Alarm bells rang. Then rang again.

Figures launched skyward, their silhouettes blurring as they rose. They read the sky the way soldiers read a battlefield and found nothing familiar in it.

Zara drew a reading device from inside his suit and pointed it upward, his jaw tight. The others watched from a distance, quiet and uneasy, wondering if something far above S-rank was about to tear its way through.

The meter held at low for half a second.

Then it slammed to extreme.

Every expression on every face changed at once.

"This is... SSS rank?" Zara turned to the slender woman beside him. She wore a fitted blue garment that moved with her, and her eyes were already fixed on the sky above. "Should we report it to the president? They’re still studying how to handle the S-rank origin gate..."

His words trailed away. No one needed him to finish them.

They exchanged looks in silence.

Then the darkness began to pull back. The lightning faded. The meter’s consistent chime slowed, dropped to low, and finally went still.

Zara stared at the device. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

A false alarm?

He glanced at the others. One of them, an older man, stroked his beard and allowed himself a small, relieved smile.

Zara said nothing. Something about the silence that followed felt wrong in a way he couldn’t name.

Then Isolde spoke.

"Something has descended into our world."

Every head turned to her.

They had reason to take her words seriously. She walked the potion Origin Path, one of the most dangerous known, and her awakened ability reached into the soft edges of the future.

"I tried to see what it was," she said, her voice even. "I couldn’t. But I’m certain that something has descended. The only question is whether that’s a good thing or not."

The unease returned, heavier than before.

"I’ll report it to the president." Isolde’s gaze didn’t leave the sky. "Tighten security. Whatever descended, it may already be closer than we think."

No one argued. Despite standing near the peak of the origin world, every person present understood clearly that they were not unkillable. That understanding had a way of sharpening the mind.

They dispersed in different directions, carrying the news outward.

Isolde remained. Her expression gave nothing away.

---

Inside Logan’s apartment, he knew none of this.

He watched the portal form at the center of the intersecting runes, rippling like a surface disturbed from below. Then it stilled, and a small figure stepped through.

Snow white. Unhurried. Moving with the kind of quiet ease that belongs to things that know exactly what they are.

Logan stared.

A cat?

He had summoned a cat.

He looked at it with visible confusion, wondering if the system had made some kind of error. The cat looked back at him. Then it vanished, reappeared on top of his head, and pressed one small paw firmly against his skull, as though it found his expression personally offensive.

Astra’s light shifted, and the information appeared.

[Name: Origin Void Cat]

[Traits: A unique entity born from the Origin.]

[Origin Abilities: Copy Cat, Time Control.]

[Copy Cat: Can copy all abilities at S-rank and above by coming into contact with the possessor of the origin ability.]

[Time Control: Can burn lifespan to alter the flow of time. With increase in its origin rank, it can gradually gain full control of time, no longer requiring such a drastic sacrifice.]

Logan read it once.

Then read it again.

He didn’t speak for a long moment. The silence in the room was complete except for the faint warmth of the small body perched on his shoulder.

’How can a creature be this overpowered?’

He kept reading. The cat waited with visible impatience.

Only when a soft paw connected with the side of his head a second time did Logan finally surface. He turned to look at the creature properly. Against the pale light of the room, the white of its fur was striking.

"What should I call you?"

The cat stared at him the way something stares at you when it expected better. Logan recognized quickly that the intelligence behind those eyes was not a small thing, and that the cat understood every word, even if it couldn’t return them. The look it gave him said clearly that asking for a name without offering one first was not appreciated.

He thought for a moment. The last memory of Evelyn surfaced quietly. Snow drifting between them. Her face.

"Snow seems like a fitting name." He nodded once, slowly. "I’ll call you Snow."

The cat tapped the top of his head once, light and deliberate. An acknowledgment.

Logan smiled. He reached up and ran his fingers gently through the soft fur, and the cat, for its part, allowed it.