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Chapter 298: Inverted World

The first stop for Aegon’s date was Inverted World, a special island on the Chainbound Sky where many natural laws behaved differently.

The whole nation was like this actually, filled with anomalies. The mere fact that it was suspended in air went against the natural laws.

But those anomalies were the reason for it’s popularity and attraction among the tourists.

They walked on the soft grass, talking to each other on random topics. They knew each other for years, so their new relationships brought them closer, not much had changed between them.

Initially, they were nervous about their first date but slowly they realised that it was not much different than the time they spent previously.

It helped them relax around each other.

Soon, they saw a settlement ahead and went towards it.

The settlement was small, no more than thirty or forty buildings arranged in a loose circle around a stone well. But what caught their attention wasn’t the layout.

It was the water flowing upward from the well. The mere fact that a well was here was surprising, but something else blew their mind away.

A thin, crystalline stream rose from the stone mouth and climbed into the sky, spiraling lazily before dispersing into a fine mist about twenty metres above.

The mist caught the sunlight and broke it into colours that Aegon had no names for. They weren’t the usual spectrum, for sure. Some shifted between hues as if they couldn’t decide what they wanted to be.

’I have learnt so many things, but not the colour names. Dumbo,’ he thought, watching the water defy everything he understood about gravity.

He noticed something and thought, ’Fascinating. The gravitational pull here probably operate on a selective basis. Heavier objects stay grounded while lighter substances get repelled upward. Or maybe something else.’

He was already forming theories when Elara tugged his sleeve.

"You’re doing it again," she said flatly.

"Doing what?"

"That face. The one where you start dissecting everything around you instead of just enjoying it." She crossed her arms. "We’re on a date, Aegon. Not a research expedition."

"This one is different, so you don’t need to worry," he said, completely serious. "Beside, I can do both."

"You can’t."

"I literally can. My brain has—"

"If you say ’parallel processing capabilities’ one more time, I’m pushing you into that upward stream and we’ll see if you float away too."

He closed his mouth. She really had a point. Not about the floating, he was far too heavy for that. But about the date.

He had promised himself he would stop overanalyzing everything today. That lasted about forty minutes, which was honestly a personal record.

"Fine," he conceded. "No more theories. For now."

"Good." Elara smiled, clearly pleased with her small victory, and walked ahead toward the well.

The locals didn’t seem bothered by the anomaly. A few children were playing near the base, tossing small pebbles into the stream and watching them shoot upward before tumbling back down.

An old woman sat on a bench nearby, knitting something while completely ignoring the impossible pillar of water beside her. Even the yarn was floating beside her.

’Must be normal for them,’ Aegon observed. ’When you live next to the extraordinary long enough, it becomes ordinary.’

He wondered if that applied to Elara too. She was extraordinary by every measure he knew. But he had known her for so long that her brilliance had become a constant in his life.

He had gotten used to her everything. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

He didn’t know.

A merchant near the well was selling glass bottles filled with the upward-flowing water. Apparently, the water retained its inverted properties for a few days even after being removed from the source.

Aegon bought two without hesitation.

"Here," he handed one to Elara. "A souvenir. I’ll see later if I can replicate the Formation in it."

She held the bottle up, watching the water inside press against the cap instead of settling at the bottom.

Her eyes lit up with genuine delight, and for a moment, she looked less like a princess trained in court politics and warfare, and more like the girl he had first met years ago on his first birthday.

A silly girl who tried to act more mature than her age.

"It’s beautiful," she said softly.

"It is."

He wasn’t looking at the bottle.

Elara noticed, and her ears turned slightly red at the tips. It was an elven trait she had never been able to control and he had catalogued every instance of it over the years without ever mentioning it, because telling her would mean she’d find a way to suppress it, and he didn’t want that.

Some things were better left as secrets.

"There’s a market further in," Aegon said, nodding toward the cluster of stalls visible past the well. "The guidebooks mentioned that the Inverted World has food that behaves strangely. Soups that stay perfectly hot no matter how long you leave them. Fruits that taste different depending on your mood."

"Fruits that taste different depending on your mood?" Elara raised an eyebrow. "That sounds made up."

"Everything here sounds made up. And yet." He gestured at the water flowing into the sky.

She conceded the point with a slight tilt of her head and they walked into the market together.

It was modest but lively. Stalls were draped in coloured fabric that rippled in a wind that didn’t seem to exist. Merchants sang songs to attract customers in a dialect that was close enough to standard to understand but different enough to feel foreign.

Aegon noticed Elara’s gaze lingering on a stall selling crystallized flowers. They were preserved in some kind of transparent resin that made them look frozen in time, petals half-open, caught in the exact moment before full bloom.

She didn’t say anything and quickly averted her face.

But he memorized which ones her eyes stayed on longest. A pale blue one shaped like a star, and a deep violet one whose petals curled inward like a closed fist.

’I’ll come back for those later,’ he noted mentally. ’When she’s not watching. Would be fun to watch her reaction.’