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Lirelle's "idea" for how to go about stopping the apocalypse comes from Silt's off-handed comment to his siblings describing his memories of the future as simply a horrible nightmare—she intends to run with the premise that Silt has received a divine oracle in the form of a prophetic dream in order to gather influence from public opinion. Since Silt's memories of the minor events of this time period are too hazy to do it legitimately, she instructs Mirea to assist in fabricating some small incidents in Silent Falls that he can "predict" in order to start some rumors of his foresight in advance of outright declaring himself a prophet. In the meantime, Lirelle focuses her own efforts on addressing the corruption threatening her sister's troops, and they uncover more details about the situation in Ielya that Silt hadn't been aware of in the past. Even though both are busy, every morning Silt and Lirelle still take some time to develop plans and practice how Silt should present himself in order to make his so-called "prophecy" seem most legitimate.

Rosch, having forgotten for a few days, recalls the interesting bits of wood he'd picked up at the sawmill and brings them out to show off, but is surprised to find that they now look considerably different than he remembers—before, they apparently had a faint rainbow shimmer to them, but now they seem to be covered in a sort of flaky, sharp black crystalline substance. To most present this comes as simply an odd curiosity, but to Silt it is undeniable physical proof that he has not escaped the hellscape of the post-collapse future for long. After this, he is increasingly plagued by nightmares with widely varying contents but a few common themes: his siblings dead in a destroyed Silent Falls; a clinic burned to the ground; a filthy, impossibly overcrowded slum in the capital; Kerr either wielding or stabbed by a knife; Silt's feet cut to shreds and barely responsive; hazy glimpses of a grotesque figure covered in festering wounds, their skin and clothes caked in dried, blackish blood with a multicoloured, oily sheen. The last of these stands out as odd because it seems to be the only one not based on his past memories or experiences; even before coming back in time he'd never encountered anything like it—a person so thoroughly disfigured by mana poisoning as to be completely unrecognizable, yet still somehow alive.

With plenty to occupy his time, the days pass quickly and all too soon, the deadline of when Kerr is supposedly coming back is fast approaching. Rather than helping Silt make up his mind, putting off his decision turns out to have only made him more uncertain, and so he ends up trying to cautiously feel out how Lirelle might react via conversation during one of their morning meetings. The focus of the discussion strays, however, and while off-topic they come to the realization that a certain event in Silt's memory—one they can't afford to miss for the sake of their plans—is fast approaching, and even if they leave immediately they're already beginning to cut it close on the timing.

Silt and Mirea hurriedly make preparations to depart while Lirelle meets with Rosch and a few other trustworthy townsfolk to hand over the information she's collected to expose the military commander's corruption. As they begin to travel, Mirea, although continuing to follow Lirelle's instructions, is beginning to grow frustrated at the fact that she's been given absolutely no explanation and Silt and Lirelle seem to be hiding something from her. Silt, meanwhile, is doing his best to stay positive and focused on his goals, but conflicting feelings are eating away at him inwardly: relief that the moment where he must face the consequences of his lie has been suddenly postponed, and self-loathing at the fact that, although he knows putting the decision off won't make things better for anyone, he's still too afraid to take that step forward on his own. On a few occasions, he also gets the distinct feeling that he is constantly being observed—he suspects Lirelle based on past experience, but if it is her, she's being especially careful to hide it.

As they near their destination, another small town on the Ielyan border, they cross paths with some other travellers who warn them to be careful—apparently an unusually large number of people have been getting attacked by animals in the area recently. Lirelle waits until Mirea has fallen asleep that night and asks Silt why the problem is so localized if this is part of an entire-world-ending catastrophe. He explains that during the mana collapse the first time around, the rate at which the excess mana from the Ensilver-Ielya vein saturated the environment varied considerably by location; this area in particular just so happened to be the first in the kingdom to start noticeably showing signs of what was to come.

The next morning, Mirea startles Silt and Lirelle by abruptly asking them to explain what the hell they were talking about the night before—it turns out she was only on the verge of falling asleep when their conversation woke her up again, and she decided to pretend to be sleeping so she could listen in. Reluctantly Silt explains the situation once again, but Mirea is very much unconvinced. Appalled that Lirelle is actually taking this seriously, she starts to argue how ridiculous it sounds for Silt to have "gone back in time". The discussion is eventually ended on a tense compromise of sorts—Lirelle tells Mirea to forget the confusing time travel stuff and think of it as just a prophetic dream, and that she should wait and judge for herself whether Silt's claims are trustworthy or not. Silt isn't particularly happy about the last seven years of his life being dismissed as "just a dream", but he recognizes that to the others there's no practical difference and so holds his tongue.

As the group arrives at their destination, Silt develops a slight fever with no obvious cause. Not having any time to spare in case the incident happens any moment, they proceed with their plans anyway, and Silt puts on a bit of a performance warning the townspeople that sometime soon a dangerous beast will attack. He pleads that everyone be on alert and prepared to take shelter until the arrival of the "hero" who will repel the creature—unsurprisingly, no one listening takes any of this even remotely seriously, so once they've made a strong impression on the people and Silt has had enough of being ignored and/or laughed at, the group retires to the town's tavern to talk. The conversation inevitably returns to catching Mirea up on the details of the whole time-travel-and-impending-apocalypse thing, but a serious problem soon reveals itself: upon hearing about Kerr supposedly having gone off on an unannounced trip, Mirea recalls Silt's comment back in the Silent Falls tavern about Kerr being "ill" and questions the purpose of telling such a pointless lie rather than just saying "he's out of town". When Silt has no immediate answer, Lirelle's lingering suspicions are suddenly given the justification they'd been lacking, and she demands that he explain himself right that instant if he ever wants to have any chance at regaining her trust. 

Silt is afraid to admit to his lies in case Lirelle uses his dishonesty in this one facet of his story as a reason to dismiss everything else he's told her, but he's been caught unprepared with no time to figure a safe way out of this predicament. Just then, he picks up the sound of a huge commotion beginning outside—it's starting. Somewhat reassured by the fact that the others would be seeing pretty clear proof of his knowledge of the future in just a few moments, he finally tells the truth: "...Kerr is dead. I killed him." Before Lirelle and Mirea can properly process what they've just heard, the situation outside rapidly escalates, and angrily they put the discussion on hold, Lirelle outright threatening that Silt had better stay where she can see him so she can give him one chance to explain himself immediately after this is over. 

Outside, the town is in chaos as an exhausted drake—a lesser, wingless relative of dragons; basically a huge lizard maybe a bit larger than a typical warhorse—is fighting off the last members of the enormous pack of crazed wolves that attacked it in its nest and harassed it all the way into town. Despite the fact that it's in rough condition, it's still doing a lot of damage to structures and whatnot in the course of its fight, and though both the drake and the wolves are focused on each other rather than the townspeople, many of those in the vicinity still end up suffering serious wounds. Silt, Lirelle and Mirea work to get people evacuated well out of the danger area and carefully pull the injured away from the conflict, providing very basic treatment. Silt, having plenty of experience observing the behaviour of both drakes and severely-mana-poisoned animals during his time as a messenger, takes command in order to minimize risk, and the three are able to save a good number of people before finally, as Silt predicted, a group of knights rush in to fight off the beasts, led by a famed captain known as one of the best swordsmen in the kingdom who proceeds to finish off the drake almost entirely by himself.

As the dust settles, the knights, working to get the situation organized, hear from many of the townspeople about the "prophet" they'd refused to listen to earlier who, as it turns out, really did accurately predict the event and risked his life to help people during the chaos. Intrigued, the captain of the knights seeks Silt out, but after the conflict his fever has worsened considerably and he's in no condition to have a conversation, so Lirelle takes over for him. As he watches from where he's resting a short distance away, he finds that for some reason he doesn't quite understand, he seems to instinctively find the man unpleasant, despite the fact that he's never met him before (in either timeline) or ever heard any negative rumors about him. Utterly exhausted and with too many things to think about, Silt eventually passes out.

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...Aaaaand that's it for part one. Now let's all cross our fingers and hope that I'll be able to scrape together enough motivation to get part two done a little faster, lol.