[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure] Ode to the Rose of the Nile

Egypt, 1988. An elderly blind fortune-teller said he had seen a miracle.

It was a golden rose, drifting with the waves along the brown Nile.

It had grown beside another distant river, yet crossed thousands of miles to pursue the firelight.

But roses can only be scorched by fierce flames, like moths consumed as they fly toward the fire.

Royston refused to believe in fate. She would be a Percival who believed in no God, with the Holy Grail as the sole faith of her life.

She insisted on a bonfire that would never go out, and branches that would never burn to ash, to mock a god who had failed his duty.

Fate is like the hand of a wound-up clock, moving from twelve according to its design. But whether it resets to zero or stops on the final second of fifty-nine, she would have to walk the path herself and find out.

Theme: The gears of fate have no predetermined direction.