Louie Monteazul leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded, posture relaxed like he was listening to a lullaby instead of standing at the edge of revelation.
"Let it decide," he murmured.
"Or let it break."
He didn't move. He didn't raise his hand. He didn't summon anything. But the world responded anyway. His right eye shimmered—not with mana, but with memory. The Eye of the Deceiver didn't manipulate the present. It projected the future. What burst forth wasn't power.
It was possibility.
A memory of what could happen. A vision of what Louie might become. A warning wrapped in silence.
The mana reader shattered, mana surged and the students staggered. Instructor Yu Chen recoiled. Louie stood, eyes glowing, voice cold.
"I am Loki."
But none of it was real. It was just a memory of a possible future. A glimpse of divine consequence.
Then Louie blinked. And the world rewound. The mana reader was still whole. Instructor Yu Chen hadn't moved. No one had spoken. No one had screamed. And Louie was still leaning back in his chair, eyes half-lidded, posture unchanged.
"Let it decide," he repeated softly.
"Or let it break."
But this time, he didn't let it break. He withdrew the memory. He sealed the vision. He returned to the present.
Instructor Yu Chen continued his lecture at the front of the room, his voice steady, his words flowing with practiced rhythm. He spoke of mana flow, avatar resonance, and the sacred mechanics of divine compatibility.
But Louie wasn't listening.
Not really.
"They're not ready," he thought.
"Not for me. Not for what's coming."
He had already seen what would happen if he chose to show them. He had already removed that memory. And now, he simply waited.
But there was one anomaly Louie hadn't accounted for. As the classroom settled back into its illusion of normalcy, as Instructor Yu Chen resumed his lecture with the same calm cadence and the students returned to their quiet note-taking and half-curious glances, one figure remained frozen in place—unmoving, unspeaking, and unmistakably altered. Long Xiaolan was still standing, her spear fully summoned, its dragonlight dim but persistent, like a flame refusing to die even after the wind had passed. Cold sweat traced a slow line down her cheek, her breathing shallow, her gaze locked not on the instructor, not on the mana reader, but directly on Louie.
She had seen everything.
Not as a dream. Not as a fleeting impression. But as a memory—clear, vivid, and unshakable. The shattering of the mana reader, the surge of impossible energy, the declaration that had echoed through the bones of the room. "I am Loki." She remembered it all. And unlike the others, who blinked and returned to the present with no awareness of what had been shown, Xiaolan remained tethered to that vision. Her body was in the classroom, but her mind was still standing in the aftermath of a future that hadn't happened—yet.
Yu Chen, mid-sentence, paused. His eyes narrowed as he turned toward her, sensing the disruption not through mana, but through instinct. He had taught hundreds of students, seen dozens of avatar awakenings, and weathered more than a few spiritual anomalies. But this was different. This was silence that carried weight. He stepped forward slowly, his voice measured, but edged with concern.
"Miss Long," he said, not as a reprimand, but as a question.
She didn't respond.
He took another step, noting the summoned spear, the tension in her shoulders, the tremble in her fingers. "You may deactivate your weapon," he said, softer now, almost gently.
Still, she didn't move.
And Louie, still leaning back in his chair, eyes half-lidded, was already watching her. He hadn't turned. He hadn't shifted. But his gaze was there, steady and unreadable, like a god waiting to see what a mortal would do with forbidden knowledge. The rest of the class began to notice. Heads turned. Whispers died. Even Shen Guqi, who had been doodling in the margins of his notebook, looked up and frowned.
Louie's thoughts remained quiet, but precise.
One saw.
He hadn't meant for that. The Eye of the Deceiver was designed to project possibility, not leave residue. It might be because Xiaolan's resonance with the Zodiac Dragon had made her sensitive to mythic distortion, or was it something else, but one thing was sure. She hadn't just glimpsed the future—she had absorbed it. And now, she stood in the present, carrying a memory that no one else could recall, holding a truth that hadn't yet been spoken.
Louie didn't flinch. He didn't intervene. He simply watched.
Because now, the question wasn't whether the system would reject him.
It was whether someone else might remember what the system refused to see.
Louie didn't speak. He didn't rise. He didn't summon anything. But as the classroom's attention shifted toward Long Xiaolan—still standing, still armed, still trembling—he turned his gaze to her with the same half-lidded calm that had carried him through the entire lesson. His posture remained relaxed, almost bored, but his eyes sharpened just enough to catch hers. And then, with the faintest smile curling at the edge of his mouth, he raised a single finger to his lips.
A quiet "shhhh."
No sound. No theatrics. Just a gesture—simple, deliberate, and unmistakable.
His eyes held hers, not with dominance, not with threat, but with something far more dangerous: understanding. They didn't glow. They didn't flare. But they spoke. They told her everything she needed to know. That what she saw was real. That no one else remembered. That this moment, this memory, this fracture in reality… was theirs alone.
Keep it secret.
Keep it safe.
Keep it between us.
Long Xiaolan's grip on her spear tightened, then loosened. Her breath hitched. Her eyes flickered—not away, but inward, as if she were trying to seal the memory inside herself before it unraveled. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she lowered her weapon. The dragonlight faded. The spear dissolved into mist.
Instructor Yu Chen watched her carefully, his expression unreadable. He said nothing more. He didn't press. But his gaze lingered longer than usual, as if he sensed something had shifted—something subtle, something mythic, something he couldn't yet name.
The rest of the class exhaled, unaware that anything had happened at all.
And Louie leaned back once more, eyes half-lidded, smile fading into neutrality.
The moment passed.
But the memory remained.
And now, it belonged to two.
Louie remained in his chair, posture unchanged, the faint smile still lingering on his lips like a mask that hadn't yet been peeled away. To anyone watching, he was calm. Detached. Unbothered. But beneath the surface, something was stirring. Not panic. Not fear. Just a quiet, precise unease.
This was the second time.
The second time his eyes had misfired.
The first time had been subtle. It was in the cafeteria, during that quiet lull before classes starts, when students were more focused on their food than their futures. Louie had been watching—casually, curiously—scanning the room with the Eye of the Beholder, not to pry, but to calibrate. He liked knowing things. He liked seeing the threads that tied people to their avatars, their ambitions, their fears. Most minds flickered with predictable patterns: elemental affinities, suppressed memories, half-formed desires. But when his gaze passed over Long Xiaolan, there was nothing.
Not resistance. Not shielding. Just silence.
Her mind didn't register. Her mana didn't echo. Her presence was there, but unreadable. Like a blank page that refused to be written on. He had dismissed it then, chalking it up to fatigue, or perhaps a rare internal discipline. But now, after what had just happened, he knew better.
This wasn't coincidence. This was pattern.
The left eye had failed to read her once. And now, the right eye had failed to erase her.
She had retained the memory. Not just the vision, but the emotional weight, the mythic residue. She had kept it. That wasn't supposed to happen. The Eye of the Deceiver was designed to reveal futures, not imprint them. It showed what could be, not what must be. And yet, Xiaolan had absorbed it like it was her own.
Louie's fingers curled slightly against the armrest of his chair. His expression didn't change, but his mind was already shifting gears. She was outside the system. Just like him. But not like him. She wasn't a god. She wasn't a trickster. She was something else—something the Eye couldn't classify.
And that made her dangerous. A variable.
Or worse, a necessary piece to the whole plot.
Louie exhaled slowly, the breath barely audible beneath the hum of Instructor Yu Chen's lecture. His thoughts, once sharp and spiraling, began to dull—not from resolution, but from choice. He had traced the anomaly, considered the implications, weighed the mythic threads that now tangled around Long Xiaolan's presence. And then, as always, he let it go.
Thinking more about it would just hurt his head.
He'd learned that lesson the hard way—back when he was still a strategist of a realm, when every decision carried cosmic consequence, when every misstep could tilt the balance of a war between gods. Back then, analysis was survival. Precision was power. But now?
Now he was a freshman.
Low-key. Unregistered. Unimpressive by design.
No one expected him to lead. No one asked him to calculate. And that, in its own way, was a kind of freedom. He didn't need to solve Xiaolan. He didn't need to understand why the Eye had failed. He didn't need to chase the threads of prophecy that might be winding toward him like a noose.
He just needed to sit.
To listen.
To nod when appropriate.
To let the system believe he was part of it.
Louie leaned back a little further, letting the chair creak beneath him. His eyes drifted toward the window, where the light was beginning to shift—soft, golden, indifferent. The world moved on. The lecture continued. And the memory of what could have happened faded into the quiet hum of what hadn't.
The mana control training resumed without ceremony. Instructor Yu Chen, ever composed, transitioned from theory to practice with the same quiet authority, guiding students toward the testing stations with clipped instructions and calm encouragement. The mana reader stood ready again, its interface glowing softly, unaware that it had just been shattered in a memory no one remembered.
Louie rose from his seat with the others, moving without urgency, without hesitation. His posture was relaxed, his expression unreadable. If anyone had been watching closely, they might have noticed the faint shimmer behind his eyes—the residue of the Eye still active, still calibrating. But no one was watching closely. Not anymore.
He approached the reader, placed his hand on the interface, and smiled.
This time, he controlled everything.
Not just his mana flow, but the perception of it. He wrapped his essence in layers of mundane resonance, masking divine threads with mortal rhythm. The system scanned him, processed him, and returned a result so perfectly average it bordered on forgettable.
[Mana Flow: 52%. Avatar Resonance: Unregistered. Potential: Moderate.]
Yu Chen glanced at the result, nodded once, and moved on.
Louie stepped back, hands in his pockets, eyes half-lidded once more. The students around him barely reacted. A few offered polite smiles. One muttered something about "civilian talent." Another scribbled a note about "non-combatant classification."
Exactly as planned.
He had shown them a future once. A rupture. A myth. A name.
Now, he showed them nothing.
And in that nothing, he was free.
After class, the five of them—Shen Guqi, Zhang Yuili, Xiao Tanglou, Li Moubin, and Louie—headed toward the academy's recreation area, their steps lighter than usual. The tension of mana testing had passed, and the next few days promised nothing but lectures, theory sheets, and the slow grind of classroom monotony. They knew the rhythm by now—different sections, different instructors, different schedules. Their paths rarely crossed outside of meals and special sessions like today's mana control practice. So when the opportunity came to laugh, to spar casually, to throw mana discs at moving targets and argue over who had the worst aim, they took it.
Shen Guqi tried to cheat at the reflex wall, claiming his mana pulse was "too fast to register."
Zhang Yuili, ever the stoic, hit every mark without comment, then casually asked if the system was "finally calibrated to his standards."
Xiao Tanglou didn't say much, but his quiet precision earned a few raised eyebrows.
Li Moubin, loud as ever, challenged everyone to a sprint across the gravity tiles and nearly broke his ankle.
And Louie, as always, played along just enough to seem ordinary—laughing when appropriate, missing shots on purpose, letting the system read him as forgettable.
When the sun dipped low and the lights of the academy began to shift into evening hues, they parted with casual waves and half-serious threats about who would fall asleep first in tomorrow's lecture. One by one, they vanished into their respective destinations.
Louie walked alone toward the dormitories, hands in his pockets, mind already drifting toward nothing in particular. He liked this part of the day—the quiet between roles, the space between masks. But just as he turned the corner past the koi pond, she was there.
Long Xiaolan.
She stood waiting, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. Not angry. Not confused. Just… focused.
Louie stopped.
She didn't speak immediately. She let the silence stretch, let the moment settle. Then, finally:
"Why did you trust me?" she asked. "You could've done to me what you did to the others. Wipe the memory. Seal the vision. Make it vanish."
Louie blinked. A drop of sweat slid down his temple, slow and deliberate, like the body betraying what the mind refused to admit.
He didn't answer right away. He looked at her—really looked. The way her posture held tension, not fear. The way her eyes didn't flinch. The way her presence felt… anchored.
It wasn't that he didn't want to erase it.
It was that he couldn't.
Not while being humane.
Not while being him.
He could've forced the Eye of the Deceiver to use a technique called Buried Dreams to override her mind, to scrub the memory clean, to leave her blinking and confused like the rest, with the price of not being able to use it for 20 years. But something in him—something old, something divine, something tired—refused.
She had seen.
She had remembered.
And she had kept it.
So he smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
And said the only thing that ever made sense.
"Because I am Loki."