The ballroom should have collapsed.
Anyone with sense could see that. The roof had been split open by lightning. Pillars lay cracked, their sun-crests broken and bleeding dust. Fire chewed through silk banners and gilded tables. Nobles had died where they stood, burned or crushed before fear could even reach their throats.
And yet
The room returned anew.
Not intact unstable like a bad copy.
Stone that should have fallen hovered mid-sag. Fractures crawled through marble floors, then stopped, as if the ground itself had forgotten the next step. Smoke hung too long in the air, refusing to rise or settle.
At the center of this wrongness stood Mathis.
He was small. Too small for the massacre surrounding around him.
His chest hurt. His ears rang. Elise was gone, pulled away by guards just before another blast had torn the hall apart.
The Falsies princess had clanged to him desperately he was the only other person near her not surround by blood or enemies.
Mathis stood alone.
And the world did not dare finish breaking.
And yet eerily everything returned anew.
A disturbance rippled at the edge of the hall.
Not a spell
Not an attack
A ERROR
Shadows along the walls slid sideways instead of stretching long. They pooled near a fallen pillar where torchlight failed to behave. From that darkness stepped a boy, only a little taller than Mathis, his posture loose, his presence sharp.
Black hair. Red eyes.
Five rings sat on his fingers, dull and dark, each one quietly warm, as if something beneath them pressed outward and was told no.
The shadows clung to him warped him like a sorta cloak .
Mathis hadn't managed to get a good look at his face no matter how hard he tried felt it immediately.
Not fear.
Not danger.
A pressure, like the room being claimed by two hands at once.
"Wow," the boy said lightly, looking around at the devastation. "This party really went downhill fast."
Mathis swallowed. "You shouldn't be here i checked the guest log what's your name."
The boy smiled easy, practiced, and irritated at the edges. "Yeah. People keep saying that."
Mathis stepped back.
The marble beneath his heel cracked then stopped. The fracture sealed halfway, stone refusing to finish what the world had already decided.
The boy noticed.
His smile faltered for half a heartbeat.
Something in his eyes sharpened.
annoyance came quick and ugly. "Huh whys the floor repairing your doing something its weird whys the room listening to you"
And Xavier hated things that obeyed someone else.
He lifted his hands in a surrender.
"Relax. I'm not your enemy Mathis."
His hands trembled, heat and pressure coiling under his skin without shape or color.
"What's your name?" Mathis asked.
The boy paused. Not because he was afraid.
Because he was choosing.
"… its ," he said. "Call me kel kelvin whatever's easier."
Mathis nodded, because things made the most sense, and that answer felt close enough.
Deep beneath the estate, where the blast had thrown Garin's body into ruin, something went wrong.
The corpse twisted.
Not violently. Not loudly.
Bones bent inward like softened metal. Skin tightened around a shape that could not stand upright. For a moment, something almost human tried to rise.
Then it folded in on itself and vanished.
Not destroyed.
Corrected.
The ballroom shuddered.
Mathis gasped, pain lancing through his chest. He didn't know why. He only knew something was wrong.
The air thickened.
Across from him, the boy stiffened.
The rings on his fingers grew warm.
Shadows coiled closer to his body, bending around his arms and legs, warping the space near his skin. They did not reach outward. They pressed inward, restrained by something older than instinct.
"You're doing something again," the boy kelvin said, irritation bleeding into his voice now. "And you don't even realize it."
"I'm not!" Mathis said, panic rising. "I just...
I just want this to stop. I want everything to stay the way it was."
And the world listened.
The falling debris slowed. A burning banner froze mid-collapse, fire guttering but refusing to spread. The air itself grew heavy, as if movement required permission.
Mathis felt it like a hand on his throat.
Reality wasn't resisting him.
It obeyed this boy
He took a step closer anyway.
The shadows obeyed the rings, bending tighter around him, forced into shape, into function. No outside will. No watching god.
Not stone.
Air.
Mathis's presence pressed outward unconsciously, not attacking, shining.
This moment exists.
This room stands.
This does not end here.
Xavier laughed. Sharp. Real.
"Oh, that's annoying," he said. "You're really annoying."
Mathis clenched his fists, tears burning his eyes. "I don't want to fight!"
"I know," the boy replied, shadows tightening as the rings bit deeper. "That's why this works."
He leaned forward slightly, red eyes bright against the smoke.
"My name," he said, voice cutting clean through the frozen hall, "is Xavier."
And the world, caught between dominion and refusal, finally screamed.
Under the world, between places that were never meant to touch, Veltrix stopped walking.
He did not hear the explosion.
He felt the misalignment.
The path beneath his feet thinned, not tearing, not breaking, but hesitating. Space forgot which side of itself it belonged to. The air tasted wrong, like a sentence cut short.
Veltrix laughed softly. Not because it was funny.
Because it was familiar.
"Oh," he murmured, adjusting his coat as the corridor around him wavered. "That's new."
No. Not new.
layared.
Two presences grinding against each other inside a single moment. Neither dominant. Neither yielding. Reality wasn't choosing a winner.
Battling.
Far above him, in a duchy ballroom that should have been rubble, the room finally began to understand what was happening to it.
The floor buckled.
Not from weight.
From The overlapse.
Mathis stood frozen, breath shallow, heart hammering. He didn't know why the air had grown so thick it hurt to move. He didn't know why his thoughts felt heavy, as if they were pressing outward instead of staying inside his head.
All he knew was this:
He didn't want anything to change from his life way perfect.
And yet
Across from him, Xavier smiled wider, teeth flashing, irritation sharpening into something close to an emotionless stare.
The shadows around his body began to peel away towards the walls.
reaching outward.
towards Mathis.
The rings burned now. Not with power, but with resistance. They locked the darkness into shape, forcing it to obey direction, intent, hunger.
The marble between the two boys cracked clean through.
As Xavier took a step "that's cool how i cant reach how do u like my ability i call it ruler"
As Xavier walked closer and closer to Mathis it was like he was getting further and further from the ball room
A line split the floor, running from Mathis's feet to Xavier's shadow, then branching like veins across the ballroom. Chandeliers finally fell, smashing against the ground as gravity remembered itself all at once.
The room began to collapse.
But not uniformly.
Sections folded in on themselves. Corners stretched too long. Distance warped. A fallen pillar existed in two places at once, half-buried, half-standing, unsure which outcome it belonged to.
This was not destruction.
This was argument.
Mathis cried out as pressure surged through him, something deep inside tightening, shedding layers he didn't know were there. The quiet authority he carried began to shake, shedding its softness.
The world did not simply obey anymore.
It clung.
"Stop!" Mathis shouted, voice breaking. "I don't want this!"
And the room answered by refusing to end.
Flames guttered and went still. Smoke reversed direction. A fallen guard twitched, not alive, not dead, locked in a moment that refused to move on.
Xavier staggered, boots scraping against marble that no longer behaved like stone. The shadows snapped tighter to him, dragged into sharper edges, more defined shapes.
Too defined.
His grin faltered.
"Hey," he muttered, annoyance flashing hot. "That's not fair."
The shadows wanted to spread. To take. To become more.
The rings said no.
The clash intensified.
Where Mathis stood, continuity thickened. The air resisted change, resisted conclusion. The room remembered itself as it had been moments before the blast and tried desperately to return there.
Where Xavier stood, possibility bent inward. Shadows sharpened, condensed, turned into tools instead of fog. The space around him thinned, as if reality itself could be folded and pocketed.
Bread and butter.
Too close. Too compatible. Too opposed.
The ballroom screamed again, this time silently.
Walls folded inward, then snapped back. Windows showed reflections of rooms that didn't exist. The ceiling peeled open to reveal not the night sky, but an earlier version of itself, unbroken and whole, hovering like a memory refusing burial.
Veltrix winced as the tremor rippled through the in-between.
"Oh, that's bad," he said. "That's very bad."
He knelt, pressing two fingers against the thinning edge of space. The path shuddered, trying to decide whether to let him exist there.
"Two of you," Veltrix muttered. "Already tearing paint off the walls of the world. No wonder the old men are nervous."
Back in the ballroom, Mathis dropped to his knees.
Something peeled away inside him.
Not lost.
Exposed.
The weight he carried sharpened. What had been a wish became a rule. What had been fear became insistence.
Things should not be taken.
Moments should not slip.
People should not disappear.
Xavier felt it and snarled.
"Oh, I get it now," he said, voice low, rings blazing as the shadows strained against their limits. "You don't want more. You want everything to stay yours."
Mathis looked up, eyes wide, tears streaking his soot-stained face.
"I just don't want it to end."
For the first time, Xavier didn't smile.
The room lurched.
A section of floor simply vanished, folding inward and sealing itself as if it had never existed. Another wall duplicated, two identical stone faces overlapping and screaming as they tried to occupy the same place.
Reality was shaking off something old.
Something patient.
Something that had assumed it had time.
Veltrix stood as the tremor passed beneath his feet, eyes gleaming with interest and something like dread.
"…So that's where you are," he said softly.
Xavier rushed forward.
At least, he tried to.
Every step he took felt correct. His muscles moved. His intent was sharp. But the distance between him and Mathis refused to close. The space stretched, quietly, endlessly, as if the ballroom had become a corridor with no end.
Mathis didn't understand how he knew.
But he knew.
If he could hold on for five more minutes, someone powerful would arrive.
Not hope. Not prayer.
Certainty.
The corridor trembled.
The space Xavier was trapped in began to lose cohesion, its edges fraying as if the world itself was being rewritten mid-thought. Shadows clawed outward, trying to seize distance, to fold space, to cheat the gap.
They failed.
Then everything stopped.
Sound vanished. Motion froze. Even the fire hesitated.
The corridor collapsed inward, snapping like a broken illusion, and reality slammed back into place.
They were in the ballroom again.
Mathis dropped to one knee.
His breath came in shallow, broken gasps. His skin was pale, almost translucent, as though the effort of holding the world still had drained something fundamental from him. He looked fragile enough that a touch might shatter him.
Xavier straightened.
Unharmed.
Unrattled.
"My turn," Xavier said calmly.
Mathis looked up, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"What's happening?!" he screamed, his voice cracking under exhaustion.
Xavier tilted his head, studying him like a puzzle that had finally begun to speak.
"These abilities," he said lightly, "I call mine Ruler. They're shaped by dreams. Real ones. The kind people don't admit out loud."
He took a slow step forward. This time, the distance obeyed.
"I've run into others like me. Not many. I needed a name for us, so I chose one I found buried in old texts. Jackalopes."
Mathis's fingers twitched against the shattered marble.
"The books said our kind appears when desire reaches a breaking point. When someone is forsaken. Or cornered. Or done waiting for mercy."
Xavier smiled thinly.
"Your ability is obvious now. You don't want to win. You don't want more. You want everything to stay the same. You want the world to stop hurting you."
He leaned in slightly.
"You maintain. You preserve. You reject harm."
Mathis swallowed.
"Once I figure out the rest," Xavier continued, voice calm, almost bored, "you're dead."
"Two minutes," Mathis whispered.
Xavier blinked. "What?"
"If what you're saying is true," Mathis said, forcing himself upright, legs shaking, "then I refuse to lose."
His mind raced.
If his power was to maintain everything, to allow no direct harm, then it had to include something offensive. A rule strong enough to defend itself.
It was strange.
Since the fight began, he hadn't used his ability directly. Only to escape. Only to endure.
Almost like—
Almost like—
Xavier's thoughts stuttered.
What is my Jackalope ability?
The question landed wrong.
The answer didn't come.
His brow furrowed.
…Why can't I remember it?
Mathis smiled.
Small. Exhausted.
Certain.
Xavier's eyes widened a fraction too late.
"Time's up," Mathis whispered.
The space behind Xavier tore open.
Not with sound, but with absence.
A rift split the air, peeling reality back like fabric, and the Tier-6 mage in Evangel's service fled at once, terror overriding obedience.
From the tear stepped an old man.
Unhurried.
Unconcerned.
Veltrix.
The grandfather of magic.
The ballroom shuddered in relief and dread as he arrived, space knitting itself closed behind him like it had never dared to open at all.
Veltrix looked at the shattered hall.At the two boys.At the warped reality still trembling around them.
And he laughed softly.
"Well," he said,
The moment Veltrix stepped fully into the ballroom, the air changed.
Not with pressure.With certainty.
The fractured marble groaned as if ashamed of its earlier rebellion. Fire shrank. Lightning bent its path away from the old man without being told to. Even the screams dimmed, as though reality itself had decided to listen.
Veltrix's gaze passed over the devastation, then settled on the two boys.
His smile faded.
"…So early," he murmured. "And two of you."
Xavier felt it instantly.
Not fear.
Recognition.
This man knew exactly what he was.
Knew the shape of his power. Knew the way reality bent around certain wills like heated glass.
Xavier took a half-step back.
Veltrix's eyes flicked to him.
"Ruler," the old man said softly. "Ambitious. Clean. Dangerous."
Then his gaze shifted to Mathis, still standing by will alone, light trembling around him like a dying star.
"And Continuity," Veltrix added, voice tightening. "Gods help us."
Mathis swayed.
His vision blurred. The ballroom doubled, then tripled, as if the world could no longer decide which version of itself was correct. Blood trickled from his nose. His knees buckled.
Veltrix turned sharply.
"That's enough," he snapped.
Xavier gritted his teeth.
No.
Not yet.
Ruler surged.
The world lurched toward Xavier's will. Distance folded. Gravity twisted. The rules Veltrix stood on attempted to rewrite themselves mid-thought.
For a heartbeat, reality obeyed.
Then Veltrix moved.
He did not cast a spell.He did not gesture.he denied.
Xavier felt it like a blade driven through his chest.
Ruler screamed.
The authority he had imposed shattered, not outward, but inward, collapsing like a crown crushed between two fingers. The world snapped back into place with violent clarity.
Xavier staggered.
Blood poured from his mouth.
Veltrix stood inches away.
"You do not rule reality," the old man said, eyes cold now. "You trespass in it."
He placed two fingers against Xavier's forehead.
And erased the corridor.
Every false path.Every imposed distance.Every stolen inch of dominion.
Ruler broke.
Wounded.
Xavier screamed as something fundamental twisted inside him, his power recoiling, mutating, warping under defeat. The world flickered around him, fragments of futures bleeding into the present this wasn't his ability.
For a split second, Xavier saw himself crowned over a dead world.
For another, he saw nothing at all.
Then the Rings burned.
Not hot
With power.
Shadow coiled around Xavier, thick and absolute, swallowing his form as space folded inward. The escape was violent, reality tearing to accommodate him.
But Xavier was already looking away.
Because he had seen Mathis collapse.
"Once he dropped i could do it again what going on with that kid" Xavier thought.
The boy prince fell unconscious, light guttering out like a candle starved of air. Elise screamed as Veltrix caught Mathis before his head struck stone.
"Too much," Veltrix muttered, grim. "Far too much."
Elsewhere in the chaos, Yogh moved.
While the battle clashed in miniature, the Horseman did what he did best.
Steel flashed.
The Falsies princess was seized amid smoke and panic, her scream cut short as Yogh dragged her onto his black steed. Her crown slipped, clattering across blood-slick marble as they vanished into the breach Grain had made.
Evangel would be pleased.
Reality sealed behind Xavier's escape with a thunderous snap.
But something had been left behind.
A distortion.
Where Xavier had stood, the air warped subtly, like heat over stone. Servants who passed later would swear the floor leaned toward an invisible throne. Guards would forget why they'd entered the room. Time would feel slightly… obedient.
Veltrix stared at the mark for a long moment.
"…So," he said quietly. " correction killed him ."
He looked down at Mathis's unconscious form.
"And you," he murmured, softer now. "Your one to a jackalope like us huh"
Veltrix straightened as the surviving guards rushed in, orders shouted, the ballroom drowning in aftermath.
High above, in a place without walls, Xavier gasped as shadow spat him back into existence.
His body shook. His power writhed.
Ruler had lost.
But in losing...
It had learned.
Reality must of been that boys ability a glimpse of the future Xavier was certain .
Xavier laughed weakly, blood on his lips, eyes burning.
"…So that's how it works," he whispered. "Every win makes me worse."
He didn't sound afraid.
He sounded curious.
And somewhere, far away, the world shuddered.
Only he could shape.
only he was broken.
This world would know his pain