The morning air was sharp and cold. Mist slithered across the academy's cobbled pathways, curling around lantern posts like wary ghosts. It was too early for most students to be awake, and those who were crept through the fog like trespassers in a forgotten story.
You stood at the window of the abandoned west wing library, the one students whispered was haunted. And perhaps it was. Dust motes danced lazily in the sunlight cutting through the stained glass. The cracked bust of some long-dead headmaster stared back at you with judgment in its eyes.
You'd been here for an hour.
Not reading. Not researching. Just... staring at the empty pages in front of you.
The book you found yesterday—the one buried under a loose floorboard beneath the stage of the old theater—wasn't just blank. It felt heavy. Not in weight, but in meaning. Like something was waiting to be written. Or perhaps... remembered.
"You came back," a voice said behind you.
You turned sharply. It was Isen.
He looked like he'd run here, his collar unbuttoned, chest rising and falling quickly. His hand clutched a piece of parchment that fluttered slightly in the drafty air.
"I found something," he said, walking straight to the table and slamming the parchment down. "Look."
The ink was smudged, faded with age, but there was no mistaking the name signed at the bottom.
Your name.
But the handwriting wasn't yours.
It was older. Sharper. Written in a hand that hadn't touched a pen in centuries.
"I think it's part of the same spell," Isen said, voice hushed now, reverent. "The one binding the roles. The Hero. The Villain. The Princess. Even the Fool. But this... This is a draft. An earlier version. Someone was rewriting it. Editing fate."
You touched the parchment and a shiver ran through your fingertips. For a moment, the world shifted. The air grew thicker. And you saw flashes—a boy not unlike yourself, but different. Crueler eyes. A smile that didn't reach his heart. Flames rising behind him. A hand stretched out in betrayal.
You stumbled back.
"What did you see?" Isen asked.
"I think I just saw... me. But not me. Like a version of me that never forgot he was the Villain."
Isen was silent for a moment. Then, "Maybe that's who wrote it. Maybe you wrote it. Before you became this version. Before whatever changed the draft."
You clenched your fist. "Then who changed it?"
Neither of you had an answer.
But that question led you down a different path.
You spent the next few hours scouring the rest of the old library. Beneath a false panel in the far wall, Isen found a stack of notebooks—charred around the edges, but mostly intact. Each one marked with a symbol you recognized: the crest of the original authors. The writers of fate. The ones said to have scripted the Academy's legacy into existence.
Inside were timelines. Names. Versions. Rewrites. Deaths. Resurrections. Twists.
In every single one of them, the Hero won. And in most... the Villain was you.
But in one—one only partially written—the ending was missing.
"This is it," Isen whispered. "A broken draft. Unfinished. Maybe... editable."
Your heart thudded.
Was that why you were remembering things no one else did? Why the script felt wrong? Why sometimes, when the Hero looked at you, it felt more like... like he was waiting for you to remember something?
Isen pulled back, suddenly cautious. "Do you think this means we can... rewrite things?"
"No," you said, "I think it means someone already did. And we're stuck in their version."
You didn't say what you feared most:
That it might have been you.
That in trying to save your brother, you may have done something far worse.
To be continued...
The moonlight bathed the crumbling ruins of Old Morven in a sickly hue as you stepped through the broken archway, the whispers trailing behind you like smoke. The air was denser here—heavy, as if mourning something long dead. Your footsteps echoed against ancient stone, and every breath felt like it stirred a memory not your own.
A cluster of fractured statues lined the hall. Time had eroded their faces beyond recognition, but each bore a strange resemblance to you. Not exact—more like distorted reflections of your soul at various ages, some younger, some older, some… twisted.
You stopped before one of them—a version of you, older and cloaked in armor black as pitch. Its eyes, though empty, seemed to follow you.
That's when the light flickered.
You turned sharply. The torch on the wall dimmed, then flared again, casting shadows that moved in ways the stone didn't allow. You weren't alone.
But no one was there.
You moved deeper. The corridor opened into what looked like a great hall, long abandoned but strangely untouched. At its center, a giant mural covered the ceiling—half scorched, half pristine. One half depicted a young warrior in chains, the other… the same warrior crowned in fire, ruling over a world in chaos.
Your name was etched beneath it in old tongue.
And beside it, a warning:
"He who remembers, reigns. He who forgets, falls."
Then a voice—soft, feminine, almost kind—whispered behind you:
"You shouldn't have come here… not yet."
You spun around.
A woman stood at the far end of the hall, cloaked in a robe stitched with stars. You couldn't see her face, but something about her presence was… familiar. Like an echo you hadn't heard since childhood.
"You remember nothing, do you?" she said, stepping closer. Her voice echoed unnaturally, as though it was being spoken in several timelines at once. "That's their doing. They sealed your beginning so you'd never reach the end."
She paused, lowering her hood.
Your breath caught.
It was your mother.
But… not the one you remembered.
This woman had eyes colder than winter and a scar where your mother never had one. Her expression was neither warm nor hostile—it was calculating.
"You're not her," you said, taking a step back.
"No," she replied calmly, "but I carry her truth. And you'll need it if you want to survive what's coming."
She raised a hand and light poured out from her palm, forming into a map—no, a blueprint. Of the city? No… of you.
Veins of power pulsed through your image—lines of energy and memory crisscrossing through every nerve and bone.
"You were made, not born," she said. "But what they didn't expect was this…" She touched a point near the heart of the blueprint. "A fracture. A spark. An anomaly."
"Me," you said quietly.
"Yes," she nodded. "You, as you are now, shouldn't exist."
Suddenly, a deep rumble echoed through the hall, shaking the walls. She stiffened.
"They've found us."
She shoved the map into your chest—it melted into your skin like mist—and pushed you toward the back exit. "Go. I'll hold them off."
"I don't even know who 'they' are!" you shouted.
"You will. Sooner than you'd like."
She turned toward the shadows that were now slithering across the walls like oil slicks.
"They're waking up the memory traps. Go, before it rewrites you again!"
You ran.
The corridor behind the hall twisted unnaturally as you sprinted, like space itself was collapsing inward. You barely dodged a collapsing column, vaulted over a pool of mirror-like liquid that rippled with visions of you killing people you hadn't even met, and burst out into the cold night air.
But it wasn't the same world.
The sky had changed—now painted in hues of violet and green, the stars moving in impossible patterns. The ruins were no longer ruins but fully rebuilt towers. And in the distance, a horn blew—a war horn from an age long forgotten.
You blinked.
And the wind whispered a name you hadn't heard in years.
Not your current name.
But your original one.
The name they had erased.
The sun had barely risen when you stepped into the training grounds of House Arclight. A soft fog blanketed the field, and your boots crunched lightly over the dew-covered grass. Sword in hand, you moved like a ghost, practicing your footwork in silence. Every motion was deliberate. Every swing, precise. If you were going to survive what was coming—and protect Leon—you had to become more than a villain.
You had to become something that didn't exist in the original script.
"Trying to exorcise some demons, brother?"
You stopped mid-step, catching Leon's reflection in a polished shield mounted on the weapons rack. He approached, still in his sleepwear, tousled hair and all.
"Couldn't sleep," you replied without turning.
"Neither could I."
He stepped closer. There was a tired edge to his usually calm voice.
"I saw Father speaking to Duke Carneth last night. They were in the war room, arguing. Something about a deployment."
You narrowed your eyes. "Deployment? Now? The kingdom isn't at war."
Leon nodded. "Exactly. Which is why I listened in. The Duke was urging Father to strike first—against House Fenroth."
Your stomach turned. "Fenroth? They've been neutral for decades. That makes no sense."
Leon crossed his arms. "It makes perfect sense if someone's whispering in their ears and ours. Divide and conquer. Sow distrust. And guess who profits from it?"
You both said the name at once:
"The Emperor."
He was pulling strings already, just like in the original timeline. And this time, he wasn't just targeting you—he was playing an entire nation like a game of chess.
"We need to find out more," you said quietly. "Before war breaks out."
"Agreed."
You tossed your sword aside and faced him fully. "Then let's start by visiting House Fenroth ourselves."
Leon's eyes widened. "That's treason."
"No," you corrected. "It's survival."
Later that night, cloaked and armed, you slipped out of the Arclight estate under cover of darkness. You had forged the documents. Stolen the maps. Marked the secret roads through the forest.
If you were caught, you'd be executed.
But staying silent would doom your family to a war none of them could win.
Leon rode beside you. For once, he didn't ask questions. He simply trusted you.
It was both the greatest honor and the heaviest burden you'd ever known.
The journey to Fenroth took two days. By the end of it, your muscles burned, and your provisions had dwindled to half a loaf of stale bread. But as you approached the high spires of Castle Fenroth, you noticed something strange.
The gates were wide open.
No guards posted. No patrols.
Leon glanced at you. "This doesn't feel right."
You nodded grimly and drew your sword. "Stay close."
You entered cautiously, your footsteps echoing off stone walls. The inner courtyard was littered with torn banners. Scorch marks. Abandoned weapons.
A battle had happened here.
And it hadn't ended well.
Suddenly, Leon stiffened. "Do you hear that?"
You listened.
Faintly, from deep within the keep, came the sound of singing.
Haunting. Off-key. Like a lullaby sung by a child who had long forgotten the words.
Leon drew his blade. "That's coming from the chapel."
You both moved quickly now, the echoes of your footsteps bouncing through the empty corridors. The castle felt… dead. Deserted. And yet, something pulsed within its heart. Something watching.
When you reached the chapel doors, they were already ajar.
And inside… was a boy.
No older than ten. Sitting alone on the altar.
Surrounded by dozens of bodies—noblemen, guards, servants. All of them face-down, unmoving.
Leon whispered, "Gods…"
The boy looked up at you.
His eyes were black.
Not with hatred.
Not with grief.
But with something ancient. Something that should not exist.
"Are you the ones they said would come?" he asked in a voice not his own.
You didn't answer.
He smiled.
And the doors slammed shut behind you.
The moment the voice said, "He's here," a low, rumbling groan echoed through the chamber, followed by the deep, metallic creak of chains being unwound.
Kai's breath hitched. He turned his head slowly toward the far end of the chamber—and saw something he couldn't immediately explain.
A steel doorway embedded into the rock wall was trembling, frost curling along its edges, and with each tremble, a muffled thud sounded from the other side. Not a knock. Not a scratch.
A pound.
Like something massive was ramming it from the other side.
The four cloaked figures dropped to one knee as the fifth stepped forward, extending both hands toward the sealed door. Their fingers pulsed with an eerie violet light that seemed to vibrate in Kai's bones.
Then, slowly, the steel door began to open—inch by trembling inch.
Kai took a step backward instinctively, his mind screaming for him to run, but his feet refused. He was trapped by awe and terror, locked in place as the chamber's temperature dropped so suddenly his breath crystallized mid-air.
The door groaned fully open.
And out of the darkness stepped something that looked like a man… and yet wasn't.
Seven feet tall. Skin that shimmered like black ice. Hollow eyes filled with static, flickering as if barely holding back a storm. Around his neck hung a rusted crown made of something that looked like bone, and in his right hand, he carried a scepter that pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
Kai felt an overwhelming pressure slam into his chest.
This thing—whatever it was—it wasn't just powerful. It was wrong. A mistake. A blight in the natural world.
The leader of the cloaked figures bowed their head.
"My lord. The boy is here."
The entity turned its hollow eyes to Kai.
Its gaze pierced through flesh and bone, straight into something deeper. For a terrifying second, Kai saw flashes—not of the future, not of the past, but of versions of himself. Broken. Twisted. Subjugated. Worshiping. Dead.
And then the thing spoke, in a voice like nails dragged across glass.
"You are the tether."
Kai fell to his knees, choking as something ancient and heavy gripped his mind. Images rushed at him—a city in flames, a sky torn in half, a mirror that wouldn't reflect—
The creature knelt.
It didn't speak again. It just leaned forward and touched Kai's forehead with a single finger.
Every light in the chamber went out.
And in that darkness, a whisper spoke.
But it wasn't the creature's voice. It was his own.
Screaming.
Then everything went silent.
A second later, the lights returned—and Kai was alone in the chamber.
No cloaked figures. No steel door. No creature.
Only the circle on the floor remained, still glowing faintly.
He stood, shaking, breathing hard.
Then he looked down at his hands.
They were marked.
Black lines, crawling like roots under his skin. Glowing faintly.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He took it out with trembling hands.
Unknown Number:
"Now you've seen him. It begins."
Kai's heart thundered.
Another message came in, seconds later.
Unknown Number:
"Don't go home. They'll be waiting."
Then the screen cracked—spontaneously—as if crushed from within.
Kai looked up…
And realized someone was standing at the top of the chamber stairs.
Watching him.