The silence between us was heavy, heavier than the stopped time itself. Professor Alaric did not move. His grey eyes were fixed on me, widened beyond astonishment into pure, unadulterated terror. He had seen it. He had seen the impossible. And he had seen that the impossible was standing in front of him, holding a mop.
This wasn't the stare of a man witnessing a miracle; it was the stare of a man witnessing a solar flare from a centimeter away. He now understood that the power he had been chasing was not a mere curiosity. It was an absolute authority, and it had been standing in the corner, cleaning up the mess others had made.
I could hear screaming in the distance, the roar of magical detonations. The temporal rift was still open. I wasn't finished yet.
I slowly turned away from Alaric's fixed gaze and looked toward the tear rending the sky. I could see more Anomalies pouring through, spreading like a virus across the academy grounds.
"It seems the problem isn't fully resolved," I said quietly, in my normal voice, dropping the simple country boy act.
Alaric didn't answer. He couldn't.
I raised my hand, not to snap, but to point. I focused on the rift. It was a wound in the fabric of spacetime itself, bleeding chaotic magic. Closing it required more than just erasing the creatures. It required stitching the wound itself.
This would be... conspicuous.
I took a deep breath. Then I did it.
I didn't stop time this time. Instead, I accelerated it. I accelerated the natural healing process of reality itself by a million-fold. To everyone else in the academy, it looked as if the rift simply shrank and vanished in a second, emitting a brief flash of golden light. Neat. Tidy. As if it had never been.
But for Alaric, who was watching me, the experience was entirely different. He saw the light flare around me, not a magical light, but something deeper, something fundamental. He saw the very threads of time weaving together like threads on a cosmic loom, stitching the wound closed in an instant. He saw the mechanism of the universe repairing itself, and I was the one directing the mechanism.
When it was over, the academy was silent. The Calamity Bell no longer rang. There was no more screaming. Just a stunned silence, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the rustle of trees in the breeze.
I lowered my hand.
Alaric turned to me slowly. He had aged ten years in those few minutes.
"Who... what are you?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.
"I'm Leo," I said, shrugging. "I'm still that janitor boy."
He shook his head slowly, carefully, as if afraid any sudden movement would make me unmake him like I had unmade the Anomalies. "No... no, you are not. You are... something else. Something... other."
I pulled a chair from a nearby porch and pushed it toward him. He staggered and sat, his legs no longer able to hold him.
"What will you do now?" he asked, staring at his trembling hands. "Will you erase my memory? Will you erase all of this?"
I considered it for a moment. It was an option. Rolling time back, making this day disappear as if it never was. But it felt... wrong. It was a retreat. And for the first time since I was reborn, I didn't feel like retreating.
"No," I said. "I won't."
He looked up, startled.
"You are an intelligent man, Professor Alaric. You understand weight. The burden of knowledge. You now carry that burden."
"Why?" he asked, his confusion now surpassing his fear. "Why hide? Why let them call you a null? A servant?"
I smiled, a sad smile this time. "Because peace is the most precious power of all. And because true power isn't about showing what you can do, but in choosing what you do not do. I've lived an ordinary life before. I know its value."
We heard hurried footsteps. Magus Theron and Elara were running toward us, their faces etched with confusion and concern.
"Alaric! What happened? We saw the rift... just vanish!" Theron said.
Then he noticed me sitting calmly opposite the pale professor. "The boy? What are you doing here?"
Before I could answer, Alaric spoke, his voice steadier now, coated with a newly found authority.
"He was... assisting me," Alaric said, his eyes locked on mine. It was a message. "He was taking shelter here during the assault. It was fortunate the rift closed when it did."
Theron looked between us, skeptical, but his inability to explain what had happened made him accept the simplest explanation. "Fortunate indeed. Well, boy, back to your work. There's a mess that needs cleaning."
That was my cue to leave. I stood, picking up my mop.
"Yes, sir."
As I passed Elara, she caught my arm. Her green eyes searched my face, filled with a sharp intelligence and a dawning understanding.
"Thank you, Leo," she whispered, her words for my ears only.
I gave a slight nod and walked on.
I didn't look back. I knew Alaric was watching me go, carrying a secret that was too heavy to bear and too dangerous to share.
In the days that followed, the academy was in repair. Kael was hailed as a hero for fending off the Anomalies in the courtyard, a story Alaric actively encouraged. Elara became a prominent student in the healing arts. And I, the magic-less janitor, went back to cleaning up the mess.
But things were different.
Professor Alaric no longer hunted me. Instead, he avoided me. When we passed in the halls, his greeting was a silent, respectful nod, laden with unspoken knowledge. He had become the keeper of my secret, not by choice, but by necessity.
One day, I found a book on my cot in the basement. It was an old tome titled "Transcendental Theories of Time and Space." There was no note, but I knew it was from him. It was a gift, an acknowledgment, and perhaps a way of saying he understood, in his own way.
I realized my quiet life as I knew it was over. I was no longer the invisible janitor. I was now a hidden master, a king in the shadows. And I had a royal retainer, one man who knew the truth and feared it.
But strangely, instead of feeling exposed, I felt a slight sense of freedom. I no longer had to pretend completely. There was one person in this world who knew who I truly was.
I picked up the book and began to flip through its pages. The theories were primitive, mostly wrong, but interesting nonetheless.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this new life could be... differently enjoyable.
I looked at the narrow walls of the servant's basement, and imagined the wide world beyond it, a world where I was its most powerful entity, yet chose to be its janitor.
And I smiled.