I looked down at my blood-slick hands.
They were deep crimson.
Horribly warm.
I could hear the man heaving beneath me.
Even through the torrential downpour, I could only hear two things clearly.
His breathing.
And my own heartbeat.
When I finally tore my eyes away from my hands, I looked down at the man on the ground.
I saw the fear in his eyes.
The shock.
The despair.
Tears ran down his face, mixing with the rain, and beneath the sharp smell of wet stone, I caught the faint scent of urine.
Then the smell of blood hit me.
Iron.
Thick.
Sour.
It crawled into my nose and struck the back of my throat.
It smelled like guilt.
Like a sin given shape.
My stomach lurched.
Before I could throw up, before I could even gag, a soft hand fell onto my small back.
I froze.
A soft, sultry voice came from behind me.
Even through the rain, even through the man's wailing, I could hear her clearly.
"Oh, my boy. My sweet, sweet boy."
Her hand moved slowly up my back.
"You are too kind for your own good, Kamrik, my dear."
The man beneath me sobbed harder.
"Even when faced with a criminal, with filth crawling through the streets of this world, you still hesitate."
Her voice was gentle.
That made it worse.
"Remember, in the world we are guiding into being, creatures like this will not exist."
I looked down at the ground.
Right in front of my tiny feet was a knife.
Its blade was slick with blood, the rain washing crimson trails down its edge.
The blood ran between the cracks of the cobblestone, slipping through the alley and disappearing into the sewage below.
The voice returned.
"You must remember why we do this."
A pause.
Then, softer:
"For me."
I leaned down and gripped the knife.
The man's breath caught.
His cries grew louder.
But the rain swallowed most of it.
"Good."
Her hand wrapped around my arm, then slid down to my hand, steadying my shaking grip.
"Killing is simply something that must be done," she whispered. "Something that has to happen when the world strays from its proper course."
Her grip tightened.
My heart beat faster.
"When you kill the animals you eat, do you mourn them?"
I couldn't answer.
"No," she whispered. "Because they serve their purpose."
Her hand tightened over mine.
"It is the same with insects. The same with rot. The same with anything that crawls where it was never meant to be."
She guided the knife forward.
"People like this…"
She paused.
"Things like this."
I took a shaky step.
The knife trembled in my hand.
"They are mistakes," she whispered. "Loose threads in the design. And loose threads must be cut before they ruin the whole tapestry."
I took another step.
"By the will of our lord, sinful creatures like this have no place in the fated world."
I raised the knife into the air.
The man's wailing was drowned beneath the rain.
Beneath my heartbeat.
Beneath her voice.
"They have no place in his world."
My breathing spiraled out of control.
My fingers tightened around the handle.
The knife felt too heavy.
Too sharp.
Too real.
"Now, please."
She hugged me from behind.
Warm.
Soft.
Loving.
Wrong.
"Would you kill this thing for Mommy?"
I plunged the knife down.
I woke up screaming.
"AHHH!"
My breathing was out of control, and cold sweat clung to my skin.
My hands shot up in front of my face.
Empty.
Clean.
Shaking.
"Wha—what was that?!"
Before I could process anything, one feeling surged up from my gut.
Literally.
Bile rose into my throat.
Before the inevitable could happen, I shoved off my blanket and rushed to the bathroom.
Then I heaved.
Before I knew it, I was hunched over the toilet for more than ten minutes, throwing up everything I had eaten yesterday.
At some point, I was just throwing up nothing.
"Gahh—uh…"
I vomited again.
Thankfully, it was the last time.
I wiped my chin with the back of my hand.
Then I looked down at them.
My hands.
Clean.
Empty.
Shaking.
But the only thought that came through was:
"I—I have to wash them…"
I stumbled toward the sink and turned the water on.
Then I started scrubbing.
Hard.
"Uhh—come off…"
The blood was not there.
I knew that.
Some part of me knew that.
But the feeling of it was still there, hot and slick between my fingers.
I scrubbed harder.
"Come off!"
The anger only made me press down more.
I poured more soap onto my hands and kept scrubbing.
The skin started to sting.
Then burn.
Then tear.
Small red lines opened across my knuckles, but even that did not stop me.
I had to wash it off.
The blood.
The sin.
The feeling of the knife in my hand.
It was only when I heard my own voices shouting behind me that I realized I was hurting myself.
Knight.
"Young man, stop it! You're tearing your skin! What happened?"
He tried to grab me.
Of course, his hands passed through.
He was a ghost.
But that did not stop him from trying.
"You must stop! Young man, listen to me!"
"H-huh…"
I looked up.
In the mirror, I saw Knight behind me, his face filled with panic.
Then I saw the others.
Lazy was upright and alert, a single cold drop of sweat sliding down the side of his face.
Bloody was sneering, but his heart was beating loudly in his exposed chest.
And Sleazy.
Sleazy was looking at me with pity.
That look pulled me out more than anything else.
Because through his abyssal eyes, I saw the first real emotion he had shown since this new life started.
Pity.
Sadness.
And recognition.
That was the worst part.
Recognition.
Then I finally saw myself.
Vomit and snot streamed down my bare chest.
My eyes were red.
Tears were running down my face.
"Hah."
I touched my cheek and gave a small, broken laugh.
Knight went quiet.
His expression softened into something even more painful than panic.
"Young man…" he said carefully. "Are you alright?"
I heard Lazy's wary voice behind me.
"What happened?"
I turned around and gave them a shaky look.
"I—I think…"
My breath trembled.
"I think I killed someone."
That was the last time I would look at my hands for a while.
The next two days passed in a strange haze.
Not bad.
Not good.
Just... muted.
I still woke up every morning.
Still attended classes.
Still trained during lunch.
Still listened to Professor Ludwig drone on about magical theory while half the class struggled to stay awake.
Life continued.
The world didn't stop because I had remembered something horrible.
Which, somehow, felt unfair.
Every now and then, I'd catch myself staring at my hands.
Then I'd immediately stop.
The memory always followed.
Rain.
Blood.
A knife.
A crying man.
So I kept myself busy.
Training helped.
Or rather, Bloody helped.
"Again."
I swung.
"Pathetic."
I swung harder.
"Again."
I swung once more.
"Still pathetic."
Sweat dripped down my face.
I gritted my teeth and swung again.
"Again."
The blood-red ghost folded his arms.
"Marginally less pathetic."
Oddly enough, being insulted by a bloodthirsty maniac was therapeutic.
It gave me something simple to focus on.
Swing.
Step.
Breathe.
Repeat.
No memories.
No nightmares.
Just exhaustion.
The only thing that truly changed was Carlos.
I stopped sitting beside him.
Stopped talking to him unless absolutely necessary.
Not because I hated him.
Not because I had given up on saving him.
But because every time I looked at him, I remembered exactly why I was trying to save him in the first place.
The future.
The deaths.
The God Tree falling.
Entire cities burning.
And now another thought had joined those memories.
A simple, ugly question.
If someone becomes a monster later...
Does that justify killing them now?
The cult certainly thought so.
The memory had made that painfully clear.
They hadn't seen a man.
They had seen a future criminal.
A future sinner.
A future threat.
And because of that, they convinced a child to murder him.
The thought disgusted me.
It also terrified me.
Because if I wasn't careful, I could end up thinking the same way.
The future was dangerous knowledge.
Knowing what someone would become made it easy to forget what they currently were.
People.
That realization stayed with me.
Thankfully, the ghosts seemed to understand.
None of them pushed.
None of them demanded answers.
Knight checked on me occasionally.
Lazy watched quietly.
Bloody pretended not to care.
Only Sleazy approached me directly.
It happened while I was resting beside the waterfall after training.
The roar of rushing water filled the air.
Mist drifted across the clearing.
For once, nobody spoke.
Then Sleazy broke the silence.
"I'm sorry, Seer."
I glanced toward him.
He sat beside the waterfall with his arms resting on his knees.
For a moment, he looked less like a manipulative cultist and more like a tired man.
"It's okay," I said.
"No."
His voice was quiet.
"It's really not."
He stared at the water.
"That was my first kill."
I froze.
"I recognized the memory immediately."
His expression darkened.
"I remembered the smell. The fear. The blood."
His fingers tightened.
"And afterward, I scrubbed my hands until they bled."
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't really anything to say.
Sleazy laughed bitterly.
"The funny part is that I thought it made me strong."
His eyes drifted upward.
"I thought I had finally earned her approval."
The bitterness vanished.
Only sadness remained.
"I was a child."
For a few moments, neither of us spoke.
Eventually, I sighed.
"Then maybe we're both idiots."
That earned a small chuckle.
"Perhaps."
I leaned back against a rock.
"If I'm going to keep moving forward, I can't let one memory stop me."
Sleazy looked at me.
I met his gaze.
"I'm not going to become that person."
His expression softened.
"No."
For the first time, there was no mockery in his voice.
"No, I don't think you will."
Three hours later, I found myself riding in a carriage toward the edge of the academy's territory.
Toward the real world.
Or at least, the version of it that existed outside the academy's protective barrier.
I rested my chin against my hand and watched the scenery pass by.
The road wound through rolling hills before eventually approaching the town of Ruan.
The town was lively.
Merchants shouted from storefronts.
Children ran through the streets.
Workers hauled crates between buildings.
People laughed.
People argued.
People lived.
And every single one of them would die in the future.
The thought hit harder than I expected.
I looked away from the window.
Not this time.
This time things would be different.
"Wonderful. It feels nice to be back in Ruan."
Knight's voice drifted from behind me.
"What do you think, young man? Does this place not bring back memories?"
I snorted.
"Not particularly."
Knight blinked.
"Really?"
"Really."
I pointed toward the town.
"Students from the Studies Department aren't exactly treated well here."
His eyebrows rose.
"What do you mean?"
"We can only stay for a few hours at a time, and most places won't even let us use their facilities."
Knight looked genuinely offended.
"That sounds absurd."
"Welcome to academy politics."
Knight shook his head.
"How unfortunate."
A wet squelching noise interrupted him.
Bloody appeared beside him.
"Bah. If someone tells you that you can't go somewhere, ignore them."
I rolled my eyes.
"That's terrible advice."
"It's excellent advice."
"It's literally criminal advice."
"Exactly."
Before the argument could continue, the carriage came to a stop.
A voice shouted from outside.
"All students off! The barrier checkpoint is ahead!"
I stood and stretched.
Then I looked toward the ghosts.
"Disappear for now."
Bloody frowned.
"Why?"
"Because there are going to be powerful mages here."
"So?"
I stared at him.
"The vice headmaster is here."
Bloody immediately shut his mouth.
Knight nodded.
"A wise precaution."
"Exactly."
The last thing I needed was explaining why four dead versions of myself were floating around behind me.
One by one, the ghosts vanished.
Then I stepped out of the carriage.
A massive field stretched before me.
Dozens of students were already gathering into groups beneath their professors.
The atmosphere buzzed with excitement.
Most of them were leaving academy grounds for the first time.
I quickly found Professor Ludwig's group and joined the line.
A few minutes later, the procession began moving.
The barrier itself was almost impossible to see.
It blended perfectly into the surrounding landscape.
If I didn't already know it was there, I would have walked straight through without noticing.
Eventually, my turn arrived.
I stepped forward.
The world changed.
Light flooded my vision.
Then color.
Then scale.
My breath caught.
The God Tree dominated the horizon.
No.
Dominated wasn't a strong enough word.
It consumed the horizon.
Its roots stretched across the heavens like glowing rivers.
Its branches covered entire regions.
One enormous branch hung overhead, blotting out vast portions of the sky.
Yet despite that impossible shadow, the world remained bright.
Golden light flowed through the bark itself.
The tree illuminated the land simply by existing.
"Ah... the Western Branch."
The words escaped me before I realized it.
I'd seen it countless times in my previous life.
Yet somehow it still felt overwhelming.
The Medium of Light.
The pillar supporting civilization.
One of the greatest wonders in existence.
And someday...
It would fall.
My jaw tightened.
Because of Carlos.
Because of the future.
Because of everything I was trying to prevent.
"Hello, students."
A voice echoed across the entire gathering.
I immediately looked forward.
And froze.
Even knowing he would be here didn't help.
Some people simply possessed a presence that couldn't be ignored.
Vice Headmaster William Al Vermont stood before the crowd.
Young.
Calm.
Immaculately dressed.
A black-and-red uniform covered in medals rested across his shoulders.
A monocle sat over one eye.
His blond hair brushed against his brow.
And replacing his left arm was a beautifully crafted metallic prosthetic.
Power rolled off him in invisible waves.
Not enough to crush.
Just enough to remind everyone present exactly who stood before them.
"I am Vice Headmaster William Al Vermont."
His voice carried effortlessly across the field.
"For many of you, this will be the first and last time we meet."
A few nervous students straightened immediately.
William raised his metal arm.
"Please remain calm."
The air trembled.
Mana surged.
"I will now transfer all of you to the minor branch of the Western Branch."
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"Hold on tightly."