The morning sunlight cast long shadows through the grand halls of Astraeus Academy, gilding the floor tiles in gold.
Cael Ardyn moved like clockwork—measured, rehearsed, exact.
Smiling when expected. Speaking when required. But his eyes weren't where they were supposed to be.
They were on Leon.
He noticed it during sparring drills. Leon wasn't just participating—he was observing. His gaze didn't waver with normal distraction. His positioning subtly shifted when Cael was near.
It happened again at breakfast. Then twice in the corridor. And once—most tellingly—when Cael pretended not to notice Leon watching him from across the courtyard, hiding behind a conversation with two knights.
"He knows.
Or he suspects. The timeline is veering again."
Cael sat silently in the library, mind calculating, legs crossed under the amber light. He flipped through an old military textbook, its pages unread by his eyes.
[System Notification – ✦ Rewrite Opportunity Detected]
Target: Leon Eorath
Anchor of Trust Identified – Subject: Serin Mirea
Estimated Impact: High
Recommended Action: Destabilization Event
Cael's expression didn't change—but his fingers stilled on the page.
"Of course. Serin."
The gentle tether. The girl who keeps him sane. The one person who steadies his moral compass when everything else spins.
A quiet breath escaped him, not quite a sigh.
"To destabilize the Hero... you don't cut the cliff.
You cut the rope."
The memory was distant but vivid.
Serin kneeling beside Leon during a breakdown, years ago. Her voice the only thing that calmed him. The quiet priestess who had whispered prayers into the dark and held Leon's trembling hand until dawn.
In all the timelines Cael had danced through, some truths remained constant.
Serin was Leon's anchor.
A voice of light when everything grew too loud. A soul untouched by war or ambition.
"And therefore, the most dangerous piece on the board."
If Serin fell in Leon's eyes—if the one pure thing became tainted—it wouldn't destroy him outright.
No.
It would do worse.
It would make him question reality.
Cael moved in silence. A student of shadows and suggestion.
First: the relic.
He retrieved a dormant hex-bound sigil from the Vault of the Forgotten—an old cursed trinket, long purged of its power but still visibly dangerous to the uninformed.
With gloved fingers, he embedded Serin's initials into the cloth wrapping.
Then, he slid it beneath a loose floorboard behind the prayer altar in the Sanctum Chapel, precisely where Serin knelt during her twilight rites.
The next morning, Leon would find it.
Cael wouldn't even need to be present. The whispers would do their job. The seed of doubt, once watered with fear, would blossom on its own.
The relic was buried. The path prepared.
And still… it wasn't enough.
Cael stood alone in his dormitory, moonlight slanting through the high window. The academy grounds were silent, asleep. Yet within him, a storm churned.
"The rope was fraying. But not severed.Doubt isn't destruction. Doubt heals over time."
No. To truly shatter the Hero, Cael needed more than suspicion.
He needed betrayal. A wound that festered.
And in all his lifetimes, in all the loops he had endured, he knew one immutable truth about Leon:
"That night. The festival. The breakdown in the chapel garden."
Leon spoke of it across countless timelines. His turning point. His core.
"If it weren't for Serin that night… I might've fallen."
Cael's lips curled into a cold, melancholic smile.
"So let's see what happens when the one thing that saved you… turns into the one who broke you."
He sat cross-legged on the floor, a ritual circle of warding around him. Incense burned low. The system interface shimmered, casting glyph-light across the floor.
Cael whispered the invocation like a curse:
"System, rewrite: memory thread—Leon. Modify anchor: Serin. Result—mistrust and betrayal overlay."
A hum, deep and mechanical, filled the room.
[Memory Thread Rewrite Initialized.]Target: Leon Eorath – Anchor: Serin Mirea.Inserting Memory Variant: 'Festival Sabotage by Serin.'Warning: Emotional Core Conflict Detected. Rewrite Will Shift Personality Foundation.Rewrite Outcome: Leon recalls Serin betraying his vulnerability, reporting it to authorities. Altered memory embedded.
Then, the price:
[Cost Deducted: Empathy Toward Friends – Moderate][Emotional Response Dampening Activated.]
Cael didn't scream. He didn't collapse.
He just… stiffened.
His breath caught—not in pain, but from something subtler.
Emotional dissonance.
He stared at the fading glow of the interface, then turned to a small frame on his desk.
It was a photo from one of his earliest timelines. Him, Elias, Serin, and Leon. All smiles and messy hair, arms around each other's shoulders. A festival day. The one before the world fell apart.
He looked at it for a long time.
And felt—nothing.
"They were important, once," he said to no one.
His voice was steady, clinical. The words felt like reporting data.
[System Whisper: A necessary pruning. Emotional clarity improves efficiency.]
Cael nodded once.
"Good. The less I feel, the cleaner the cut."
The next day, as the academy stirred with morning prayer, Leon moved through the halls like a shadow.
He didn't speak to anyone at breakfast. His eyes were red—not from lack of sleep, but from conflict.
In the temple garden, Serin found him standing alone, gaze distant.
"Leon," she said gently, "I… heard you were looking for me yesterday. Is everything alright?"
Leon turned. His eyes were hard now—not angry, but guarded.
He looked at her like she was a stranger wearing a familiar face.
"Don't pretend you've always been honest," he said flatly.
Serin blinked. "What—?"
Leon didn't explain.
He didn't give her time to plead, defend, or even understand.
He simply walked past her, the distance between them no longer emotional—but structural. Like a bridge had been shattered in silence, and neither could cross again.
Serin stood in place, hand still half-lifted toward him.
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Leon…?"
But he was already gone.
It was later that evening. The dorms had quieted, the hallways dimmed.
Kaelith wrapped herself around Cael like ivy—her arms encircling his shoulders, her chin resting on his head as he sat unmoving at his desk.
"You've changed again, my darling…" she whispered, breath warm against his ear. "Colder. Sharper. Mmm—so cruel."
Her fingers toyed with the hem of his sleeve, then trailed up to brush his jaw. "Is it because of the rewrite? Did it hurt? Do you want me to hurt him back for you?"
Cael didn't move.
His eyes were fixed on the flickering System interface before him, long since dismissed. Blank now. Empty like his expression.
"I don't hurt anymore," he said quietly.
His voice lacked its usual bite—no sarcasm, no venom. Just… absence.
Kaelith purred, unnerved but excited. "Ooh, such beautiful apathy. But I still see you, you know. I always see you. Even if the world forgets what warmth feels like… I'll love your ashes."
She clung tighter, a smile pressing against his neck. "You can be hollow, Cael. Just let me fill the emptiness."
His fingers twitched, brushing her wrist, neither pushing her away nor holding her closer.
Affection. Possessiveness. Obsession. It all blurred together."
And he didn't care anymore.
That night, Cael sat alone at the edge of the training arena.
From afar, he watched the others—the students still laughing, still clinging to hope, to petty dramas and shallow ambitions.
The moon cast silver over the field.
Their voices echoed distantly, like the memory of a dream he could no longer feel.
He didn't smile.
Didn't frown.
Didn't ache.
Just watched, detached and precise.
His thoughts murmured like scripture:
"Trust is a lie.Emotion, a weakness.If I must become hollow to rewrite fate…So be it."
The System chimed softly, as if pleased:
[Rewrite Successful.]Hero's Alignment: Fracturing.Emotional Cost: Permanent.]
Cael closed his eyes, letting the silence devour him.
Tomorrow, he'd begin unraveling the next thread.