The scream shattered the stillness.
Cael bolted upright in bed, chest heaving, drenched in sweat. The moonlight through the window slashed across the floor like silver blades, but it was the silence that gnawed at him—the unnatural stillness after the storm.
He hadn't screamed.
But someone had. In his dream. A voice that knew him intimately—yet called him by another name.
His fingers trembled as they brushed against the sheets. Cold. Too cold.
Fragments flickered behind his eyes:
—A battlefield drowned in black fire, the flames devouring the sky itself.
—A woman crying, blood staining her mouth as she screamed a name he didn't recognize.
—A man—himself, but not—standing over a burning sigil etched into flesh, too ancient, too precise.
The system mark.
But… not his.
"I've never seen that place.
But I remember it."
A sharp chime sliced through the haze.
[Warning: Memory Desync Detected.]
[Recalibrating User Thread.]
[Trace Residue Present: Previous System Host.]
Cael's heartbeat stilled.
He stared at the floating notification as it pulsed unnaturally—off-tempo, like a skipped heartbeat in reality itself.
"Previous host?"
He tried to navigate into the system's deeper memory cache. Folders flickered in and out of existence. Logs fractured into corrupted strings. Every attempt to open them led to error messages, code static, or worse—rejection.
Then a new prompt appeared:
[Legacy Fragment Accessed – View? Y/N]
For a moment, he hesitated.
Then: Yes.
The world around him froze.
All sound died.
Then: light—harsh, raw, and red.
He stood within a vision. Not real, yet more vivid than memory.
A man stood there.
Older. Worn down. Hollow-eyed and hunched over like a beast with too many sins etched into his skin. He wore the academy's uniform, though it was torn and bloodied, soaked in filth and regret.
His hands trembled as he gripped the shoulders of a dying woman—young, eyes wide, familiar in a way that sliced deep.
"I had to rewrite you," the man whispered. His voice cracked, broken by grief long since fossilized. "You were too kind to survive this world."
The woman smiled faintly. "You… forgot who you were."
Then the System spoke.
[Rewrite: Companion Deleted.]
[Emotional Burden Reduced.]
The man screamed.
It wasn't a cry of pain. It was loss, carved into raw throat and dying soul.
And then, like a tower of sand against time, he crumbled into dust, the System interface flickering coldly where he had stood.
Cael jolted awake, half-falling from the edge of his bed.Sweat slicked his back. The room felt like a coffin—too quiet, too still.His hands wouldn't stop trembling.
He stumbled to the mirror, tugging open his robe.The sigil etched over his heart—the System Mark—still pulsed, but not in its usual cool blue.It throbbed red.Faint. Like an ember. Like a warning.
A knock.
Kaelith's voice, muffled but musical:"Darling? You look like you saw a ghost. Want me to gut it for you?"
He forced his breath even. His voice came out too smooth, too controlled."Just a dream. Go away."
A pause.
"Okay~ But if the ghost touches you, I'll rip its spine out and braid your name into it~"
He didn't respond. The mirror showed his reflection.But he didn't feel reflected anymore.
Inside him, something stirred—not fear. Not sadness.Doubt.
He was not the first.
The deeper Cael descended into the Sealed Archives, the more the air thinned. Dust choked the corridors, and forgotten glyphs shimmered faintly on stone shelves that hadn't been touched in decades—maybe centuries.
Here, the oldest magical contracts were kept. Forbidden spells. Divine edicts. Fragmented systems discarded or sealed.
His boots echoed in the chamber of silence.
He searched.
Row after row. Page after page.
Ritual logs. Soul-binding tomes. Fated oaths recorded in dragon's blood.
But nothing—no mention of Sable, no records of anyone that matched the descriptions of those visions.
"There must be something."
His voice sounded small in the vast, dead air. He gritted his teeth, fingers curling around a shattered ledger like it might bleed answers if he squeezed hard enough.
But the pages were blank.
He sat on the cold floor between pillars carved with the names of forgotten heroes, head bowed.
Those visions... that man who looked like him, spoke like him, suffered like him—"Were they echoes? Or warnings?"
"If there were others before me… did they also think they were in control?"
Did they also believe they were rewriting fate, only to discover they'd been scripted from the start?
The System remained quiet.
Until it didn't.
[You are not a pawn.][You are the inevitable.]
The words rang in his skull like prophecy. Or like a trap.
Back in his dormitory, the fire had burned low.
Cael stood before the cracked mirror above the washbasin. He looked into his own eyes.
They were calm. Too calm.
He had sacrificed empathy, trust, love—each piece cut away for precision, for power, for survival.
But then——for a split second——his reflection changed.
The flicker was near imperceptible. But he saw it.
Not his own face.His face. But older. Gaunt. Hollow-eyed.Sable.
A ghost in the glass, watching him. Judging him. Or perhaps... warning him.
Cael didn't flinch.
Only whispered:
"Then I'll finish what you couldn't."
The mirror stilled. His reflection returned.
But the room felt colder.
And outside the window, the stars had shifted.