The Academy's southern courtyard pulsed with celebration.
Banners fluttered overhead in the evening breeze, golden and crimson. Lanterns danced in the air like captured stars, held aloft by levitation glyphs and subtle magic. Students clustered around marble benches and tiered platforms, still in their light armor from the day's mock tournament, laughing and recounting their near-victories, their strategic blunders, their well-earned bruises.
Music played—an ensemble of enchanted instruments orchestrated by a student from the Bardic Division. Cakes floated delicately through the crowd, served by magical trays. The scent of roasted meat and spiced wine hung heavy in the air. For once, peace reigned at the Arcanum Crown Academy.
Even Cael allowed himself to linger at the fringes of the crowd, near the edge of the fountain where moonlight pooled in the water like liquid silver. He didn't smile, but he didn't frown either. That was enough.
Then, the world fractured.
A deafening crack split the sky—like glass shattering against itself.
The celebratory lights flared, then imploded into sparks. Magic surged through the air with a screeching sound, wild and untethered. The very sky above them twisted—a writhing knot of unstable spell threads swirling into a single, jagged tear in reality.
And from that tear… something came through.
A shape—wrong and vast. Dripping with arcane corruption. Half-serpent, half-hound, its body pulsed with molten veins, limbs twitching erratically as if barely holding together. A malformed beast-class summon, but its aether signature was wrong—tainted, unstable, tampered with.
A collective gasp surged through the crowd.
Then screams.
The creature landed in the middle of the courtyard with a concussive thud that cracked marble and sent shockwaves rippling out. A moment later, chaos bloomed.
Students scattered, knocking over tables, tripping over each other. Protective barriers flickered to life around the courtyard perimeter, but too late to stop the initial impact. A small group of instructors near the far side sprang into action, launching restraint glyphs and warding sigils—but they were too far to contain it immediately.
Lightning arced from the creature's broken horns, splitting a nearby pillar. One of the enchanted instruments shattered mid-note.
Blood was in the air.
And Cael didn't move.
Not yet.
He scanned the chaos automatically—tactical, cold. Instinct born from lifetimes of danger. The faculty would handle containment. The barrier wards would seal the perimeter. Casualties would be minimal—unless…
A flicker of color caught his eye.
Near the edge of the cracked northern walkway, rubble from a collapsed archway had pinned a student beneath jagged stone and splintered tile.
Lira.
The one he had defended against Ceron Valte's cruelty.
She wasn't moving—frozen in place, back against the wall, one leg pinned beneath debris. Her wide eyes were locked on the beast, breath shallow. Not screaming. Not crying.
Just frozen.
The corrupted summon turned its head then, something primal in its gaze catching on her stillness. Its body shifted, coiling. Preparing to strike.
And no one was close enough.
The instructors were focused on the front. The other students were fleeing.
Cael's hands tightened.
"She won't survive."
"You could walk away," the cold logic whispered. "No one would blame you. She's not important."
But her eyes—he remembered—had looked at him with something raw after that day. Trust. Respect. Like he was better than the rest of them.
And now, she was going to die.
Unless he moved.
A familiar chill bloomed in the base of Cael's skull.
[Fatal Event Detected. Rewrite Available.][Target: Lira Halwen – Civilian Class.][Projected Outcome: Death in 3.2 seconds.]
Rewrite Options:– Alter Trajectory– Collapse Magic Density– Save Civilian
[Cost: Permanent Reduction – Empathy Cluster: Kindness.]
Time slowed.
The world blurred—screams became echoes, the beast's growl distant and hollow. Everything tunneled toward the girl pinned beneath the rubble, eyes wide and waiting for death.
Cael didn't breathe.
"Kindness."
He still remembered the feeling. Not as an abstraction—but real. The instinct to comfort. The ache when someone else was in pain. The invisible tug that made you reach out, even when there was nothing to gain.
Once, he might have believed that was strength.
Now, it was a luxury.
A flash of memory—brief and clear.
That day in the hallway, when he had shielded her from Ceron's scorn.
Lira had followed him afterward, hesitant but sincere. And she'd smiled—not because she had to, but because she believed something about him.
"You don't seem like the others, Cael."
The words hung suspended.
Then they unraveled.
Like a thread burning from both ends, the image of her face—the softness of that moment—flickered.
Then faded.
He whispered, so quiet only the system might hear:"Then I'll be exactly like the others."
And he confirmed the rewrite.
[Rewrite Confirmed. Executing Reality Adjustment.]
[Rewriting Fate Node: Temporal Collision – Summon Behavior Arc.]
[Applying Alteration: Density Collapse – Null Path Triggered.]
[Cost Applied: Kindness – Severed.]
[System Note: Remaining Emotional Clusters: 3.]
The world jerked.
Like a thread being plucked in a loom of reality.
The creature's claw, mid-swing, suddenly wavered—its arc collapsing into itself as if gravity had folded inward. The summoning field around its limbs short-circuited with a snapping hiss. Its form destabilized for a breath—
—and in that breath, a shimmer of translucent magic flared to life around Lira.
A perfect dome.
Her eyes widened as the creature's attack distorted against the dome's edge, disintegrating harmlessly into light and heat. She was untouched.
The dome vanished a heartbeat later. The beast reared back, but too late—
Instructors arrived in a coordinated surge of sigils and destructive force. Binding glyphs wrapped the creature in a spiderweb of golden chains, forcing it to the ground with a primal shriek.
It dissolved seconds later into raw aether.
Dead.
Silence followed.
Then scattered applause. Cheers. Someone shouted that it must've been a miraculous fluctuation in ambient magic—perhaps caused by the beast's instability.
No one questioned it.
No one saw the cost.
Cael stood still amid the ruins.
He didn't go to her. Didn't look when Lira was pulled from the rubble by healers, still shaking but alive.
The price hadn't left a mark on his body.
But he felt it.
The space where something had once been.
Like a room in his chest that had been emptied and locked, and he no longer remembered what it used to hold.
He turned, walking away before anyone could speak to him.
The moon was high now, casting long shadows across the fractured courtyard. Restoration glyphs pulsed faintly from the instructors' magic, rebuilding what they could. The celebration was canceled. Laughter had faded.
But footsteps approached from behind.
"Cael!"
He turned slowly.
Lira Halwen stood there, dirt on her cheeks, a healing ward faintly glowing on her wrist. Her eyes were glassy, rimmed with red, her expression an open mix of confusion and hope.
"I don't know how," she said, stepping closer, "but I… I felt you. Just before it happened. When I was trapped—I thought I was going to die, and then it was like something pushed the danger away."
Her hands shook as she held them over her heart.
"I knew it was you. I don't know why, but I felt it."
Cael blinked.
He said nothing for a moment. Then, with a breath too flat to be called a sigh, he replied, "It wasn't me."
Lira froze.
"I didn't do anything," he said, tone clipped and even. "You survived. That's all."
Her lip trembled. "Did… did I do something wrong?"
Cael tilted his head slightly, like observing a problem he didn't understand.
Wrong?
The question didn't compute.
What would have compelled him to offer comfort before?
Nothing surfaced. No instinct. No ache. No ghost of warmth.
There was only silence in the place where kindness had once lived.
He looked away.
Later, Cael passed through the halls of the dormitories, nodding mechanically to those who greeted him. When classmates laughed, he mirrored their reactions. When someone offered a high-five, he raised his hand and returned it.
But the gestures had no weight. No tether to intent.
He was an echo of himself.
"There should've been something," he thought. "A weight. A glow. But it's gone."
Kaelith, watching him from the shadowed edge of the corridor, narrowed her eyes.
She didn't say anything at first.
But her gaze lingered. Studying the stiffness in his shoulders, the way his eyes never quite focused.
He wasn't the same.
And she knew it.
That night, Cael stood in his room, the light from the window washing him in silver.
He stared at his hands.
They had moved to save a life.
They had shaped a rewrite. Altered magic. Twisted fate.
And yet…
There was nothing inside.
No pride. No shame. Not even guilt.
Only a gnawing emptiness that deepened the longer he looked.
He whispered, voice dry and distant:
"I keep rewriting people… but every time, I lose a part of myself."
His fists trembled, curling tight.
"And the worst part? I don't even remember what I've already lost."