"Day 46 – Evening. Private log encrypted.Today, something was… off.The trials feel wrong. Too precise. Too clean. Like pieces locking into place before anyone lifts a hand.People I thought I knew feel like strangers wearing their skin.Déjà vu. But worse. As if they're being rewritten behind my back."
Leon's pen hovered over the parchment. He stared out the dorm window, eyes narrowing as the lamplight flickered.
"I've fought monsters, bandits, even nightmares. But this? This is something else.Like the rules of the world are changing—and I'm the only one who remembers how it used to be."
He set the pen down.
And frowned.
The next morning, the training arena buzzed with quiet tension. Swords clashed, arcane runes flared. The second-tier duel circuits had become the perfect place for students to watch the rising stars.
Leon stood across from Elias.
Just a mock spar.
On paper.
"Ready?" Elias asked, his grip confident, footwork already shifting into formation.
Leon blinked.
Something was wrong.
"Elias was supposed to be sloppy. Late on the draw. Always reactive, never predictive."
They engaged.
Elias sidestepped Leon's feint—correctly, not by accident. Parried a low slash, countered with a twisting shoulder hook, pivoted into an almost textbook arcane movement that flowed too smoothly for someone of his supposed level.
They broke apart. Leon's heart raced—but not from exertion.
It was like sparring someone with weeks of battlefield experience. Not a friend he'd dragged through novice ranks.
Again.
Leon lunged. Elias pivoted before the blade came close, a smirk in his eyes that was never there before.
Again.
Again.
It ended with Elias landing a clean strike to Leon's ribs.
Leon gasped, staggered back.
"Nice work," Elias said, breath steady.
Leon stared at him.
No sweat.
Perfect control.
"What in the hell…?"
"That kind of growth doesn't happen overnight."
The instructors' offices were lined with aged books and echoing silence. Leon stepped into Elrin's chamber with a rare urgency.
The old duelist sat polishing a set of etched gauntlets, one eye flicking up.
"Elrin," Leon said. "I've got a question about the frontier evaluations."
Elrin raised a brow. "Mm. What about them?"
"Cael isn't on the roster."
A pause.
Elrin resumed polishing.
Leon pressed on. "That's not possible. He ranked high in last month's trials. Top five. So why's he being excluded?"
"Oh, that?" Elrin waved a hand casually. "He's been transferred to a strategic observatory rotation. In the White Spires. Classified, of course."
Leon frowned. "That's a historical research wing. They don't even have combat fields."
"Exactly," Elrin said, nodding as if that made complete sense.
"That doesn't make sense," Leon replied, voice rising. "He's a frontline prodigy. What use is he cataloguing tower ruins?"
"According to the administration," Elrin said, "his high mana affinity makes him a high-resonance candidate for crystalline mapping."
Leon blinked. "That's not even—"
"–a real field of study?" Elrin finished with a smile. "I assure you, it is. We just invented it. You wouldn't understand."
Leon's jaw clenched. "So this is what? A favor? A cover?"
Elrin simply raised his brow again. "You're asking too many questions, Leon. Best focus on your own evaluations."
He dismissed him with a flick of the wrist.
Leon walked out of the chamber in silence.
The hallway blurred around the edges, students passing like shadows. Laughter. Magic flares. Friendly duels.
All of it felt… warped.
Cael.
Elias.
Even the instructors.
"This isn't right."
The world wasn't changing by chance.
Someone was behind it.
And Leon—chosen hero or not—was starting to suspect he was no longer the main character in this story.
Leon sat alone in his dormitory, back straight against the cold wall, fingers interlaced in quiet resolve.
"Open Archive," he said softly.
A faint hum answered. Runes formed in the air, cascading downward like falling stars, lines of divine text threading themselves into a flowing codex. The Archive—his lineage's divine relic, accessible only to noble candidates—floated before him like an ancient tome pulsing with light.
He navigated past the trial logs and battle records.
To Cael Ardyn.
The screen flickered.
Then glitched.
The section blurred, glyphs distorting into broken code. His request looped endlessly, rerouted.
[Access Denied: Interference Detected. Unknown Rewrite Signature.]
A heavy silence fell.
Leon stared, eyes narrowing.
The Archive had locked him out. It didn't know what had altered the entries. That was supposed to be impossible.
His expression darkened.
"That's new. The system's never done that"
The courtyard buzzed with idle talk after sparring. Leon leaned against a marble pillar, watching students pass, his mind churning.
That's when Lira approached.
She smiled warmly, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. "Hey, Leon. You doing okay? You've seemed a bit... distant lately."
"I've been thinking," he said vaguely. "About people."
Lira laughed. "Well, if you're thinking about Cael, you're not the only one."
Leon tensed. "What do you mean?"
She glanced around. "He helped me last week. Ceron Valte tried harassing me again after class—Cael stepped in. Said something I didn't hear, but Ceron's face went pale. He hasn't looked at me since."
Leon kept his tone even. "That doesn't sound like the Cael I knew."
"Oh, he was so charming. Calm. Even made a joke after." Her eyes lit up. "It's strange. I always thought he was... cold. But now? He seems almost—heroic."
Another classmate nearby chimed in. "Yeah, did you see his barrier spell in the last skirmish? That wasn't student-level magic. I asked Instructor Thelir—she said it was high-tier spatial anchoring. Even she couldn't cast it with such finesse."
Leon nodded, smile thin. "Impressive."
But inside?
"No one learns that in three months."
He watched their laughter fade, their trust deepen—Cael, weaving his way through their admiration like a spider through silk.
That evening, Leon found Elias on the terrace, overlooking the quiet academy gardens. The lamps below shimmered like fireflies in soft wind.
"Hey," Leon said, joining him. "Remember that duel we had when we were ten?"
Elias glanced at him, puzzled. "Which one?"
"You cheated," Leon chuckled. "Used that broken training staff to trip me. You claimed it was a 'tactical maneuver.'"
Elias blinked. "That didn't happen."
Leon's smile stiffened. "Sure it did. You even got in trouble with your tutor. Swore you'd master footwork so you never had to cheat again."
Elias frowned. "I... don't remember any of that."
Leon studied him. Not just the words. The eyes. The tone.
He wasn't lying.
His memory had changed.
It aligned with the version Leon had seen forming around Cael.
Elias scratched his head. "You sure that was me?"
Leon gave a tired laugh. "Yeah. I guess I was mistaken."
He turned to the night sky, breath slow.
"I'm not crazy.""The world is shifting under my feet."
The moonlight glinted off the academy's spires, casting elongated shadows across stone pathways. Most students were asleep by now—curfew long passed. Yet Leon moved silently along the upper gallery, something tugging at his instincts.
A flicker of movement below.
He paused, just behind a balcony column, narrowing his eyes.
Cael.
Walking calmly, his posture as poised as ever—but not alone.
Kaelith was with him.
Leon had seen her before—on campus, beside Cael, quiet but ever-present. Yet this time… something felt wrong.
She was clinging to him. Her arm looped tight around his. Her steps practically mirrored his own. One hand constantly touched him—his chest, his shoulder, his fingers—like a possessive shadow. And her eyes…
Too devoted. Too hungry. Too obsessed.
Leon held his breath and watched as the two disappeared down a flight of stairs—and into a hallway clearly marked Restricted – Faculty Use Only.
The brass sigils guarding the door pulsed once.
Then they opened—on their own.
Leon's pulse slowed to a concentrated beat. "That shouldn't be possible. Not even I can go in there as a noble and Cael's just a commoner."
And yet Cael walked in like he owned it.
The door sealed behind them, silent and sure.
Leon stepped back, letting the darkness fold around him.
"He's definetly hiding something."
Later that night, Leon stood atop the east balcony tower—his usual retreat when the world made too little sense.
The gardens below slept in moonlight. The academy rooftops glistened with fading dew.
Everything looked normal. Serene. Untouched.
But it wasn't.
Something had changed.
Not just with Elias. Or the trials. Or the Archive.
With Cael.
Leon's hand rested lightly on the marble railing, fingers twitching with thought. His eyes were no longer unsure. They were narrowed, watching.
Studying.
He had never really paid attention to Cael—not beyond the typical noble distance.
But now?
"He's everywhere. In whispers. In praises. In records that don't add up.
And in shadows where no student should be."
"I have a feeling," Leon murmured, his voice lost to the wind, "he's hiding something."
A beat passed.
"Something deep."
The air felt colder than before.