The village slept uneasily.
Even after the laughter died down and the children were coaxed indoors. Even after Sister Lily's prayers were whispered like lullabies, and the candles in the chapel were snuffed out with soft breaths.
Even then—especially then—the silence watched.
I stood outside the chapel, leaning against the stone wall, staring at the sky.
The scar was still there.
It no longer pulsed.
It simply existed. Like something that had chosen to stay.
My cloak flapped against my legs in the wind. The chains along the hem rattled gently—a sound I'd grown used to, almost like breath.
My rune-scarred arm ached dully beneath its wrappings, as if the marks were tugging inward, toward something I couldn't name.
Behind me, the village's heart beat slow and cautious. I could feel it now. The magic of this place—Hage's magic—wasn't strong, but it was warm. Gentle. Honest.
It didn't know what I was.
Didn't know that I had bled something into the world tonight that would never wash away.
Not fully.
My vision blurred.
No… not blurred.
Shifted.
I straightened, immediately alert. My irises burned faintly, flickering violet. Magic prickled along my spine.
The world had tilted again.
The rift wasn't pulsing. But something had passed through.
And it was here.
A voice—not heard but felt—crawled along my thoughts like mold across wet wood.
"Name yourself."
I blinked, trying to focus, but the wind stopped. The sky dimmed—unnaturally, like paint being peeled off the canvas of night.
My magic reacted instinctively, flaring in my chest and fingers.
I stepped away from the chapel wall, scanning the tree line beyond the fields.
Nothing.
No movement.
No sound.
Then—
A single figure stepped forward from the shadows.
Not emerged.
Arrived.
Like it had always been there, waiting for me to notice it.
It didn't walk. It breathed motion, every footstep too perfect, too deliberate.
Humanoid.
Tall.
Clothed in something wrong—not cloth, not armor. Layers of stitched-together shapes, twitching slightly in places where seams overlapped.
Its face was covered with an old, expressionless porcelain mask. Cracks spiderwebbed from the right eye, which gleamed violet.
Like mine.
I didn't speak.
I didn't have to.
It already knew me.
"You bear the wound," it said in a voice like splintered glass being ground beneath bare feet. "The thing-that-should-not-live. The First Breach made flesh."
It tilted its head.
"I was sent to welcome you. And to offer… guidance."
I activated my magic instinctively, rune scars igniting like chains dragging across a forge.
"Stay back," I warned.
Its body shuddered. Not in fear. In delight.
"Good. Still resisting. That means the original shape remains."
It stepped closer.
One more pace.
The air chilled.
Not cold. Rotten. Like winter wearing summer's skin.
"You must decide, Kael." The creature spoke my name like it was sacred. Like it tasted it.
"Will you remain yourself, and be devoured by all that comes after…"
It spread its arms, the sleeves peeling back to reveal dozens—no, hundreds—of small, shifting glyphs embedded in its skin.
"…or will you become what you were born from? The other side of the door. The thing that remembers what the world tried to forget."
My magic flared, refusing the cold, rejecting the voice. My breath misted.
"You're not real," I hissed.
"Oh, Kael…"
It laughed softly.
"I am more real than you."
---
Asta – Third Person POV
He woke suddenly, gasping.
His heart thundered in his chest, and for a second, he didn't know why.
Then he felt it.
That same choking pressure from earlier.
But fainter now—like a ripple from a stone thrown far across a lake.
He stumbled out of bed, rushing to the window.
The sky was wrong.
He didn't know how.
But it was.
Somewhere out there, Kael was facing something again.
And this time, it didn't feel like something he could punch.
---
Yuno – Third Person POV
He didn't sleep.
He hadn't even tried.
He'd been meditating by the river, keeping his mana flow calm.
He felt it, too.
A fracture.
A ripple in the weave.
But this time it wasn't an attack. It was a conversation. One older than magic. Deeper than memory.
He stood.
And whispered quietly:
"…He's talking to it."
---
Kael – First Person POV
The figure stepped closer.
I stepped back.
My rune-arm glowed violently now, the energy within it burning away the cold that tried to cling.
"Who sent you?" I demanded.
It smiled under the mask—I could feel it.
"You did."
No.
"Or rather—the you that broke first. The Kael who screamed before language, who bled before bones."
It raised a hand slowly.
"You called me with your survival."
A blade began forming from its arm—jagged, raw, made of fractured runes and bone shards fused by ancient light.
"You broke the silence."
My grimoire cracked open beside me, hovering.
Pages flipped—slowly.
Not reacting.
Resonating.
It was awake.
Ready.
So was I.
My voice was steady now.
"Then let me shatter you next."
---
The air tore itself open between us.
Not wind. Not force.
Rejection.
Even the world didn't want this thing standing in it.
I surged forward before it could finish forming the blade. My magic screamed through the air, twisting into jagged violet sigils mid-strike, tethering my motion to raw instinct and muscle memory forged in nightmares.
Chains lashed forward from my cloak's hem, no longer ornamental but alive—serpents of cursed iron laced with runes that burned reality itself.
They struck.
And passed through.
No impact.
No resistance.
Only echo.
The creature hadn't dodged.
It hadn't defended.
It had never existed in that moment.
I felt my magic recoil. Not from failure, but from dissonance. Like I had tried to pierce fog with fire and only burned myself.
The porcelain mask tilted, slow and smooth.
"You fight like you remember the world."
I gritted my teeth. My grimoire's pages flared open wider now, vibrating with layered spells that blurred together—words of freedom and unfreedom, screaming at one another in ancient tongue.
"I fight because I haven't forgotten who I am," I snapped.
The blade fully emerged from its arm. It wasn't a weapon. It was a sentence. Entire stanzas of some forgotten language curved along the blade's jagged edges, reshaping themselves with each heartbeat.
It raised it.
And struck.
I barely moved in time.
The blade cut through sound, not flesh. The world fell silent for a breath—true silence, without echo or breath or even thought.
My left shoulder caught the edge of it. The wrappings over my rune-scarred arm disintegrated like ash. Skin split open without blood. The runes pulsed, feeding on the pain.
The creature spoke again as it advanced, step by step, its voice no longer like splintered glass—now, it was like my voice, twisted and slowed, warped by grief.
"You were not made to be free, Kael."
Another swing.
I dodged. Barely.
My counterstrike slammed into its side—a blow that should have broken anything human.
It simply staggered.
No crack.
No reaction.
Just a pause.
Then it looked down at the point of impact.
Curious.
"I felt that," it whispered.
My heartbeat thundered.
'Not enough.'
The grimoire beside me blazed open. A new page unfolded—a page that hadn't existed before this night.
The ink wrote itself:
"Bind the False. Sever the Mirror."
Chains of black-violet light erupted from the air, ensnaring the creature's limbs mid-motion. My magic poured into the bindings, layering rune after rune in frantic rhythm.
The creature jerked once—twice—then stopped.
The blade crumbled back into its arm, disassembled like language forgetting itself.
It stared at me now.
No longer curious.
Now… reverent.
"You are it," it said. "The unborn wound. The devourer of orders."
The mask began to crack further down the left side, spreading like frost on glass.
It dropped to one knee.
Not defeated.
Recognizing.
"You are not the question," it whispered.
"You are the answer."
My breathing slowed. I didn't drop my guard.
"What does that mean?" I asked through gritted teeth.
Its shoulders trembled.
Was it… laughing?
"You will know. When the next one comes."
And then—
It dissolved.
Not into mist. Not into ash.
But into absence.
Like it had never been part of this world to begin with. Like a page in a story removed without tearing.
The chains fell, clattering uselessly onto the ground.
I stood alone again.
No sky. No stars.
Just quiet.
But not silence.
Not anymore.
Because something inside me was awake.
And it was listening.
---
Sister Lily – Third Person POV
The bell tolled.
Once.
But no one had rung it.
Lily sat bolt upright in bed, heart racing, hands instinctively clasped in prayer before she could think.
She knew that sound.
Not the bell.
The silence after.
It was the same silence she'd heard once—years ago—when a child she couldn't save passed away in her arms.
A silence that didn't just follow grief.
It invited it.
She got up, wrapped in her robe, and stepped barefoot into the chapel hall.
The candles had gone out.
Not flickered.
Not blown.
Extinguished.
Lily turned toward the door.
Kael was still outside.
Still… watching.
And beyond him…
There was nothing.
Not emptiness.
Nothing.
---
Yuno – Third Person POV
He'd moved.
Faster than he should've.
Faster than he could explain.
His mana was flaring around him in golden tendrils, instinctively forming a barrier.
He wasn't even at the field's edge yet, but he saw it.
The figure was gone.
But Kael…
Kael was still glowing.
Not like before.
Not with power.
With recognition.
The boy looked like someone who'd seen the ending of the book and realized he was the villain's last sentence.
Yuno didn't speak.
Didn't call out.
He simply watched.
And in his mind, for the first time in his life, a single word whispered through his magic:
"Run."
---
Kael – First Person POV
I didn't move.
Not at first.
My body trembled, not from fear—but from the sheer effort of containing what I'd just touched.
It hadn't been a fight.
It had been… a test.
And I'd passed.
But the cost…
I looked down.
My rune-scarred arm was uncovered now, raw and alive. The marks had changed—thicker now. Some were bleeding.
Not blood.
Ink.
Black and violet, seeping like open script.
My grimoire hovered beside me, glowing softly.
Another page was writing itself.
I didn't look.
I already knew what it said.
"The First Door Opens."
I turned back toward the chapel.
The village still slept.
The magic here… still warm.
Still gentle.
Still unaware.
But that wouldn't last.
The sky had scarred once.
Now it had started to crack.
And I was the thing holding the pieces together.
Or tearing them apart.
'No going back.'
I walked to the door.
And for the first time since arriving in Hage, I felt the air treat me like a stranger.
Like a ghost.
Like a god that shouldn't exist.
---
Kael – First Person POV
I pushed the chapel door open.
It didn't creak.
It recoiled.
The wood resisted the contact like it knew what I was.
Even the hinges seemed to hesitate—as if protesting the return of something that should never have stepped inside in the first place.
Warm candlelight greeted me.
No… not candlelight.
Memory.
I stepped into it slowly, deliberately, like a sinner into sacred flame.
My presence doused the warmth in seconds.
Lily stood near the altar.
Barefoot.
Wrapped in a modest robe, palms still clasped together, eyes fixed not on the entrance… but on me.
She didn't speak.
Didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
Her gaze held something I hadn't seen since the Witch's Forest.
Not faith.
Not fear.
Grief.
Preemptive. Wordless. Deep.
As if she'd just looked at a child and seen the corpse he would one day become.
I walked past her.
Our eyes didn't break contact.
"I wasn't going to hurt anyone," I said.
It wasn't a reassurance.
It wasn't even true.
She nodded. Just once.
"I know."
That was all.
No questions.
No prayers.
She turned and followed me back toward the pews, sitting at the edge, hands folded loosely now—not in worship, but in resignation.
I collapsed onto the stone floor by the far wall. My cloak curled around me like living smoke. My grimoire closed itself and hovered quietly nearby, pages twitching in dreamless sleep.
And still, I bled ink.
It pooled beneath my left arm in steady drips, staining the floor with glyphs the world forgot.
"I saw the candles go out," she murmured. "And the bell."
"No one rang it," I replied.
"I know."
Silence stretched again—but this time, it wasn't absence.
It was mourning.
"I saw you from the window," she said softly. "You weren't alone."
I didn't answer.
She didn't press.
Because she already knew.
And somehow, she didn't ask the one question everyone else would've.
What was it?
Instead, she asked—
"Is it over?"
I closed my eyes.
"No."
A long breath escaped her. Not surprised. Not scared. Just tired.
Lily looked down at her hands like they'd aged in a single night.
"Will it come back?"
I considered lying.
It would've been kinder.
But I wasn't built for kindness.
"It wasn't the first," I said. "And it won't be the last."
She nodded again.
As if that, too, was something she'd already accepted.
"Then we should prepare."
My eyes snapped open.
"What?"
She looked at me. Not with fear. Not with awe. Just… conviction.
"If the devil walks into your home, you don't debate theology," she said. "You light candles. You gather water. You protect what you can, and you pray the children stay asleep."
There was no hesitation in her voice.
No tremor.
She spoke like a nun. But moved like a soldier.
Like someone who'd buried too many dreams and refused to let another die.
I sat back against the wall and watched her begin to relight the chapel.
One candle at a time.
Even though the night had already decided it didn't want light.
Even though it knew we were awake now.
And watching.
---
Yuno – Third Person POV
He stayed outside longer than he should've.
The magic in the air had begun to settle—slowly, like a pond after a stone strike—but something about the stillness unnerved him more than the storm.
Asta stood beside him now, blinking blearily.
"Did I… did I miss something?" the boy asked, rubbing his eyes with a fist.
Yuno didn't answer.
Couldn't.
Because there were no words for what had passed through that field.
And no words for the look on Kael's face when it was over.
Asta yawned, still unaware, still untouched by whatever had just walked between worlds.
Still blessed.
Still human.
Yuno envied him for it.
Even as he kept watching the chapel door.
Because deep inside his bones—his mana—his soul…
Something was whispering still.
A name he didn't recognize.
A language he didn't speak.
And a warning:
"He is the place the world bleeds."
---
Kael – First Person POV
The ink stopped flowing an hour before dawn.
Not because the wound had closed.
Because the story had paused.
I sat in that chapel, watching the first light stretch thin across the floor. It didn't touch me.
It tried.
But even light hesitated now.
Lily was still awake.
She hadn't gone back to sleep.
Neither had I.
She finally spoke as the sun breached the hills.
"Will you tell them?"
I shook my head.
"No."
She exhaled, slow and deep.
"I didn't think you would."
I stood.
My bones ached.
Not from damage.
From memory.
From weight.
"Thank you," I said quietly.
She looked up.
"For what?"
"For not asking me to stay."
Lily smiled—but it didn't reach her eyes.
"I don't have to," she said.
I nodded once, stepped past her, and walked toward the dormitory hallway.
I didn't go to my bed.
I didn't sleep.
I sat beside the children's quarters, unseen, unheard, until the sun rose fully.
Until the birds remembered how to sing.
Until I felt the sky stop bleeding.
Until the new page in my grimoire finally dried.
Its words etched in living ink:
"The First Door Opens."
And below it, in smaller script:
"Second: The House Without Echo."
I touched the page once.
It burned like truth.
Then closed the book.
And waited.
Because the next one was coming.
And this time…
It wouldn't ask questions.
It would come with answers.
And I wasn't sure I wanted them.
---
Kael – First Person POV
Three days passed before I left the chapel.
Not because I was recovering.
Because the world was.
No one mentioned what happened.
Not to my face.
But they looked. Whispered. Shifted just a little farther when I passed. Eyes flicked to my arm, my aura, the cloak that now curled without wind.
I didn't blame them.
The thing that had come through the veil left marks they couldn't see—on the soil, on the stone, on them.
Even if they never knew it.
Even if I never told them.
Yuno didn't say anything. But he watched me longer. Differently.
Like he was trying to decide whether I was still the boy from the cart… or the thing in the storm.
Asta was the only one who smiled the same.
Laughed the same.
Punched my shoulder like I was still made of bone.
Not ink and contradiction.
Lily didn't mention it again.
But every night, she relit the candles.
Every morning, she left a folded towel by the chapel's edge.
Clean. White. Dry.
Waiting for blood that didn't come.
Not anymore.
Because I had learned something in that second door.
And for the first time since the forest—
I understood a fraction of what I was.
---
Three Months Later – Third Person POV (Shifting Focus Between Kael, Yuno, and Asta)
The road to the Capital wasn't long.
But it felt heavier with every step.
Yuno walked ahead, silent as ever, wind tugging at his cloak in restless waves.
Asta bounded behind, all noise and grins and wild determination.
Kael walked between them.
A shadow between a storm and a sunrise.
The air around him shimmered subtly, like space disagreed with his presence.
Like it kept trying to rewrite him.
And failing.
He didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
Every step closer to the exam felt like a line being crossed.
Not into opportunity.
But into confrontation.
With the world.
With fate.
With himself.
---
Kael – First Person POV
It had grown quieter in my head since the second door.
But not peaceful.
Just clearer.
Like the noise had been filtered. Translated.
Control wasn't just a power anymore.
It was a law.
A decree my presence imposed on reality.
And Freedom?
Freedom defied it.
Mocked it.
Bent in directions thought impossible and whispered, "You are more than what this world allows."
The paradox wasn't that I had both.
The paradox was that I was both.
Two opposing truths, coiled like serpents through my veins.
And somehow, I had to learn to let them fight without breaking everything around me.
The Grimoire helped.
It no longer hovered like a ghost.
It followed like a sentinel.
Its pages turned themselves now—only forward.
Never back.
The third was near.
But first… this.
A test.
A performance.
A proving ground for boys who wanted to be knights.
And one mistake that never asked to be chosen.
---
Third Person POV
He didn't like the way people stared at Kael.
Not with curiosity.
Not with awe.
With recoil.
Even the nobles sensed it.
They didn't know why.
Couldn't explain it.
But they felt it in their bones.
That something unnatural was walking beside them.
Yuno had felt it too.
But he'd also seen the night Kael sat beside the children's dorm, blood pooling beneath him, fingers twitching in sleep—fighting something in his dreams he hadn't told anyone about.
Yuno didn't understand what Kael was.
But he knew what he wasn't.
He wasn't a monster.
He was something the world didn't have language for.
And that frightened people.
Yuno included.
---
"Kael, you're gonna crush it! I bet you could pass with just one look—bam, they'll be scared into giving you a squad!"
Kael didn't smile.
Didn't respond.
Asta didn't notice. Or pretended not to.
Yuno rolled his eyes.
But Kael's silence wasn't cold.
It was focused.
The kind of silence that came before a spell no one could counter.
Because Asta wasn't entirely wrong.
Kael could break this test.
But that wasn't the goal.
He wasn't here to prove strength.
He was here to understand why he was still breathing.
Why the world hadn't collapsed when that second door opened.
And what it meant that the next one was already whispering his name.
---
Magic Knights Exam Grounds – Third Person (Scene Begins)
They stood at the heart of the coliseum.
Hundreds of other candidates around them.
Each one buzzing with nerves, pride, desperation.
Kael stood silent in the center.
Eyes half-lidded.
Grimoire closed at his side.
When the exam began, mana flared like fireworks.
Yuno drew first gasps. His wind danced like a sovereign.
Asta shocked with his lack of mana—and his raw defiance.
Kael?
Kael didn't move.
Not at first.
Until the sparring phase.
When he stepped onto the ring…
…And the ground recoiled.
---
Kael – First Person POV
The boy across from me was trembling.
He didn't know why.
Neither did I.
But the moment I stepped into the arena, my cloak fluttered like it had entered a different atmosphere.
My grimoire opened itself.
Pages flipped like a storm's fingers.
And then—
Two spells.
Simultaneously.
"Bind the Truth."
"Shatter the Cage."
Control.
Freedom.
Launched together.
The paradox struck the air like a rift.
And when it cleared…
My opponent wasn't hurt.
But he was on his knees.
Crying.
He didn't know why.
Neither did I.
But the exam proctors whispered.
The captains stared.
And someone—far above, hidden in shadow—stood up.
Lucius.
I felt it.
Even if I didn't know the name yet.
I felt his gaze wrap around me like prophecy and ruin.
I left the arena without looking back.
Because I already knew.
The third door was almost here.
And I hadn't survived this long just to kneel.
---
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed the chapter.