...
A day passed since the encounter with Corviel Thanus.
The blood had long been scrubbed from the tiles of House Thanus' tower. The whispers of the servants had died down. The nobles had decided to look the other way, as they always did, especially when truth became inconvenient.
Now, I sat in Theory Class—an arched lecture hall carved into the inner wall of the Academy's east wing, its domed ceiling painted with constellations no one could name anymore.
The room smelled faintly of burnt parchment and chalk dust. Professor Kaldein was already mid-lecture, tracing sigils on the floating glyphboard with a flick of his wand-staff.
"…Aetheric compression occurs when residual elemental particles from multiple planes conflict without a stabilizing core," he droned. "This is most commonly observed in the aftermath of failed summoning rituals or during Fold tears."
Fold tears.
I leaned back, fingers tightening slightly against the desk.
Everything Corviel had said was still sinking in—his words, twisted in fear, didn't feel like lies. He hadn't known who pulled the strings, but he knew where the strings were being pulled from.
The Fold.
The place between.
The hidden hand.
He'd muttered it again and again before losing consciousness. And now, the lecture happened to be on it.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I didn't believe in those anymore.
"Mr. Valen," came Kaldein's gravel-rough voice.
I blinked once. Then again.
"Perhaps you'd like to tell the class what happens when a Fold thread is severed without containment?"
A few students turned. Most didn't care.
I didn't hesitate.
"If the Fold thread's anchor collapses without a re-channel, the rift eats through both mana fields. Aether collapses inward. Reality bends."
These were basic concepts, although more defined than what I had previously studied in my last world, the fundamentals were the same.
Professor Kaldein stared at me for a moment too long. His pale eyes flickere.
"Correct," he muttered, and turned back to his glyphboard.
I tapped my fingers once against my temple.
Corviel had said something else.
That they weren't the only ones.
That five families were involved.
That someone in the Academy was ensuring this reset happened. Again and again.
A cycle.
And that meant one thing.
Whoever killed Arthur Valen wasn't trying to kill him. They were trying to erase something he knew. Something I couldn't be sure of, after all I couldn't see all of his memories.
I looked down at my notes. Blank. My mana sense had been open the entire time, quietly observing the way Kaldein's runes glimmered.
Too many of them shimmered just a shade too deep.
I activated Mana Flow Analysis silently, hiding the ripple behind my breathing technique.
...Yes.
There it was again.
Buried beneath the weave of Kaldein's lecture sigils—a spatial resonance signature.
Why would a theory professor be hiding a Fold tether beneath a class?
And more importantly…
Who was watching?
...
System Notification:
[Hidden Field Detected.]
[Do you wish to trace the Fold resonance back to origin?]
[Caution: Doing so may alert higher entities.]
I didn't press yes.
I couldn't.
Not yet.
The fear still lingered within me. The dread from that existence was still there.
…
I flicked my gaze sideways.
Sitting at the back of the class was a girl I'd never seen before. Black hair, straight-cut bangs. Pale uniform, but a brooch that shimmered with ancient heraldry—none from this continent.
And her eyes... they glowed for the briefest second. Violet, almost opalescent.
Her hand hovered above her desk. A rune was carved into the wood.
A glyph of watching.
She met my gaze, and I knew instantly:
She hadn't cast it for the professor.
She'd cast it for me.
...
I kept my expression still. If she wanted to observe, let her. If she wanted a confrontation, she'd get more than she bargained for.
I looked back to Kaldein just as he finished the final sigil.
"Now," the professor said, voice rising, "this is the theoretical weave that contains minor rifts and prevents destabilization. It's mostly used in containment spells at the border of forbidden zones, such as the Lower Tower crypts or the Bleeding Archives—"
Bleeding Archives? That name felt familiar, and not in a way that I had experienced it from someone else's memory… But my own!
The glyphboard pulsed.
In that moment, I allowed my mana sense to stretch just a fraction further. The spatial resonance beneath Kaldein's feet shimmered like spider-silk in rain.
And it moved.
My heartbeat slowed. The tether was alive.
No—reactive.
The Fold tether was feeding information somewhere. Listening. Recording.
A surveillance spell? No. This was deeper. Fold-tethered runes didn't just transmit data, they preserved memory.
Someone wanted to keep a perfect copy of this room. Every word, every reaction.
And if that was true…
Then the real classroom wasn't here.
A spatial imprint. An endlessly repeating time.
…
Recursion, a spell which calls a certain history, one it was triggered in endlessly until a certain 'ending' has been achieved.
It wasn't a fairly difficult spell, though what was difficult was the mana to power the original trigger of recursion.
...
System Notification:
[Additional Field Signature Detected: Repetitive Chrono-Layering (Experimental).]
[Timeframe Loops Registered: 13]
[You have entered a Recursion State.]
I stilled.
Thirteen loops.
I had sat through this class thirteen times without knowing.
Considering the number of cycles for recursion it took for me to even realize… the mage who casted it must be at the very least a tier 7 Mage!
My breath caught.
This wasn't a class.
This was a cage.
...
A high-pitched chime rang through the glyphboard—signaling class end. The illusions shimmered, and Kaldein stepped back.
"You're all dismissed," he said without looking up.
I didn't move. Neither did the girl at the back.
For a heartbeat longer, we stared across the classroom.
Then her lips moved.
One word.
"Recursion."
And she vanished.
...
.
Certainly. Here's a continuation of the chapter with a dramatic confrontation between Arthur and Professor Kaldein:
---
I walked down the tiered rows of seats, each step echoing like a drumbeat in my ears. The classroom was nearly empty now, save for the faint afterimage of departing students and the ghost-trace of that girl's mana, already dissipating.
Kaldein stood alone by the glyphboard, absent-mindedly twisting his wand-staff in one hand while muttering notes into a transcription crystal. The glow of the sigils had faded, but the residue of Fold energy still clung to the room like smoke.
I stopped just short of the final step.
"You knew," I said quietly.
He didn't turn.
"Knew what, Mr. Valen?"
I walked closer, crossing the threshold of the center ring. "That this class is caught in a recursion spell."
That made him pause.
His head tilted slightly, and I saw his eyes flick toward me, only for a moment—before he resumed his idle motions.
"Interesting theory," he replied. "What makes you think that?"
"Thirteen loops," I said. "Fold tether under the sigil array. Spatial resonance beneath your feet. And the chrono-layering imprint that's failing to fully reset. It's not clean anymore. You didn't expect me to notice, did you?"
Still, he didn't face me.
"I expected no such thing," he said. "You weren't meant to."
My hands clenched at my sides. "Why? Why entrap a classroom? What are you recording?"
His voice lowered. "You think this is about you?"
I took a step forward. "Everything's been about me since the day Arthur Valen died."
Now he turned.
Professor Kaldein's face, always expressionless, carved in sharp angles and shadowed hollows, looked older now. Tired. But his eyes were alight with something far more dangerous than fatigue.
"You speak of death like you understand it," he said. "You speak of recursion like a child reading a grimoire he cannot wield."
"I've lived through thirteen of your false lectures," I said. "Watched the way your glyphs shimmered wrong. Felt the Fold ripple when you walked. I don't know who put you here—but you're not just a professor."
He laughed softly, like chalk on glass.
"No," he said. "I'm not."
A ripple of power pulsed from his staff, and the glyphboard behind him flickered back to life, sigils burning red this time, not instructional, but binding.
"You think you're ready to know the truth, Mr. Valen? Let's see if your mind survives what your arrogance invited."
The room shifted.
Space inverted.
The walls collapsed inward, folding in on geometry that shouldn't exist—desks stretched like wax, the air turned heavy as iron. The sky in the dome above flickered into an endless expanse of void-threaded stars.
Kaldein was no longer a mere professor.
Behind his shadow rose something older, something coiled around time itself. His voice echoed through layers of thought and memory.
"Do you know why recursion exists?" he whispered. "Because time itself cannot bear the truth in a single breath. Because there are moments so critical, so wound-tight, that they must be tested again and again—until the right choice is made."
I stood my ground, mana flowing to my limbs, teeth grit.
"And you think you get to decide what that right choice is?" I spat. "Who gave you the right to loop my life? To trap me in this?"
He tilted his head. "It wasn't me who made the decision."
I felt my blood run cold.
"No. You're just the warden," I said. "Someone else built the cage."
The shadow behind him pulsed once, an outline of something vast and unknowable pressing against the seams of the Fold.
And then—
"System Override Detected," came the familiar neutral chime in my mind.
[Recursion Layer Breached.]
[Manual Interference Registered: Identity Code—Redacted.]
[Do you wish to initiate Counter-Severance?]
[Caution: Risk of Permanent Fold Collapse.]
Kaldein's gaze sharpened.
He saw it, too.
"You can't sever it," he said, voice now edged with urgency. "Not yet. The cycle isn't ready. You don't remember enough."
I stared at him.
"I remember enough," I said. "Enough to know this—"
My hand lifted.
Mana surged.
"I was never supposed to be Arthur Valen."
And with a twist of will, I pressed yes.
The world screamed.
…
To Be Continued…