…
The Counter Severance protocol from the system started spreading.
It started with cracks.
Then the whole space was filled with fractures.
[Time for protocol completion: 260 seconds]
Then I moved.
Mana flared from my core, flooding my limbs with the chill of invocation. Kaldein barely had time to raise his staff before I launched a sigil—[Vyreburst], a raw compression of kinetic mana that detonated against the floor between us.
Once I recalled the term Recursion, memories of the past 13 loops flooded in. In all those loops I 'recalled' the term and it lead to the same outcome.
I used all the spells in my repertoire.
Kaldein on the other hand used the same speels each loop.
The explosion shattered the glyphboard and sent a wave of force spiraling out. Dust and fractured sigils flew like glass. Kaldein's eyes flashed as he flicked two fingers—[FoldStep]—and vanished from where he stood.
I spun, mana already weaving into a second cast—[Spectral Bind]—targeting his emergence point. He reappeared ten paces to my left, the spell wrapping spectral chains around his limbs, but they burned away in an instant, unmade by a counter-loop glyph hidden in his coat.
"Fast," he muttered. "But not fast enough."
The room around us shuddered again, and this time it wasn't illusion. The Recursion Layer fractured, jagged edges of memory peeling away like torn wallpaper. Old lectures. Past students. Thirteen loops of silent watching—all fading into grey ash.
He raised his staff high.
"Instructor Mode: Release."
The air exploded with pressure.
Rings of sigils—dense, ancient, layered in dozens of languages, spiraled out from his staff like a blooming flower. They burned white with Fold-light. The shadows behind him thickened, pressing down like an avalanche of eyes.
I activated [Resonant Core]. Light snapped around me in tight arcs—lines and fractures of my own body surging with silver veins.
He came first. His strike was more like a spell-surge than a physical blow, his wand-staff extended into a blade of glyphs, and it cut through the air like screaming glass.
I barely blocked with a reinforcement rune—[Kael-Mirror]—the edge of his weapon colliding with a hexagonal mana field inches from my face. The blow reverberated through my bones.
We broke apart.
[Time for protocol completion: 260 seconds]
He launched a series of folded sigils—[Bind: Chrono-Slow], [Spacial Sever], [Mind Echo]—but I twisted between them, using the very pulse of the recursion to phase-step around his attacks.
Every inch of the classroom was a battlefield now.
Desks shattered. Chalk dust turned to glowing embers. The painted constellations above began to shift, no longer static.
"You're adapting faster than expected," Kaldein growled, casting a shielding wall to intercept my triple-cast volley of kinetic glyphs. "You're syncing with the loop—aren't you?"
"Why not?" I replied, panting. "You gave me thirteen tries."
He snapped his fingers. The floor beneath me cracked—[GravitonMark]. The gravity pulled at my legs like chains, mana draining away like water through a sieve.
But I'd seen this spell in three previous loops.
I raised my arm and reversed the polarity—[VectorFlip]—and shot upward, flipping midair and launching a burst of elemental wind that tore through his defenses.
Kaldein staggered, blood tracing a line across his cheek.
[Time for protocol completion: Completed!]
[[Lineage Break]] can now be performed!]
For the first time, his eyes widened.
"You—"
"I'm not him anymore," I said. "I'm not Arthur Valen."
My mana surged.
"I'm what comes after."
And I struck.
A new spell. One I had never cast before. One I hadn't remembered until now.
[LineageBreak].
A blade of pure, unclaimed mana formed in my hand, forged from recursion echoes and unresolved memory. It burned white-gold—cutting not just matter, but fate itself.
Kaldein's eyes blazed.
"You'll tear the Fold open—"
I slashed.
The blade met his chest—
And the world split.
...
[System Alert: Recursion Breach Reached.]
[Anchor Entity Severed.]
[Fold Integrity: Compromised.]
The room dissolved into white. Kaldein's scream, more of a spell than a sound, echoed into the void.
And I fell.
Through the floor.
Through the recursion.
Through memory—
...
There was no bottom.
No end.
The world had shattered into a cascade of forgotten seconds and unmade meaning, and I plummeted through its belly—silent, weightless, a thought unanchored.
Not even mana answered me now.
Light twisted around me, writhing like serpents of undone reality. I passed echoes of moments that weren't mine—faces that might've been. Cities that never were. Each fragment brushed against me like glass. Each one took.
A breath.
A thought.
A memory.
My hands reached for something—anything, but found only the void's answer.
Fall.
Fall again.
Fall forever.
...
Meanwhile,
Nebelholt University of Mana Arts
Main Lecture Hall—West Tower
The tower was in shambles.
Fractured beams of recursion energy still pulsed in the air, like lightning trapped in glass. The once-ornate dome was gone—vaporized. The ancient glyphboard lay split in two, its sigils bleeding silver mist into the stone. Rain hissed against the mana fields hastily thrown up by panicked faculty.
Sarah Elowen stood on the edge of the collapsed chamber, her breath ragged.
Her hair clung to her cheeks, soaked through from the storm above. The mana in the air was so thick it crackled—wild, unformed, dangerous.
Students were being evacuated.
Overhead, crimson ward-beacons pulsed in rapid succession—emergency mode. Members of the Security Council strode through the wreckage in reinforced frame-armor, their insignias glowing with verification glyphs. Their expressions were tight. No one was answering questions.
"Any trace of them?"
"Nothing." A report scrawled itself in midair, red text blinking against a projection sheet. "Mana trails are severed. Instructor Kaldein's core signature is scrambled. The student—Arthur Valen—isn't even appearing on the registry."
"Fold-shadow event, then?"
"Either that or intentional concealment. But this level of suppression—" The enforcer hesitated. "They've vanished."
The head of the Council narrowed her eyes. "No one disappears from this university. Not without leaving a mark."
A younger councilman adjusted his crystal lens. "They didn't leave a mark, Ma'am. They left a scar."
The crater still hummed.
Three days later.
After the students were evacuated and the panic eventually subsided rumours started to spread. Some said that the professor had gone rougue, while others talked about the drastic change in Arthur and it was planned for the assassination of the professor, but no one truly knew what happened.
No one except a Black hair, straight-cut bangs. Pale uniform, and an ancient brooch.
No one paid attention to her, she blended perfectly into the crowd. There was simply nothing exceptional about her that met the eye...
She was now starting at Sarah. A look filled with bloodlust, envy and Anger!
...
To Be Continued...