The world was still dark when Cael opened his eyes.
Rain tapped at the dormitory window like impatient fingers. A soft hum vibrated from the wall—mana circuits awakening across the academy.
He didn't move. Just stared at the small calendar nailed above his desk.
18 days.
His eyes slid down to the flickering system interface hovering in his peripheral vision. The usual pale blue was now a sickly red.
[Doomed Event Approaching: 18 Days Remaining]
Beneath it pulsed a second message—smaller, but cruelly persistent.
[Your Thread: Assigned to Frontline Deployment – Blood Tier.]
He opened the "Battle Roster Thread" tab.
Names shimmered in white and gold—sons and daughters of noble houses, future knights and strategists. Then there was his name.
Cael Ardyn.
Glowing red.
As if fate had already bled him dry.
"I've rewritten deaths, severed emotions, stolen lives that weren't mine to change…"
"But I'm still marked to die like a dog."
He stood.
Fate had drawn its sword.
Time to draw his own.
The records room was quiet—too quiet.
Not just empty. Hollow.
The torches flickered along the stone walls as Cael slipped in, using a key swiped two days ago from Instructor Bellrow's office. A minor manipulation, a falsified faculty request form. Easy.
Inside, the room smelled of old ink and burning magic wax.
He closed the door behind him.
The scrolls lined the walls—categorized by department: Combat Evaluations, Magical Aptitude, Lineage Decrees. But he went straight for the metal rack labeled:
"FIELD ROSTERS: UPCOMING DEPLOYMENTS"
There.
Thick parchment, partially enchanted—warded against tampering, but not unreadable.
He laid it open on the reading slab, eyes scanning.
Criteria identified:
Performance: Combat scores, mana synchronization, training simulations.
Family Standing: Nobility, military history, magical bloodlines.
Volunteer Bias: Those who'd shown initiative during field drills.
And then in small lettering, scrawled at the bottom in mage-script:
"Final evaluations and squad assignments will be reviewed by High Instructors on the 3rd Moon—three days from now."
Three days.
Three days to bend a century-old system.
He thought through the options:
Option One: Decrease his value.
Falter in training. Fake a panic disorder. Tamper with his mana signature. But it was risky—too obvious, and suspicion could trigger a deeper review.
Option Two: Raise another's value.
Push a volunteer higher. Someone eager for glory. Someone stupid.
He mentally flipped through students like cards. Tomas Valeon. Ambitious. Competent. Disposable.
Option Three: Forge a Rewrite directly on the scroll.
Even more dangerous. The scroll bore divine wards—karmic signatures tracked every alteration.
Tampering could wake the system. Or worse—whatever watched behind it.
He hesitated—then called the system.
A pulse of blue light filled the room.
[Rewrite Target Selected: Collective Deployment Scroll][WARNING: High-level interference detected.][Cost: Core Memory Required – "Childhood Oath with Brother."]
Cael stopped.
The name of the memory hit him harder than he expected.He hadn't thought about it in months. Maybe years.
Two boys beneath a summer sky.Wooden swords clashing under the watchful gaze of the sun.His brother—grinning, bleeding from a split lip.Cael, panting."One day, we'll be knights.""Yeah. Protect the people. Protect each other."They shook on it.
He felt the warmth of it. The pride. The naïve certainty.
And then—like a dying candle—
It was gone.
"If I forget this... am I still me?"
But the answer came too easily.
"Better incomplete than dead."
He accepted.
The system opened before him—glowing, sharp, alive.A constellation of names floated in the air, each tethered by thin glowing threads to a central knot: the battlefield fate-point.
Cael reached toward his own thread—marked in red.
It pulsed angrily, as if it knew.
Then, with two fingers, he plucked it free.
And replaced it—sliding it into the spot where Leron Fael's had rested.
That one, in turn, snapped into Cael's place.
The colors shimmered. Adjusted.
Red became green.
Green turned to blood.
[Rewrite Successful.][Memory Fragment Lost: "Knight's Oath with Brother."]
Cael blinked.
Something in his chest... dimmed. A warmth he hadn't noticed before turned cold.He frowned.
"Why do I feel like I lost something important…?"
He couldn't answer.
Because the answer was already gone.
Pain lanced through his skull.
His vision tilted. The room blurred, spun, then slammed into him like a crashing wave.
He collapsed against the desk—blood dripping from his nose.
[System Feedback: Neural Overload Detected.][Warning: Collective Fate Rewrites Risk Divine Response.]
Across the constellation of threads still floating in Cael's vision, the lines rippled—like silk dipped in freezing water.
A slow, suffocating stillness took over the space.
Then it came.
A shape. Not a thread. Not a person.
Something else.
A glow—soft at first, then sharpening into a narrow, watchful slit.An eye.
Watching. Waiting. Waking.
From the void between fates, a dark mark unfurled like oil in water, sliding across the threads toward him. It moved without sound, without pause.
Cael couldn't move.
He felt it looking into him—through him—measuring.
Then—
Like a leash pulled taut, the mark snapped backward.
The eye blinked once.
And vanished.
The threads resumed their quiet shimmer, but the room was no longer silent.
His heartbeat crashed against his ribs.
"Something's watching the system. Something that isn't the system."
He didn't know what it was.
But it knew him now.
Later that day, Cael wandered half-numb through the courtyard, the ringing still in his ears. His eyes were dry. His head pounded.
Near the mess hall, he almost walked past Leon—until the idiot stepped directly into his path with a grin.
"Hey, Cael!"
Cael paused, blinking against the sunlight. "Leon."
Leon's smile was easy, like breathing. "Crazy, huh? Just found out I'll be on the vanguard squad. Looks like we'll be side by side after all."
He slapped Cael's shoulder.
"I'm glad. Wouldn't want to go out there without you."
Cael didn't speak for a long moment.
He looked at him—really looked. The way Leon stood tall, not because of pride, but because he didn't understand the weight that crushed others. He'd never had to.
So full of certainty.
So ready to die without knowing it.
Cael gave a hollow chuckle.
"You think I'll still be there."
He smiled, faintly.
"You have no idea what I've paid to run."
A flicker of something stirred in him.
Not guilt—he didn't have that anymore.
But… the shape of where it used to be.
"There's no room for guilt anymore."
That night, Cael sat on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
The Thread Cutter lay hidden in his drawer, wrapped in a handkerchief like a secret.
A storm rumbled in the distance.
Then—
A scream.
Sharp. Human. Nearby.
Cael jerked upright. Students scrambled in the hallway outside, voices rising in alarm.
He pushed out his door just in time to see a crowd forming down the corridor.
Someone had collapsed.
Leron Fael.
He writhed on the floor, veins blackening with some invisible poison. Eyes rolled back. Frothing at the mouth. Professors rushed in—casting spells, summoning barriers.
But nothing worked.
He wasn't dying from magic.
He was being torn apart by fate.
[System Message:]
Fate resists. Rewriting does not guarantee stability.
Cael stared as the boy he'd chosen—the one who'd taken his place—screamed again, his thread unraveling in real time.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
He was supposed to be safe.
He turned away.
His hands trembled.
The system had let him make the trade.
But the world…
The world had made its own correction.
"Escaping death isn't enough—"
"I'll have to bend the whole world."