Rain whispered down from a gray sky, soaking the cobblestones of the Academy courtyard in a soft drizzle. Cael stood beneath the overhang of the western annex, arms crossed, watching students gather beneath the newly posted deployment scroll.
Their voices rose in disbelief, awe, gossip.
"Did you see? Elias Dorne got bumped up."
"Wasn't it supposed to be Cael Astor?"
"No way. Elias fits better—pure instinct, that one. Genius decision."
Cael said nothing. His gaze swept over the scroll. His name was gone.
Gone.
He should've smiled. Instead, the moment sat cold and distant in his chest. Hollow. Like biting into bread that tasted of ash.
"I did it. I survived fate… this time."
And yet, the system was silent. No congratulatory ping. No celebratory ribbon.
Just the drizzle.
Just the hum of dread.
Later, as he crossed past the empty training yard, a sharp static crack split the air.
He froze.
The sky above flashed—not lightning, not fire, but a blood-red streak that seared across the clouds for the briefest second.
The system glitched.
[ERROR: Synchronization Interrupted]
Then—just silence.
The interface rebooted slowly, sluggish. And when it came back, a new anomaly shimmered in his vision: a thread in the sky, darker than shadow, pulsing with something wrong.
The Black Thread.
It was thicker now. Rooted to nothing. Suspended across reality like a scar carved into fate itself.
Only he could see it.
Only he could feel the way it watched.
That night, the Academy was quiet.
Most students were at supper or preparing for the upcoming evaluations.
Cael was in the archives, fingers skimming across old war documents—searching for patterns, divergences in battle deployments between timelines.
That's when the air shifted.
No sound.
Just stillness. Dense. Pressurized.
He stood. Slowly.
Too late.
The assailant struck like a shadow given weight—black cloak, silver mask, gliding between bookshelves without sound.
Cael dove aside. A blade nicked the edge of his sleeve.
System interface flared:
[Threat Detected – Combat Mode Enabled]
The figure didn't speak. They didn't need to. Their blade hummed with intent. Fate threads around them twisted, bent in real-time—impossibly fast.
"They're using something like the system," Cael realized. "No… they're deeper. They're not just rewriting—they're enforcing."
The duel was vicious, silent chaos.
Cael dodged a killing thrust only by yanking on a nearby thread—one tied to the shelf's structural integrity.
Wood snapped. The shelf collapsed between them.
But the figure was relentless.
Unfazed.
Faster.
It was weaving through fate threads—he could see it now. They shimmered around the assailant like strings to a marionette, snapping taut just as they moved—directing, adapting, predicting.
They weren't reading fate.
They were enforcing it.
Then—one chance.
His eyes caught a flicker: a red-highlighted thread above. The chandelier. Heavy. Fragile. Thread connected directly to the anchor bolt.
"Pull."
His hand twitched.
The thread snapped.
The chandelier came crashing down, glass shattering like falling stars. It wasn't fatal—but it was enough.
The figure halted. Just for a heartbeat.
Just enough for Cael to vanish into the deeper stacks—his presence masked, his breathing silent.
Long enough to survive.
System Revelation
When he finally emerged into the moonlit corridor, the system was trembling.
Literally. The interface shimmered, jagged and unstable.
Then:
[WARNING: Interference Detected – Class: Paradox Entity]
SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 64%
Fate Breach Threshold Approaching.
A new prompt unfurled slowly across the dark interface.
❖ FATE LOCK PROTOCOLS AVAILABLE.
Unlocking this will grant access to hidden defense mechanisms.
Cost: One Personal Truth.
Requirement: Sacrifice a Core Belief that defines your identity.
Cael stared at it. He understood the weight.
Memories could be painful to lose. Names. Faces. Emotions.
But this?
This wasn't a memory. It was a belief.
It was who he thought he was.
He hesitated only for a second. Then pressed confirm.
"I believe in justice."
It evaporated.
That belief, instilled by his mother's stories, by old hero tales, by teachers who praised selflessness.
Gone.
No bitterness followed.
No ache.
Just cold.
Just silence in the space where righteousness had once lived.
He breathed in.
And the air felt thinner.
Later, when the archive hall had settled into silence and moonlight spilled across broken marble, Cael crept back in.
The glass crunched beneath his boots.
Shelves leaned drunkenly against each other. Thread-echoes still lingered in the air, like heat after lightning.
And then he saw it.
A thread. Black. Not attached to any person, object, or place.
It writhed slowly on the ground like a worm made of smoke.
He crouched, examining it.
No signature. No source. But it was real.
On its end was something else.
A rune—not one he recognized. No cultural origin. No arcane school.
The system scanned it.
[ERROR: Symbol Unknown]
[Warning: External Fate Architecture Detected]
[Designation: THE WATCHERS – Data Corrupted]
The name echoed strangely in his mind. As if it had been there before. Buried.
His fingers tingled. The thread vanished—no, collapsed—into dust as the rune dimmed and blinked out of existence, leaving nothing behind.
Nothing… except doubt.
He stumbled back to his dorm.
As his door clicked shut, the world twitched.
The system flickered—just a second.
And in that flicker, something slipped through.
A memory. But not his.
Or… not one he remembered.
It burned behind his eyes.
He was kneeling. A war-torn battlefield. Blood smeared across shattered armor.
Leon was in front of him, collapsed. Reaching. Bleeding out.
But there was no enemy nearby.
No arrow in Leon's chest.
Cael held the blade.
Dripping.
He'd run it through Leon's ribs with his own hands.
He watched the life leave the hero's eyes.
Watched it without flinching.
Then the vision vanished.
He gasped awake, heart pounding, palms cold.
"…That wasn't my past," he whispered, voice shaking.
"But it felt like mine."
The system remained silent.
Later, long after midnight, Cael wandered the Academy's sleeping halls. Ghostlike. Unseen. Avoiding others like they might see through the cracks in his shell.
Rain still tapped softly against the tall stained windows.
He paused at the main hall, watching students' names shimmer across the battle roster crystal.
Elias Dorne. Leron Fael. Dozens of others.
Not his.
He should've felt relief.
But all he felt was the weight of unraveling threads.
[Stability: 64%][Warning: Rewrites approaching instability threshold][Chain Reactions Possible]
The system pulsed again. New prompt:
[Side Quest Unlocked: Trace the Phantom Thread]Objective: Discover the source of the Fate Enforcer's threadsReward: Partial Immunity to Divine Fate CorrectionsRisk: Unknown
Cael didn't hesitate.
[Accept]
The screen vanished.
He stood there for a moment, watching his reflection in the glass—tired, fraying, changed.
Then, softly, he spoke:
"If someone's watching me… I'll cut the thread before they pull it."