Something Wrong with the World

He woke up breathless.

Kaito sat upright in bed, sweat clinging to his skin like cold chains. The room was quiet — the dull sound of someone’s slow breathing across the dorm, the wind against the cracked window, the creak of old beds shifting in the dark.

He blinked.

His hands still trembled.

He looked down at them.

The symbols were gone.

No light. No glow. No proof.

But he remembered.

The Entity. The Temple. The threads of power wrapping around his soul. The voice like thunder: Be the first.

Had it really happened?

He slowly pushed off the blanket and stood. His legs were unsteady — like his body was still adjusting to something it wasn’t meant to contain.

He didn’t know what had changed.

Only that everything had.

The next morning, Class D trudged through another grim breakfast. The same cold stew. The same silence. The same eyes that refused to meet his.

But Kaito felt… different. Not better. Not stronger. Just… off.

The world around him felt like it was glitching. Time didn’t move smoothly. His spoon bent oddly when he gripped it too hard. A single drop of stew hovered in mid-air for a moment too long before falling.

When he walked past a mirror in the hallway, his reflection blinked a second later than he did.

And when he passed a pair of golden-mark students from Class A, they stopped laughing mid-sentence, staring at him like they’d forgotten what they were saying.

Kaito didn’t stop.

He didn’t dare.

In the next combat drill, Instructor Kael was harsher than usual.

“Spell conjuring. Again,” the man barked.

Students stepped forward one by one. Fire. Wind. Ice. Failure. Success.

When Kaito’s name was called, he hesitated.

He didn’t know what would happen.

He took his place in the ring.

He didn’t try to summon anything this time. He just… let go.

He opened the door inside him — the door that had been unlocked in the temple.

And power slipped out.

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t controlled.

It was like watching glass shatter in reverse.

The entire arena trembled.

The air grew thick. Lights flickered. Magic runes on the walls flared, then short-circuited. The training dummy across from him disintegrated, its pieces folding into each other like time rewinding violently.

A silence fell over the room — the wrong kind.

Instructor Kael’s eyes narrowed. He raised his staff slightly.

“What was that?” he asked. Not accusing. Not curious. Wary.

Kaito shook his head. “I… I didn’t mean to—”

“Step back.”

Kael’s voice was sharp, cutting off further explanation.

And the rest of Class D was no longer ignoring him.

They were watching now.

By the end of the day, rumors had begun to bloom.

A student without a mark had destabilized the training glyphs. Broken an enchanted dummy. Bent the air around him.

Kaito heard whispers as he walked past other dorms:

“...he’s not supposed to be here.”

“...they said the dummy screamed before breaking…”

“...unmarked, but something’s wrong with him...”

He felt eyes on him in the halls. Not mocking. Not amused.

Afraid.

Even in Class D, the girl with the messy bun — who once ignored him completely — now scribbled things in her book while glancing his way.

And the red-haired boy?

He finally spoke to him.

“You don’t smell like the rest of us anymore,” he said with a smirk. “Don’t take it the wrong way. I just think the world’s starting to notice.”

That night, back in the dorm, Kaito lay awake again.

His body felt heavier — as if the Entity’s power had roots growing inside him. He couldn’t control it. Could barely understand it.

He remembered the Entity’s words:

“They erased me. They won’t see you coming.”

But something inside him was afraid. What if he couldn’t hold this power? What if he lost control?

He stared at the ceiling again.

And this time, there were no cracks.

There was only a single sentence written across the stone in glowing letters that hadn’t been there before.

“You’ve taken your first step off the script.”

Kaito sat upright.

The message vanished.

He wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.

But he knew, beyond doubt, one thing:

The story was no longer following the rules.

And now?

Someone was going to notice.

End of Chapter 4