The Hero with No Name

The gates of Royal Celestia Academy shimmered with enchantments so old even the runes had forgotten their names. Students gawked, nobles strutted, and carriages lined the marble courtyard like an exhibition of ego and wealth.

I stood among them with dirt on my boots and a rusted sword on my back.

None of them recognized me. Not the instructors, not the high-ranking families walking past me without a glance. Not the world that I had once saved with blood and fire.

I didn’t expect fanfare. But I didn’t expect to be erased either.

They called it the “Hero’s Era.” Statues of the Four Saints stood proudly in the center plaza, posed in dramatic mid-battle. They were real—I remembered them. I fought with them. I watched two of them die.

But something was wrong.

Their formation was off. Their weapons weren’t the same. And the fifth figure—me—was missing.

Not even a shadow. Not even a name.

It had been one year since I killed the Demon Lord. One year since I felt my soul tear apart under the final spell. I woke up alone in a ruined forest, half-naked and half-mad. And when I crawled into a nearby village to ask what day it was, they looked at me like I was insane.

“Hero? What hero?”

The innkeeper had said that the Saints defeated the Demon Lord, not some unknown warrior. The church echoed the same. Even the world’s magical system—once linked to my very life—rejected me like a virus.

[STATUS: UNKNOWN USER]

[ERROR: UNRECOGNIZED DIVINE SIGNATURE]

I had to know why.

So I came here—the Royal Academy where it all began. Where the Hero’s story was supposed to be celebrated and new heroes forged. If there were answers, they’d be buried beneath the polished floors of this place.

“Name?” the registrar asked.

Her voice was tired. She didn’t look up from the enchanted scroll hovering above her palm.

“…Kael,” I said.

There was a flicker of hesitation before she tapped the rune quill. It hovered above a glowing sigil, scanned my aura, then sputtered with a sharp whine.

“Hm. No affinity,” she muttered. “No signature, no bloodline match… you’re applying through the public trials?”

I nodded. I wasn’t, but the system had no way of checking now.

“Third Division. Class 3-C.” She slid a plain iron tag across the counter. “Wear this around your neck at all times. You’ll be tested in three days. You pass, you stay. You fail, you’re out.”

That was generous. Most didn’t even make it through the gate without sponsorship.

I took the tag and walked away. My reflection followed me in the academy’s crystal walls—gray cloak, dark hair, mismatched eyes. I looked like a scavenger in a city of kings.

Class 3-C dormitories were little more than converted storage sheds behind the central academy building. The other students were already moving in—peasant-borns with wide eyes, a few disgraced nobles with family crests they tried to hide, and one or two mercenary kids clinging to battered weapons.

My room was small. One bed. One desk. One cracked mirror. It reminded me of the barracks back during the war.

I ran my fingers along the wall and felt old enchantments buried beneath the stone. This place was ancient. Older than it claimed. I could still feel the Divine Thread that once ran through every corridor of the academy—faint and frayed, like a forgotten song.

But my connection to it was gone. As if the gods themselves had turned away.

I dropped my pack and took out the sword.

It wasn’t the blade I’d used to kill the Demon Lord. That one shattered with him. This one was salvaged—ordinary, chipped, ugly. But it hummed softly when I held it, reacting to the scar etched across my palm.

The scar left by Arvalis, the Hero’s Blade. The divine mark. The thing that no one else could see now.

I unsheathed the sword and began my forms.

The room was small, but my body remembered the steps. Lunges, pivots, parries. Not the flashy swordsmanship of the noble duels, but the grim, efficient kind taught by years of real war. I imagined the faces of the soldiers I had trained—Gareth, who always joked too much. Mira, who died protecting a child in the burning city of Ralos. Sera, my vice-captain. My…

No.

Don’t think about them.

It hurts too much.

I woke early the next day.

Training was scheduled in the South Yard for all third-division applicants. I arrived before dawn. The air was cool, crisp, filled with the smell of dew and dust.

Instructor Ryelle was already there—an older woman with scars down her neck and arms like tree trunks. She eyed me briefly as I lined up with the others. Maybe she saw something in my stance. Maybe not.

She didn’t say anything.

“Welcome to the bottom,” she growled. “You’re not nobles. You’re not prodigies. You’re not even mages. You are here because you begged, bribed, or bled your way in. Half of you will be gone in a week. Most of you will never touch a real battlefield.”

She turned. “But if you survive me, you’ll have a shot. Just a shot. Don’t waste it.”

The drills were basic. Sword swings. Endurance laps. Mana channeling through empty circuits.

When it was my turn, the crystal turned gray. “No mana signature detected,” it said.

Some of the students chuckled. A few whispered.

“Try again,” Ryelle said.

I did.

Nothing.

She gave me a long, unreadable look. Then moved on.

Later that evening, I sat alone in the practice yard after everyone had gone. My muscles ached—not from effort, but from restraint. If I moved too well, if I drew too much attention, they’d notice. And someone would come looking.

I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

“Kael,” a voice called.

I looked up.

A girl stood near the edge of the circle. Pale silver hair. A staff strapped across her back.

“I’m Lira,” she said. “You’re the only one who didn’t laugh when they mocked the kid with no mana.”

“I didn’t see the point,” I replied.

“Me neither.” She stepped closer. “You don’t belong here.”

I tensed. “Excuse me?”

“You fight too clean. You dodge before attacks are thrown. You breathe like someone used to armor. And I saw the way you held back during sparring.”

She didn’t say it like an accusation. Just a fact.

“You were trained.”

“Everyone was trained.”

“No. You were hardened.”

Silence stretched between us.

Finally, she said, “I’m here to uncover something. Someone erased the records of the Hero who saved this world. I want to know who. And why.”

I didn’t move. My heart pounded.

“If you’re not who you say you are,” she added, “then either you’re part of that cover-up… or you’re the reason it exists.”

Then she walked away.

The moon hung low over Royal Celestia Academy, cloaking the towers in pale silver and shadows. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks like constellations I once knew. But even the stars felt different now—strange, colder, more distant.

Lira’s words echoed in my head.

“Either you’re part of the cover-up… or you’re the reason it exists.”

She wasn’t wrong. I was the reason.

But not in the way she thought.

If she really was trying to uncover the Hero’s erasure, she’d be walking a dangerous path. That kind of curiosity gets people killed—if not by blades, then by the truth itself. I’d seen what truths did to people. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t romantic. It broke them.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Her mana was raw, but there was something focused about it. Like a sharpened edge under control. That kind of talent, if left unchecked, would draw attention—from the wrong people.

I closed my eyes.

Sleep didn’t come easy anymore.

By the next morning, whispers had begun.

Some said an instructor caught a student reading sealed texts in the library. Others claimed a Class 1-A prodigy nearly burned down a practice arena trying to summon a lost spirit. There were rumors of doppelgangers on the grounds, of memory leaks in enchanted scrolls, of strange fluctuations in the Divine Thread itself.

I had a suspicion all of it was connected—to me, or to what was buried beneath this place.

Instructor Ryelle pulled us into paired combat that afternoon. Wooden swords only. No mana reinforcement. “I want to see what instinct looks like when your blood’s up and your back’s to the wall,” she said. “No posturing. No bloodlines. Just sweat and bruises.”

They paired me with Joren—the noble boy who’d been watching me.

“You’re quiet,” he said, circling.

“So are you.”

“Because I watch,” he said, then lunged.

He was fast. His strikes were fluid, economical. He wasn’t showy like the noble brats in Class 1-A, but he had the polished technique of someone trained by a proper master.

I parried once, twice, letting my blade slip just enough to test his form. His follow-up came low and sweeping. A classic Marov feint. He expected me to block—and when I didn’t, his eyes widened.

I stepped inside the arc of his swing and planted the wooden sword against his chest.

“Yield,” I said softly.

He blinked. “You knew that move.”

“I’ve seen it before.”

Joren’s lips twitched. “You should be in Class 1-A.”

“I don’t belong there.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not supposed to exist.”

I walked away before he could ask more.

That night, I found Lira again—this time in the western library annex, beneath an archway sealed to all but those who knew the old glyphs.

She was already inside when I reached her, cross-legged beneath a mural of the First Hero. Her staff glowed softly beside her, channeling low-level scrying magic. Scrolls lay scattered around her, many half-burned or blank. I recognized the pattern.

“Someone purged the records,” I said.

She didn’t flinch. “Pages that were here a week ago are missing now. Even the archival echoes are corrupted.”

“You’re not going to find answers like this.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’m hoping someone else does.”

Her eyes flicked up to me. “You.”

“I never said I knew anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

There was a long silence.

Then she asked, “What does it feel like—to be erased?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“It feels like drowning in a room full of people who won’t look at you. You scream, and they keep talking. Laughing. Living.”

Lira didn’t speak. But she nodded slowly.

“I can’t prove anything yet,” she said, “but I think the erasure is magical. Divine-level. Someone rewrote causality. Not just memories—reality itself.”

“I know.”

Her gaze sharpened. “How?”

I took a deep breath.

“When I killed the Demon Lord… something shattered. I don’t know if it was the final spell or a trap… but when I woke up, my connection to the divine system was gone. Like I’d been disqualified from the world.”

“Then you are the Hero,” she whispered.

“No,” I said, stepping back. “I was.”

Two days later, a sealed alarm rune activated in the southern wing of the academy.

Someone had broken into the Chamber of Echoes.

I recognized the name. It wasn’t just a vault of relics—it was where the academy stored memory cores: magical devices that recorded key historical events using spirit-infused crystals.

They were supposed to show the Hero’s final battle.

I raced there without thinking.

By the time I arrived, the door was shattered, runes smoking and twisted. Inside, the lights flickered. The central pedestal was cracked. And one of the memory cores was gone.

Lira was there, breathing hard, cloak scorched.

“It wasn’t me,” she said before I even asked. “Someone else got here first.”

We heard footsteps outside. A lot of them.

I grabbed her wrist. “Come on.”

We ducked into a hidden alcove behind a statue, just as two enforcers entered—battle-ready, faces hidden beneath silver masks.

“They’re not school guards,” Lira whispered.

“No. They’re from the Church.”

She stiffened. “Why?”

“Because whatever was in that core… proves the Hero wasn’t one of the Saints.”

She stared at me.

“I was in that recording,” I said. “And they can’t let the world see it.”

The next night, someone left a note in my room.

“You are not forgotten. But you were meant to be.

Stop digging, or we finish what fate started.”

—The Order of Light

I stared at the paper for a long time. The Order. The same group that anointed the Four Saints. The same group that buried kingdoms in the name of peace.

I felt the old fire stir in my blood.

I had tried to live quietly. To let the world move on.

But the world wouldn’t let me.

If they wanted the Hero gone, they should’ve made sure I stayed dead.

I didn’t sleep after the note.

It wasn’t just the threat—it was the handwriting. I recognized it. Formal, precise, sharp at the corners. The same script used in divine declarations during the war. The same one on the mission orders that had sent me into the final battle.

The Order of Light hadn’t just forgotten me.

They had planned it.

I sat in the dark, fingers wrapped around the iron tag that marked me as Class 3-C. A label for the weak. For the ones without gifts, lineage, or purpose.

But that wasn’t who I was.

I once led armies into battle against the abyss. I had watched cities fall and kingdoms rise again. I had stood on the edge of the world and seen what lay beyond the veil. And still, I came back.

Not to be remembered.

But to make sure no one else suffered what I did.

—

Morning brought fog and tension.

Whispers ran like wildfire through the academy. Word of the memory core theft had spread, though the official line claimed it was a “malfunction.” The student body wasn’t buying it.

Classes were suspended for the day. Enforcers patrolled the halls. Third-division students were told to remain in their dorms.

But I didn’t.

I slipped through the hidden paths I remembered from long ago—corridors sealed with runes, stairwells forgotten by architects. This place had changed over the years, but its bones remained the same. The academy had grown on top of older foundations—relics of a world the Order wanted buried.

At the end of one such path was the Vault of Echoes, sealed by three keys.

I had one. A remnant from the old days—buried in my sword’s hilt, dormant until now.

The lock pulsed as I held it near. Ancient light flickered. The seal cracked slightly—but didn’t open. The other keys were still needed.

I backed away.

One thing was clear: the Order hadn’t destroyed everything. They had sealed what they couldn’t erase. And now, someone was breaking those seals.

Not just me.

—

Back in the dorms, I found Lira waiting by my door. Her cloak was soaked from the mist, her expression tight.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” she said. “The note.”

I nodded. “They’ve known from the start.”

“And they still let you in?”

“They didn’t know I remembered.”

She held out a scroll. “I decoded a fragment from the stolen memory core. It only played once before it disintegrated.”

She tapped it open. A shimmer of light, fractured and faint, danced between us.

The battlefield. The Demon Lord—enormous, winged, corrupted beyond recognition—towered at the center.

And at his feet… a lone warrior.

Black cloak. No emblem. Sword raised high.

It was me.

The scene froze. Then collapsed in on itself, vanishing into smoke.

Lira was pale.

“Why would they hide that?” she whispered. “You won. You saved everything.”

“Because the world wants clean stories,” I said. “The Saints were easy to worship. I wasn’t.”

She looked at me, voice soft. “What are you going to do?”

I stared out the window, where enforcers marched past like shadows in holy armor.

“Simple,” I said.

“I’m going to take my story back.”