Chapter 2 The Forgotten Blade and the Burning Truth

Fog coiled through the academy grounds like smoke from a fire no one could see. Kael walked the outer perimeter of the central tower, his cloak drawn close and footsteps light. He wasn’t sneaking—just avoiding attention.

Attention brought questions. And questions led to lies.

Lira’s scroll burned in his coat pocket like a second heartbeat. The memory fragment was gone, dissolved by protective enchantments. One viewing only. The Order had ensured no traces were left behind.

But Kael remembered.

He remembered the Demon Lord’s dying scream. The shockwave that tore apart sky and soul. And most of all—he remembered standing alone at the center of that battlefield, with the divine system flickering around him like a dying star.

The Order didn’t just erase him from history.

They buried the truth under the weight of saints.

⸻

Classes resumed with a cold edge in the air. Enforcers lingered longer than they should have. Instructors wore tired smiles that didn’t reach their eyes. Students whispered, but no one dared speak loudly. Not after the lockdown. Not after the “malfunction.”

Kael returned to his drills in silence. He didn’t spar. He didn’t answer questions. He didn’t speak to Lira again.

He couldn’t afford to.

But it didn’t stop her from watching.

⸻

It was two days later when Instructor Ryelle called him aside.

“You’ve fought before,” she said bluntly.

Kael didn’t answer.

“Not like these kids. Not padded dueling. You’ve seen real combat.”

Still, he said nothing.

Ryelle studied him for a long time. Then she handed him a scroll. “Trial summons. You’ve been selected for evaluation by the Upper Rings. That usually takes months. Someone’s watching you.”

Kael unfolded the scroll. A glowing crest pulsed at the bottom—one he hadn’t seen in years.

The Order’s seal.

He stiffened. “What happens if I fail?”

Ryelle smirked. “You’re expelled. Or worse.”

“What’s worse?”

She leaned in. “You disappear.”

⸻

That night, Kael couldn’t sleep. Again.

So he went to the old greenhouse.

It had once been a place of divine study. He knew because he’d bled there—years ago, in a different life, when a Saint had nearly killed him during training and claimed it was an accident.

He wasn’t looking for memories. Just quiet.

But someone else was already there.

Silver hair. A staff laid gently across a moss-covered bench.

Lira didn’t speak when he entered. She just gestured to the broken fountain and waited until he sat down beside her.

Then she said, “They accelerated your trial.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

“Because I asked too many questions. I was told to stop digging or I’d lose my position.”

“Are you going to?”

She looked up. “Would you?”

He didn’t answer.

⸻

They sat in silence. Wind whispered through broken glass. A single moonbeam cut through the ivy above, glinting off a shard of cracked marble—once part of a statue, now forgotten like everything else.

Then Lira spoke again, softer this time.

“I found something.”

Kael turned toward her.

“It’s not much. Just a page. Torn, almost burned through. But it’s not from the academy archives. It’s from the Church vaults.”

She handed it to him. Kael took it slowly.

It was old. Real parchment, hand-inscribed. The ink shimmered faintly with holy resonance.

At the top was a title: “Project Sanctum: Divine Consolidation.”

And beneath it, just three chilling lines:

Designation: HERO-NULL

Status: Terminated

Rationale: Narrative Instability

Kael felt his hands tighten.

Terminated.

They didn’t just forget him.

They chose to erase him.

⸻

Lira whispered, “They rewrote the system. Not just the story. The divine system itself.”

Kael stared down at the page.

The world didn’t forget him.

It was made to forget.

Suddenly, a shadow passed outside the glass.

Kael was up in an instant, hand on his sword, eyes scanning the perimeter. But the shadow was gone.

Lira rose too. “Someone was listening.”

He nodded. “Go back to your dorm. Don’t talk to anyone.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to the Inner Library.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s suicide. It’s restricted to Saints and High Circle mages.”

“I know.”

She didn’t try to stop him.

⸻

The Inner Library was a tower unto itself. Guarded not by locks, but by oaths. Only those with divine clearance could enter—and Kael had lost that the day he died.

But the walls didn’t forget his soul.

He pressed his palm to the marble arch. A brief pain stabbed through his chest—then the seal pulsed.

Not open.

But cracked.

A sliver of space. A loophole.

He slipped inside.

⸻

Rows upon rows of floating codices spun slowly in place, suspended by divine glyphs and runic chains. The air was heavy with silence and weight—like walking through memory itself.

Kael didn’t look for what was there.

He looked for what was missing.

And he found it.

A gap between shelves. A missing volume.

[Vol. 231: Final Battle, Chrono-Sealed]

Only the Divine Keepers could remove that core.

But someone had.

And they had erased the catalogue too.

Kael turned.

A woman stood at the far end of the aisle.

She wore a veil of silver threads and no insignia. No aura. No scent.

But Kael remembered her.

The Timekeeper.

She had watched his death.

She had been there—silent, unblinking—as the Hero was wiped from the world.

And now she was watching him again.

“Why?” Kael asked.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she raised her hand—

And the library began to collapse.

The Forgotten Blade and the Burning Truth

The collapse began not with sound, but silence.

Shelves folded inward as if retreating from her. The air thickened. Kael’s breath caught in his throat as the divine runes that held the archives together began to fray. Light bled from the glyphs, threads of magic unraveling like broken harp strings.

The Timekeeper didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

She only watched.

Kael grabbed a support pillar and anchored himself as the collapse surged toward him like a spiraling maelstrom of unraveling time. Books warped. Codices aged and rotted in an instant. Knowledge erased in the blink of an eye.

This was no attack.

This was a cleansing.

“Why now?” he shouted, his voice barely a whisper in the chaos.

Still she said nothing.

But as the floor buckled beneath him, Kael caught a glimpse beneath her veil—eyes like broken hourglasses. Cracked and filled with stardust.

She raised her hand again. A single finger pointed.

Not at him.

At his chest.

At the scar—the divine mark.

His entire body seized.

⸻

Kael awoke on stone.

Cold. Damp. Not the library.

The scent of blood filled the air.

His cloak was torn. The sword was missing.

He sat up, gasping. The world around him shimmered—a memory echo. The Timekeeper had cast him into a stored fragment. One he couldn’t control.

Around him, the battlefield burned.

Flames climbed shattered watchtowers. Ash drifted like snowfall. Screams echoed through the smoke, distant but familiar.

He knew this place.

Ralos.

The fall of the last free city.

But he wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this moment. Not in this memory.

Not alone.

Kael turned and saw the version of himself—years younger, face fierce, sword gleaming with divine light—charging into the fray.

Behind that Kael marched a legion.

Mira. Gareth. Sera.

Alive again, even if only for a moment.

He tried to speak. To scream. To warn them.

But no sound came from his mouth. No one saw him.

He was a ghost inside his own past.

⸻

The real horror came minutes later.

As his memory-self clashed with demonspawn, as Mira shouted orders and Gareth laughed in the face of fire—Kael saw the rift.

Not the one he remembered.

A second one.

Behind enemy lines.

Small. Flickering.

Barely visible.

But from it emerged a robed figure.

Silver threads in her veil.

The Timekeeper.

She watched the battle. Saw the divine strike fall. Saw Mira die. Saw the tide turn.

Then she whispered something into the rift—and it closed.

And all the memory shimmered.

Gareth vanished mid-laugh.

The sky rippled. The divine blade flickered.

Kael felt his chest explode in pain as the scar re-opened.

He was being pulled backward again. Time was rewriting itself. And the one holding the quill… wasn’t the gods.

⸻

When Kael woke again, he was back in the academy.

Infirmary.

“Hey.”

Lira’s voice. Sharp. Concerned.

Kael sat up too fast. His body screamed in protest.

“Easy,” she said, pressing a hand to his chest. “You were missing for six hours. No one could find you.”

“The library—”

“Collapsed. Or part of it. They’ve locked it down. Word is the Church is blaming a magical surge.”

Kael coughed. “She was there.”

Lira’s brows furrowed. “Who?”

“The one who erased me.”

She froze.

He reached into his torn coat. Somehow—impossibly—the scroll page had survived.

Project Sanctum.

Lira took it gently. “You still want to go to the trial?”

“They want to erase me a second time,” Kael said. “Let’s give them a reason to remember.”

⸻

Three Days Later

The Trial of Selection took place at the Obsidian Arena.

Not just a test—a spectacle. Nobles packed the stands, instructors sat in private boxes, and the High Mages of the Church loomed over it all like statues carved from judgment.

Kael stood in the center of the field.

Iron tag still around his neck.

No blade.

Just him.

Opposite him stood his opponent.

Joren.

But something was wrong.

His aura shimmered with golden light. His eyes… vacant.

“A sanctified vessel,” Lira whispered from the stands. “They’re using him.”

“They want me to kill him,” Kael muttered.

And then the bell rang.

⸻

Joren lunged with divine speed.

Kael barely ducked. The earth split where the boy’s blade struck. Spectators gasped.

Kael danced away, refusing to strike.

“You’re not him,” he called.

But Joren said nothing.

A puppet. Controlled.

Another strike. Kael caught the blow on a conjured mana barrier—barely.

“Fight back,” someone roared.

“Coward!” others jeered.

This was a show. They wanted blood.

Kael clenched his fists. He could end this. A single killing strike. A divine impulse still echoed in his veins.

But that would be what they wanted. Confirmation that he was unstable. Dangerous. Wrong.

So instead…

He knelt.

Dropped his guard.

And looked up at Joren.

“Remember who you are.”

The blade halted an inch from his throat.

The arena went still.

Joren trembled. Then collapsed.

Gasps. Chaos.

The spell broke.

Kael had won. Without raising his hand.

But he wasn’t smiling.

Because one of the judges had risen.

Robe gold-trimmed.

Eyes too familiar.

The same script from the note.

The Order was watching.

And next time, they wouldn’t just test him.

They would execute him.

The Obsidian Arena cleared out in stunned silence.

Kael stood alone at the center, dust swirling around him like forgotten ashes. The cheers never came. There was no applause. Only the weight of too many stares and one truth:

He had stolen their script. Refused their ending.

The Order had wanted a villain or a martyr.

He had given them neither.

⸻

Back in the dorms, Kael found his bed stripped, his belongings gone.

A quiet message.

You don’t belong.

He sat on the bare frame and unwrapped the tag from his neck. Class 3-C. A label. A brand. A cage. He stared at it for a long time, then closed his hand around the metal until it cut his palm.

Outside, a knock.

He didn’t answer, but the door creaked open anyway.

Lira stepped inside, a cloth bundle in her arms. “They moved your things to storage. Said you were being… ‘relocated.’ No reason given.”

She set the bundle on the desk—his cloak, neatly folded, cleaned of arena dust.

Kael didn’t look at her. “They’re coming.”

“Yes,” she said. “Soon.”

He turned. “Why are you still helping me?”

Her silver gaze was steady. “Because I saw your face in the memory core. And I watched you risk your life to save a boy you barely knew.”

“That doesn’t make me good.”

“No,” she said. “But it makes you human. And if they can erase someone like you, then none of us are safe.”

Kael stared at the cracked mirror. His reflection didn’t speak. It never did.

He whispered, “They’re rewriting the soul of the world.”

“I know,” Lira said.

Silence fell again.

But this time, it was different. Not lonely. Not cold.

Heavy. Like the calm before a storm.

⸻

That night, Kael dreamt of the battlefield again.

But this time, he wasn’t alone.

The Timekeeper stood at the center, hands raised to the stars. Strings of light coiled from the heavens, wrapping around her wrists like chains.

Behind her, the Order watched.

They didn’t wear robes now.

They wore masks shaped like saints.

Kael tried to move—but his limbs were frozen in gold. The divine seal had him bound, scarring his arms with forgotten prayers.

The Timekeeper turned.

Her mouth moved—but no words came.

Only one thought echoed in his skull:

“You were never supposed to return.”

⸻

Kael awoke gasping, sweat slicked across his back. Outside, horns blared from the east gate. Not a drill. Not training.

An alarm.

He was up and armed within seconds.

When he opened the door—

—flames greeted him.

The eastern wing of the academy was burning.

⸻

Smoke billowed into the night sky.

Kael sprinted across the stone path toward the east wing, the sound of cracking beams and distant shouting growing louder with each step. Academy guards scrambled with water glyphs and hastily drawn containment runes, but the flames weren’t ordinary.

They burned blue.

Holy blue.

Divine fire.

Someone had ignited a sanctified blaze—designed not just to destroy, but to cleanse.

Kael’s heart pounded.

They weren’t trying to harm students.

They were erasing another part of the truth.

He passed by scorched banners, melting sigils, and twisted relics of the academy’s earliest days—artifacts tied to the Hero Era. This wasn’t a fire. It was a purge.

A holy rewriting.

And in the center of it all…

He saw her.

Not the Timekeeper.

Not a masked judge.

Calia.

Lira’s roommate.

Kael froze behind a crumbling pillar, eyes wide.

She stood untouched by the flames, a circle of burning sigils rotating slowly beneath her feet. Her hands were raised, her expression serene—almost sad.

She was chanting in a language only the High Priests used.

The language of divine code.

Calia… was part of them.

The Order.

Before he could move, she turned. Looked directly at him.

Their eyes met.

And she smiled.

Not cruel.

Not mocking.

Something worse.

Pity.

Then she mouthed the words:

“I’m sorry.”

The sigils flared—

And the tower exploded.