Chapter 2: Wasn’t His Name

Morning light slipped through the curtains of his room, tracing a few outlines along the walls.

The mattress bent slightly with his weight, offering him solace. But the air in the room carried a crispness that felt suspiciously invigorating as if his apartment was next to a mountain spring.

That should have raised more questions than it did, but his brain was still waiting for the rest of him to clock in.

Knock. Knock.

A courteous rhythm echoed into his mind.

His soul twitched but his body hadn’t yet signed the contract to participate in the day.

‘Ugh. Who knocks at this hour?’

The door creaked open before he could process anything further. A set of footsteps followed, far too graceful to belong to anyone he remembered granting access to.

Yet, he stayed where he was, wrapped in the blanket’s hold, which clung to him with traitorous comfort.

Then, fingers combed gently through his hair.

They were careful. The touch wasn’t harsh, but there was a false familiarity in it, he felt the instinct to question it—rise and immediately fade, buried under sleep’s gentle bribe.

“Wake up, sweetie,” came the voice, melodic and dangerously gentle.

“The world awaits, you sleepyhead.”

Then, he realised that something was wrong in a catastrophic way.

‘Huh!?’

His eyes opened with urgency and met the morning sunlight. He flinched a bit. Then, turned his head slowly, and found her.

Seated beside him on the edge of the bed was a woman. Dressed in deep green wool, embroidered vines curled along her cuffs and hem.

Her hair, dark and pinned, framed her face slightly. Her face bore the serene, beautiful expression that one might expect from a goddess in a children’s book.

She was pretty but in a way certain flowers were poisonous.

Yuzuki’s brain, with admirable speed for this hour, immediately filed her under danger.

Woman equals danger.

Especially the beautiful one. It's not just a simple hunch but a well-established law of reality, confirmed through repeated and painful personal experience.

‘Why is there a woman in my room? No, wait. This is not my room… Where am I?’

His body moved before thought could catch up, throwing itself instinctively toward the headboard.

“Ouch!”

A slight wince betraying how real everything felt.

The woman blinked, her composure didn't crack. And it was immediately replaced by the smile that suggested she had seen this exact scenario a thousand times before.

“Oh my,” she said, with a soft voice.

“Did you have a nightmare, dear?” Her gentle laughter followed.

‘Dear? Huh? Don't dear me, who the hell are you?

His eyes swept across the room with cautious disorientation.

Everything around him felt curated.

‘Hey, this… isn't my apartment.’

The boy became even more puzzled and uneasy.

Where was he? Who was she? But he simply continued to observe and let the details float by without effort.

‘Why does my body feel… light?’

His weight and his proportions, none of it matched the person he remembered being.

‘And why weaker…?’

Then, just as he opened his mouth to say something logical or accusatory—his voice betrayed him.

“Mom—”

The word slipped out before his mind could slap a hand over it. His smaller hand immediately lurched upward, pressing hard against his mouth in disbelief.

‘Why the hell did I say that?’

Even if he dug far enough through the dusty archive of his childhood, Yuzuki didn’t have a mother like her.

This woman… none of it belonged to any fragment of memory he could claim.

‘Why do I look like a teenager?’

‘What kind of sadistic dream is this?’

The woman’s smile deepened as she brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. Yuzuki felt the unease stronger now because whatever affection she offered… felt belonged.

And it managed to trick him into accepting it.

“Anyway, if you’re awake enough to be surprised by your beautiful mother, then you’re certainly awake enough to get moving.”

She stood as she spoke, her movements fluid and composed.

“Wash up now, Ruvian. Breakfast is getting cold, and you know how dramatic Ciela becomes when she has to wait for you.”

Then, she turned and left. The door clicking shut behind her. And the silence returned, thick and undisturbed.

The boy on the bed, which she had called Ruvian, remained silent in his sheets. His expression had changed from mild confusion to disbelief.

‘Ruvian? Huh? I-I don't understand! Who the hell is that? And this isn't my bedroom. This isn’t even my blanket or the stiff pillow I hate!’

His eyes moved again, scanning the room, trying to locate some kind of anchor, something familiar or stupid enough to make this entire dream sequence collapse.

The room was composed with a rustic sense of order. In the corner stood an oak wardrobe, doors narrowly opened to reveal rows of folded tunics and neatly hung trousers.

A simple writing desk sat by the window.

Everything about the place breathed medieval reenactments or fantasy-themed films.

It was all painfully… like a fiction.

His jaw tensed.

‘Am I inside a generic fantasy setting? No, did I die?’

A slow exhale escaped him.

“For real?” he murmured to himself, testing his voice, it sounded different.

Slapping his face, he realised that everything was fundamentally, intrinsically wrong. Buried in his chest, the sensation of mismatch deepened, like two puzzle pieces forced into union.

His thoughts, or what used to pass for thoughts, felt frayed at the edges.

Familiar memories began to blur in his mind, reshaping themselves into things he couldn’t quite tell the difference between which one belonged to him and which had been borrowed.

Then, it came. Threaded itself in his head like it had always been there.

‘Ruvian… Castelor?’

The name didn’t belong to him, he was almost certain of that, but the way it rang in his mind felt disturbingly belonged to him.

His lips parted. “Ruvian,” he said quietly, testing it like a foreign word.

“Ruvian… Ruvian.”

The sound twisted the air around him, and worse, it twisted something inside him too.

That wasn’t his name.

He knew that.

But then why, with every repetition, did it start to sound more natural than his actual name?

Why did it feel like the syllables had lived somewhere in him long before he ever spoke them aloud?

Panic began to creep in. His name was Yuzuki. Yuzuki Nozomi. Not Ruvian for sure.

Then, the flood came.

Memories surged through him with sharp, unpredictable rhythm. Flash after flash, images of unfamiliar people, buildings that didn’t exist, voices that spoke his name like they had always known him.

His chest constricted as the blitz of two lives clashed inside his skull, fighting over space that wasn’t built to contain both.

He sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed, for several minutes. Eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow as he held to the fragments of his real identity.

Eventually, the static quieted.

And then, the words Velthia Academy rose to the forefront of his mind. Some part of his soul had recognized the name long before his consciousness caught up.

‘Velthia Academy? Where did I hear that before?’

‘Wait, don't tell me that—’

He stumbled back, feet tangling in the edge of the mattress, nearly sending him crashing onto the wooden floor.

His head spiralling as his equilibrium faltered under the weight of a single, horrific truth.

Velthia Academy.

One of the top three magical institutions in the kingdom of Averenthia.

A nation that gave birth to heroes, scholars, tyrants, and monsters alike. The name alone carried respect, and fear across the entire continent.

This world. The kingdom. The academy. The storm of events that is about to unfold.

He knew them but they were not from this boy's memories… It was from someone else.

It's Yuzuki Nozomi’s memories.

‘DAMN IT!! How? How did I end up inside that damnable novel?!!’

[The Hero That Left The Academy]

He had read it, proofread it, actually—skimming through late-night chapters, begrudgingly enduring the protagonist’s infuriatingly righteous ideals and the endless tragedies that piled up around him.

It had all been just fiction!

Words on a screen and stories to pass the time. The polished wood beneath his feet creaked as he moved.

All around him felt far too real, too tangible.

‘Fuck! I knew skipping therapy after reading her novel was a bad idea!!’

He stood still, utterly still, as though movement might wake something worse. His name wasn’t Yuzuki anymore, not in this world.

It was Ruvian now.

Ruvian Castelor.

His mind racing to comprehend the weight pressing down on him. He was inside the damnable novel, and if the fragmented timeline in these foreign memories held any truth…

He exhaled and spoke:

“The 472nd Year of the Nescra Calendar. So it's late winter, just two weeks left before the start of Nescra’s first month, which is the equivalent of January in this world.”

‘And in two weeks, this body, this Ruvian Castelor will enter Velthia Academy.’

His view lowered to the floor, but he wasn’t seeing the worn planks. His thoughts had pulled far away.

“No, calm down. You’re overreacting. This could still be a dream. Some twisted lucid nightmare your brain cooked up to punish you.”

He clenched his jaw.

“However, if this is my reality now…”

‘Then, I am fated to die.’

If the plot followed its course, death would come swiftly to anyone unlucky enough to be nothing more than a background figure in this world.

And judging from both of their memories, Ruvian Castelor was one of the nameless extras that didn’t get big, tragic deaths.

One that just stopped existing somewhere off-page, swept into the gutters of the story without so much as a paragraph.

He was extremely sure that the name didn't register in any of the written passages he had read or edited.

The floorboard in his room gave a long, aching creak. He barely bothered to lift his head when a figure appeared in the doorway. She stood there, framed by the battered wooden door.

Ruvian’s mother. Warm, shiny concern leaking from her eyes. Ruvian blinked slowly, wondering if he was supposed to feel comforted by this.

“Still in bed, Ruvian?” She asked, her voice gentle.

“Aren’t you coming down for breakfast?”

‘Hmm, what was the thing that he usually said to his mother again at this moment?...’

Ruvian's face flushed as he realized how he must look disheveled, wrapped in blankets like a sickly child.

“Ah. I’ll get ready soon… mom.”