Kidnapped

A hand clamped over Lucien’s mouth before anyone could react. Another seized his chest, yanking him backward with a force that knocked Fenris off his feet.

“Lucien!” Darius shouted, lashing out, but his claws tore through empty air.

Fenris lunged, teeth snapping, growls splitting the night, but it was too late. Lucien’s body convulsed once, then the shadow swallowed him. Gone.

The courtyard erupted. Students screamed. Teachers shouted spells, lightning and fire arcing from fingertips, striking nothing but mist. Anselm’s wards flared violently along the gates and stones, but the lattice held only as decoration. Lucien was gone.

“No!” Rhoren’s voice split the air, sharp and brittle. “Block every passage! Seal the service tunnels!”

Chaos moved like a living thing. Torches toppled. Screams collided with spells. Veyra barked orders, shoving students back, while Selwin muttered incantations, fingers tracing furious patterns in the air.

And yet the shadow lingered, a ripple in the courtyard that resisted every counter.

Darius spun, eyes wide, muscles coiled like a spring. He surged forward, but there was nothing to strike. The ground trembled faintly underfoot, a warning more than a pulse, and the shadow—if it could be called that—slipped through walls, stairs, and gates as if they were written in ink, not stone.

Toren stumbled into a student, nearly toppling over. “This is absurd! We need swords and axes, not… poetic thieves!” His voice cracked. Panic sharpened his tone, and even his bravado could not mask the terror in his eyes.

And then there was Arian. He surged forward, eyes wide, breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands trembled, fingers sparking with uncontrolled magic. 

“No… no, this isn’t happening!” he barked, voice breaking. Every instinct screamed at him, every memory from the cycles of failure pressed like a hammer against his chest. Here it was again, in front of him. He lost his beloved friend once more from before his eyes.

He darted between Toren and Darius, trying to form a protective line, but he was too late. His magic flared, a pale, jagged light across the courtyard, and the shadow recoiled for a heartbeat. But Lucien was already gone.

Arian dropped to his knees, the flare of wards around him flickering as he slammed his fists into the stone. “Why?! Why now?!” His voice was raw, half agony, half rage.

He could feel the echoes of previous failures, fragments of memory that didn’t make sense but hurt like fresh wounds. The world tilted, and he felt helpless in a way that tore at him from the inside.

He stood again, shaking, chest heaving, eyes scanning every shadow, every flicker of movement. “I won’t… I won’t let this happen again,” he whispered, almost to himself, even as the courtyard descended further into chaos.

I should have written him surviving.

I could feel my pen trembling in my hand even as the world erupted around me. It had been decades—no, cycles—of this. I knew the outcome. I had known it ninety-nine times before. And yet I was powerless, watching the same events replay in the flesh instead of on parchment. However I lost him every single time in different ways. Why? Why? Why?

> [Mission Failed – Attempt #99]

The words appeared, not on paper but in the edges of my vision. Not absurd or flashy—just a cold fact. Lucien had been abducted. The conditions for reset were not met. Time would not rewind. I would not get another chance to erase this failure by spilling my own blood. This time he was abducted, he might again—

I swallowed, a bitter taste crawling up my throat. Usually, the System allowed me to step back, to die and rewrite the events as if they had never been. Ninety-nine times, I had paid the cost, each death precise, methodical, painful. Each death had been a coin for a chance to undo the horrors that fell upon him.

But not now. Not this time. He was alive. However taken. And so there was no salvation in the familiar ritual.

Rhoren’s voice split through the fog of my despair. “Everyone! Check every corridor, every passage! I want every service tunnel sealed!”

Toren grabbed the nearest student. “Move!” He shoved him toward the inner gate. “Don’t just stand there!”

I could see them trying. I could see their desperation and fear. They thought this was new. They thought this was the first time. But I knew the pattern. I knew how it would unfold. And the knowledge burned worse than the panic.

The shadow moved with intent, threading through corridors and staircases, slipping through cracks no one else would notice. It was careful, deliberate, patient. It knew exactly where Lucien was most vulnerable and it moved him as easily as one might move a pawn across a board.

I should have changed the wards earlier. I should have anticipated this. I had tried—tried every subtle variation I could think of. Each time I rewrote my notes, shifted patrols, added lines of protective magic. Yet each attempt was undone, each success mocked by the narrative itself. Who can I blame? Haha. It was me, it was all me. It's all my fault...

> [New Mission Assigned]

Retrieve Lucien before the Claiming completes.

Failure: Permanent narrative collapse.

Permanent. The word echoed in my head, a drumbeat of terror and inevitability. Unlike before, there was no rewind, no soothing balm of repetition. If I failed here, the story—my story—would end. There would be no second chance. No redemption in death. Only failure. And I wouldn't be able to rewrite my mistakes then nor would I be able to save my favourite character.

I had seen him die in countless ways. But this was worse. This was uncertainty. This was the first time I had to act without the safety of knowing he would live to be saved by my own sacrifice.

And yet I was alive.

And so, finally, I stepped into the narrative—not as the distant writer, not as the observer—but as the one who had to make the impossible choices in real time.

I shouldered my pen like a weapon. Each line I had written before had been a tether, a chain I tried to pull tight around the story. But now the chain felt loose in my hands, frayed and impossible to grasp fully. And yet, I had to reach forward. I had to track him, find him, before the Claiming completed.

The courtyard was still in chaos. Teachers and students collided in frantic motions, wards sparking and splintering under stress, and Fenris prowled the edges of my perception, ears flat, muscles coiled. 

But none of them understood what was at stake. Only I did. Only I knew that he had to live, that the clock was ticking, and that every second I hesitated cost us both more than anyone else could understand.

I drew a breath. I tried to steady my hand, pressed it to the parchment, and for the first time I wrote not to record, not to test, but to anchor myself:

I will find him. I will bring him back. I will... I will save you, Lucien. No matter what so wait for me just please don't die this time.

The words burned as I wrote them, each letter a promise, a tether to a future I could still shape.

I had failed ninety-nine times before. Each cycle, I had killed myself to start over, to watch him live again, to rewrite the story and try again. Each death had been unbearable, etched into my mind, twisting and tearing. And yet I had kept going.

Now, there was no death to hide behind. There was only forward motion, only the uncertainty of the real timeline.

I glanced at the scattered courtyard: shattered torches, students pressed against the walls, teachers yelling in frustration. Every detail was a guide, a breadcrumb I could use to follow him.

I would follow him.

I would survive.

I would save him.

I could feel the narrative itself resisting, the invisible weight of all the previous failures pressing down on me. Every instinct screamed to flee, to hide, to despair. But the narrative had grown brittle. It could not stop me if I willed myself forward. I had spent countless cycles learning the edges, testing the patterns, memorizing the rhythms. But every time...every time he dies in different way. And i couldn't save him every time...

And now the test was not theoretical.

Lucien was alive. And he needed me.

I gripped the pen tighter, feeling the wood splinter against my palm. The courtyard blurred around me. Toren was shouting. Darius was racing down a staircase, trying to trace some hint of the shadow. Arian’s flares of magic still sparked erratically as he scoured every corridor, tears streaking his face. Fenris growled low, circling the perimeter. And yet, in all of this, I felt clarity.

I am Caelith. But am I Caelith?

I had been observing. I had been recording. I had been shaping the story from behind the veil. But now, I could not be the distant scribe. I was a part of it. The narrative demanded action. Lucien demanded action.

The mist that had swallowed him was not endless. It had shape, it had intent, and it could be traced if I understood its logic. I had understood it in the past. I would understand it again.

I would follow the thread, through shadowed corridors, across winding staircases, into every forgotten corner of the Academy. And I would find him.

Because if I failed now, there would be no more chances.

Because if I failed now, everything—every sacrifice, every cycle, every line of ink I had spilled in hope—would be meaningless.

And I would not allow that.

I moved toward the inner corridors, Fenris at my side, every sense stretched taut. Every shadow, every breath, every flicker of torchlight was a signal. I could see the way the wards hummed, feel the way the air bent around residual magic. I was alone in understanding, but I had to act.

I had no right to hesitate.

I had no right to fail.

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