Remnants of the past

In the distant past, in the small, dim kitchen of a run-down, weathered house…

A young boy eagerly assembles a magical item from scratch, imbuing a poorly made sword with glyphs and using common household materials to give it special properties. He cannot afford proper materials, so he makes do with what he has.

As he busily tinkers away, a man descends the stairs, fully clothed in his traveling gear. He quickly approaches the table and assembles several sandwiches.

The boy looks up, hesitating at first, before posing a question.

“Father… when can we study spellcasting again?”

The man is stunned for a while before giving his son a pained smile.

“In the future, alright? Father is busy for now. I’m working hard so I can buy our old mansion back. You loved our library there, right?”

“Yes, but… I already brought my favorite books from there, so we can still study them now…”

“Ahh, but I’m sure there are more books there that you miss, and we’ll have more space to practice spellcasting in our old courtyard, too,” he says, sliding a plate of sandwiches toward the boy and packing the rest into his coat pockets.

“I’m sorry we’re living like this now, but I promise, I’ll bring us back to our old, comfortable life, alright?”

The man pats his son’s head and hurriedly leaves the house.

The boy looks through the window, watching his father leave.

“But… I don’t mind living like this. Really.”

…

Naoya closes his eyes, making sure to keep them shut during their warp, and after a minute of standing still…

“We’re here.”

Naoya opens his eyes, and what he sees immediately makes his jaw drop.

They stand at the gates of an ominous, ruined kingdom. But it does not look like the dilapidated remains of Merrowind’s Keep; it is something much worse.

The entire place looks as if it was caught in the middle of an explosion—a single moment of destruction, suspended in time. Chunks of rubble and shattered masonry hang motionless in the air, frozen at the exact moment they were blown away. Beams bend close to snapping, walls lean at impossible angles, as if the violence had paused just before completing its ruin.

Strangely, the structures closest to the ground remain intact, while everything not anchored to the earth now floats, weightless, in eerie defiance of gravity. Not even a single breeze stirs, maintaining the absolute, unnatural silence. And the great outer walls that were meant to protect them now radiate outward, forming a jagged ring around everything, like a broken crown upon a corpse.

“What the… where are we?” Ori asks, struggling to understand what stands in front of them.

“I remember this place,” Naoya replies. “This is where the Demon Lord lived as a child. He attacked this place after he got his powers from Merrowind’s Keep, and he seemed really happy when he was doing it.”

“You’re right,” Solenne says, her gaze sweeping across the land. “The Cursed Ruins of Thevros. Nowadays, it serves as a cautionary tale for every nation in the world. The origin of the Demon Lord… and the Mage Hero.”

She sighs. “I don’t miss it at all, even if it was our homeland.”

Her umbrella rises and creates a transparent veil around them.

“Let’s go. We’ll remember more once we explore.”

…

In the small, dim kitchen of a run-down, weathered house, a young boy eagerly performs alchemy, creating a homemade concoction to finish the magical sword he has been making.

Loud footsteps thunder down the stairs, and his mother, dressed in beautiful—albeit revealing—clothing, appears, hurriedly fixing her earrings.

“There’s dinner on the stove, and some snacks in the cupboards. Don’t stay up too late now, alright?” she says, kissing him on the forehead.

“Are you leaving again?”

“Yes, dear. Off to make a living, like always. We can’t just rely on your father anymore.”

She drinks some water and leaves the house, her son watching through the window as his mother walks into the night.

“But… why do you have to work this late?”

…

The group walks through the ruins, protected by the umbrella’s transparent veil, observing the horror around them.

Within the ruins, they find broken, human-shaped figures wandering aimlessly. Some lie scattered on the ground like unwanted shells, others stand frozen in place, unmoving. A few limp through the rubble, their movements slow and unnatural. And trailing behind them is a dark, ink-like substance seeping from their forms—as if their bodies are dissolving into nothing.

“Are those…” Ori begins, but doesn’t finish her sentence, as she already knows the answer.

“They can’t even finish dying. Just like their kingdom,” Solenne says, observing the creatures.

Naoya frowns in disbelief, wondering what had led to his past incarnation bringing down such a curse on this place.

“Let’s go visit our old school, Naoya. I’m sure we’ll remember a lot from that place.”

…

In a large, open courtyard, a young boy, dressed in an old, weathered uniform, stands in front of a massive boulder.

Around him, other students also face similarly sized boulders, each taller than their teacher.

Everyone proceeds to lift their boulder without touching it. Some struggle to get theirs off the ground, while others effortlessly keep it in the air.

Meanwhile, the young boy pulls out his homemade magical sword from thin air and stabs it into his boulder. The poorly created blade somehow pierces stone, and without any effort, the boy lifts the massive boulder off the ground in one hand.

“Fenric, didn’t I tell you already that magical items are not allowed?”

The harsh reprimand of his teacher, Miss Karen, reaches his ears, and he quickly puts the boulder down.

“You’re meant to use your abilities only. Magical items are cheating!”

With a flick of her fingers, the sword shoots out of the boulder. The handle hits Naoya in the chest, knocking him down.

“But… I don’t have enough aether…”

“Well then, better find a way to improve your aether capacity, or I’ll have you expelled for cheating,” the teacher announces, and Alcestrus stands up, ignoring the faint laughter around him.

After class, he retreats into the school library—the only place he is safe from his classmates’ jeering eyes. Always watching, always judging.

He spends his entire lunch break there, hiding behind a stack of books and eating his sandwich, unable to find anywhere else he could safely eat.

“You do know that food isn’t allowed here, right?” says a gentle, friendly voice, as the tower of books in front of him shifts aside to reveal the speaker: a young girl with wavy blue hair, wearing a pointed hat and a pristine uniform.

Alcestrus hides his sandwich under the table. “I’m not eating here, what do you mean?”

“Hmmm… there are crumbs on the book you’re reading. Clean it up first,” she points out with a smile.

He shakes the crumbs off the book and brushes the rest from the table.

“All clean now. But why are you here? You’ll get in trouble if your parents find out.”

“What’s wrong with meeting my friend? And besides, what will they do, ground me again?” she shrugs. “I’m perfectly fine staying in my room. At least no one can bother me there.”

“But… never mind…” He shakes his head and takes another bite of his sandwich.

A cup of tea appears in the girl’s hands, as well as a small plate of cake.

“What are you doing? We’re gonna get in trouble!”

“It’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll just make it invisible.” She sets down her cup on the table, and it vanishes, along with the plate of cake. With unbothered confidence, she proceeds to eat her invisible food, using her invisible utensils. To anyone watching, she would have looked like a child playing pretend at a tea party, but Alcestrus still smelled the mild aroma of her drink and the sweet scent of her cake.

She snaps her fingers, and a similar meal appears in front of him, which slowly turns invisible.

“Here, have some. It’s my favorite cheesecake. If we’re breaking the rules already, might as well enjoy the best,” she says with a playful smile.

Alcestrus looks at her incredulously, then shakes his head with a grin. He puts down his sandwich and tries the cake before him.

After a while, they start chatting.

“Miss Karen was so unreasonable earlier. You had a perfectly good reason to use a magic item, so why did she want to expel you for that? It’s not like it’s an illegal item, right?”

“It’s not illegal… I made it myself,” he bashfully explains.

“See? The teachers should be praising you for that! Even my dad can’t make a magical item,” she exclaims a little too loudly, causing others in the library to silence her with hushed whispers.

“I don’t know… they probably think I shouldn’t be here, since my parents just begged them to accept me into the school.”

“But you do deserve to be here. Every kid does!” she sighs, taking a bite of her cake. “Why does everyone have to be so nasty…”

The boy, unable to think of an answer, turns his eyes to the windows, watching the grounds below bustling with life. He notices the grand school gates, decorated with intricate ironwork, flanked on each side by pristine marble pillars. And etched into that stone, the school’s slogan shimmers in gold:

“Where our Future Begins.”

…

“... Futur… Beg…”

Those are the only recognizable letters on the marble pillars in front of them, crumbling from the top like the rest of the school.

The three of them silently observe the stillness, watching unknown creatures shuffle around the grounds, aimlessly wandering, hopelessly waiting for salvation.

“This is it, where we first met, and where everything began,” Solenne tells him.

“Even though I’m here now, I still can’t remember anything,” Naoya replies.

“I’m sure you had your reasons, and it was probably for the best. Don’t worry, we don’t need your memories for this one,” she says, holding a small blue disc between her fingers.

“Wait, actually, I do remember something! But it’s just a really short, weird one…”

He looks back at a tower, crumbling into the air.

“I was falling from a window…”

…

Another day, another lunch break that Alcestrus spends in the library, hiding behind stacks of books as usual.

And like always, he hears the voice of a girl speak to him.

“Hey, you do know that eating in the library is prohibited, right?”

But this time, it isn’t Aurelia.

The stack of books in front of him gets swept away, revealing three of his classmates, looking at him with wicked grins.

“You’re gonna have to leave the library. Now.”

The girl pushes him, but before his chair can fall over, his surroundings change in the blink of an eye.

The safety of the library disappears, replaced by the open sky. He is teleported right outside a school building, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, with nothing but air beneath him.

Before he can even panic, a figure jumps through a window above and dives straight toward him, both of them plummeting at deadly speed.

His fear is overridden with confusion, as he recognizes the face of the person pushing him down.

It was himself… or so he thinks.

“Good riddance, weirdo.”

His impostor wears an evil grin before disappearing, leaving him on his own.

Thinking quickly, Alcestrus pulls out his magic sword and holds on to its blade, causing him to lose all of his mass, like it did for the boulder, and safely fall to the ground.

Before he can process what happened, a voice echoes from above. It is the same girl who pushed him in the library, crying out from a window.

“There he is! That guy was trying to molest Aurelia! Don’t let him escape!”