Towan’s mouth opened.
The words that ca out weren’t just sound—they were force given shape.
"I am Towan."
Distant. Like an echo from the bottom of a chasm.
Absolute. Like a god declaring natural law.
Len’s knees buckled. The air itself thickened, pressing down on her shoulders like a mountain’s weight. Her vision swam, rainwater and sweat stinging her eyes as her hair clung to her face in dripping strands.
She couldn’t look away.
His eyes were voids. Not just dark—anti-light, swallowing the downpour’s reflection, the battlefield’s glow, everything.
Is this still Towan?
The doubt clawed up her throat.
Beside her, Sera’s face twitched—just once. A microscopic crack in her composure. Her fingers flexed, not toward her dagger this ti, but open, empty, as if preparing to catch lightning.
The rain howled, but it didn’t touch him.
Drops stead away an inch from his skin, repelled by the invisible furnace of his presence.
Power radiated off him in waves, the kind written about in epics and warnings, the kind that reshaped nations and slaughtered armies.
And he was looking right at them.
"Do I… know you?"
His voice was calm, almost gentle—like a stranger offering directions. No malice. No aggression. Just detached curiosity.
His shoulders loosened, the crushing pressure in the air easing as he studied them. They weren’t corrupted. That much, at least, he seed certain of.
But Len and Sera did not relax.
"Towan…!" Len’s voice cracked, raw with desperation. She took a step forward, her hands trembling at her sides. "I’m Len! Your friend!"
The words hung in the air, a plea thrown into the void.
Towan’s head tilted slightly, his dark eyes flickering with sothing unrecognizable.
"A Verestra?"
The word landed like a guillotine.
Not just confusion—disbelief. As if he’d seen a ghost. As if she shouldn’t exist.
Len’s hands flew to her mouth, her breath catching in her throat. The ground beneath her seed to tilt, the world shrinking to this single, horrifying truth:
He doesn’t know .
Not just forgotten—erased.
Sera’s grip tightened around her dagger, her expression unreadable. But her silence scread louder than any curse.
The rain continued to fall, the sound muffled, distant, as if even the storm dared not interrupt.
And Towan—
—no, this hollow echo of him—
Simply stared.
Rhys finally kicked open his door.
"FINALLY!" His voice bood down the hallway, sharp with pent-up frustration.
He’d known the lower-class students would try sothing tonight—so pathetic coup to seize the dorms while the professors were distracted. He’d prepared for it. Sharpened his techniques. Drilled counters. Even anticipated their cowardly tactics.
But this?
A barrier—thick, suffocating, woven with enough layered Essentia to stall even First-Class students—sealing off the entire third-year wing?
"I should’ve expected that," he muttered, rolling his shoulders. Of course they wouldn’t face the strongest head-on.
Still…
"How the hell did they manage a barrier this strong?"
He stepped into the hall—and froze.
The other third-years flooded out behind him, their expressions a mix of battle-ready grins and confusion. The elite of the academy, each one a force unto themselves.
And yet—
No enemies.
No clashing steel, no shattered walls, not even a taunting shout from the shadows.
Just silence.
Rhys’s jaw tightened. "Did the professors already handle it?"
But that made no sense. If the threat was neutralized, why leave the barrier up?
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(He didn’t know, of course. Couldn’t know. The barrier had already fallen the mont Haeren’s Corruption crumbled—dissolving like smoke without its caster’s will to sustain it.)
"Let see."
Rhys slamd his palms together, Essentia coiling outward in a pulse of awareness. Not Towan’s crude "bubble"—no, this was Eryndar’s original technique, refined over years. His energy laced through the air like invisible fingers, probing, testing, mapping the dorm’s periter with surgical precision.
And then—
Contact.
Towan.
Or…
Sothing wearing his shape.
Rhys’s technique shattered on impact, his Essentia dissolving like water thrown on a forge. The backlash jolted up his arms, leaving his fingertips numb.
"What the…?"
His breath stilled.
For the first ti in years—Rhys felt the ice-cold prickle of genuine uncertainty.
"I need to see that."
Not curiosity.
A warning.
Towan stood motionless.
The rain slowed, its relentless downpour easing into a drifting mist, as if the storm itself hesitated in his presence.
Then—his hand twitched.
A flick of his wrist—casual, effortless—and Rhys’s technique shattered between his fingers like brittle glass. The backlash should have ripped through flesh, but Towan didn’t even flinch.
A pause.
"...Rhys?"
His voice was hollow, yet recognizing. Not the warmth of reunion—just cataloguing a familiar signature, like a scholar identifying a long-forgotten text.
The rain dulled to a whisper.
Sera let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her shoulders loosened, but her gaze remained razor-sharp.
Then she smiled.
Not her usual mocking smirk, not the playful taunt she wielded like a blade.
This was sothing rarer.
Curiosity.
"Where are you from?" she asked, her voice soft, almost reverent.
Because she saw it now.
The emptiness in his stance. The void where his intent should be.
This wasn’t just a broken boy.
This was soone who had already lost everything.
And that—
That made him the most dangerous thing on the battlefield.
Towan hesitated.
A fraction of a second—a lifeti of calculation flickering behind those void-dark eyes.
Then:
"I am not your Towan."
His voice carved through the rain, each word heavy with finality. He crossed his arms, not defensively, but like a king dismissing petitioners.
"I’m sure you’ve noticed that."
A step forward.
The air warped around him, the ground blackening where his shadow fell.
Sera’s muscles locked. Every instinct scread to run—to vanish into the trees and never look back. But her feet remained rooted, not from courage, but from the primordial understanding that flight would change nothing.
Len’s breath crystallized in her lungs.
Then—
"I co from another tiline."
The words detonated between them.
A shiver ripped through both girls—not fear, not awe, but the visceral wrongness of a fundantal law breaking.
The rain stuttered mid-fall, droplets hanging suspended as if ti itself gasped.
Sowhere in the distance, a branch snapped, too loud in the sudden silence.
Towan watched them, unblinking.
Waiting to see if they’d flee.
Or beg.
Or shatter from the revelation alone.
Then—
FLASH.
A figure blitzed from a third-story window, shattering the glass mid-leap. Rhys, a cot of coiled fury, descended like a hamr of the gods.
CRACK.
Towan’s forearm t the kick mid-air—not with a block, but a casual interception, the impact echoing like a gunshot. The ground beneath his feet didn’t buckle. Didn’t tremble. As if the force simply ceased to exist the mont it touched him.
Rhys’s sneer faltered. His veins burned with wrongness—this close, Towan’s presence wasn’t just off. It was an abyss wearing skin.
"What are you?" Rhys snarled, flipping back to land in a crouch.
Towan didn’t pursue. Just tilted his head, the ghost of a smirk playing at his lips.
"Rhys," he said, voice laced with sothing between nostalgia and pity."As impatient as always."
A beat.
Rhys flinched. Not from fear—from not knowing who was talking to him
(How does he know ?) he thought. He had never spoken with Towan before
Len’s nails dug into her palms."How does… this Towan know Rhys?" she whispered, the tiline’s weight crushing her grasp of reality.
Sera’s pupils dilated, her breath shallow. "That’s a possibility," she murmured, not to Len—to the universe itself.
Because standing before them wasn’t just a stranger.
It was proof.
Of worlds beyond theirs.
Of lives already lived.
Of a Towan who rembered everything—and had nothing left to lose.
A resonant hum shuddered through the air as the Academy’s barrier flared back to life, its golden latticework searing through the night like divine script.
The corpses of the wolves—twisted, violet-veined, half-reassembled by Corruption—
—vanished.
Not decayed. Not burned away.
Erased.
As if the universe itself blinked, and in that split second, undid the violation.
The battlefield fell eerily pristine, the only evidence of the slaughter the blood still drying on the survivors’ hands.
Then—
Footsteps.
Elliot and Lyris erged from the smoke-choked halls, their faces etched with exhaustion and grim triumph—until their eyes locked onto Towan.
Elliot’s essentia flickered and died on his palm, his breath catching like a knife in his ribs.
Lyris’s eyes widened and her fingers twitched—then froze.
A beat.
A rustle of leaves.
Sylra and Ryn landed soundlessly behind them, fresh from their pursuit. Sylra’s windblades dissipated into mist the mont she saw him. Ryn’s daggers hung limp in his grip.
No one spoke.
No one dared.
Because the boy standing before them—
Wasn’t.
Not anymore.
"Elliot… Sylra."
Towan’s voice washed over them, thick with sothing unplaceable—not joy, not relief, but a quiet, aching recognition, like a man tracing the nas on a long-lost gravestone.
"I’m glad to see you okay."
The words should have been warm. Should have been a balm after the night’s horrors.
But the way he said them—
Pity.
Nostalgia.
As if he wasn’t greeting them, but rembering them.
As if they were already ghosts to him.
Then—
He stepped forward.
And hugged them.
Elliot stiffened, his body locking up mid-breath. Sylra’s fingers twitched at her sides, her wind Essentia stuttering out in a silent gasp.
They could feel him—the solid weight of his arms, the heat of his skin, the familiar scent of iron and ozone that had always clung to him after a fight.
But it wasn’t him.
Not really.
This close, the wrongness was undeniable. His heartbeat too slow, his breathing too even, like a machine mimicking life. The arms around them held no tension, no unspoken fear or relief—just empty motion, a pantomi of affection perford by sothing that no longer understood it.
A hug that felt like a requiem.
And for the first ti in their lives—
Neither of them could move.
Not to pull away.
Not to hug back.
Just—
Frozen.
In the arms of a stranger wearing their best friend’s corpse.
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