“Sometimes the most valuable information comes not from the archives, but from the mouth of an enemy who believes they are speaking a curse, when in fact, they are handing you a key.”

  [ 14th Lumiran 1749 | Keyris | 21:27 | Dormitory Room 231 ]

  The air in the room was stale and heavy, saturated with old tension and the faint scent of healing balms. I sat on the edge of the bed, my posture rigidly aligned. I wore a simple white uniform shirt, but the fabric felt foreign and cold against my skin. My body still vibrated with the echoes of the battle—a phantom, pulsing pain in my bandaged hand where the dream magic had left its mark; a deep, background tension in my muscles that had not subsided for days.Evelina and Nova were in their own chambers, but I was certain their dreams were just as restless and filled with shadows.

  Without a knock, the door gave a soft, barely audible creak, and Catherine entered the room. She was dressed in her familiar academic uniform, her hair pulled back in a neat, severe ponytail. She moved with a deliberate, almost pained caution, as if afraid to disturb the fragile silence that had settled after the storm. She carried a small tray: a steaming clay teapot, two simple, unadorned cups, and a plate of plain biscuits. She set it on the small table by the window, her movements silent,measured, almost ritualistic. She didn't ask if I had been sleeping. She knew I hadn't.

  “I thought… you might need to eat something,” she said quietly, without turning. Her voice was even, but it held the depth and weariness that comes after a sleepless night spent in anxious thought. She wasn't speaking to me—she was speaking to the space, trying to fill it with something simple and comprehensible, something from her former life.

  I didn’t answer, my gaze fixed on a point on the wall where the shadow of a chair leg formed a perfect straight line. My mind replayed the events at the Lenford estate again and again, breaking them down into their components: vectors of attack, types of magic, probabilities of outcomes, reaction times, acceptable losses. This was not reflection. It was a post-mortem analysis of a lost game. Lost not because we had fled, but because the enemy had dictated the rules, and we had been forced to play by them. For the first time since my incarnation, I considered the sufficiency of my power…

  Catherine came over, took a chair, and sat opposite me. She poured the tea, its steam rising in the cold morning air,painting ghostly, chaotic patterns before dissolving. She passed a cup to me, and her eyes held a multitude of questions.

  “Tell me,” she requested. It was not a command, nor a plea. It was an invitation to let her into my space, to share with her the knowledge that weighed on me like an invisible burden. “Tell me what really happened. Nova isn’t saying anything.Evelina has locked herself in her chambers. But I know you saw everything. I don’t need their versions, full of emotion and fear. I need yours. I need to understand what you faced. What we’re dealing with…”

  I slowly turned my head. Her eyes were clear; they held no pity, no panic. Only a complete concentration that felt like a phantom memory of something long forgotten. She didn’t want to comfort me; she simply wanted to know. And so, with a sigh, I began to speak. My voice was monotone, devoid of inflection, as if I were reading a tactical report from the battlefield.

  “The attack was planned. And there were two targets. The first was Evelina. The executor was an entity using dream magic. Power level—beyond the scope of ordinary humans. She is likely a key figure in the Cult of the Gods of Dreams,perhaps even its leader. Her method is a localized distortion of reality, creating a contained nightmare zone that resembles a parallel world. The second target was me. The executor was a mercenary, likely an agent of the Cult of Chaos. His task was the elimination of an Order mage. He was armed with a desecrated blade, which Evelina now has.”

  Catherine listened without interrupting, her fingers resting motionless on her cup. Her face was impassive, but I could see the images I described reflected in the depths of her eyes.

  “The woman in the mask transformed into a monster, a hybrid of a wolf and a serpent. Its physical strength and regeneration were anomalous. Conventional elemental magic had no effect on it. Only magic of the higher orders. The assassin was a professional, but the irrationality of the situation confused even him. I killed him. I ran him through with a blade of ice as he was about to strike me directly in the heart.”

  Catherine continued to listen, her brow not even twitching, but pinpricks of fear burned in her eyes.

  “As for the wound… I received it fighting the woman. Her blades, woven from dream magic, tore at reality itself.”

  I fell silent, taking a sip of the slightly cooled tea. The drink was tasteless, but it was warm, and that warmth was the only real thing in the cold morning.

  Catherine did not look away from me for a second.

  “Arta, you could have been killed. How did you even… how did you know what to do in all that chaos?” she asked.

  “I calculated the variables. There were not many,” I answered in a calm voice. “Eliminating the mercenary was simpler,though he was a master of his craft. With the monster, I had to improvise and escape with minimal losses. I saw no possibility of defeating it.”

  “Minimal…” She gave a bitter smile, a smile like a crack on a smooth sheet of ice. “The Lenfords are dead. You’re wounded. You barely escaped with your lives. You call that minimal losses? Arta, people died there! Elizaveta, Kiron… they were… they were Beatrice’s parents. Do you know how she cried when Nova told her the news?”

  “I cannot know, Catherine. I did everything I could,” I repeated, my tone unchanged. “The alternative scenario involved the deaths of Evelina and Nova. And my own. Do you truly believe I had a choice?”

  “No, I don’t,” she answered, shaking her head.

  Silence fell in the room again. Catherine slowly set her cup aside. She looked down at her hands as if seeing them for the first time.

  “You know…” she began quietly, “while you were gone from the academy, Ren approached me several times. She tried to talk. About books, about Nova, about some nonsense… You know, I have a feeling something isn’t right with her, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.” She looked up at me, and her expression held a cold, adult weariness. “I… I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to her. Every time I remember how she manipulated me, I just get angry. Maybe I was too harsh… but I couldn’t help it.”

  “I understand,” I nodded. “You acted logically. Ren truly lives in her own world and is in no hurry to grow up. You established a boundary, and that was the correct thing to do. When she matures, she will change her behavior on her own.”

  Catherine nodded, then slowly stood, walked to her travel bag, and took out clean bandages and a vial of healing balm.

  “Give me your hand,” she said. “I brought some ointment made from Silverleaf extract. It should help.”

  I held out my hand. She carefully unwound the old, blood-soaked dressing that Nova had applied the previous night at the Black Swan inn. The wound was still deep, its edges dark, almost black—the dream magic was hindering the natural regeneration of the flesh. Catherine applied the balm, her touch light but confident. She worked in focused silence. This was not a display of affection. It was an act of order, meant to stabilize my structure. She saw the chaos—the wound—and was eliminating it with the only means available to her. When she finished, she didn’t let go of my hand immediately. Her fingers lingered on my wrist as if checking my pulse.

  “You were on the edge, Arta,” she said quietly. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise. I saw it in your eyes when you returned. There was… a void. I was afraid… I was afraid you wouldn’t come back from it.”

  “It was concentration,” I corrected.

  “Call it what you want,” she said, releasing my hand. “But even the strongest sometimes need to rest.”

  She returned to her seat and finished her tea. We sat in silence until the first rays of sun touched the spires of the Academy, heralding the beginning of a new, fragile day.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ 38th Lumiran 1749 | Entris | Academy of Duality ]

  The weeks following our return from Sumerenn flowed like a viscous river of mud. The routine remained—lessons, schedules, curfew—but it had become a mere facade, a fragile decoration hiding the tension beneath. The world had changed. The people I interacted with had changed. Even I had changed. Nothing in the universe is stable, not even order itself.

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  The corridors grew quieter; the students’ laughter was less frequent, more subdued. In response to the incident with Frederik, Rector Terren had increased the number of royal guards at the academy; the regime from the beginning of the year now seemed lenient by comparison.

  Isa Lern often stopped by to see me. It seemed she wanted to be friends, believing the events in Sumerenn should have brought us closer, but I limited our interactions to formal gestures.

  Evelina had become a ghost. She almost never left her chambers; her orders and decisions were relayed through Nova. I saw her only rarely—a pale shadow behind a window curtain, a figure frozen on a balcony, staring toward the capital. She was weaving a web of conspiracies, preparing for war, and the preparation was draining the life from her. But the “Ice Snake” visited her regularly, and I understood that, despite her apparent breakdown, the princess was playing a double game.

  Nova became her cousin’s hands and voice. She was torn between her training with me, Evelina’s errands, and the need to maintain the appearance of a normal student’s life. She had lost weight, and shadows had formed under her eyes, but her gaze had become harder, sharper. The aristocratic detachment was gone. All that remained was the steely resolve of a soldier who knew the price of every step.

  I often saw Lilian. After the incident and the loss of her eye, she had become quieter, but not broken. Catherine had taken her under her wing. She helped her with lessons, taught her to concentrate on Order magic, to cut off the chaotic impulses. I observed them from a distance. Catherine, having gone through her own trauma, had become not just a mentor for Lilian, but living proof that one could endure. This was changing Catherine herself. A depth was awakening in her, an empathy that made her structure more flexible and resilient. I only helped Lilian when necessary, and she always accepted it with silent gratitude.

  As for Ren… Ren had vanished, though her disappearance wasn't physical, but social. I hardly ever saw her outside of class. Occasionally, there would be nothing but a flash of fiery red hair at the far end of a corridor; a cold glance, heavy with hidden resentment, from across the dining hall. She was avoiding me, and she was avoiding Nova, but even in that avoidance, I knew perfectly well it was just another step in her game. She would, without a doubt, make her next move.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ 39th Lumiran 1749 | Fardin | 19:20 | Academy Library ]

  One ordinary academic day, trying to escape the chaotic and emotional influence of the other students, I decided to go to the library. It greeted me with its usual silence and the smell of old paper. I chose a table in the farthest, least-lit corner. It was the perfect place—not for study, which I did not need, but for analysis, far from the emotional vibrations of others. I opened a heavy tome on the history of Valtheim’s cartography, creating the illusion of academic diligence. The rumors that Vespera had vanished without a trace did not surprise me. I was expecting a chaotic flare-up anywhere and was trying to predict her moves to minimize the damage to myself and my mission.

  The movement was almost silent. I felt her presence before I saw her. Ren sank into the chair opposite me. She didn’t look chaotic or enraged—if anything, she was surprisingly calm. She held nothing in her hands, but I saw how her fingers clenched around the emptiness, as if gripping an invisible book.

  “I was looking for you here,” she said quietly, but each word fell upon the library’s silence like a stone on thin ice. “You’re an anomaly, Arta, did you know that? A blank space that someone wrote into the plot for some reason. But that’s a trifle.” She placed her clenched fists on the table.

  I didn’t look up from the map. Her emotional impulses did not interest me.

  Her voice trembled, not from weakness, but from restrained fury. “That was meant to be her path! Nova's path! She was supposed to be forged in the fires of a civil war, to lose everything, to become a hero! And you… you’ve turned her into a nanny for a frightened princess! You stole her tragedy, her sacrifice, her purpose! Do you think you're a savior? You're a parasite that feeds on the fates of others! You are the most terrifying chaos of all, because you pretend to be order.”

  She fell silent. A few students at nearby tables turned, their gazes filled with curiosity and a slight fear. To them, this was just another dramatic outburst from the impulsive Ren Morgan. They didn't understand the substance of it. But I did.

  I slowly closed the book. The sound of the heavy tome shutting echoed in the silence like a gunshot.

  “Are you talking about your book again, Ren? Don’t you think it’s time to live in the present and understand that life is more complex than stories in books?”

  “You… You don’t understand anything! You broke the fragile design. The Eye over Sumerenn! That wasn’t supposed to happen! The Gods of Dreams are just a fairy tale that should never have been opened!”

  “Go and talk to Nova. Ask her how real that fairy tale is.”

  Ren slammed her fists on the table and jumped to her feet.

  “I know!” She glared at me furiously and hissed, so that only I could hear, “The prince was supposed to be free, not a prisoner. It’s all your fault, Arta! You are the worst mistake I can possibly imagine! Queen Margaret was supposed to die! And you… you rewrote everything. You ruined it all!”

  I said nothing, just stared into her hate-filled eyes.

  "I don’t know who you are, and I don't know your true motives. But I know one thing: you don’t belong here!"

  She spun around and walked away, leaving behind a heavy silence and the judgmental stares of the other students. To me, her outburst was nothing more than background noise. However, what she said about the book The Heroine Who Saved the Kingdom was invaluable information—one I would certainly factor into my calculations.

  『 ?? 』━━━???━━━『 ? 』

  [ 39th Lumiran 1749 | Fardin | 20:49 | Dormitory Room 231 ]

  I returned to my room. Inside, it was quiet, smelling of cooled herbal tea. I sat at my desk in a perfect, measured posture. My body was still, but my mind was working at maximum speed, processing the new data.

  The key to Ren’s accusation was a plot woven into the very foundation of 'Cycle 0'—a cycle to which I had no access. The heroine who saved the kingdom was, in reality, the virus I was destined to fight. Yet even this variable, who fancies herself the 'Protagonist' of the book, is merely a statistic attempting to reclaim a slipping narrative.

  Nevertheless, her maneuvers as a pawn of the Chaotic Light constantly sow disorder throughout the entire system. While Queen Margaret’s death was an inevitable constant, we have now entered a zone of temporal error. This will culminate in something unique—something I must confront in the near future.

  Perhaps my desire to resolve the matter with minimal effort has triggered the exact anomaly needed to settle the affairs of this world once and for all. In any case, my presence in Illumora’s 1001st cycle was perceived by the World Soul as a radical intervention; now, I am forced to contend with more chaotic, petty threats on a single, massive board.

  However, one pivotal question remains: why was there no mention of the Dream Gods in L. Alterius's book? Did the author intentionally excise these parts to preserve the story's dramatic effect, or was there another reason entirely?

  I shook my head, realizing I still didn’t have the full picture. The door opened quietly, and Catherine appeared on the threshold. She saw me—frozen, focused, staring at a single point—and could not understand the nature of my concentration.

  She didn't ask questions. She simply approached me, her movements quiet and careful. She didn't bring tea, didn't offer food. She stopped behind me and gently, almost weightlessly, placed her hands on my shoulders. Her fingers began to slowly, methodically knead the tense muscles. This was not a gesture of affection. It was an act of functional care—an attempt to eliminate the physical manifestation of my internal tension. “You’re as stiff as a stone,” she whispered. “Even when you’re just sitting.”

  I just nodded my head. Her care was unnecessary, but I could not deny that my muscles were relaxing. It was pleasant, and I could not deny that either.

  “Thank you, Catherine,” I said, breaking the silence. “Get your sword. We’re going to the clearing.”

  Catherine removed her hands, but not immediately. Her fingers lingered on my shoulders a moment longer than necessary. “Are you sure? Maybe you should just rest?” she asked.

  “I’m sure. I need to see how bad my arm is,” I answered calmly.

  The evening training session was different. The air was thick and cold, despite it being the middle of spring in Valtheim. Two moons shone in the sky, as if reminding me of something long forgotten, but I was focused on the training.

  “Don’t think. Act,” I told her sternly, although my thoughts were not here.

  Our blades met with a clang that cut through the silence of the forest. This was not training. It was meditation. My way of ordering the chaos that Ren had thrown into my mind. I was rebuilding the structure, adapting it into a new plan, a new order that was becoming more and more thought-out with every second.

  Catherine sensed that something was wrong with me. She didn’t ask unnecessary questions, but her movements became sharper, more precise. She answered my tension with her concentration. At one point, when our blades crossed, she looked me directly in the eyes, and in her gaze, there was no fear or fatigue, only understanding and loyalty. She had become my mirror, reflecting my own order.

  We finished when the two moons were already high above the trees. We stood in silence, breathing heavily, then went to the bathhouse, and only after we had cleaned up did we return to our room.

  I stood by the window, silently watching as the third, red moon appeared over the horizon, illuminating the nocturnal world of the academy with new shades. This was merely contemplation, a way to realize the correctness of the next step.

  The door to the room opened, and Catherine appeared behind me.

  She came and stood beside me. Not too close, but close enough that her presence was palpable, even if I wasn't looking at her.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking about,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper, her fingers nervously clenching the edge of her robe. “And I don’t know what chaos she sowed in you. But…” She paused, and a new, trembling note entered her voice, one she had likely read in Ren’s books. “…even if all your lines and structures are jumbled right now… just know that mine… mine will always lead to you.”

  I slowly turned my head. Her face, in the light of the three moons, seemed as mysterious as that of a person I had known for a whole year. I looked at her—not as a friend, not as a student, but as the only predictable and reliable variable in an equation that was becoming immeasurably more complex with every second.

  “A stable structure is the most valuable resource in an unstable system,” I said in a half-whisper.

  It was not gratitude. It was an assessment, the highest form of recognition that my soul, a mixture of the structures of order and darkness, could form.

  Catherine didn't smile. She just nodded, accepting my words, and remained standing silently beside me.