CHAPTER 101: DATE RUINED [4]

The sky above the plaza was cracked with veins of light.

The distortion had not yet closed; instead, it pulsed like a half-healed wound in reality.

The remains of the café flickered, tables overturned, cups shattered, and the faint smell of burnt sugar mixing with ozone.

Darcyroix stood at the far edge of the devastation, his hands behind his back, his coat gently swaying in the distorted breeze.

His gaze wasn’t the gaze of a teacher anymore, it was the look of a man who had seen too many things he wasn’t supposed to.

Lyrium was standing in the center, blade humming, breathing hard but unbroken.

The entity twitched, a shape of mist and lightning, whispering in frequencies no human ear could properly register.

Darcyroix’s voice broke the silence, calm and precise, yet it carried a tremor of something deeper, curiosity, perhaps even awe.

"How strange... I have witnessed every recorded phenomenon the Academy dared to name, elemental ruptures, arcane storms, even the unbinding of a demigod’s seal. But this..."

He tilted his head slightly, his eyes narrowing as if studying a rare specimen.

"This is not just mana gone feral. This is something that responds. It learns. And you, boy, you are provoking it instead of purging it. Do you even comprehend what kind of resonance you’re creating?"

Lyrium’s lips curved into a small, defiant smile, the kind born from exhaustion and pride interwoven.

"Comprehend? No,"

He said slowly, lifting his sword, its edge trembling with light.

"But I feel it. It listens. It’s the first thing in a long time that actually answers back."

Darcyroix exhaled through his nose, a long, thoughtful sound that might have been a sigh or a silent laugh.

"Fascinating. A mindless creature echoing your will, or perhaps your will seeking itself through the creature. Either way, this goes far beyond arrogance. Do you know what I see when I look at you, Blackwood?"

Lyrium didn’t respond.

His eyes were locked on the entity as it began to re-form again, limbs stretching like ink trying to shape meaning.

"I see a boy,"

Darcyroix continued softly,

"Pretending to command storms he doesn’t even understand. But at the same time, I see a pattern, a flaw in the world’s script that refuses correction. You are an anomaly, not a prodigy. And anomalies... fascinate me more than perfection ever will."

The entity lunged again.

Lyrium moved, faster this time, his blade colliding mid-air with the creature’s mass.

Sparks exploded, the world turned white, and when the smoke cleared, Lyrium was still standing.

The blade was buried into the ground, humming.

The creature was split, yet still whispering, still alive in fragments.

Lyrium spoke without looking back.

"You call me an anomaly. Fine. But don’t stand there pretending you understand what that means. You don’t know how it feels when your power rejects logic. When every second it threatens to consume you, and yet, you can’t let go of it. Because the moment you do, you stop being you."

His grip tightened around the hilt.

"If I die using it, then so be it. But I will never bow to something that treats me like its host."

Darcyroix’s expression shifted slightly, eyes reflecting the dying light.

"And that,"

He murmured,

"Is why the Council fears you."

Lyrium turned finally, sweat dripping down his chin, eyes blazing with restrained emotion.

"Let them. They fear everything they can’t categorize. You think I don’t know what they’ll do next? The reports, the hearings, the whispers about my lineage? I’ve seen it before. They’ll send someone to clean up the mess and write their neat little conclusion: Subject unstable. Containment recommended."

He looked down at his sword, the old weapon still crackling faintly.

"But this blade,"

He said, almost to himself,

"Has seen timelines break. It’s not a relic, it’s a memory that survived where I didn’t. I thought it was gone, erased with everything else, but it seems some things refuse to be rewritten."

Darcyroix blinked.

"Timelines?"

Lyrium paused, the words hanging like ghosts in the air.

He realized what he’d said.

Then he simply smiled, faint and cold.

"Slip of the tongue."

Darcyroix studied him long and hard.

The professor’s tone shifted, the calmness replaced by a quiet intensity, a scholar’s hunger now tinged with something darker.

"Blackwood, if you truly stand on the edge between understanding and annihilation, then remember this: every man who thought he could command the impossible ended up becoming the proof of its cost. The difference between a savior and a monster is nothing but the story written after the end."

Lyrium turned back toward the entity, which had begun to fuse itself again from the fragments.

"Then let’s make sure the ending is worth reading."

With that, he raised his sword again, lightning crawling along the edge, the air warping from the heat of his mana.

Darcyroix didn’t stop him.

He simply stepped back, the corner of his mouth lifting faintly.

"Show me, then,"

He whispered.

"Show me why you shouldn’t be erased like the rest."

The next moment, the entire plaza erupted in light, a column of violet flame splitting the world open.

When the smoke cleared, Lyrium was still standing, blade drawn, eyes distant, as if he were staring at something beyond what the others could see.

Darcyroix exhaled slowly, dust brushing past his coat.

"The boy’s no longer following the world’s rules,"

He murmured.

"He’s writing new ones... and each stroke costs him something he doesn’t yet realize."

His gaze lifted toward the horizon where the distortion still shimmered.

The sunset painted everything blood-red.

"And yet,"

He whispered, half to himself, half to the fading light,

"Perhaps monsters like him are exactly what this decaying age needs to survive."

He turned, coat sweeping behind him as the sound of approaching footsteps echoed, Council agents already on their way.

Darcyroix smiled faintly, eyes reflecting the burning sky.

"Let them come,"

He said.

"Let them see what I’ve seen. The moment they do... the age of reason ends."

*****

The storm was no longer just above the plaza, it was the plaza.

The ground cracked and folded like parchment caught in a blaze, gravity warping under the raw pressure of mana.

Lightning arced from shattered walls, weaving across the air in erratic, beautiful lines.

Lyrium stood at the center of it all, battered, bruised, his coat torn, his greatsword humming like an animal dragged out of myth.

The entity floated before him, its form coalescing into something vaguely humanoid now, a crown of smoke, a body stitched from shadow and flame, its "eyes" glowing with the same color as Lyrium’s own lightning.

It spoke at last, not in words, but in impression.

A thousand whispers overlapping:

Return.

Assimilate.

You are incomplete.

Lyrium spat blood into the ground and laughed, voice hoarse yet steady.

"Incomplete? Maybe. But I’m still mine. You hear me?"

He raised his sword, lightning crawling up the steel, biting his skin, burning him as if even his own element resisted the intensity.

"You think you can erase me, overwrite me? No. I decide what I become. Not the world. Not fate. Not you."

Darcyroix, standing among the ruins, didn’t move.

His eyes narrowed, the faintest glimmer of intrigue flickering within them.

"He’s forcing resonance... without a focus stone? Impossible. That level of synchronization should destroy his mind..."

The entity lunged forward, and the world went white.

Lyrium blocked, but the force threw him across the plaza, crashing into a half-shattered pillar.

His sword clanged beside him.

The ground smoked.

He coughed violently, vision blurring.

The air burned with static, each breath a struggle.

But through the haze, he saw the sword, the same sword he once called this baby.

And suddenly, everything went silent.

He reached for it slowly, his voice a rasped whisper.

"You’ve been waiting, haven’t you...? Waiting for me to stop running."

He gripped the hilt.

The pulse answered him.

A soundless hum reverberated across the battlefield, as if time itself hesitated.

"Alright then,"

He said softly, rising to his feet.

"Let’s end this together."

The air cracked, reality twisting around his body as lightning swallowed him whole.

Every wound screamed.

Every nerve burned.

But his eyes, his eyes gleamed with something terrifyingly alive.

Darcyroix took a single step forward, eyes widening a fraction.

"He’s merging his core directly into the blade... Foolish child... That’s suicide."

But Lyrium was no longer hearing him.

He was moving, faster than sound, faster than thought, a blur of pure defiance.

The entity met him mid-air, its body fracturing into countless tendrils of dark energy, each one lashing toward him like serpents.

Lyrium didn’t block them.

He walked through them.

Every lash struck, and every lash was burned away by his lightning.

"You talk about assimilation,"

Lyrium shouted, his voice cutting through the storm,

"But you forgot something vital, I’ve already been consumed once. I know what it means to be rewritten. To watch everything around you die while you keep moving forward."

He swung his sword, one clean, fluid motion, and for an instant, the entire plaza stilled.

The entity froze mid-air, its form shaking violently as if rejecting reality itself.

Darcyroix whispered under his breath.

"He’s... binding the distortion? No. No, he’s rewriting its structure. He’s forcing it to collapse under his will—"

A shockwave tore outward, slicing through the smoke and flame.

The plaza’s ruins folded inward, drawn toward the sword’s center as if the world were kneeling.

Lyrium screamed, half in agony, half in release, as lightning burst from his skin in pure, radiant arcs.

And then... silence.

The distortion shattered.

The entity cracked, its form breaking apart like stained glass, each fragment fading into sparks of light.

It reached toward him, almost human in its final movement, as if recognizing the inevitability of its defeat.

Then it was gone.

Only Lyrium remained, standing in the crater, his sword buried deep into the stone, his breath ragged.

The last rays of sunlight finally faded from the sky, leaving him drenched in the electric afterglow.

Darcyroix stepped forward slowly.

The professor’s tone was quiet, almost reverent now.

"To survive that level of collapse... You shouldn’t exist. And yet..."

Lyrium turned slightly, eyes dull but alive.

He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand.

"I told you..."

He murmured, his voice faint but steady.

"This baby doesn’t break."

He tried to smirk, but it faltered halfway.

He could barely stand.

Still, the exhaustion in his face didn’t hide the satisfaction there.

Darcyroix watched him for a long time before speaking.

"You do realize what you’ve just done, don’t you? You didn’t destroy it. You absorbed it. That thing isn’t gone, Blackwood, it’s inside you now."

Lyrium looked down at his hands, where faint traces of violet light still flickered under the skin.

Then he looked up, eyes meeting the professor’s.

"Then I guess it’s mine to control,"

He said simply.

"Whatever it was... it’s part of me now."

Darcyroix’s lips curved faintly, the kind of smile only scholars wear when they see something both magnificent and terrifying.

"Control?"

He said quietly.

"You misunderstand. You’ve just declared war on the natural order."

The words hung in the evening air like prophecy.

Lyrium gave a short, broken laugh.

"Good,"

He whispered, resting the blade across his shoulder.

"Let it come."

And there, his knees buckled.

The world blurred, color draining, sound fading.

Lyrium’s sword slipped from his grasp, clattering against the cracked stone.

He would’ve hit the ground... if not for the hand that caught him.

Darcyroix’s grip was firm, his expression unreadable.

"Tch,"

The professor muttered under his breath, a quiet blend of irritation and intrigue.

"You really are an anomaly."

The boy’s consciousness flickered, the faint hum of residual lightning still dancing beneath his skin.

*****

Elsewhere, within the Academy’s upper chamber,

Professor Theodeus sat alone, the amber light of her desk-lamp reflecting off the sealed pages of a restricted archive report.

Her hand hesitated before turning the page.

Her eyes scanned the sigil illustration, a black, eight-legged emblem etched into the parchment.

The moment she saw it, her breath caught.

Her pupils dilated.

Her throat tightened.

"...No..."

She whispered, closing the book halfway, voice trembling with restrained disbelief.

"That... that was no ordinary anomaly."

She swallowed hard, her gaze flickering toward the window, toward the distant glow over the plaza.

"Just as I feared..."

She murmured, fingers curling over the book’s edge.

"It was one of Sleiphnir’s Cult’s entities."

*****