Turning slowly, dread climbing up his throat like a choking hand, he came face to face with the creature. It stood less than a foot away, its head tilted just slightly, its form a maddening blend of humanoid and impossible shapes. Nick's face looked back at him—blank-eyed, calm, and horrifying.
Then it spoke.
"Brother... you came."
The voice was Nick's—but it wasn't. It glitched, skipping syllables and echoing in strange directions like sound caught in broken mirrors.
Kaelix's heart twisted. His hand shot up to his mouth in reflex, biting his own knuckle to stop from screaming. "W-what the hell are you doing with my brother's face!?"
The creature tilted its head further. Its expression didn't change, but the area around its mouth twitched, glitched. "What do you mean?"
"Why did you—WHY DID YOU STEAL HIS FACE?!" Kaelix shouted, his voice cracking into desperation and fury.
The thing didn't respond for a moment, its silence somehow louder than noise. Then it shook its head—or rather, its form stuttered side to side, the gesture both familiar and fundamentally wrong.
"I did not steal," it said softly. "I was given."
Kaelix stared, horror-stricken. "You're lying..."
"I have no need for lies," it said with a voice like folding glass. "I am the heart of this Advent. I did not crawl here like vermin—I was called. I was welcomed."
The calmness in its voice shook him more than any scream could have. Kaelix fell to his knees, fists clenching the dead grass beneath him, trying to process. No. This thing—whatever it was—was playing with him. His brother wouldn't do this. Couldn't do this.
"You're disgusting," he spat. "You think you can manipulate me with his face? With his voice?!"
The creature did not flinch. "Your brother opened the gateway of his own free will. That is all that was required."
Kaelix could barely hear anymore over the pounding in his head.
Then the being knelt beside him. The pressure in the air shifted as if the world was holding its breath. It didn't speak right away. It simply looked at him—and for the first time, Kaelix realized how tiny he felt.
He was nothing in front of this thing. Not because it wanted to destroy him. But because it could not muster the care to do so, like a god ignoring dust.
"I am not one who honors its deals often," it said, tilting the book open with one hand. "But it is not often I find a nobody who survives an Advent. Who still stands untouched."
Kaelix flinched as its shadow stretched around him like a living thing.
"I will indulge the final sliver of our deal. I will show you what transpired."
And with that, the world began to fold in on itself, preparing to replay the moment the Advent was born.
Kaelix barely had time to whisper, "Nick... what did you do..."
The world before Kaelix convulsed. It did not shift or fade—it reconstructed.
Chairs that were once shattered and melted into bone or honey or quartz reformed with a sound like whispering wind and tearing cloth. The scorched grey grass writhed as if resisting some unseen command before unfurling and snapping back into vibrant green, only to glitch again, flickering between healthy and dead with each second.
Adversaries below the stage—those broken souls turned monstrous—convulsed violently as their warped limbs and cursed forms retracted, reversed, twisted back through memory and space until they were merely students again. Some were smiling. Others were nervous. But none of them were aware.
Time itself was stitching back together.
Kaelix found himself on the sidelines. No longer on the dead tree, no longer amid the Advent's corrupted landscape. He was watching—but not through his own eyes. Through Nick's.
He sat in the back row, his vision blurred with quiet tension. All around him, students chattered, some fidgeting, others bouncing in their seats as each name was called. A name. Applause. A walk to the stage. A bright smile. A crystal camera's flash. And then a proud return to their families near the front.
Kaelix—no, Nick—sat alone.
His hands were curled tightly in his lap. Not with fear, not exactly. With something deeper. Conflicted pride. Wounded love. Bitter jealousy. A thousand things wrapped in silence.
Name by name, they climbed the stairs, received their parchment, and were commended. Some praised for their intellect. Others for combat acumen. Some for their creative souls, others for rare Runesight or natural gifts. None of them had ever been told they had no place in the world.
Then it was his turn.
He walked slowly up the stage.
The principal smiled professionally, offering a firm handshake as the cameras flashed.
"Young Nick. Commended for his strong physical capabilities and innate leadership potential. A promising candidate for the Kingdom's armed forces," the principal said with the cadence of someone reading a grocery list.
"A great opportunity," they called it.
Nick smiled, barely. A twitch of the lips. He bowed, took the certificate—and inside, his teeth gritted like stone grinding against stone.
My brother is better than most of them.
He stepped off the stage, his eyes already drifting to the crowd. Somewhere in the back, behind the guards and families, Kaelix would be watching. Alone. Not even allowed near.
And then—
The microphone activated again.
A girl stepped forward. Elegant with blonde hair. Radiant. The valedictorian.
Her voice rang clearly over the crowd, confident and proud. "Today, we stand at the threshold of greatness, not by our own merit, but by the Emperor's will. Through his gaze, we are seen. Through his benevolence, we are chosen. Fate is not a gift—it is a calling."
She smiled warmly. Many smiled with her. A nobleman among the stating rather proudly, "So true! So true!"
She continued.
"We are marked by his grace. We are blessed. And as we stand on this stage, we carry more than ourselves. We carry destiny. Let this be the first step in the journey we were meant to walk."
Applause rose strongly among the crowd.
Cheering.
Pride.
Nick did not clap, though. They hadn't even noticed that he had not yet gotten off the stage.
His hand trembled slightly at his side. Something shifted in his robe. A weight. He reached in—
The book. The odd, too-cold, too-heavy book that should not have existed.
The words of the cloaked man came back to him like venom in his veins:
"If fate is the weapon of those who tie you and your brother to the dirt, then wouldn't the weapon of their enemies uplift you?"
His fingers closed around it.
The speech went on. "Every one of us who stood here today has a future. A true future. A path carved by the Emperor's own design. No matter what we face—we are never lost, because fate does not abandon its own."
Nick's jaw clenched.
He stepped forward.
"What about those without this, your fate and destiny?"
The valedictorian paused. Her voice cracked just slightly. "What… did you say?"
Nick's eyes burned. "I said, what about those without destiny? Like my brother!"
The entire field fell silent.
Eyes turned.
"What is this boy saying?" An older lady among the guests asked her grandaughter.
"I don't know. I don't even know him." the granddaughter replied, just as confused.
The principal, seeing this sudden halt in momentum, quickly waddled to the mic. He smiled with restrained condescension as he thought of what to say.
"Some people… simply don't have a place in the Emperor's plan."
A pause. Murmurs.
"That doesn't mean we must dwell on them, though. You, Young Nick, have a future. Don't let your brother's absence cloud your light. He should be happy. At least he graduated."
Some people nodded in agreement.
"People like him… they simply aren't part of the picture."
The field was still.
Nick's fist clenched so tightly around the book that his nails pierced his skin.
You just sealed your fate with those words, you fat bastard.
And though no one saw it in that moment, though the air was calm and the sky still blue, the world had already begun to rot.
The crowd clapped.
They clapped not out of thought, nor empathy—but out of agreement. A chorus of blind obedience, a mechanical ovation to the principal's words, resonated through the clearing like nails driven into the soul of the air.
The principal's smile was slight, tight-lipped, self-satisfied. A flicker of pride touched his face as he saw Nick's head bow. Feeling like he had just saved the world with his meager words.
Good, he thought. He understands now. That boy always had such a questioning temperament. If only he were more like his brother—quiet, unseen, resigned to the dirt.
The principal adjusted his cloak, letting out a tired sigh. Though, he mused bitterly, if he was like that, nobody we'd have to actually put in the work to make him like that. Much more work.
"What did you say about my brother?"
The voice was low. Too low. And it wasn't quite Nick's. Not anymore.
The principal blinked. "What? What do you mean, Young Nick?"
Nick lifted his head. Gone was the average face, the short red hair, the dull look of reluctant compliance. Veins—multicolored, flickering like oil on water—slithered up from beneath his collar, tracing sickly patterns into his skin and pulsing at his temples. His eyes were wrong. No longer hazel, they gleamed with iridescent distortion, shifting too fast to follow.
Gasps rippled across the clearing.
Nick stepped forward.
"I said, what did you just call my brother? A nobody? Something that's easier to deal with when he stays buried in the dirt?" His voice cracked into a deeper, layered tone, like more than one mouth speaking at once.
"I—I didn't mean—" the principal stammered.
Nick let his cloak fall.
"And what do you mean put in the work? What did you do to Kaelix!?"
And the world screamed.
In his hand, pulsing like something alive, was a Tome. An ancient, jagged thing bound not in leather but in shifting layers of glass, flesh, and whispers. It bled symbols. They changed too fast to read, but their very presence scorched the air.
Cries rang out.
The valedictorian stepped back in horror.
Nick's body trembled, but his voice never faltered.
"You've all built this rotten world and dressed it in gold. You've crushed people like my brother under your feet, said it was destiny. That we should be grateful. That we should bow to the Emperor's gaze because it offers us a chance."
He spat.
"You people don't deserve salvation. You deserve to see what's really out there. What lies beneath the veil you worship."
"GUARDS!" the principal screamed, his voice cracking. "GET THAT TOME AWAY FROM HIM!"
But it was too late.
"You deserve for the Advents to destroy you all..."
Nick opened the Tome.
The sky split.
A wave of impossible light and darkness exploded outward, swallowing sound and color. People froze mid-scream. The air cracked like glass. The trees rippled into metal, then crystal, then ash. Shapes impossible to comprehend unfolded and refolded themselves across the sky, and then all of it—everything—collapsed.
Nick looked within the Tome, it's pages pouring out incomprehensible letters and words but he had only one reaction as he responded.
"I accept..."
*******************
Kaelix hit the ground on all fours, dry-heaving until bile spilled into the dirt.
The vision ended. But the nausea, the horror, the grief—those remained.
He choked, coughing, gasping for air as his mind spun.
Why... why did he do that?
Why would Nick...
The memories echoed—Nick's anger, his desperation, his cry for justice. And still, none of it made sense. Why?
Why would he open the Tome? It was just a disagreement. Why did he...
"Do you understand now?"
The voice was clearer now. Stable. Almost composed.
Kaelix looked up.
The being stood calmly, the book still in its hand, its form now less unstable, less wild—like it had settled into reality. It wasn't just mimicking Nick anymore. It had become something else.