Chapter 3: "Wait, Where Am I?"
The dream world is fading, its warmth dissipating, leaving Riya with a lingering sensation of disconnection.
The air is thin, and something is off. Merlin, lying beside him, feels it too—something deeper than the usual magical instability. Her gaze is far away, her lips tight with concern.
She speaks softly, but there's a new edge to her voice. "This isn't right. Your physical body… it's gone. We've been displaced."
Riya, still hazy from the aftermath of their bond, doesn't immediately understand.
"What do you mean, 'displaced'?" he mutters, his voice still thick with lingering pleasure and confusion.
Merlin's expression darkens, her usual playful demeanor replaced by something more urgent. "We've been pulled out of your world, Riya." looking at him with concern.
"I don't even know where we are."
He tries to shake off the lingering effects of the connection, but his mind still feels clouded, both by the aftershocks of their magical bond and the confusion now spreading through him.
Merlin's words are like a cold splash of water, pulling him out of the haze.
"Wake up, Riya," she orders softly, a serious note in her voice.
The world around him shatters, and with a sharp breath, Riya awakens.
He opens his eyes, but this isn't his room—this isn't even his world.
The place he finds himself in is cold.
The room stretches out before him, vast and imposing, filled with shelves lined with arcane tomes, relics, and artifacts that pulse faintly with power.
Runes swirl across the walls, glowing with an otherworldly energy. The room feels… ancient.
Riya blinks, trying to make sense of his surroundings. His head aches from the rapid shift, and his limbs feel heavy. He's still trying to piece together what's happening when the sound of footsteps breaks the eerie silence.
A man enters, tall and composed, with long silver hair that seems to shimmer even in the dim light.
His eyes—sharp and unsettling—seem to pierce right through Riya, assessing him without a word.
The man exudes power, an aura of calm dominance that fills the room.
Zelretch doesn't waste time on pleasantries. His gaze shifts to Riya, unfazed by the younger man's anger.
"You're awake, finally," he observes in his smooth, calm voice. "That's good. You'll need clarity soon enough."
Riya opens his mouth, but the words stick in his throat. "Where the hell am I? What is all this? And what the hell happened to me?"
Zelretch moves with deliberate grace, the room seemingly bending around his presence. "You're no longer in your world, Riya Riot."
Riya's chest tightens. "Stop speaking in riddles. I've had enough of that."
Zelretch tilts his head slightly, considering him. "I will speak plainly, then," he says, his voice cutting through the tension in the room.
"Every female Saint Graph, every Servant of legend, has disappeared from the Root. Their very existence has been severed, creating a temporal disturbance."
Riya doesn't immediately understand, his brow furrowing. "The hell are you talking about?"
Zelretch steps forward, his eyes gleaming with an almost detached amusement.
"Those Saint Graphs now reside within you, sealed inside your soul." He pauses, letting the words sink in.
"You are the singularity now, the point of convergence for all those powers."
Riya's confusion deepens. "Wait, what? That doesn't make any sense."
Zelretch gives a grim smile. "The absence of Chaldea, the absence of these Servants, has thrown this world into chaos. Time itself is unstable. And now… You are humanity's last hope."
Riya feels a cold dread creeping over him.
"Me? Sorry you got the wrong guy"
Zelretch's gaze sharpens. "I don't make mistakes, boy. You didn't choose this—but the moment those Saint Graphs fused with your soul, fate did."
It seems that riya didn't had a choice in the matter.
"sigh* fine I bite So... where am I?"
Zelretch turns slowly, the hem of his coat sweeping across the marble floor. "You're in my former office. The Clock Tower, London. Or rather, a protected pocket of it—cut off from the rest of the Mage's Association.
They no longer trust me with much of anything these days."
Riya blinks. "Clock Tower? What, like Big Ben?"
Zelretch almost smirks. "Not quite. The Clock Tower is the seat of magecraft on this Earth. The most ancient and corrupt magical institution still standing. You're sitting at the heart of the Mage's Association, where reality bends around old secrets and older politics."
Riya stares at the shelves of forbidden tomes, the glowing relics, and the softly pulsing magical runes along the walls. The air itself hums with age. "Great. So Hogwarts with more ego."
Zelretch ignores the sarcasm. "Do you know what a Servant is, Riya Riot?"
Riya folds his arms. "You keep saying that word. I'm guessing they aren't maids."
Zelretch walks to one of the bookshelves and retrieves a small silver cube. He sets it on the desk between them, and with a flick of his fingers, it opens—projecting glowing diagrams in the air.
"Servants are Heroic Spirits. Legends crystallized into power. When humanity is threatened by anomalies in time—called Singularities—certain systems summon those spirits to act as protectors. Warriors, mages, assassins… kings."
The glowing diagrams shift—familiar silhouettes begin to form: a knight in golden armor, a woman with a flaming spear, a shadowy assassin cloaked in smoke.
"Normally," Zelretch continues, "they are bound to Masters—mages—via contracts, given physical form through the Holy Grail systems. But you..."
He turns, eyes sharp. "You bypassed all that. The Saint Graphs—digital blueprints of their very souls—were ripped from the Root and embedded into yours. Dozens of them. All female. All powerful."
Riya frowns. "So they're… inside me?"
"Yes. Not summoned. Integrated. You don't just command them—you become them, piece by piece. You're a living convergence point. The laws that normally govern Servant systems were... ignored. Or rewritten."
Riya leans back, unease crawling up his spine. "That sounds like something that should kill me."
"It should have," Zelretch says flatly. "But it didn't. Which is why I'm here. Because someone—or something—rewrote the rules. And now you're in possession of a power that could either save the human order or completely annihilate it."
The images vanish, the cube closing with a quiet click.
Silence hangs in the air.
"Okay…" Riya says finally, rubbing the back of his neck. "So just to recap—magic is real, I'm stuffed full of legendary warrior women, I'm in wizard-London, and I've probably broken time."
Zelretch nods. "Correct."
Zelretch turns his back, hands clasped behind him as he stares out the tall, rune-inscribed window.
"You didn't ask for this. But neither did the world ask to be broken."
He glances over his shoulder, eyes like ancient steel. "You house the only hope left to restore the timeline—dozens of heroic spirits bound to you alone. No Chaldea. No backup. Just you."
Riya stands frozen, the silence crushing him.
Zelretch's voice hardens. "So here it is, Riya Riot. The burden. The war. The legacy. All of it, dumped at your feet. You can crumble under it—"
He turns fully, pointing a single finger at Riya's chest. "—or you can rise. Because whether you believe it or not, you are now the center of everything."
Riya sat in silence after Zelretch give him those words, the weight of fate pressing down like a storm cloud. The silence wasn't peaceful—it was suffocating.
(I want to go back home.)
The thought came quietly, almost childlike in his mind.
Back to my room. Back to my crappy bed, my sister yelling about breakfast, my mom reminding me to eat, dad leaving the light on in the hallway 'cause he thinks I still get scared of the dark…
His throat tightened.
Were they even worried when I disappeared? Are they looking for me?
He stood, forcing himself to breathe.
I'll find a way back. Even if this is all real—even if I've become… whatever the hell this is—I'm not staying gone forever. Not without seeing them again.