Welcome back guysssss!!! It took me a long while to think about the plot and story progression, and this is not following the original plot anymore, more like my own story taking original black clover world as it's foundation, the story of people are completely different here and will be changing for better now....anyway have a fun read.
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There was blood on the moon.
Or maybe it was rust.
Or maybe it was just another trick of the sky .....like everything else lately.
Nozel didn't care enough to check.
He stood alone on the balcony, high above the capital. The wind didn't move his cloak. There wasn't any wind.
It was quiet.
Not the good kind. Not even the dangerous kind.
Just... wrong.
Like the world was holding its breath, but not because it was scared.
Because it had forgotten how to breathe.
---
Lucius was gone.
That much was known.
What wasn't known — and what no one seemed brave enough to say out loud — was how.
There had been no final battle.
No spell clash, no world-ending rupture, no shout of victory.
No aftermath.
Just absence.
One day, Lucius was here.
The next... he wasn't.
No trace. No crater.
Just this... stillness.
---
Behind him, the council argued like it mattered.
"Spade's gone dark—"
"No devil sightings in five days—"
"You saw the sky last night, that wasn't normal—"
"The Bulls are unreachable—"
"Why is the mana behaving like that?"
Nozel didn't turn.
They'd call him when it was his turn to lie.
Instead, he watched the city.
The people.
The ones still pretending things made sense.
A little boy down in the courtyard was drawing glyphs in the dust with a broken stick.
His lines were clean. Symmetrical. Practiced.
But every symbol was mirrored.
Backwards.
And the boy looked proud of it.
---
Nozel clenched his teeth. The taste of metal hit his tongue.
It wasn't blood.
Just the air.
The air had started to taste like endings.
---
Footsteps behind him. Softer than the noise from the council.
"...It's happening."
Secre.
Of course it was her.
Always the one to speak when no one wanted to.
He didn't answer. Not right away.
When he finally turned, she looked worse than usual.
Her eyes .....distant, shaking. Her arm, covered in slowly unsealing glyphs.
Old ones. Ones she'd locked years ago.
Now peeling off like scabs.
"The anchors are slipping," she said.
"It's not just mana. It's memory."
---
Nozel said nothing.
Mostly because he didn't know what to say.
But also because words didn't seem to land properly anymore.
He'd said "yes" to a soldier earlier and the word came out a full three seconds late.
Reality was stuttering.
Like a scratched record.
And no one was holding the needle.
---
And then....it came.
Just a flicker in the clouds.
A burn-mark of shadow. Gone in a blink.
But he saw it.
The shape.
A cracked anchor.
He knew that symbol. Hadn't seen it in years. Had hoped to never see it again.
His throat tightened.
"If that ever lights up,"
Yami had told him once, after a mission gone too quiet,
"Don't fight. Don't run. Don't die. Just hold the line until something worse arrives."
---
Nozel stepped back from the ledge.
The city below him was still pretending it wasn't already dying.
The council would keep yelling.
The glyphs would keep unraveling.
The wind would keep forgetting how to move.
But somewhere, out there, that anchor had flared.
And that meant someone —
or something —
was on its way back.
And this time, it wasn't going to be the king.
It wasn't going to be Asta.
It wasn't going to be gods or armies.
It was going to be something the world forgot on purpose.
He rode out before dawn.
Didn't wait for escort.
Didn't ask for permission.
Didn't tell the council.
They'd only argue.
And there were no orders left to follow anyway — not when the map kept redrawing itself overnight.
---
The field was twenty klicks out past the northern watchpost.
A known route. A stable mana zone.
A squad of fourteen had been dispatched there three days ago.
They were supposed to report in every six hours.
They didn't.
Nozel had assumed it was interference.
He'd been wrong.
---
He dismounted in silence.
The battlefield was too clean.
Flat earth. No burn marks. No blood. No armor.
Not even bones.
Just... rows of boots.
Fourteen pairs.
All lined up, toe-to-toe.
As if the squad had taken them off before vanishing into the sky.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was that the boots had no footprints around them.
No signs of movement.
No magic residue.
No fading mana.
As if they had never moved at all.
---
He stood there for too long.
Long enough for his horse to get nervous.
It bucked once.....then froze, mid-movement.
Time stopped for it. Just for a moment.
Its eyes rolled back, muscles twitching like it was caught between frames.
Nozel didn't touch it. Didn't risk it.
Instead, he knelt near the boots. Took out a capture crystal. Held it over the nearest pair.
The spell flickered once.
Then played.
---
He watched it in silence.
A looping memory fragment, just a few seconds long.
The squad stood in formation. Laughing. One of them pointed upward.
They all turned to look.
And then—
Nothing.
No flash.
No strike.
No sound.
Just static.
Like the moment had been swallowed.
The crystal cracked in his hand. A thin line of blood trickled down his palm.
---
He didn't flinch.
He was too busy watching the wind.
Because it had started to move ...not around him.
Not across the field.
But through the boots.
Threading between them.
Like the wind remembered where the men had been…
but not who they were.
---
He stood. Turned.
And found a sigil burned into the grass behind him.
Faint. Incomplete. Only the top third remained.
But he recognized it.
Not from grimoires.
Not from kingdom archives.
From a page Yami had once torn out and burned.
A devil mark.
Not summoning.
Not binding.
Rejection.
A glyph that marked a soul no longer welcome in its own body.
---
Nozel exhaled through his teeth. The air tasted like static.
"Is this what's left when death forgets to happen?"
His horse neighed again.... except it didn't.
The sound echoed before it was made.
He backed away. Mounted fast. Didn't look back.
He'd seen enough.
There was nothing left here.
Just boots.
Wind.
And whatever it was that had erased a squad without letting them die.
---
He rode harder than he should have on a field that didn't trust time.
By the time the capital reappeared on the horizon, the sigil was already burned into the back of his eyelids.
And for the first time in weeks,
Nozel realized what was actually scaring him.
It wasn't that Lucius was gone.
It was that no one replaced him.
---
He made it back to the capital by mid-morning.
The sky hadn't changed.
Still stuck in that purgatory shade of pale — not overcast, not bright.
Like someone had drained the contrast out of the sun.
His cloak smelled like burnt grass and crystal dust.
He didn't change.
---
There was a crowd gathering in the north plaza.
Half civilians, half knights, all standing in that nervous circle people make when they want to believe in order again.
At the center: a rune-priest.
Old, fragile.
Cloaked in ceremonial red, staff in hand.
One of the ones who survived the Lucius era without ever touching combat.
"They're rebuilding a sigil," someone whispered.
"City-wide mana stabilization array. Should settle the spell fog."
"Old protocol. Capital anchoring spell. They used it during the Civil Fracture, remember?"
They didn't get it.
You can't anchor a city when the continent's logic is slipping sideways.
---
Nozel stepped closer.
Didn't speak.
Didn't stop it.
He needed to know how bad things had gotten.
The priest raised both hands. The glyph beneath him flickered, etched into the stone. Beautiful. Ancient. Functional.
The circle bloomed to life.
Just for a second.
---
And then... it didn't.
The lines twisted.
The runes spun...counter-clockwise.
The circle inverted itself, flattening into shadow, then folding upward into a shape that wasn't part of any spellbook Nozel had ever read.
The air dropped ten degrees.
The priest screamed.
Not the kind of scream that meant pain.
The kind that meant he wasn't inside his own body anymore.
---
Nozel took one step forward—
and the man burst open.
Not exploded. Not like blood and bone.
He unfolded.
Like his skin was made of paper.
Like his spine was a hinge.
Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.
Until nothing remained but a tangle of runes, pulsing in the shape of a man who wasn't there anymore.
---
People screamed.
A few ran.
Most just stood.
Some clapped their hands over their mouths.
Others dropped to their knees.
One little girl said,
"He's spelling backwards."
---
Nozel moved in. Fast.
Sword not drawn — it wouldn't help.
Secre was already there.
Kneeling beside what was left of the man.
"He wasn't just inverted," she said, eyes wide.
"He was rewritten."
"The spell tried to anchor the city's magic."
"But the city's magic doesn't know what 'anchor' means anymore."
---
The glyph beneath the priest began to crawl.
Like an inkblot trying to escape itself.
Nozel sliced the edge of the array with a mana-thread.
It didn't die.
Secre placed her palm down. Hard.
Her horns lit up.
One of her own sigils cracked in the process.
She sealed it.
But she was pale. Sweating.
---
"That shouldn't have cost that much," she said, shivering.
"It's not just spells that are eating power now."
"It's concepts."
---
Nozel looked up.
The crowd was still there. Watching.
Most of them wouldn't even remember this properly by tomorrow.
Not because it was trauma.
But because the memory wouldn't store.
Reality didn't know where to put it.
---
"If that had been a teleportation spell," he said quietly,
"this entire district would've ended up inside the ocean."
Secre didn't respond.
She just stood. Slowly.
And stared at the broken symbol glowing where the priest had once stood.
It pulsed once.
Then dimmed.
But it didn't disappear.
---
Nozel turned away.
There were still people in the city who believed this was fixable.
And maybe that belief was the last thing holding the kingdom together.
But he knew better.
You don't fix something when the pieces start refusing to remember each other.
---
He didn't speak to anyone on the way back.
Not to the guards.
Not to the knights keeping formation near the outer wall.
Not to the messenger that tried to hand him a scroll that dissolved before it touched his glove.
He just walked.
Straight down the marble corridors.
Past the golden stairwells.
Past the oil-lit glyph torches that flickered a little slower than fire should.
His boots echoed.
But not always in sync.
Sometimes they echoed twice.
Sometimes not at all.
---
His personal archive was behind the third seal in the eastern wing.
No one was supposed to access it.
Not even his own family.
The spell on the door accepted his mana.
But it delayed by half a second.
A tiny pause. Like it was hesitating to remember who he was.
That hadn't happened before.
---
Inside, the chamber smelled like cold parchment and silver ash.
Dust floated where sunlight didn't reach.
Books hung midair in containment rings — untouched for years.
Scrolls glowed faintly in lock-boxes, inscribed with his own markings.
Nozel moved straight to the back shelf.
Top left. Second row.
He reached for a sealed leather volume.
Thin. Blackened at the spine.
The one Yami had given him long ago.
A codex of forbidden sigils.
Things the world had outlawed not because they were dangerous…
…but because they were too true to exist safely.
---
He flipped the cover open.
The pages didn't rustle.
They just turned.
Like they knew he didn't have time to waste.
Third page in.
There it was.
The sigil from the field.
---
Except... it wasn't.
It had the right curve.
The same broken crescent.
The same four-point intersection down the stem.
But the center was missing.
The name beneath it had faded.
Not blurred.
Not scratched.
Just... absent.
Like the ink had given up on being legible.
---
He touched the page.
The sigil pulsed once. Cold.
His fingers trembled. His breath caught.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
Something in the back of his mind .....a dream, maybe, or a scent.... tried to surface.
Tried to form a name.
But when it reached his tongue, it felt like choking on glass.
---
He whispered:
"Ka—"
And the air warped.
Just slightly.
A shiver in the light.
A pressure in the ears.
He closed the book.
Fast.
Tucked it back into the ring.
Locked it with an extra seal.
Three glyphs burned into place before the room steadied again.
---
He stepped back.
His own notes — written in clean silver ink on the adjacent scroll — now had smudges.
Not smudged like damage.
Smudged like they were trying not to be read.
He squinted. Focused on a name he had written there years ago.
"Captain Yami Sukehiro"
The ink crawled.
Twisted. Letters rearranging into something older.
Not Japanese.
Not runic.
Just... wrong.
He dropped the scroll.
---
"Something is rewriting history," he whispered.
"Not changing it."
"Undoing it."
---
There was a knock at the door.
One tap.
Silence.
Two more.
He turned, blade ready.
It opened before he could say anything.
Secre stood in the hall, hand pressed to a blank tablet.
Her eyes didn't blink.
She looked straight at him and said:
"You're starting to forget things you haven't lost yet, aren't you?"
---
He didn't ask how she got it.
Didn't ask where.
Didn't ask when.
He just took it from her hands — the black stone tablet, still warm to the touch, like it had soaked up something's breath.
Not carved.
Not written.
Not inked.
Just... burned. From the inside out.
---
At first glance, the tablet was blank.
But when he held it under the archfire, he saw it.
The mark.
Faint. Cracked. Deep.
The anchor.
---
Not etched into the surface —
but curled into the foundation of the stone itself.
The symbol pulsed.
Slow.
Dull.
Alive.
---
Secre leaned against the wall behind him, arms crossed tight across her chest.
"We found it in the break between two mana zones," she said.
"It wasn't supposed to be there. The zones shouldn't have touched."
"And yet... this was left behind."
"No source. No caster. No explanation."
---
Nozel stared down at the anchor.
It looked worse now.
Like it had been carved with hesitation.
Like the one who left it behind hadn't wanted to be remembered...
but had run out of time.
---
"Did it flare?" he asked.
Secre nodded.
"Once."
"High above the spire line. Black flame. No sound."
"It wasn't a signal."
"It was grief."
---
Nozel gritted his teeth.
The room felt heavier now.
Not colder — not warmer either.
Just... dense.
Like the air had too many memories pressed into it at once, and none of them had been invited.
---
He touched the center of the symbol.
Only for a second.
The pressure hit instantly.
Not pain.
Not magic.
Something else.
Recognition.
---
A wave of something spilled into him — not an image, not a word, just a feeling.
Familiar.
Weighted.
A memory too large for one lifetime.
A sword splitting a throne.
A hand held in darkness.
A voice saying,
"You are not what they said you were."
---
He recoiled, breathing hard.
Secre stepped forward, catching the tablet before it hit the floor.
"What did you see?"
Nozel didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because he hadn't seen.
He'd remembered.
---
He sat down on the edge of the table.
Ran a hand through his hair.
Eyes flicked to the mark again. It didn't pulse this time.
It waited.
Patient.
Knowing.
---
He whispered it.
Not to her.
Not to himself.
Just into the room.
To the stone.
To whatever had heard him before.
"Kael."
---
The torches dimmed.
Not down — inward.
Like they were pulling light into themselves.
The walls breathed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
A pulse. A slow intake. A shallow exhale.
Like the room had waited years to hear that name again.
---
Secre didn't flinch.
She just stared.
"So it's true."
"He lived."
Nozel closed his eyes.
"Or he died wrong."
---
He stood on the balcony again.
Same cloak.
Same windless sky.
Same silence.
But something was different now.
It wasn't just quiet anymore.
It was listening.
---
The torches along the outer wall flickered in sync.
Not with each other.
With his breath.
He inhaled.
They dimmed.
He exhaled.
They flared.
He didn't mention it.
Didn't even blink.
---
Somewhere in the distance, church bells rang.
Off key.
Three chimes.
Then two.
Then one...
Then one again.
Then none.
He didn't know of any church that used that rhythm.
Or any that still rang at all.
---
He leaned against the rail.
Looked down at the city.
It still moved — in pieces.
Shadows flickered where light didn't reach.
People stepped out of buildings they hadn't entered.
The plaza where the priest died was already cleaned.
Too quickly.
Too cleanly.
No memorial.
Not even an outline.
Like it never happened.
---
His fingers dug into the stone.
Just enough to feel the chill.
He thought of Yami.
The way he used to lean like this, too.
One boot kicked up. Hands in pockets. Looking at the sky like it owed him something.
Nozel had always envied that kind of stillness.
Right now, he would've paid blood for it.
---
Behind him, Secre hadn't moved.
She stayed just inside the threshold.
Not stepping onto the balcony.
Not stepping back into the archive.
Just... between.
---
"You know," she said, after a long time,
"You said his name out loud."
"I didn't think you'd remember it that clearly."
He didn't turn.
"Neither did I."
---
"There's something else," she continued, quieter now.
"In the mana currents. In the layers beneath the leyline dust."
"I can't read it. Not directly."
"But it's waiting."
---
Nozel's eyes flicked skyward.
The clouds had stopped moving.
Not slowed — stopped.
Like the wind had signed a ceasefire with something above the atmosphere.
---
And then — it happened.
A sound.
Not thunder.
Not shouting.
Not magic.
Just...
a breath.
A massive, strained, hollow breath — like a world exhaling after centuries of silence.
It didn't come from the sky.
Or from underground.
It came from behind the clouds.
From beyond.
---
Secre staggered once.
She gripped the doorframe, horns pulsing with pale white.
Nozel felt the pressure too — deep in his chest.
Not magic.
Not sound.
Just presence.
---
"That wasn't the world," Secre whispered.
"That wasn't this one, at least."
---
Nozel said nothing.
Because he already knew what it was.
That breath didn't belong to something alive.
Or something dead.
It belonged to something that had been denied.
Something that had seen the spellbooks rot, the timelines collapse, the gods forget their own laws.
Something older than purpose.
---
His grip on the railing tightened.
"When?" he asked.
Secre looked at him.
Her voice didn't shake — but her glyphs were flickering.
"Soon."
"Not the end."
"But... the door."
---
He nodded once.
Didn't ask what door.
Didn't ask if it was already open.
He just turned back to the sky —
and whispered something the clouds didn't quite understand.
---
"Yami," he said.
"Where the hell are you?"
---
The clouds didn't answer.
But they shifted.
A spiral.
Slow.
Subtle.
Like the sky had started to turn its head.
Not toward Nozel.
Not toward the capital.
But toward something moving in the space between names.
---
Somewhere out there, Kael walked.
And something else had started walking toward him.
---
3200 words, letsssgooo good start for an absolutely roller coaster arc, many characters will be introduced, many things will be explained from now, have a nice time reading, and please support me
I love you guys, have a nice day ahead