The Academy sky was blue again.
Too blue.
Perfectly, evenly, unnaturally blue—as if someone had taken the memory of a childhood summer and painted it across the dome of the world.
It didn't shift with the hour. Didn't stain with dusk. It was frozen. Static. Still.
Because Callum had said so.
He watched from the dorm roof, knees drawn to his chest. Morning bells rang, faint and hollow, and students below moved like nothing had happened. Like the sky had never disappeared. Like there'd never been a hole above their heads and a scream in the courtyard.
That was the danger of shaping reality with belief.
The world didn't just accept your lie.
It forgot what came before.
"You're not eating," Elly said.
She stood beside him, one foot on the ledge, hands in her pockets. She stared at the too-blue sky like it had wronged her personally.
"I don't feel hungry," Callum replied.
"You didn't eat yesterday either."
"I ate the day before."
"Yeah, and you rebuilt a cosmic layer of environmental logic with a few poetic words. You should be dead, Callum. Or a god. Or both."
He didn't look at her. "I'm not either."
Elly crouched.
"You're bleeding belief."
Callum turned to her then, finally, and said nothing.
Because she was right.
The mark on his palm still pulsed faintly, but he could feel his certainty slipping. The sky was there, yes—but so flawless it drew doubt. And doubt was oil to fire when it came to [Lie].
"I wrote it too well," he murmured. "The sky's too clean. Too false."
Elly nodded.
"You need to remind people what a real sky looks like," she said. "Or they'll stop believing in weather."
That night, a storm was scheduled.
That's how the Academy did weather: through schedules, proposed shifts in mana drift, and cloud-seeding constructs built into the perimeter wards.
Callum hacked the scheduler.
Not with code. Not with tools.
With a whisper.
"It rained yesterday."
[Lie] activated.
Target: Weather Memory Register
Belief Level: Moderate
Duration: Residual
Effect: System Backdate and Recalibration — Triggering Precipitation Event
At 2:34 AM, the sky opened.
Lightning cracked. Thunder rolled. Rain fell—cold and sharp and real.
Students woke screaming.
But by dawn, the sky was pale again. The false blue fractured. And clouds returned like they'd never left.
In the week that followed, Callum began to notice things missing.
Not from reality—from memory.
Elly forgot her favorite boots had ever existed. Harlan blinked blankly when Callum mentioned a duel from two days earlier. An instructor failed to recognize his own handwriting on an exam scroll.
"Cascading echo-loss," said a voice behind him.
Callum turned.
The masked figure from the Hall of Shapes leaned against a column, arms crossed.
"The price of layering belief without anchor," they continued. "You've bent the rules too often, too quickly. You're leaving ripples."
Callum stepped closer.
"How do I stop it?"
The figure didn't move. "You don't. You balance it."
Callum frowned. "With what?"
"With a truth stronger than the lie you built."
That night, he went back to the memory room beneath his dorm.
The orb waited for him.
He placed both hands on it.
"Show me what the world forgot," he whispered.
The orb pulsed.
And the chamber dissolved.
He stood in a field of stars.
No ground beneath him. No air. Just a sense of falling upward.
Before him, a figure emerged.
Not Osric. Not the masked one.
Someone younger.
A boy, no older than Callum, wearing a school uniform with a crest long since retired.
He looked up.
"You're the one who broke the sky," the boy said. Calm. Not angry. Just… sure.
"I fixed it," Callum replied.
"No. You replaced it."
The stars behind the boy shivered.
"We made that mistake once," he said. "The first class. The first Liecaster."
Callum stepped forward. "What happened to them?"
"They became law."
Callum's breath caught. "That's what I'm becoming?"
"No," the boy said, fading slowly. "That's what you're replacing."
He returned to his room trembling.
He didn't know what that vision had meant.
But he knew what he had to do.
He opened his journal.
Dipped his quill in memory-dye.
And wrote:
The sky I spoke is not the sky that was.
The world believes it.
But I will not.
The ink resisted.
For the first time since he'd begun, the page pushed back.
It didn't want him to remember.
Because belief wanted to settle.
He pressed harder.
I am a liar who remembers the truth.
The page accepted it.
And a tear rolled down his cheek.
He didn't sleep.
At dawn, he climbed the tower again.
This time, not to speak a lie.
But to plant a truth.
A real one.
One that couldn't be overwritten.
He stood at the edge of the spire, arms wide.
And whispered:
"The sky is imperfect.
It rains when we don't expect.
It clouds our brightest days.
It is inconsistent, and real, and flawed—
and that's why it matters."
[Belief] acknowledged.
Echo Anchor set.
Concept stabilized: SKY
And for the first time since it returned…
…the sun moved.
It rose.
Slowly.
Beautifully.
Late.
Like it had remembered it was real again.
Three days later, a new student joined Class 9-Z.
She wore a coat stitched with mirrored thread, and her eyes shimmered between colors like oil on water.
Her name was Elya.
She shook Callum's hand and smiled like she knew a joke he hadn't heard yet.
And when she touched his palm, her eyes widened.
"You've lied to gods," she whispered.
"No," Callum said, smiling faintly. "Only to the sky."
She leaned in.
"Well. Don't stop now."