The door opened into a hallway that hadn't been constructed, only remembered.
It was cold, but not with air—cold with stillness. The kind that sank into your bones, like you were walking through someone else's silence. Callum stepped through, his boots making no sound against the floor, because the floor didn't quite exist. It shimmered beneath him, a shifting suggestion of stone, as if the world was unsure whether it should build or erase it.
This was no dungeon. No vault. No secret archive.
This was a place beneath the architecture of memory itself.
A place not meant to be real.
And yet, here it was.
Because Callum had remembered it. Or lied it into being.
He wasn't sure anymore which was which.
Each step he took pulled at something inside him.
Not just nerves. Not fear.
Context.
He felt the laws he'd trusted begin to thin, stretched like threadbare parchment. Gravity became uncertain. The air didn't flow right. The rhythm of his breath no longer matched the weight of his body. Magic here was not only fragile—it was shy. Afraid to reveal itself.
Still, he moved forward.
The corridor narrowed.
A voice echoed through the dark.
"Turn back."
It was his own voice.
Whispered, distant, disbelieving.
Callum paused. He turned his palm over. The mark of [Lie] glowed faintly, its lines stuttering like a broken signal.
He responded aloud.
"I don't turn back. I redefine forward."
The floor solidified underfoot.
The path accepted him.
He arrived at a door—not like the last one.
This door bled light.
Not warm light. Not golden.
A colorless glare, like meaning itself had leaked through a crack in the world.
Callum reached for the handle.
The mark on his palm burned.
[WARNING]
Target Concept: SELF
Integrity: 78%
Exposure Level: Increasing…
He opened the door anyway.
And entered a room made of names.
Each wall bore writing.
Not books.
Engraved truth.
Dozens, hundreds—maybe thousands—of names carved into the stone. Some shimmered. Others flickered, half-faded. A few were burned out completely, leaving only a ghostly impression behind.
But in the center of the room, carved alone and recent:
Callum Vance
It wasn't etched in stone. It was written—in a looping, careful script that matched his own.
He stepped forward and touched it.
It pulsed once.
Then the world around him spoke.
He stood again in the courtyard.
But it was wrong.
Frozen mid-moment. The sky overhead was split—half blue, half void. Students were locked in mid-motion, mouths open, spells mid-cast.
He saw himself across the courtyard.
Younger. Shaking. Holding his hand to the sky.
Watching it tear.
Then another version of him, older, stepped in front of the first.
Wearing the black pin Elya had given him.
The older Callum turned.
Looked at the real Callum.
And spoke.
"Every time you lie, something else forgets the truth.
Are you still sure this is worth it?"
Callum swallowed.
"Yes."
The older version smiled.
"Then I'll show you what comes next."
The courtyard shattered.
And the layers peeled back.
Like a map unfolding—each fold another world, another version of the Academy.
Some where he never awakened [Lie].
Some where he died on his first day.
Some where the sky never came back.
Some where he never existed at all.
In one, Elly stood alone, eyes hollow.
In another, Harlan was the top student—brilliant, ruthless, untouchable.
In another still, Elya wore black robes and ruled from the Tower, whispering denial into the bones of reality.
Callum drifted between them.
Not walking.
Falling sideways.
Until he landed in the one that mattered.
A small classroom.
One desk.
One chair.
A blackboard filled with red chalk.
And Jerren standing before it.
Except this Jerren had eyes.
Too many of them.
Stacked along his forehead and cheeks like gemstones, all staring in different directions.
"You've reached the Divergence Core," he said, calmly.
"This isn't real," Callum whispered.
"Not yet," Jerren replied. "But you're making it real. Every choice, every lie—it nudges you further down this line."
He pointed at the board.
Drawn on it was a branching pattern of timelines, arcing like tree roots, some thick and strong, others snapped mid-growth.
"You think [Lie] is power. But it's responsibility. It anchors divergence. Wherever you stand, the world must choose to follow."
Callum's mouth was dry.
"Then why give it to me?"
"You gave it to yourself," Jerren replied. "The moment you said you belonged."
Callum took the chalk.
He didn't ask permission.
He drew a circle.
Then another beside it.
Then a line connecting the two.
"This is the current path," he said.
Jerren nodded.
"And this—" Callum circled the second— "is what comes next. If I let it."
He turned.
"I want to write a third path."
"Not choose?" Jerren asked.
"No," Callum said. "Write. From scratch."
Jerren's eyes blinked—all of them.
"A path with no foundation is unstable."
"Good," Callum said.
He raised the chalk.
And wrote one word.
Maybe.
The chalk exploded.
He woke on the staircase again.
Breathing hard.
The pin on his chest glowed faintly, keeping him from forgetting.
He stumbled up, step by step, dragging himself back toward memory.
By the time he reached the surface, the sun had set.
Elya sat at the top of the stairs, arms crossed.
"Took you long enough," she said.
He collapsed beside her.
Then laughed.
Because for the first time in days, he felt like he had written the moment.