The moment Lyle's body touched the stone chair, the world around him disappeared.
There was no light. No sound. Not even the sensation of sitting.
Just black.
Weightless.
Empty.
> I didn't fall asleep.
This isn't a spell.
This is… something else.
A pulse echoed from within. Not from his Codex. From beneath it. A deeper place. The kind of place that doesn't get touched by training or talent. The kind of place that holds your reasons.
Then came the first voice.
It wasn't his.
> "Tell me who you are."
Simple. Soft.
But Lyle could feel the weight of the question.
It wasn't rhetorical.
It wasn't abstract.
It needed an answer.
He opened his mouth to respond—
And the world around him shifted.
Suddenly he was back home.
Not in the academy.
Not in the present.
But in the small, cluttered apartment where he'd once lived with his parents, before the "incident." Before the disappearance. Before the grief.
The bookshelf stood crooked near the window. The ancient trunk sat at the foot of the bed. And on the table, untouched and forgotten, lay the wizard book—the one that had never opened.
The one he had cried over the night they vanished.
His throat went dry.
His legs moved on their own. The air was thick with emotion, but it wasn't crushing—it was probing. As if this scene wasn't being shown to him… but was being felt through him.
> "Tell me who you are."
The voice came again.
But now it had his mother's tone.
Lyle stepped closer to the table.
He reached out for the book.
The moment his fingertips touched the cover—heat surged up his arm.
He recoiled.
And the room fractured.
The apartment split down the center, revealing two diverging halls of memory. One was bathed in golden light, full of laughter, warmth, and moments he never got to live.
The other was cold, littered with the blood and ash of trial zones, surveillance, betrayal.
He didn't walk toward either.
He turned inward.
Closed his eyes.
And whispered, "I'm the one who remembers both. But believes neither."
The world shuddered.
And the voice changed again.
This time, it wasn't anyone he knew.
It was himself—older, harder, distant.
> "You're not ready. But you chose to sit."
> "You're not honest. But you pretend to be nothing."
> "You don't fear power. You fear being seen with it."
Then a mirror appeared before him.
And in its reflection stood not Lyle Greenbottle the cadet—
—but Lyle Greenbottle the Mage of Ruin.
Hooded. Calm. Eyes like storms trapped in glass.
His future self didn't speak.
Didn't move.
He only watched.
And in that gaze, Lyle understood something for the first time.
> There is a version of me that burns the world clean.
> And this path will lead me there—unless I choose otherwise.
---
He opened his eyes.
The blackness faded.
The chair returned beneath him.
Stone. Cold. Real.
The chamber was silent again.
The man in the midnight-blue robe stood in front of him, arms crossed.
"You're still here," he said simply.
Lyle blinked the sweat from his eyes.
"I didn't answer the question," he rasped.
The man shook his head. "You didn't have to. The chair only asks it."
One of the veiled observers stood and handed him something—a black iron ring, threaded with a strip of faint green cloth.
No inscription.
No explanation.
"Wear it if you choose the path," she said. "Toss it if you'd rather live safely."
Lyle took the ring.
Didn't put it on.
Not yet.
But he didn't throw it either.
---
As he climbed the steps out of the vault and returned to the academy above, one thought echoed louder than anything else:
> If power asks who you are… then hiding is no longer safety.
> It's betrayal.