The moment Julien told them to leave, the weight of the word morning settled on Alaric like a quiet threat.
"You cannot stay here," Julien said, already moving, already thinking several consequences ahead. "This is the public archive wing. Another historian will arrive at first bell."
Felix raised an eyebrow. "And that's bad because…?"
"Because," Julien replied, tightening his cloak, "he will see things that should not be seen. Hear voices that do not exist. Ask questions that cannot be answered without ink."
Marcus nodded once, already understanding. Silas rose without comment. Theo stood last, lingering near Alaric.
"What about him?" Theo asked, glancing back.
Julien hesitated. His eyes flicked to Alaric, flicked away, then returned. "It's...ok, He can go anywhere with that body."
Alaric did not know whether to be offended or relieved.
Julien guided the others first. It took effort, quiet signs, careful timing, the precise authority of a man who has walked these paths all life. The doors of the archive opened not with hinges, but with permission. Felix joked under his breath. Marcus watched the hallways. Silas smiled at passing servants as if he had always been there. Theo walked close to Felix, fingers brushing his sleeve as if to anchor himself.
They looked almost normal as they left.
Almost.
When they were gone, the silence deepened.
Julien exhaled slowly. "You should not wander aimlessly," he told Alaric. "But you cannot remain here either."
"I wasn't planning on sleeping between shelves," Alaric said. "No offense."
Julien gave a strained smile. "Try not to be noticed."
"Not that i can be noticed," Alaric replied dryly.
Julien did not laugh. He wanted to speak something but he remained quiet.
When he turned and left, the library felt different. Less guarded. As though the Annals themselves had stopped pretending to ignore Alaric.
He stepped away from the shelves.
The palace beyond was nothing like the worlds he knew—neither Earth nor fiction nor the composite fantasy his mind kept trying to assemble. It was inconsistent in a way that made his thoughts itch.
Corridors curved when they shouldn't. Light pooled without a visible source. Tapestries depicted battles whose outcomes shifted subtly depending on how long one stared. Servants moved with purpose but without urgency, as if time itself were optional here.
Nothing followed a single logic.
"This place isn't built," Alaric murmured to himself. "It's…weird...as if it was here from centuries but yet it as if it was made but not by any creation."
This library is really weird.
That thought unsettled him.
He drifted through halls where marble gave way to wood, where doors opened onto courtyards that felt older than the palace itself. And everywhere—everywhere—there were knights.
Not statues.
Living men and women in armor that bore scars no forge could explain.
Alaric paused at the edge of a training yard.
Two knights faced each other in silence. One raised his blade. The other did not.
The air shifted.
Something invisible surged forward, an echo of motion, weight, intent, and struck the raised sword aside with crushing force. The blade skidded across the stone. The knight staggered back, stunned but unharmed.
Alaric felt it ripple through him.
"What… was that?"
A guard nearby glanced at him, and did not see him. Alaric swallowed and focused harder, anchoring himself the way Julien had shown him.
The guard blinked, frowned, then shrugged and answered aloud anyway. Maybe the sun was too bright.
"Echo," the guard said. "Sir Calden's."
Echo.
The word rang strangely familiar, like something half-remembered from a lecture or a dream.
Alaric watched as Sir Calden closed his eyes, breathing slow. When he moved again, it was with deliberate restraint, as if he were holding something back.
Echo, Alaric realized, was not magic in the conventional sense.
It did not feel external.
It felt like memory given force.
Later, much later, he would learn the formal definitions. But in that moment, watching the training yard bend subtly around the knights' actions, Alaric understood Echo the only way he could.
Echo was a story that refused to stay in the past.
In Veritas, some individuals carried fragments of completed narratives, moments so significant they left residue behind. A hero's last stand. A general's unbroken charge. A king's vow spoken at the edge of ruin.
These moments crystallized.
They became Echoes.
An Echo was not learned. It was inherited, from history, from legend, from events that the Annals had already sealed. Knights did not invent power; they remembered it on behalf of the world.
There were two kinds.
Upgradeable Echoes were living legacies. A knight who wielded the Echo of an Unyielding Shield could refine it, deepen it, strengthen it through continued alignment with the story that birthed it. The more faithfully they embodied the narrative, the defender who never retreated, the guardian who endured, the stronger the Echo became.
Non-upgradable Echoes were relics. Fixed moments. A single miracle, forever capped. The Echo of a Final Blow. The Echo of a Sacrifice That Ended a War. They could be invoked, but never grown. To try was to invite backlash, history rejecting reinterpretation.
Alaric watched a knight stumble as crimson light flickered and died around his gauntlet.
"Overreached," someone muttered.
The idea made his skin prickle.
Power here was not potential.
It was precedent.
And suddenly, Alaric understood why this world feared anomalies.
He moved on, unsettled.
Everywhere he went, the palace revealed more of its illogical structure. Stairs that shortened when climbed too quickly. Windows that showed different skies depending on who looked through them. Guards who aged forward and backward within the same conversation.
Veritas was not broken.
It was edited.
Alaric pressed a hand to his chest. He could feel it now, the absence where his Echo should have been. Knights drew strength from past stories.
But his past had been concluded.
There was nothing left to inherit.
And yet… he still existed.
He felt a bit tired and saw that people couldn't notice him anymore it seems like he can only anchor himself for a few hours, mostly 2 hours?
He started ghost walking around, going in from one wall of the palace and coming out from the other.
He stopped before a long gallery lined with portraits. Kings. Queens. Heroes. Each frame shimmered faintly with Echo residue, history humming just beneath the surface.
Alaric stepped closer to one.
The plaque beneath read: Prince Alaric Veyne – The Winter Traitor.
His own face stared back at him, painted in dignified stillness. The artist had softened his expression, given him resolve he didn't remember feeling.
Alaric reached out.
His fingers passed through the canvas.
The Echo did not respond.
No resonance. No recognition.
"I don't belong to myself," he whispered.
That should have terrified him.
Instead, it clarified something.
Echo was power derived from remembered stories.
The Annals recorded stories to stabilize the world.
Knights wielded Echo because they aligned with history.
And Alaric existed because history had failed to account for continuation.
He stepped back, heart pounding.
If Echo came from the past...
And if he had no past that could be acknowledged...
Then whatever he became would not draw power from memory.
It would draw power from absence.
From misremembering.
From the space between what was written and what persisted anyway.
Alaric smiled faintly, tension coiling tighter in his chest.
"Then let's see," he murmured to the empty hall, "what happens when a story refuses to stay finished."
Morning came to the Library of Veritas quietly.
Not with birds, nor with bells, but with the soft shifting of light across the tall windows and the faint murmur of pages turning themselves in distant shelves. The library always woke before the palace did, as if the stories inside it preferred to stretch before people began interfering with them.
Julien Crowe stepped inside with the practiced calm of a man who had performed the same ritual for years. He placed his satchel on the central desk, loosened the clasp of the Annals, and inhaled the familiar scent of parchment and old ink.
Then he looked up.
And frowned.
Floating several feet above one of the reading tables, leaning sideways in a way no living man could manage, was Alaric.
The ghostly prince hung there like an abandoned thought, one arm dangling through a shelf, his translucent hair drifting slightly in the still air.
Julien closed the door behind him.
Slowly.
"You look," he said carefully, "unproductive."
Alaric did not react immediately.
His gaze was fixed somewhere high above the ceiling, distant and hollow. When he finally lowered his eyes, there was something in them Julien had not seen before.
Weariness.
"Good morning," Alaric said.
Julien hesitated.
For a moment, just a moment, the old habit rose automatically to his lips.
Your Highness.
He stopped himself.
That title belonged to a man who had died months ago.
And yet… the face before him was still unmistakably the Crown Prince of Veyne.
Julien cleared his throat. "Did you remain here all night?"
Alaric shrugged lazily. "Not intentionally. I was thinking."
"Dangerous activity."
Alaric gave a faint smile that vanished almost immediately.
Julien stepped closer, studying him.
Something about the way the ghost hovered felt… heavy. Not physically, of course. But emotionally. As if Alaric had discovered a weight his incorporeal form could still feel.
"You seem troubled," Julien said.
Alaric tilted his head slightly. "Do I?"
"Yes."
Alaric glanced down at his transparent hands.
"I walked through the palace last night," he said quietly. "Found a portrait of the prince."
Julien's chest tightened.
"And?" he asked.
"And I realized something uncomfortable," Alaric said. "Everyone in this world knows him better than I do."
Julien did not answer.
Alaric looked back at him.
"You almost called me something earlier," he said.
Julien froze.
"You stopped yourself," Alaric continued. "Why?"
Julien looked away.
"It was nothing."
Alaric's eyes sharpened.
"That wasn't nothing."
Julien hesitated.
For a long moment, he said nothing. He adjusted a stack of scrolls that did not need adjusting, straightened a quill that was already straight, and pretended the silence was comfortable.
It wasn't.
Finally, he sighed.
"It is… personal," Julien said.
Alaric watched him.
"You're a historian," he said. "Personal is your profession."
Julien gave a weak laugh.
"That is unfortunately true."
He leaned against the long desk and folded his arms.
"The man whose face you wear," Julien said quietly, "was not an ordinary prince."
Alaric raised an eyebrow.
"That much I gathered."
Julien studied him for a moment before speaking again.
"His name was Alaric Veyne," Julien said. "Crown Prince of the Veyne Kingdom. First son of Empress Elowen. Heir to a throne that half the kingdom feared would one day belong to him."
Alaric listened silently.
"He had three siblings," Julien continued. "Two princes and one princess. All ambitious. All beloved by the nobility."
"But not him," Alaric guessed.
Julien shook his head slowly.
"No. The nobles despised him."
"Why?"
Julien's expression grew complicated.
"Because he was born with the coldest temperament anyone had ever seen."
Alaric frowned slightly.
Julien continued.
"The prince did not laugh as a child. Did not cry. Did not form attachments easily. Even his tutors described him as… distant."
"That sounds unpleasant," Alaric said.
"It frightened people," Julien corrected. "A child with no visible emotions is difficult to understand."
"But the Empress loved him," Alaric said.
"Yes," Julien said softly. "Fiercely."
Julien's gaze drifted toward one of the tall windows.
"Many believed she protected him because he was her firstborn. Others believed she saw something in him the rest of us did not."
"What did she see?"
Julien looked back at him.
"A man who could carry suffering without breaking."
Alaric said nothing.
Julien continued.
"The young prince rarely attended noble gatherings. Instead, he disappeared into the lower districts of the capital."
Alaric blinked.
"The slums?" he asked.
Julien nodded.
"At first, people assumed he was curious. Then they realized he was… involved."
"Involved how?"
Julien's voice grew quieter.
"He bought the freedom of war slaves."
Alaric stilled.
"He opened shelters for orphans using his personal treasury," Julien continued. "He forced corrupt officials out of office. He established grain reserves for winter shortages."
"That sounds like good governance," Alaric said carefully.
"For the commoners," Julien replied.
"And the nobles?"
"They saw their profits vanish."
Alaric leaned back slightly.
"Ah."
Julien nodded.
"The prince was relentless. He inspected labor camps personally. He executed slave traders without trial. He redistributed land that had been controlled by powerful families for generations."
Alaric exhaled softly.
"So he made enemies."
"He made everyone his enemy," Julien said.
"The court called him cruel. The clergy called him dangerous. The merchants called him a thief."
"But the people loved him," Alaric said.
Julien smiled faintly.
"They called him the Warlord of the Winter Star."
Alaric blinked. "That's… dramatic."
"It came later," Julien said. "During the northern campaigns."
"The prince became a general?"
"He became something worse."
Julien's eyes darkened slightly.
"On the battlefield, Alaric Veyne was unstoppable. He wielded the Echo of the Winter Star, an ancient power born from a forgotten hero who held a frozen pass against an army."
Alaric leaned forward with interest.
"And he improved it?"
"Yes," Julien said. "The Echo grew stronger the more he fought for the defenseless."
Julien paused.
"But victory breeds fear."
Alaric waited.
"The nobles whispered that he was building loyalty among the army. That the common people would crown him whether the court approved or not."
"And did he?" Alaric asked.
Julien shook his head.
"No."
"What did he do?"
Julien's voice became quiet again.
"He kept protecting people."
Alaric sighed.
"That's inconvenient."
"Yes."
Julien looked at him steadily.
"Eventually the court accused him of treason."
"For helping the poor?"
"For undermining divine order."
Alaric frowned.
Julien continued.
"They said the gods had placed nobles above commoners for a reason. They said Alaric was betraying the divine hierarchy."
"And the prince?"
"He refused to defend himself."
Alaric blinked.
"What?"
Julien nodded slowly.
"When the trial came, he stood before the court and said nothing."
"That's absurd," Alaric said.
"He only said one thing."
Julien's voice softened.
"He said: If protecting the powerless is treason, then I will accept the charge."
The room fell silent.
Alaric stared at him.
"And they executed him," he said.
"Yes."
Julien's expression darkened.
"They called him the Betrayer of the Divine."
"And the people?"
Julien's smile was sad.
"They called him the Holiest Hero."
Alaric looked down at his transparent hands again.
"And the wickedest villain?" he asked.
Julien nodded.
"That was the title the nobles preferred."
Silence lingered between them.
Finally Alaric spoke again.
"So the prince died protecting people," he said.
"Yes."
"And history calls him a traitor."
Julien nodded.
Alaric looked thoughtful.
Then he sighed quietly.
"Well," he said, "that explains why the Annals wrote such a neat Ending."
Julien frowned.
Alaric looked up at him.
"A perfect tragedy," he said. "Hero becomes villain. Justice becomes treason. Story complete."
Julien felt a chill run down his spine.
"And yet," Alaric continued softly, his ghostly form flickering faintly in the morning light....
"here I am."