Kael's POV:
There was something unnatural about silence—when it wasn't the absence of sound, but the absence of threat.
The Grand Magic Zone had always screamed at me—ripped at my ears, filled my lungs with rot, and whispered with every breath that I didn't belong. But here…
Here it was quiet.
'Too quiet.'
I stood at the edge of the dense woods that bled into Hage Village, my boots soaked in weeks of old blood and black mud. My cloak, what remained of it, hung from my shoulders like a burned flag. The runes etched into my skin pulsed low, humming against my ribs. Not a warning—just a heartbeat.
'This is it.'
Past the fields and crooked wooden fences was a place where people slept without fear. Children laughed here. The weak were fed. The unwanted were wanted.
'I shouldn't be here.'
And yet I was.
Yami had said nothing before vanishing again. Typical. Just a rough hand on the back and a grunt: "You'll know when it's time."
This was apparently it.
The first building I passed was a stone chapel. It didn't deserve that word. It was small, old, and half-eaten by moss. But it stood. And it stood clean.
I caught my reflection in a pane of warped glass.
'Gods.'
My face was thinner than I remembered. Cheekbones cut sharp. Lips cracked. One eye, violet, pulsing with residual spelllight. The other silver, almost empty. I looked like something that had crawled out of a storybook meant to be burned.
Still—I stepped forward.
The door creaked open.
And inside… warmth.
Children's voices.
I didn't breathe. Just stood in the doorway, watching.
A boy with green eyes and messy silver hair was wrestling with a broom. Another—smaller, louder, with spiked black hair—was yelling something about "training muscles by cleaning harder."
I knew them.
'Asta. Yuno.'
I'd seen them once—through leaves, across a field, in the dead of night. They didn't see me. No one ever did.
This time… was different.
A woman turned toward me—slight, gentle, with the kind of expression you forget until you starve long enough.
"Hello?" she said. "Are you lost?"
I should have run.
Instead, I stepped inside.
And the screaming inside me didn't stop—it just knelt.
---
Sister Lily brought me food. Not just food—warm food.
I didn't trust it. I stared at the bowl as if it were bait. The children watched from behind her robes like deer half-spooked.
Asta whispered something to Yuno. Yuno didn't respond. His eyes never left mine.
Smart.
"You don't have to say anything if you're not ready," Lily said. Her voice was soft. Real. She wasn't faking it.
'She's too kind. It's going to get her killed someday.'
I nodded, barely.
Then I ate.
And every bite tasted like sin.
---
That night, I lay in a corner of the chapel under a blanket that smelled of soap. My left arm—what remained of it—throbbed beneath the bindings. Not from pain. From the magic inside the rune-scars.
It knew this was wrong.
'Comfort is poison.'
They'd made room for me. Shared their food. Treated me like… like I was human.
But I wasn't.
I was something else.
Something broken that kept crawling forward only because stillness was death.
Asta had come over before sleep, all grins and noise.
"You're strong, right?" he'd asked. "I can tell! You've got that look!"
I didn't answer.
He kept smiling.
Then he said, quieter, "I was an orphan too, y'know. This place… it saved me. Maybe it can save you too."
Then he left.
'No. It can't.'
But part of me… hoped.
And that was worse than any wound.
---
The next morning, I woke before the sun.
Not from a nightmare. From something else.
The runes on my ribs were glowing faintly.
Something had entered the village.
I stepped outside barefoot, the dirt cold against my skin.
And then—I saw it.
A single figure dragging itself toward the chapel from the treeline. Cloaked. Bleeding. But wrong.
Its shadow didn't match its body.
Its breath was backward.
And its eyes glowed black with mirrored reflections.
Asta was already outside, yawning, stretching.
I moved without thinking.
My hand slammed into his chest, shoving him back into the doorway.
"Stay inside."
He blinked. "Huh? Wh—"
"Inside."
My voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
The thing saw me.
It stopped crawling.
And smiled.
Its jaw unhinged and spilled a tongue made of chain-links and nails.
Yuno stepped out then, eyes narrowing.
He saw it too.
The moment cracked.
The thing charged.
I met it halfway.
---
The fight wasn't like in the Zone.
This wasn't chaos.
This was precision.
The creature moved like liquid muscle, each limb shifting into something new with every strike—bone-blades, syringes, hands made of teeth.
I dodged. Barely.
My right hand burned to life—violet flame lashing out as I summoned a single spell.
"Binding Creed: Reverse Judgment."
Chains erupted from the earth, not to hold—but to twist. They sank into the creature's limbs and folded its body inward, turning motion into paralysis.
It laughed.
Then it spoke.
"I saw your birth, Kael."
I stopped.
Its voice was too human. Too familiar.
"I drank from the womb you were thrown from."
The chains snapped.
It lunged, jaws open wide, and this time—I didn't dodge.
I let it bite.
Because I wanted to see.
See what it really was.
The moment its teeth sank into my shoulder, my mind snapped open.
---
Visions.
A tower of thorns in the Grand Magic Zone.
Screaming children hung from its walls.
A throne made of lungs.
Knights, slaughtered.
The Clover Kingdom's crest burned into their corpses.
This wasn't a creature.
It was a message.
From who?
I broke free.
I gripped its face.
And I whispered,
"Anarchy: Reversal Law."
It imploded—skin first, then bone, then idea.
When the dust settled, only ash remained.
And Sister Lily was standing there.
Eyes wide.
Mouth open.
Asta behind her.
The silence returned.
But this time… it judged me.
---
They didn't ask questions that day.
Not yet.
They just stared as I returned to the chapel, shoulder smoking, blood trailing behind me.
I knew it wouldn't last.
They had seen.
They had felt it.
Something worse than devils.
Worse than magic.
Me.
---
That night, I sat beneath the stars.
Not real ones—reflections, warped by lingering mana. But they were enough.
Asta approached.
Slow. No grin this time.
"You… protected us."
I didn't answer.
He sat beside me anyway.
"I don't know what that thing was. But you weren't scared."
I was.
'Still am.'
"I've never seen magic like that," he said. "Yuno said it felt like… like the mana around you was fighting against you."
I smirked.
"That's because it is."
He tilted his head. "Then why are you still alive?"
I looked at my hands.
One human. One… not.
"Because dying's easy," I said. "Living when you shouldn't—that's the hard part."
Asta didn't reply.
He just nodded.
And for once—he was quiet.
---
Later, when all the others had fallen asleep, I opened the grimoire.
Not with hands.
With blood.
It hovered in front of me, its cover pulsing like skin over muscle.
It still had no leaf.
No crest.
Just page after page of ash and scars.
And now—one more phrase had appeared.
"I am not salvation.
I am warning."
---
Somewhere far away, in the depths of the Clover Kingdom—
Lucius Zogratis opened his eyes.
And smiled.
"It's started."
---
Thank you for reading the chapter..... Apathy_Personified, I am really thankful to you for showering me with power stones.....
Guys, I am trying my best, your thoughts on this would be helpful in making this fanfiction goated and in creating a good lore...have a nice day