The dormitory lay draped in unnatural stillness, the kind that doesn't welcome dawn but waits for an ending no one dared speak of. Yuji's eyes opened slowly, not with the familiar pulse of morning, but with the uneasy tremor of dislocation. The world around him—the faded tapestry of his room, the carved wooden desk, the tattered scrolls—held all the echoes of a home, but the essence was hollow.
He sat up, chest tight, as a strange sensation stirred deep within his core.
The Eternal Ring, resting invisibly beneath his skin, pulsed erratically. Its usual warm glow flickered, replaced by jagged streaks of cold, inverted light that rippled like shards of broken glass beneath his flesh. The ring's heartbeat was uneven, a warning signal sent from the heart of time itself.
Yuji pressed a trembling hand to his chest, trying to steady the chaos inside.
The mirror caught his gaze—his own reflection staring back, but wrong. Younger. Unmarked by battles or scars. Eyes untrained yet wide with unknowable fear.
He wasn't supposed to be here. Not like this.
A sudden chill slithered down his spine as the room shifted beneath him.
Walls that had once held the scent of burned incense and whispered study bent and folded, like smoke caught in a glass jar. The stained glass window spilled muted colors, fractured and cold, into the room.
The air shimmered, and words, like frozen embers, traced themselves across the peeling plaster of the wall in flickering blue fire:
> "If you remember, then you do not belong here."
The flame-letters flickered wildly, twisting and reforming with impossible grace—warnings etched in a language older than kingdoms.
Time fractured.
Reality fractured.
Yuji's breath caught in his throat as the world cracked like fragile porcelain around him.
A figure stepped from the shadows—a broken echo, a remnant of a timeline that should have faded into oblivion.
King Kael.
But it's impossible for him to know about the flame world and he is not the King Kael Yuji had fought beside. This Kael was fractured, his body veined with cracks like ancient pottery shattered and poorly mended. His eyes, hollow and empty, held the weight of forgotten kingdoms and the terrible knowledge of endings unspoken.
"You were meant to vanish," the cracked king said, voice brittle like dry stone. "But even Time fears forgetting you."
Yuji's heart hammered against ribs tighter than iron. How could Time, an endless river flowing forward, tremble in fear?
His gaze darted around the room, searching for familiar faces.
No Kraél, no guiding presence in the halls.
No Aika's steady strength anchoring him.
No Yumi's knowing gaze—only absence.
The world around him was a splintered reflection, a place where memories were lies and truths were whispered only in shadows.
His fingers clenched the invisible weight beneath his skin.
The Eternal Ring.
It trembled... no.... it felt like it vanished, the cold light shifting as if alive—responding to the fractures in this false reality.
The world bent once more. Walls breathed, the ceiling warped and twisted, stained glass bleeding colors that made no sense.
Yuji felt the pull of lost seconds, futures that had been stolen before birth, memories that were not his own, and yet… they clawed inside his mind.
A silent scream echoed from the empty corners of his thoughts.
"What is this place?" he whispered. "Where time forgets me?"
The shattered King Kael's cracked smile seemed to pierce the darkness.
"Between what was… and what could be."
The blue flames writhed, burning prophecies onto the walls:
> "The moment you never lived
is the moment that holds your fate."
Yuji closed his eyes.
The weight of a thousand forgotten moments pressed upon him.
The Eternal Ring's heartbeat slowed, pulsing faintly like a dying star caught in endless night.
He thought of Aika, her unyielding resolve, but she was lost here—stripped of memory, untouched by the flames of the Grand Hunt or the secrets of the Bone Artifacts.
He thought of Yumi—her urgency, her fear—but she was a ghost in this timeline, absent and silent.
His mind raced, frantic to grasp the threads unraveling before him.
If this was a world where he was never chosen by Time, then what tethered him here?
A sudden whisper, a shattering echo:
> "You were never meant to leave Zeyrus alive."
The words burned like acid beneath his skin.
A fracture in reality, a broken moment in the endless weave of time.
He staggered, the walls closing in.
Memories flashed—faces, battles, alliances—things that should have been his, but now felt like the dreams of a stranger.
The Eternal Ring flickered once more, warmth returning, but fragile—like a candle fighting a storm.
Yuji clenched his fists, resolve coiling like a spring.
If this was the moment that never happened—if this reality was a shadow cast by his true path—then he would fight to reclaim his place.
The fractured King Kael stepped back into shadow, his final words lingering like a dirge.
"Even Time fears forgetting you."
Yuji took a steadying breath.
"I remember," he said quietly. "And that means I will not be forgotten."
The world cracked again.
But this time, Yuji smiled—because even in a splintered reality, the soul knows its way home.
But he also felt something strange
> it's an time loop. ARA SAID on the mind realm of yuji
---
The edge of the Temporal Fault Line was a place where reality itself seemed to sigh and stretch, a liminal zone where time's currents slowed to a sluggish crawl. The air hummed with static—the kind that prickled skin and whispered secrets in forgotten tongues.
Here, Ryen knelt beside Xioner, who lay crumpled against the jagged rocks, her breaths shallow and ragged like the fading song of a dying ember. Her once-luminous veins, normally crackling with latent power, flickered dimly beneath pale skin. She was fragile, broken, but not defeated.
Ryen's hands trembled as he pressed gentle fingers against the bruises blooming across her leg—deep, angry bruises that spoke of violence, betrayal, and desperation.
"Who did this?" he asked, voice low, carrying the weight of both anger and worry.
Xioner's eyes fluttered open, luminous with pain but sharp as shattered glass. She coughed—a rasp that seemed to tear at her throat.
"Some people... but I don't know exactly who," she whispered. "The ones who live outside of time."
Ryen's jaw clenched. The Temporal Fault wasn't just a boundary between past and future—it was a battlefield where the unseen war for timelines played out. And Xioner was at its heart.
Before them, the Chrono Field shimmered—a translucent dome of warped space where moments bled into each other. Inside the field, Ryen's eyes caught a shifting memory-loop: the scene of Yuji's death in Zeyrus.
At first, it seemed seared into the fabric of time itself—the broken body, the fading light in his eyes, the silence that followed.
But then Ryen's practiced gaze caught a subtle flicker—an impossible detail.
Yuji's eyes blinked.
The chest rose and fell, slow but steady.
It was a lie.
A carefully crafted illusion, replayed endlessly in the folds of fractured time.
"Yuji wasn't killed," Ryen muttered, voice trembling with revelation.
Xioner nodded, her strength waning but her mind razor sharp.
"That moment is being rewritten… over and over," she said. "As if time itself can't decide what truly happened. Like it's caught in a loop—a cage of uncertainty."
Ryen's fingers brushed against something half-buried beneath jagged stone—a device, ancient and cracked, humming faintly with dormant power.
A Temporal Relay.
An artifact designed to swap souls between timelines.
His heart thundered.
Someone was manipulating fate itself—stealing lives, rewriting destinies.
And Yuji was the prize.
As the air thickened, Xioner's aura flickered wildly—her blood draining pale for a brief, terrifying moment.
A voice echoed from the fractured void, low and chilling:
"One of you is not supposed to be here..."
Ryen's eyes narrowed, breath tightening.
He reached deep, calling on the Phantom Steps—the forbidden technique passed down through his lineage, a dance with time itself.
Not content with the slow glide of Level 3, he summoned a power reserved for legends.
Level 3.
The world around him blurred as he slipped between moments, moving faster than thought—each step stealing seconds from the timeline, allowing him to react before danger even formed.
His form flickered, shadows stretching and folding like smoke in a tempest.
Assassins emerged from the cracks of time—figures draped in shifting shadows, their faces hidden behind masks etched with eldritch runes that pulsed with stolen chronomancy.
They came for Xioner.
To erase her.
To prevent the truth from leaking into the fractured timelines.
Ryen moved like a storm unleashed.
Each blink of his existence was a strike, his blade slicing through air and shadow with surgical precision.
The Phantom Steps Level 4 wasn't just movement—it was war against time itself.
His every strike fractured moments, stealing futures from his enemies.
They faltered, disoriented, trapped in the grip of stolen seconds.
But there were too many.
A dozen. Two dozen.
More surged forward with relentless hunger.
The Chrono Field pulsed wildly, warping space and shuddering with temporal energy.
Ryen's breath burned, muscles screamed, but his resolve did not waver.
He protected Xioner with every ounce of his being.
As the battle raged, Xioner's eyes fluttered open once more, filled with determination despite her wounds.
"We must stop them," she said weakly. "Before they rewrite everything."
Ryen's gaze hardened.
"Then we fight. Until the last second."
With a final surge, he accelerated, weaving through the temporal chaos with an almost supernatural grace.
Every step was a challenge hurled against the relentless tide of time—an assertion that some fates could not be stolen, some souls could not be erased.
The assassins faltered, their attacks growing desperate and disorganized.
At last, the air cleared.
Ryen lowered his blade, chest heaving, eyes still blazing with cold fury.
Xioner lay quietly, safe for now, but the battle was far from over.
He looked toward the dark horizon where the Temporal Fault stretched endlessly, a scar in the fabric of all worlds.
"This is only the beginning," Ryen whispered, voice heavy with promise and pain.
He tightened his grip on Xioner's hand, anchoring her—and himself—to the fragile present.
"Let them come.
I'll steal every second they try to take."
BUT he also felt strange
> we never entered the Flame World. The moment we stepped into that blood vein
> yuji died. And why is everything repeating itself why I asked aika the same question while kneeling why she gave the same answer.
...WHY?
> no we are in the Flame World but not on the real timeline MINA I KNOW IT'S YOU!!
---
in flame land academy
The air around Yuji thickened, heavy with a silence that pressed like a thousand shadows on his chest. He stood alone in a place that felt neither here nor there—a fold between moments, a seam in reality itself.
Before him, a figure emerged from the mist, stepping through the veil of fractured time.
It was himself—yet not.
The clone's skin was pale as moonlight, veins glowing with a sickly, shimmering light that pulsed beneath translucent flesh.
There were no eyes.
Just empty sockets, black and endless.
And from those hollow voids came a voice—layered in echoes, as if many versions spoke as one.
> "I am not your future, Yuji Kazehaya," the figure intoned, "but a memory—a shadow of all the timelines that failed."
The words hung in the air, cold and unyielding.
Yuji's breath caught, heart pounding with a mix of fear and defiance.
The clone stepped closer, the blue glow of its veins flickering with sorrow and rage.
> "Would you suffer again... if you knew the outcome?" it asked, voice fracturing like broken glass. "Would you bear the pain of endless loss... knowing it would all come to this?"
Yuji's eyes burned with fierce light, his fists clenched tightly.
> "I'd suffer a thousand times over," he replied, voice steady but trembling, "if it meant that one version of me—one with a beating heart—survived."
The fractured figure faltered, the blue fire around it crackling with a strange intensity.
> "Then you are stronger than time itself," it whispered.
Suddenly, the world around them twisted.
The seams of reality rippled like water disturbed by a stone.
Yuji's hand shot forward, smashing through the illusionary veil.
His fist shattered the folds of fractured time, sending shards of broken moments scattering like stardust.
He punched through pain, doubt, and every failed version of himself that haunted this place.
With a final surge, the false world crumbled.
Light exploded.
And Yuji fell back—
Back into the solid ground of reality.
---
Aika stood nearby, eyes wide with confusion and concern.
> "Yuji? You were gone for three seconds."
Her voice broke the stillness.
He swallowed hard, breath ragged, eyes trembling with the weight of all he'd seen.
> "I… lived three lifetimes," he whispered.
She stepped closer, hand reaching out but hesitating.
The air around them felt charged—like the world had held its breath.
Yuji's gaze softened as he looked at her, a flicker of vulnerability beneath the storm.
> "Time remembers everything we try to forget," he said quietly.
> "Even the version of me... that never made it out."
The words lingered like a prophecy.
Because in the endless corridors of time, every loss, every pain, every forgotten fragment was etched—alive and eternal.
And Yuji Kazehaya was more than just one man.
He was the sum of every struggle, every survival, every fractured moment stitched back together by sheer will.
---
The room around them shimmered slightly, the glow of Bone Artifacts pulsing faintly in the distance.
The battle against time was far from over.
But Yuji had reclaimed a piece of himself—something stronger than fear or doubt.
He had reclaimed his heart.
---
END OF CHAPTER 31