Volume 1 – The VR World
Chapter 10 – The World That Waited
The dreams weren't mine, but I woke from them like they belonged to me.
I saw them in flashes.
A battlefield soaked in frost.
A tower of dead iron twisted by siege fire.
A throne room buried in snowdrift and silence.
A girl with eyes like dying stars, calling me "brother."
And a voice — not my voice — shouting commands in a language I shouldn't have known.
Every time I opened my eyes, the pieces of me felt less like fiction.
Hollowreach wasn't a city. It was a wound that refused to close.
The people here wore desperation like armor. Their eyes didn't ask questions. They didn't whisper rumors or hopes. They survived because survival was the only thing left worth doing. The land didn't give. The sky didn't forgive.
But they followed me.
They called me their Magus. Their ruler. Their last hope.
And I remembered being him.
Not through logic, not with evidence, but through muscle memory and echo. My hands moved the way his had. I spoke with inflections I couldn't have learned. I navigated the broken spiral stairwell of the watchtower without misstep — even though I'd never seen it before.
Not in my life.
But maybe in his.
The staff waited for me in the sanctum below the keep.
It was made of ironroot, blackened by age, wrapped in bands of dull silver. The runes along its length weren't decorative — they shifted when touched, responding to thought.
I didn't know how I activated it. I just did.
A single pulse of light lit the runes, and warmth spread through my chest like a second heartbeat. The arcane circle on the ground recognized me. It hummed.
And the air… listened.
They called it mana.
Not in textbooks. Not in systems.
In breath. In prayer. In need.
I wasn't channeling it. I was it.
The realization came slow, terrifying, beautiful. I wasn't just a man who had magic — I was a conduit. A vessel this world had poured itself into. Caelan Arion had been born with it.
And now I was him.
Completely.
I stood at the edge of the western watchtower as dusk bled into the mountains.
No signs of the others.
Not Darius's banner. Not Soren's caravans. No whispers in shadows. No sermons beneath strange stars.
Just snow, wind, and a silence that held its breath like it knew I was listening.
I climbed back down into the sanctum. The arcane ring still glowed. The same iron band I'd touched before. Its runes flickered as I approached, this time forming letters I could almost read. Not English. Not any language from Earth.
But I knew it.
A spellform. A message weave.
Something old. Something meant to reach.
I dropped to one knee, placed my hand at the center of the circle, and breathed into the staff's crystal.
A whisper.
One word.
"Darius."
The mana surged.
The light bent inward. The circle ignited with a heatless flame, spiraling outward like smoke underwater.
Not a signal. Not a command.
A call.
And somewhere — I felt it — someone heard.