Rating: MA15+Mature themes including reality distortion, existential horror, and traumatic memory
PART ONE: The First Signs
Three weeks pass like water through cupped hands—you know they're slipping away but can't hold them no matter how tightly you grasp.
Mildern and the child live under observation that feels less like protection and more like a microscope pressed against their existence. Council agents follow them through the market. Their rented room is searched twice while they're out—nothing taken, everything left slightly displaced, a message that says: we can ruin your life whenever we want. The child has nightmares that wake him gasping, reaching for Mildern in the dark, and Mildern holds him while pretending his own hands aren't shaking.
The assignments start small. Innocuous, almost.
A village baker reports bread that exists and doesn't exist simultaneously—customers buy loaves that vanish before they can eat them, money exchanged for nothing. Patrix sends Mildern to investigate with a simple note: Document the phenomenon. Report findings. Prove yourself useful.
Mildern and the child travel to the village on a morning when the sky looks bruised, clouds stitched together wrong like the weather itself is uncertain what it's supposed to be. The bakery is small, windows fogged with condensation from ovens that should be producing warmth and safety but instead radiate wrongness.
The baker is an adult in her fifties with flour permanently embedded under her fingernails and eyes that have stopped sleeping properly. She shows them the evidence with hands that tremble: a loaf of bread sitting on the counter, perfectly formed, golden-brown crust gleaming. But when she reaches for it, her hand passes through like reaching through mist.
"It's there," she insists, voice breaking. "I can see it. I can smell it. But I can't touch it. And customers—they come in, they point at the bread, they give me money, and then they leave with nothing and don't remember they were supposed to have something."
The child reaches out carefully, small hand extending toward the phantom loaf. His fingers make contact where the baker's couldn't—solid, warm, real. He picks it up, feels its weight, then watches in horror as it flickers like a candle flame in wind and vanishes entirely.
Then reappears. Then vanishes again. Cycling between states of being and not-being, trapped in a loop that refuses to settle on a single truth.
Mildern documents everything in the notebook the Council provided, but his hands shake so badly the writing is barely legible. Because he recognizes something in this wrongness, something that tastes familiar even though he's never encountered it before—like déjà vu for events that haven't happened yet.
They return to the city with a report that says essentially: Reality is fracturing. No known cause. Phenomenon localized but spreading. Recommend further investigation.
The Council reads it and says nothing. Just sends them to the next assignment.
A student at the Academy discovers his textbook contains spells he hasn't learned yet, then has already learned, then never learned—all simultaneously. The pages shift when he's not looking, knowledge appearing and disappearing like it can't decide what's supposed to be true.
An elderly gramps finds his granddaughter's name erased from his family tree—documents, photographs, memories all shifting until she's never existed, then snapping back into reality when he screams her name loudly enough. She's real. Then she's not. Then she is again, crying in confusion because the world keeps forgetting her.
Each incident is different but the wrongness is the same: reality becoming uncertain, causality turning negotiable, the fundamental rules of existence starting to forget what they're supposed to enforce.
Mildern documents everything with increasing dread. The child helps, writing observations in his improving handwriting, asking questions Mildern can't answer: "Why is the world breaking?" "What makes things stop being real?" "Can it happen to us?"
At night, in their small room, Mildern pours over the reports and sees a pattern he desperately doesn't want to acknowledge. Every incident—every fracture in reality—occurs in locations connected to him. Villages that were once part of his kingdom's trade routes. Cities his family visited. Places that remember the Yazukaze name even if the kingdom itself is ash.
The wrongness is following his history like a disease spreading through old scars.
He doesn't tell the child. Doesn't tell the Council. Just watches reality unravel thread by thread and feels guilt compress in his heart like a stone he's swallowing one grain at a time.
PART TWO: When the Sky Forgets to Change
The morning arrives not with light, but with wrongness made absolute.
Mildern wakes to the child standing at the window, small body rigid with fear, hands pressed flat against glass that reflects nothing. The room is dark despite the hour—dawn should have broken an hour ago, the sun should be painting their floor gold, but instead the world outside is caught in a twilight that refuses to resolve into either day or night.
"Mi-der," the child whispers, voice small and terrified. "The sky. It won't change." Mildern crosses the room in three strides, bare feet cold on wooden boards, and looks out at what should be morning.
The stars are still there. All of them. Frozen like insects trapped in amber, refusing to fade the way they're supposed to when dawn arrives. But beneath them, the horizon bleeds with colors that have no names in any language Mildern knows—crimson that pulses like an open slash, violet that shatters into silver fragments before reassembling wrong, green that looks like corruption given visible form.
And the sun. Wow, the sun.
It's rising and setting simultaneously, caught in a loop it can't escape. One moment a pale sliver on the eastern horizon, the next a blood-red sphere sinking in the west, then fracturing into multiple versions of itself—two suns, three, four, the number changing every time Mildern tries to count them. Each one slightly different from the last, like reality is trying every possible configuration of sunrise and can't settle on which one is true.
The child's breath comes in short, panicked gasps. "It hurts. Looking at it hurts."
And it does. The wrongness has a physical quality now, pressing against Mildern's eyes like fingers trying to push through into his brain. His stomach turns. His head throbs with pain that's half migraine, half existential crisis.
A pulse ripples through the air—not sound, not magic, something deeper and more fundamental. The feeling of ice cracking beneath your feet, that microsecond before the world drops away and you realize you've already fallen, you just haven't hit bottom yet.
Then the screaming starts.
From the streets below, from neighboring buildings, from everywhere at once—people waking to the same impossible sky and finding their minds can't process what they're seeing. The sound rises like a wave, crashes against their window, and Mildern feels the child press against his leg, trembling so violently it's almost convulsive.
"We need to go," Mildern says, voice steadier than he feels. "The Council. They need to know."
But even as he says it, he knows—they already know. This isn't something you can hide. This is the world ending loudly enough that even the powerful can't pretend not to notice.
They get up and get ready quickly, Mildern's hands shaking so badly he can barely manage the suplys and random stuff. The child pulls on his clothes in silence, movements mechanical, shocked into compliance. They step into the hallway and find their neighbors already fleeing—families, elderly people moving as fast as age allows, everyone heading toward the perceived safety of the Council chambers like the powerful might have answers when really they're just as lost as everyone else.
The streets are chaos rendered in slow motion. Reality fractures visible now in ways that make Mildern's brain hurt trying to process them.
Buildings exist in multiple states simultaneously—one moment solid stone, the next transparent as glass, then crumbling to ruins, then restored to pristine condition. A fountain flows with water that moves backward, upward, in spirals that defy every law of physics. The cobblestones beneath Mildern's feet shift between smooth and cracked and covered in moss and brand new, cycling through states too quickly for the eye to follow.
People stumble through the distortions, some screaming, some silent with shock too profound for sound. A young adult stands frozen in the middle of the street, staring at her hands which keep flickering between young and old and skeletal and to even objects including suitcases. She's experiencing her entire life's aging process compressed into seconds and objects, over and over, trapped in a loop she can't escape.
The child sees her and makes a sound like something breaking inside him. They run. And he and Mildern seem uneffected though. And Mildern thinks it has to do with his magic energy being strong, and the child being from another world to.
The Council building looms ahead, white marble and glass that should look solid but instead shimmers like a mirage, its edges uncertain, its very existence becoming negotiable. The doors are already open, people flooding inside seeking shelter that probably doesn't exist anymore because if reality itself is breaking, where can you hide?
Mildern and the child push through the crowd, and it's only when they're inside that Mildern notices: the child is crying. Silent tears streaming down his face, body still moving forward on autopilot while his mind struggles to process horror too large to fit inside a child's understanding to.
"I've got you," Mildern whispers, pulling him close as they move through corridors already packed with refugees. "I've got you. We're okay." But it's a lie. They're not okay. Nothing is okay. The world is ending and all Mildern can do is hold a small hand and pretend that matters.
PART THREE: Emergency Council Session
The Great Council Chamber is packed with people it was never designed to hold—nobles, merchants, students, commoners, all pressed together in panic that makes class distinctions irrelevant. The Eight sit in their thrones looking simultaneously powerful and utterly helpless, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing Mildern has ever seen.
Because if they're afraid, what hope does anyone else have? Patrix stands, and the room falls silent immediately, hundreds of people holding their breath in unison.
"Three villages have been erased," he says, voice carrying despite not being raised. "Not destroyed. Not burned or conquered. Erased. As if they never existed in the first place. The land where they stood is empty—no ruins, no graves, no memory except in the minds of those who visited before they were unmade."
He waves a hand, and a projection materializes above the obsidian table—a map of the surrounding territories rendered in light and shadow. Three areas glow with sickly green luminescence, then fade to gray, then flicker between existence and void like candles in wind.
"We have confirmed seventy-three individuals forgotten," Akuno adds, his clinical tone somehow more disturbing than panic would be. "Families erased from' memories. People never existing to others who grieve them without knowing why."
The crowd murmurs—fear mixed with confusion, grief mixed with anger.
Jerry Ino speaks next, his haunted voice making everyone lean forward to hear: "The temporal distortions are spreading exponentially. What started as isolated incidents three weeks ago has become systemic failure. Reality itself is losing coherence. Time is becoming... negotiable. Past and future are bleeding into present, and none of them can decide which is supposed to be true."
His eyes—sunken and exhausted—find Mildern in the crowd, and there's something in that gaze that makes Mildern's blood run cold. Recognition. Accusation. Terrible knowing.
Majiro slams his fist on the table, the sound muted and wrong like physics itself is dampening the impact. "WHAT IS CAUSING THIS?" he roars, frustration breaking through his controlled fury. "Give me an enemy! A target! Something to fight!"
"You can't fight causality," Jerry whispers. "You can't punch time itself."
Then Yujiro stands, and everyone flinches because his madness has a quality now that suggests he's seeing something the rest of them can't, something that's driving him further from sanity with every passing second.
"Wrong wrong WRONG," he chants, fingers twitching, spectral feathers manifesting and dissolving around him. "The little bird, the chickadee prince, they SMELL wrong! They smell like ELSEWHERE! Like BETWEEN-WORLDS! Like mistakes that walk and talk and breathe!"
His wild eyes fix on the child, who shrinks against Mildern's side. "Where did you come from, little freak? Not here. Not this world. You eyes are like SOMEWHERE ELSE, and somewhere else is LEAKING THROUGH YOU!"
The accusation hangs in the air, and Mildern feels every eye in the chamber turn toward them. The child trembles so violently Mildern can hear his teeth chattering.
Akuno stands slowly, and when he speaks his calm is more terrifying than Yujiro's mania: "We've been researching the child's magical signature. The aura he radiates is unlike anything in our databases—magic from a reality with different fundamental laws. He's not from this world."
Silence. Absolute. Suffocating. Then someone in the crowd screams: "He brought this! The child brought the end of the world!" Others take up the cry: "Get rid of him!" "Send him back!" "Kill him before he destroys everything!"
The mob surges forward, and Mildern feels pure terror flood his system—not for himself, but for the small person pressing against his legs, who didn't ask for any of this, who's just a person caught in forces he can't understand.
"STOP."
Kael's voice cuts through the chaos, and crimson-black flames erupt around him, forcing the crowd back. He descends from his throne, power radiating from him in waves that make the air thick and hard to breathe.
He walks directly to Mildern and the child, and for a terrible moment Mildern thinks he's going to hurt them. But instead, Kael kneels, bringing himself to the child's eye level, and when he speaks his voice is surprisingly gentle:
"Where did you come from, little one? Tell me the truth." The child's voice is barely audible: "I don't know. I was in my closet and then I was in a forest and I can't remember how I got there."
"What were you doing in the closet?" "Hiding." "From what?" The child's face crumbles. "From Papa. He was hurting Mama and I was supposed to stay quiet but I looked through the crack and I saw—I saw—"
His voice breaks entirely, dissolving into sobs that shake his whole body.
Kael's expression shifts—something almost like compassion flickering across features usually held in perfect aristocratic control. He stands, turns to face the Council, and his flames burn brighter.
"The child experienced severe trauma in another world. Trauma significant enough to tear a hole in reality itself. Someone detected that rupture and exploited it—pulled him through, sealed the path back, created a permanent paradox."
He pauses, letting the implications sink in. "A child who shouldn't exist here. Whose very presence violates causality. The perfect fuel for something that feeds on paradox."
Patrix's voice is heavy with terrible understanding: "The Loop Bringer." The name settles over the chamber like a shroud.
Jerry's whisper carries despite the crowd: "An entity that exists outside linear time. That can rewrite history. That feeds on unresolved paradox and uses it to unmake reality itself. Creating one would require..." He looks at the child, and his haunted eyes glisten with moisture. "It would require weaponizing a persons grief. Keeping the trauma fresh and bleeding forever. Never letting him heal because healing would collapse the paradox."
Mildern feels like he's been stabbed. "Who would do that? Who could be that cruel?"
Akuno's answer is quiet, clinical, devastating: "The World Leaper. Your former master, Prince Yazukaze. The wizard who taught you magic, who swore to protect your kingdom, who vanished the night it burned. He's been manipulating events for decades. Your kingdom's fall wasn't random—it was calculated to break you. The child's crossing wasn't accident—it was design. Everything, all of it, carefully orchestrated steps leading to this exact moment."
The words hit like physical blows. Mildern's vision swims. His legs nearly give out. The child's small voice cuts through his shock: "He used me? Someone used Mama dying to make a weapon?"
No one answers because the answer is yes, and saying it aloud to a innocent person feels like committing suicide.
Patrix speaks with the full weight of his centuries: "The Loop Bringer is erasing reality piece by piece, working backward through time. Every erasure connects to you, Prince Yazukaze—your bloodline, your kingdom, everything touched by your history. It's systematically removing you from existence. And once you're gone, the child who trusts you follows. Then everyone connected to either of you. The World Leaper is creating his perfect timeline by deleting everything that threatens it."
Mildred's voice, usually dripping with contempt, now carries something almost like pity: "You're not being hunted, Prince. You're being erased. There's a difference. Hunting implies you might escape. Erasure is absolute."
Jura adds, shadows writhing: "And the child is the battery powering your deletion. His unresolved grief over his mother's murder—grief the World Leaper deliberately maintains—fuels the entity unmaking you both."
The child makes a sound like something vital breaking inside him. He turns to Mildern, small face wet with tears, and asks the question that cuts deepest:
"Did someone let Mama die just so they could use me?" Mildern can't speak. Can't breathe. Can only pull the child against his stomach and hold him while the truth destroys them both.
Because the answer is yes.
Someone let the child's mother be murdered. Detected the rupture it created. Widened it deliberately. Pulled a traumatized human through dimensions and sealed the path back. Created a paradox made of grief and guilt and a question that would never find an answer: Why didn't I save her?
All so the World Leaper could build a weapon to escape a reality he deemed unworthy of existence. His history and Mildern's being connected and all made some great evidence for the council to figure it all out. And mostly with small pieces Mildern never expected. Pieces Mildern never knew about and niether did the child.
The chamber erupts into chaos again—voices shouting, magic crackling, fear and anger feeding off each other until the air itself feels combustible.
And in the center of it all, Mildern holds a child who just learned his mother's death wasn't tragedy but calculation, and tries desperately to think of words that could possibly make that okay.
There are no such words. There have never been such words. There will never be such words.
Reality fractures further. The chamber's walls become translucent, showing other versions of the same space—pristine and ruined and filled with different people and empty and burning. Time is collapsing into itself, all possibilities existing simultaneously, and no one knows how to make it stop.
Patrix raises his voice above the chaos: "We have days at most before total causality failure. The only way to stop the Loop Bringer is to collapse the paradox powering it. Which means—"
He looks at Mildern and the child with eyes that have seen civilizations rise and fall and knows what he's about to ask is monstrous but necessary.
"—you must face what happened. Truly face it. Accept it without trying to change it. The child must grieve his mother honestly and find closure the World Leaper never wanted him to have. And you, Prince Yazukaze, must confront your master and everything he took from you."
Kael's flames flicker: "If you can't... if you break instead of healing... reality ends. All of it. Every world. Every timeline. Erased because one fool decided existence wasn't worth the pain of living it."
Mildern looks down at the child in his arms—this impossibly small person carrying trauma that broke reality itself—and feels the full weight of what's being asked.
Heal from your mother's murder. Save the world by processing grief that should have destroyed you. Face the person who weaponized your pain and forgive yourself for surviving it.
All while reality unravels around you and an entity made of your own suffering tries to erase you from ever having existed. The child whispers against Mildern's ribs: "Can we do it?"
Mildern thinks of his burning kingdom. His master's betrayal. Eight years of shame. The impossibility of the task ahead. "I don't know," he admits, voice breaking. "But we have to try."
Because the alternative is letting everyone they've ever cared about be erased. And some things are worse than facing your own trauma. Like letting that trauma destroy everyone else.
END OF ACT TWO