Lyra's private tent was larger than the entire section where refugees slept. Maps covered the walls, marked with demon migration patterns and military deployment routes. A desk sat in the corner, buried under reports and correspondence.
She gestured for me to sit, then poured two cups of something that smelled like tea but probably wasn't.
"Drink," she said. "It's not poisoned. If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead."
Comforting.
I drank anyway. The liquid burned going down, but it cleared the fog in my head and dulled the pain in my back.
"Now then." Lyra sat across from me, those violet eyes pinning me in place. "Tell me everything. When you're from, how you died, who killed you. And don't bother lying—I've interrogated monsters older than the Empire. A village boy won't fool me."
"Why should I trust you?"
"Because I'm the only person in this world who will believe you." She leaned forward. "Do you know how rare regressors are? In the thousand years since the System was established, there have been exactly seven confirmed cases. All of them changed the course of history. All of them were hunted by the gods."
Hunted?
"The gods don't like people rewriting fate," Lyra continued. "It threatens their plans, their games, their precious cosmic order. When they detect a temporal anomaly, they send agents to eliminate it. Kill the regressor before they can change too much."
My blood went cold. "How long do I have?"
"Unknown. The detection method isn't instant—it depends on how much you've changed. A small deviation might take years to notice. A large one..." She shrugged. "Could be months. Could be weeks."
Elena.
I'd saved my sister. Changed her fate completely. Was that enough to draw the attention of gods?
"There's a way to hide," Lyra said, watching my face. "Masks, rituals, artifacts that blur your signature in the cosmic web. The reason I know so much about regressors is because I've been studying them for years. Preparing for you."
"For me specifically?"
"For any regressor." She stood and walked to the map wall, tracing a line across the continent. "Twenty years ago, I met a dying woman on a battlefield. She told me things—things about the future, about the System, about the true nature of the gods. She was a regressor who had come back four times, each time trying to prevent the same disaster."
"What disaster?"
Lyra's hand stopped on a point in the center of the map. The World Spire.
"The end of everything," she said quietly. "When a mortal reaches the top of the Spire and claims the First God's power, they become a god themselves. But the process isn't clean. It requires sacrifice—massive, world-shattering sacrifice. The dying woman told me that in her original timeline, the hero who reached the top used that power to burn half the continent."
Rylen.
I saw it in my mind—the golden light wrapping around him, the cold smile on his face. The gods don't reward the worthy. They reward the ruthless.
"You think this disaster can be prevented?"
"I know it can. The woman did. That's why she kept trying, even after death after death after death." Lyra turned to face me. "But she never succeeded. She was always too weak, too slow, too trusting. Her enemies saw her coming every time."
"Because she told people the truth?"
"Because she tried to fix things the right way." Lyra's voice hardened. "She warned people, gathered allies, built coalitions of the virtuous. And every time, someone betrayed her. Someone with ambition, someone who saw an opportunity to claim power for themselves."
Rylen. Every time, in every timeline.
"You're different," Lyra continued. "I saw it in your eyes when you looked at that demon. Not fear—calculation. You didn't fight because you wanted to save your sister. You fought because you already knew you could win."
"I almost died."
"But you didn't expect to." She crossed the room and crouched before me, her face level with mine. "You've done this before. Not this exact moment, but something. You've lived and died and come back, and now you're here with knowledge that shouldn't exist."
I said nothing.
"Here's my offer," Lyra said. "I can protect you from the gods. Hide your signature, train your power, give you access to resources that even nobles can't touch. In exchange, you tell me everything you know about the future. Every detail, every name, every event. We work together to prevent the disaster."
A fair deal, I thought. Too fair.
"What's the catch?"
"There's always a catch." She smiled thinly. "The masks I can provide only work if you remain within my sphere of influence. The moment you leave, the gods will see you. The moment you strike out on your own, you become visible."
A leash.
She wanted to control me. Keep me useful, keep me compliant. In exchange for protection, I would become her tool—another weapon in her arsenal.
Not so different from Rylen, really.
But there was a crucial difference. Lyra was offering this openly, honestly, with no pretense of friendship or trust. She wasn't trying to make me love her before she stabbed me in the back.
I could work with that.
"I have conditions," I said.
"I expected you would."
"First: my sister remains safe. Non-negotiable. She's moved to somewhere secure—not a refugee camp, not a border town. Somewhere the demons and the politics can't touch her."
Lyra nodded. "Easily arranged. What else?"
"Second: you teach me. Not just hide my power—develop it. I have an unknown affinity, and I need to understand what it is before I can use it effectively."
"Unknown affinity?" Interest flickered in her eyes. "That's rare. Most regressors maintain their original abilities. For your affinity to change..."
"Something happened when I died. Something the System called 'magical core reformation.'"
Lyra was silent for a moment. Then she stood and walked to her desk, retrieving a crystal sphere that glowed with inner light.
"Hold this," she said.
I took the sphere. The moment my fingers touched it, something lurched inside me—a power that had been sleeping, stirring for the first time.
The sphere turned black.
Not dim. Not dark. Black—an absolute absence of light that seemed to drink in the glow of the tent, the campfires outside, the sunlight filtering through the canvas.
"Interesting," Lyra breathed. "Very, very interesting."
[AFFINITY ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[AFFINITY TYPE: VOID (LEGENDARY)]
[DESCRIPTION: THE POWER OF ABSOLUTE NEGATION. VOID AFFINITY ALLOWS THE USER TO ERASE, NULLIFY, AND UNMAKE. IT IS ANTITHETICAL TO ALL OTHER FORMS OF MAGIC.]
[HISTORICAL NOTE: ONLY THREE VOID USERS HAVE EXISTED IN RECORDED HISTORY. ALL WERE CLASSIFIED AS WORLD-LEVEL THREATS.]
World-level threats.
I stared at the black sphere in my hands, feeling the power pulse beneath my skin. This wasn't what I'd had before. This was something new—something born from betrayal and death and the absolute, crystalline hatred that had refused to let me fade.
A power of negation. Of destruction.
Of revenge.
"Your third condition?" Lyra's voice was soft, almost reverent.
I looked up, and I saw that her expression had changed. Where before she'd been calculating, now she was... cautious. Like she'd found a weapon that might be too powerful to wield.
"Third condition," I said slowly. "When the time comes—when I'm strong enough—you help me kill the people who murdered me. Not just defeat them. Not just expose them. Kill them. Everyone who was involved. Everyone who knew. Everyone who profited."
Lyra held my gaze. "And if some of those people turn out to be powerful? Nobles? Military leaders? Even heroes?"
"Especially heroes."
A long silence stretched between us. The black sphere pulsed in my hands, hungry and patient.
Finally, Lyra smiled.
"You have a deal, Regressor." She extended her hand. "Welcome to the shadow war."
I shook her hand, feeling the weight of pacts and promises settle over my shoulders.
Step one: complete, I thought. Now the real work begins.
[END OF CHAPTERS 1-4]
[PREVIEW — CHAPTER 5: THE TRAINING BEGINS]
In the depths of the capital, where monsters are made and broken, Kael begins his transformation from broken boy to living weapon. But the past isn't done with him yet—and some ghosts don't stay buried.
Coming soon...