“Prepare the defibrillator. Two charges.” The voice echoed somewhere above me. Defibrillator? I knew exactly what that was. What appalled me was that I could breathe. Easily. I took another breath. Nothing hurt. No tightness in my chest. No weakness in my limbs. No pounding heartbeat threatening to tear itself apart. I felt... normal. Healthy. That couldn't be right. I was dying. The doctors had been keeping me alive with machines. My parents couldn't afford the treatment anymore. I remembered the hospital. I remembered my mother. I remembered my father. I remembered thinking I might never see them again. So why did I feel better than I had in years? I tried to open my eyes. Instead, I saw the sky. I was falling. The ground was impossibly far below me. Wind tore against my face and whipped the long coat around my body. Something was clenched tightly in my right hand. A sword. I stared at it. Why was I holding a sword? Then something slammed into me. My body twiste

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying flat on a soft surface. The room was golden orange, and the soft crackle of burning wood was the only sound that filled it. I was bare-chested.I sat up slowly, and immediately, memory fragments began bombarding my head. I recalled the graduation. I recalled collapsing.Then I recalled the day before the graduation, when my parents handed me the keys to my car. I grabbed my head with both hands. The pain was excruciating.Then I recalled leaving this castle on horseback to find Amelia and Astrid.Astrid?I recalled her kissing me at the Tower of Gods. I recalled how her lips felt. I recalled Amelia walking in on us.The fragments elapsed, and I snapped back, gripping the arm of the bed for support.I had no memory of living this life, yet the memories felt real, as though I had lived every microsecond of it. I gripped the bed frame with both hands and tried to stand.That holographic screen appeared again.“Congratulations. Complete synchroniza

My mouth tasted of blood and iron. My vision blurred from the impact, and a deep ache throbbed through my back. I barely had time to register the pain before Symon's voice cut through my head. "Mana Flow State, Tiger Tail Rewind." I didn't understand what the words meant. Then the world moved. Not forward, but backward. The courtyard vanished beneath me. The impact disappeared. The pain in my back pulled away as though someone had reached into the last few seconds of my life and dragged them backward. For an instant, everything blurred. Then I was falling again. The window was in front of me. The same window. The same courtyard below. The same moment I'd just lived through. He rewound time.There was no time to process it. Instinctively, I drew my sword and twisted through the air, catching Zeldryl's next attack before his blade could tear through me. Steel rang against steel. Zeldryl's expression shifted. For the first time, I saw surprise in his eyes. I landed hard and

Sleep refused to come.I had been lying in bed for what felt like hours, staring at the ceiling; the same thoughts kept circling through my head.The dead girl.My name written in blood.Symon's mana found on her body.None of it made sense.And somehow, every answer seemed to point back at me.I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes.Nothing.I opened them again.The room was dark except for the faint orange glow from the fireplace. The academy had gone quiet hours ago. I wasn't supposed to be awake, let alone outside. Zudrik had placed me under curfew after the council hearing, and after what happened earlier, I had no intention of giving anyone another reason to suspect me.Still, something bothered me more than the accusations.Symon was gone.I hadn't heard his voice since earlier.Not a single word.I looked toward the space beside my bed.“Grey.”The familiar screen appeared."Yes, Lord Symon."“Why haven't I heard him?”“Who?”“Symon.”A pause.“I cannot determine why.”“You'

The journey to Blackwood took most of the day. I spent most of it staring through the carriage window, watching the landscape change — the academy disappearing behind us, replaced by rolling hills, thick forests, and distant mountains whose peaks vanished into the clouds.I should have been relieved. Instead, I couldn't stop thinking about the two girls. Two students were dead, and someone had written my name in blood.And now I was going home. Home. The word felt strange. I had a home here, apparently — a family. A father, a mother, and a younger sister who knew me as Symon Wardreth. I knew almost nothing about them, yet some part of me did. That was the worst part.Now and then, a memory surfaced without warning — a voice, a room, a laugh, a hand grabbing mine. They weren't my memories. At least, they shouldn't have been. But they lived somewhere inside me.By the time the carriage passed through the gates of Blackwood, I had stopped trying to make sense of it.The Wardreth estate st