The World Betrayed Me, So I Rewrote Its End

Chapter 4: The Woman Who Sealed My Existence

Seraphina’s scream had barely faded when Kael Veyron felt an invisible force seize his heart from within.

He collapsed beside her bed, clawing at his chest as the black markings on his wrist spread toward his elbow. Although the medical wing remained shrouded in darkness, he could hear students and instructors rushing through the corridor in a panic. Somewhere beneath the building, a heavy door slammed shut, sending a tremor through the walls and rattling the windows.

Then the voice inside his mind spoke again.

“Stop resisting, Kael. You cannot steal a life and expect its rightful owner to remain silent.”

Kael pressed his forehead against the cold floor, struggling to draw breath.

“I don’t know who you are!”

“That is the first lie they taught you to believe.”

A violent surge of pain tore through his skull, and a vision erupted before his eyes.

He saw a woman standing inside a circular chamber, her silver hair hanging loosely around her shoulders and blood staining her white robes. She held a crying infant against her chest while another figure stood behind her, bound by chains as dark as the surrounding shadows.

The woman slowly lifted her head and looked directly at Kael.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

Before he could understand what he was witnessing, she drove a glowing needle into the infant’s forehead.

Kael screamed as the vision shattered.

“Kael!” Seraphina cried.

She reached for him, but the moment her fingers touched his shoulder, a burst of golden energy erupted between them. The force hurled her backward against the bed while Kael slid across the floor and struck the opposite wall.

The lights suddenly returned, revealing the destruction scattered across the room.

For several seconds, neither of them moved. Kael eventually raised his head and discovered that the black markings had stopped spreading, although they now covered most of his forearm. His fingers trembled uncontrollably as he tried to understand what had happened.

Seraphina stared at him with frightened eyes.

“Your face,” she whispered.

Kael forced himself upright. “What about it?”

“For a moment, you looked like someone else.”

He glanced toward the dark window, where his reflection stared back at him with a pale, exhausted expression. Something about his eyes seemed wrong, however, because a thin golden ring surrounded each pupil, flickering like a flame struggling against the wind.

Then the golden rings disappeared, leaving his reflection looking normal again.

A sharp knock sounded at the door.

“Open up!” Professor Thorne shouted from the corridor. “Kael, step away from Seraphina immediately!”

Kael looked at the young woman sitting on the bed. Whatever connection existed between them had just unleashed enough magical force to throw them across the room, and he had no idea whether touching her again would help him understand the mystery or destroy them both.

However, he knew that Professor Thorne would demand answers he did not possess if the professor discovered what had happened.

“Don’t tell him what you saw,” Kael whispered.

Seraphina stared at him incredulously. “You expect me to lie to a professor after what just happened?”

“I expect you to survive long enough to understand it.”

Before she could respond, the door burst open, and Professor Thorne entered with three armed instructors. The moment he saw the markings on Kael’s arm, he raised his staff and summoned a silver circle beneath Kael’s feet.

“Containment formation!” he ordered.

Magical chains erupted from the floor and raced toward Kael.

He reacted instinctively, activating World Error before the chains could close around him. The room dissolved into glowing magical structures, revealing the intricate connections that linked the chains to the formation beneath them.

Among the countless runes, Kael noticed a flaw in the third symbol from the left. It was a tiny imperfection that even an experienced mage might overlook.

Kael twisted his wrist, and the defective rune broke apart.

Every chain dissolved before reaching him.

The instructors stared at him in disbelief, while Professor Thorne examined the shattered formation with an expression of growing alarm.

“That ability shouldn’t be possible,” the professor muttered.

Kael's expression hardened. “You said you would give me answers.”

“And you have just demonstrated why I cannot allow you to leave this room.”

Professor Thorne struck his staff against the floor, causing silver symbols to ignite across the walls. A transparent barrier sealed the medical wing, and a crushing pressure settled over Kael’s body as the barrier attempted to suppress his magic.

World Error immediately displayed a warning.

[FOREIGN SUPPRESSION FIELD DETECTED.]

[STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS IDENTIFIED.]

[WARNING: DISRUPTION MAY CAUSE CONTAINMENT COLLAPSE.]

Kael hesitated as he studied the message. He could probably break the barrier, but he had no idea what consequences might follow. The last time he interfered with the academy’s magical structures, something beneath the building had awakened.

Professor Thorne noticed his hesitation and lowered his staff slightly.

“Good. At least you understand that some doors should remain closed.”

Kael met his gaze.

“Then tell me what is behind them.”

The professor’s expression darkened as he delivered an answer that struck Kael harder than any magical attack.

“Your mother.”

---

The words left Kael staring at the professor in disbelief.

“My mother is alive,” he replied. “She lives outside the capital, and I spoke to her before coming here.”

“I never said she was dead.”

“Then explain what you mean.”

Professor Thorne dismissed the other instructors with a gesture. After a moment’s hesitation, they obeyed, although two guards remained outside the sealed doorway.

The professor approached the window and studied the courtyard below before beginning his explanation.

“Twenty-five years ago, when magic first appeared across the world, the first awakening produced something the authorities could not explain. It was neither a monster nor a magical artifact. It was a child whose existence caused the magical laws around him to malfunction.”

Kael felt the black markings on his arm begin to throb.

“What happened to the child?”

“The authorities took him to a research facility, where specialists attempted to understand his abilities. Every test produced contradictory results. Some instruments registered no magical capacity, while others recorded energy levels far beyond their limits.”

“And then?”

“Three days later, the facility vanished.”

Kael stared at him, wondering whether he had misunderstood.

“Vanished?”

“Every building, every person, and every record disappeared. Investigators found only a circular crater filled with black glass. The government sealed the site and erased every reference to the incident.”

Kael swallowed as the professor’s explanation became increasingly disturbing.

“How does that involve my mother?”

“Because she was one of the researchers assigned to the facility.”

Kael immediately shook his head.

“My mother was never a researcher. She raised me.”

“She raised you after the incident.”

Professor Thorne turned away from the window and faced him directly.

“Your mother, Elara Veyron, was responsible for creating the original seal that contained the anomaly. She disappeared shortly afterward and returned years later with a child whose birth records did not exist.”

Kael’s thoughts raced through memories he had always considered unquestionable. His mother had taught him to read, comforted him after his first failed assessment, and defended him when other children mocked his lack of magical talent. He remembered the warmth of her embrace, the patience in her voice, and the quiet sadness that sometimes appeared in her eyes whenever he asked about his father.

Could every one of those memories have been built around a lie?

“Are you saying she stole me?”

Professor Thorne hesitated before answering.

“I am saying that your mother was involved in an event the world was never meant to remember.”

Kael curled his fingers into fists.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No,” the professor admitted. “It isn’t.”

The black symbol on Kael’s arm suddenly illuminated, and a new message appeared in his vision.

[MEMORY SEAL UNDER ATTACK.]

[EXTERNAL KEY DETECTED.]

[SOURCE: ELARA VEYRON.]

Kael stumbled backward as the meaning settled over him.

His mother was connected to the seal inside him, and whatever she had done was still affecting him.

Before he could process the revelation, a communication crystal attached to the professor’s belt began flashing red.

An urgent voice emerged from the device.

“Professor Thorne, we have a security breach in the western archive. Someone has accessed the restricted records.”

Thorne snatched the crystal from his belt.

“Who accessed them?”

“We don't know. The security system registered a valid master key, but the identity attached to it has been erased.”

The professor slowly looked at Kael before turning toward the window.

Outside, beneath the academy’s main gate, a woman in a long gray coat stood watching the medical wing.

Even from that distance, Kael recognized her.

His mother.

Elara Veyron raised one hand, and the black symbol beneath Kael’s skin burned so violently that he dropped to his knees.

---

By the time Kael reached the courtyard, the woman beneath the gate had disappeared.

Professor Thorne had ordered the academy’s security forces to search the surrounding streets, but the magical tracking systems produced no results. It was as though Elara had never entered the grounds.

Kael stood beneath the gate, staring at the space where he had last seen her. He had spent his entire life believing his mother was the one person who had never lied to him, yet he could no longer trust even his own memories.

“Kael.”

Seraphina approached cautiously, carrying a folded piece of paper.

“I found this inside your medical file.”

He accepted the paper and immediately recognized the handwriting.

His mother had written a single sentence across its surface.

If the original subject awakens, do not allow him to remember the woman who created him.

Kael read the sentence twice, hoping he had misunderstood its meaning.

Then he looked at Seraphina.

“Who is the woman who created me?”

Seraphina shook her head. “I don’t know.”

A sharp burst of static interrupted their conversation as every communication crystal in the courtyard activated simultaneously. Each device displayed the same image of a circular chamber surrounded by black chains, with a woman in white robes standing at its center.

Her face remained hidden behind a translucent veil.

The image flickered before the woman slowly lifted her head.

Her face was identical to Kael’s.

The candidates and instructors gathered in the courtyard stared at the crystals in horrified disbelief as a line of text appeared beneath the image.

CONTAINMENT STATUS: FAILED.

ORIGINAL SUBJECT: RELEASED.

Kael felt the blood drain from his face when another message appeared.

CURRENT HOST: NO LONGER REQUIRED.

The black markings on his arm began spreading again, crawling toward his shoulder as Professor Thorne shouted for the suppression barriers to be activated.

Kael barely heard the professor over the familiar voice returning inside his mind.

“You wanted to know who I am.”

The voice sounded almost affectionate, as though the speaker were an old friend who had finally been reunited with him.

“I am the person your mother cut out of existence.”

Kael gritted his teeth against the pain.

“Then why do you have my face?”

The answer came without hesitation.

“Because she didn’t create you, Kael.”

A brief pause followed, during which the black markings continued spreading across his skin.

Then the voice whispered the words that destroyed the last certainty Kael possessed.

“She created me first.”

Every communication crystal in the courtyard shattered at once, scattering fragments across the stone pavement.

And somewhere beneath the academy, something began climbing toward the surface.