Smoke.
The sky burned like paper doused in blood. Screams stitched the wind, echoing from far below the obsidian tower that reached beyond the clouds.
At its peak, the throne of Lord Magus Blackwood stood, sculpted from bone and dragonsteel, jagged with the blades of fallen kings.
Lyrium opened his eyes again, this Lyrium.
This version had black armor fused into his flesh.
Red runes carved into his skin pulsed like veins.
His hands trembled with power that cracked reality itself.
And beneath him… a world ending.
His doing.
He stood alone.
Not by fate.
But choice.
Because he had killed everyone.
A voice ca from behind.
Soft.
Familiar.
"Do you rember , now?"
Lyrium turned, and saw her.
'Margaret?'
Or… this world's Margaret.
Her hair was soaked in ash, her eyes red from weeping, her once-golden armor shattered and bleeding light.
A sword pierced through her abdon, his sword.
Still glowing with her blood.
"You told you'd save this world,"
She whispered.
"But you only saved yourself."
And suddenly, mories flooded in, this life's sins, crashing like a tidal wave of fire.
He had once been a prodigy at the Deviants Academy.
He had discovered sothing forbidden, Worldbinding Magic.
A magic that didn't control elents.
It controlled fate.
It could rewrite reality.
And he used it.
At first, to protect.
Then to control.
Then to dominate.
Then to kill.
Because in this world, Lyrium believed the only way to fix things… was to break
everything first.
And so, he had.
He broke peace treaties.
He broke the spines of archmages.
He broke ti.
And Then,
He broke her.
He dropped to his knees before Margaret's fading figure.
"I… I tried to do what was right,"
Lyrium muttered not him, this world's version of Lyriumm's voice, his voice shattering under the weight of millennia.
"You tried to be a god,"
She spat.
"And all gods do is bleed the world dry."
He touched her hand.
It turned to ash in his fingers.
"Please, just this once, stay. Just for a mont longer. Let fix this. Let reverse the weave, restore the balance, bring you back…"
"You already rewrote fate, Lyrium. And this? This is the consequence."
She looked at him one last ti.
"You don't need more power. You need to rember. Who you were. Before the world bent to you. Before you lost yourself in the fire."
"Please…"
"Goodbye, my tyrant."
She vanished.
Lyrium scread, not from pain, but from clarity.
And that scream turned into a whisper.
"What am I becoming…?"
Behind him, the obsidian throne cracked.
And the world he had created…
Collapsed.
The og him, the original Lyrium's vision blurred again…
Whoosh—!
****
The sky was grey.
Permanently grey.
As if the gods had forgotten how to paint.
Rain fell not like tears, but like reminders, constant, cold, and indifferent.
Lyrium stood in a cracked mirror of the Academy, only this ti, there were no banners, no towers of magic, no flickering mana-lights.
Just stone.
Just silence.
And himself.
Dressed in rags.
Starved.
Hollow-eyed.
The students didn't see him.
The professors brushed past him.
His na wasn't on any registry.
His room didn't exist.
His presence didn't matter.
He was there, but not really.
"Hey! Watch it, you ghost freak!"
A student bumped into him, sneering.
Lyrium looked up, but the face wasn't familiar.
None of them were.
"Why can't they see ?"
He murmured, voice hoarse.
"Because in this world,"
A voice whispered,
"You were never chosen."
He turned, and saw Ren.
Not his Ren.
Just a mirror.
A reflection.
This Ren had magic.
Power.
And Lyrium… was nothing.
"You failed every exam. You never awakened. You were cast out of the dorms. You scraped food from bins while the rest of us trained under stars. You begged at the academy gates for a second chance... but you never got one."
"I… I was supposed to be soone?"
Lyrium whispered.
"I am soone."
"Not here,"
Ren said coldly.
"Here, you're the reminder that not every spark ignites. You're the footnote the world forgets."
And the worst part?
It wasn't cruel.
It was indifferent.
The world didn't hate Lyrium in this version.
It just didn't see him.
"I trained alone,"
Lyrium said, sitting beneath a broken arch.
"I morized books I stole. I watched them cast spells I could only dream of. I broke my fingers trying to recreate sigils with blood. And every night, I asked the stars…"
"Why not ?"
He stared at his hands.
"Why not ?"
But the stars gave no answer.
No divine punishnt.
No tragic twist.
No cosmic horror.
Just… silence.
One night, Lyrium climbed the spire wall, cold stone cutting into his hands, feet slipping, but he kept climbing.
All the way to the top.
Where the old statues of founders watched over the country, the continent.
And he stood there.
On the edge.
Looking down.
A fall that would erase even his shadow.
"Maybe… if I die here… soone will finally say my na."
But even that was a lie.
He didn't fall.
Because nobody cared.
And that was the deepest wound of all.
Suddenly, the real Lyrium, our Lyrium, awakened inside the mory.
He stood behind that powerless version of himself.
And for the first ti…
He wept for the boy who was forgotten.
"I'm sorry,"
He said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"You deserved more."
"We don't all get to beco legends,"
The boy replied.
"So of us just… disappear."
And with that, the world dissolved.
No explosion.
No chaos.
Just a slow fade to grey.
Whoosh—!
*****
Whoosh—!
Darkness again.
But this ti, not even the sound of wind.
Just silence, thick like oil. Suffocating.
Then… footsteps.
Slow.
Uneven.
A chain dragging.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Lyrium stood in a narrow corridor of blackened stone.
The walls breathed.
Shadows whispered his na in languages no god had ever spoken.
His feet were bare, torn, and bloodied.
Each step left a print of him behind.
He wasn't alone.
All around him were doors.
So old and rusted.
Others carved from silver and bone.
Each one bore a symbol, a face, his face.
Different versions.
Different fates.
The multiverse catalog of all he could have been.
A knight.
A traitor.
A king.
A slave.
A god.
A corpse.
Every ti he passed a door, it opened.
And inside?
Himself.
Screaming.
Begging.
Laughing.
Killing.
One version tore out his own heart to save a child.
Another slaughtered his family in cold blood.
One was crowned and loved by millions.
Another rotted in a cell, alone, forgotten, mad.
And then, one door opened, but no sound ca from within.
He paused.
Stepped inside.
And found a room made of mirrors.
But they didn't reflect him.
They reflected Margaret.
Different Margarets.
All versions of her.
One smiling at a wedding.
One dying in battle.
One burning a city to avenge him.
One holding their child.
One killing him.
And in the center, bound in chains of starlight and regret…
Margaret knelt, hollow-eyed.
She looked up at him.
"You don't get to run from this,"
She said.
"I'm not…"
"You're watching now, aren't you?"
She cut him off.
"Not just reliving. You see it now."
Lyrium sank to his knees.
"I didn't an to…"
"You always an well. That's the problem. You an well when you burn kingdoms. When you erase tilines. When you rewrite destiny."
He clutched his chest.
Sothing inside was cracking.
Not his heart.
No.
His soul.
"You think suffering makes you special? That because you wept as you killed, it makes you better than the monsters?"
"I…"
"You wanted to save the world. So did we all. But you… you chose to bear the burden alone, like only you were capable. That pride beca your noose."
She reached out, not in anger.
But in mourning.
"You were never the hero, Lyrium."
"You were the warning."
The mirrors shattered.
Each shard pierced his skin, not his flesh, but mories.
Visions poured in, all the lives he had lived.
The ones where he failed.
The ones where he beca nothing.
The ones where he beca everything.
The weight crushed him.
His knees hit stone.
Blood from a thousand versions of himself flowed from his eyes.
And yet…
No death ca.
Only more visions.
More truths.
More guilt.
He scread.
But it ca out silent.
Because in this realm…
Even pain had abandoned him.
Just suffering remained.
The slow, suffocating kind.
The one where you don't die.
You just rember.
Every step.
Every choice.
Every soul.
Until you don't know who you are anymore.
Until you can't tell if you were ever human to begin with.
And then, he saw one last door.
White.
No symbol.
No lock.
Just a whisper from within:
You can end this, Lyrium. If you're willing to forget who you were… and beco sothing else.
He reached for the handle.
But his hand shook.
Because to enter…
Was to lose everything.
Even the so-called his wife in that vision.
Even himself.
And still…
He turned the knob.
The door creaked open.
And light spilled out…
Not warm.
Not cold.
But blank.
A canvas.
And this ti…
He had no idea what he'd beco next.
But he stepped forward anyway.
Because maybe…
Just maybe…
He'd finally earn a second chance.
Not as a god.
Not as a tyrant.
Not even as a hero.
But as soone who could still rember pain…
And still choose hope.
Even after all the suffering.
Even after the fall.
Even after everything.
*****
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