The world that greeted Lyrium was quiet.
Not the silence of death.
But the silence before birth.
A field stretched endlessly, silver grass swaying beneath a twilight sky.
No sun.
No moon.
Just a sar of stars, like sared oil paint across a cracked canvas.
He was barefoot again.
But this ti, he bled nothing.
No wounds.
No runes.
No weight of past sins carved into his bones.
Just… stillness.
He walked, not knowing why.
Not caring where.
With each step, the field shifted.
mories rippled in the blades of grass.
A boy laughing, holding a spellbook too large for his arms.
A girl, Margaret, training beside him, mock duels that ended in breathless laughter.
A teacher praising his sigils.
A friend giving him their last al.
All of it…
Gone.
Ghosts playing on loop across the land of might-have-beens.
"I don't deserve peace,"
Lyrium whispered.
And yet, the world gave it anyway.
That was the worst part.
He didn't earn this.
This calm.
This blank reset.
He deserved fire, screams, a throne of agony.
Instead… he got stars.
"Lyrium."
The voice again.
But it was no one he recognized.
Not Margaret.
Not Ren.
Not even himself.
He turned,
And saw a child.
His eyes wide, innocent.
His hands clutching a book.
The book of Worldbinding Magic.
"I was you, once,"
The child said.
"No,"
Lyrium replied.
"I was you."
The child tilted his head.
"Then why did you kill ?"
Lyrium staggered.
"I didn't."
"You did,"
The child said gently.
"You stopped listening to . You buried beneath titles. Under spells. Under power."
"I had to…"
"You chose to."
Silence again.
Then,
The sky broke.
Not violently.
But like glass.
It cracked above, and light spilled through, golden, blinding, divine.
From that crack, figures descended.
Not gods.
Not monsters.
Versions.
Of him.
Each shaped by different decisions.
One with eyes of fla.
One robed in humility.
One crowned in silver, holding a child.
One burned from head to toe, still screaming.
They surrounded him.
Judged him.
They spoke, in voices like thunder woven with grief.
"You are Lyrium Blackwood."
"You are the result of every decision we made."
"You are our consequence."
"You are our chance."
He fell to his knees.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
"Good,"
They said.
"Then you're ready to begin."
The field collapsed.
The stars pulled inward.
And Lyrium fell,
Not into fire.
Not into void.
But into mory.
A single, perfect one.
The last mont before he ever learned magic.
A boy.
A book.
A sky full of dreams.
And a question written in the stars:
"If you could start again, not with power, not with fate, but with heart… what would you beco?"
*****
Lyrium opened his eyes.
For a mont, they were not his eyes.
They belonged to a child.
A student.
A nobody.
And then the vision shattered like ice kissed by sunlight, and reality scread back into place.
He was lying on stone.
Real stone.
Cold.
Wet.
Rough.
He gasped.
Air tore into his lungs like knives.
He was alive.
Sowhere.
Sowhen.
The air stank of sulfur and rust.
The sky overhead pulsed a deep crimson, like the heart of a dying god.
He sat up slowly, body trembling, every muscle weak, as if he hadn't moved in years.
There was no one.
No throne.
No voice.
Just the aftermath.
Burned corpses buried in ash.
Cities reduced to skeletons of glass and bone.
A sun that refused to rise.
It wasn't the future.
It wasn't the past.
It was the grave of both.
And in the center of this dead world stood sothing impossibly wrong.
A mirror.
Tall.
Black.
Shaped like a door without a wall.
And in it, he saw himself.
Not the current him.
Not the boy.
Not the tyrant.
But… all of them.
They were all staring back.
Dozens of reflections.
So crying.
So screaming.
One smiling.
One with no eyes.
One drenched in blood.
One whispering a na he had forgotten long ago.
He stepped closer.
And the mirror spoke, not with words, but feeling.
"Which one are you?"
Lyrium touched the glass.
And the mont he did, the sky cracked again.
Like lightning made of mory.
Visions surged through him:
—Him, laughing with Margaret under a moonlit tree.
—Him, clutching his dead ntor's robes, screaming.
—Him, casting Worldbinding for the first ti, heart pounding with wonder.
—Him, watching cities fall from the sky by his hand.
—Him, dying.
—Him, reborn.
—Him, begging the stars.
—Him, alone.
Too many versions.
Too many paths.
Too many failures.
And the mirror whispered again.
"Pick one."
But he couldn't.
He wasn't any one of them.
He was the scar left behind by all of them.
He raised his fist.
And shattered the mirror.
Glass flew like silver rain, cutting into his skin, his soul.
And from behind the mirror,
A light.
Soft.
Warm.
Not salvation.
But beginning.
He walked through.
And the world blinked.
*****
When Lyrium opened his eyes again, the sky was blue.
The grass was green.
And he was sixteen.
Back at the Deviants Academy, in a classroom.
Breathing hard.
Covered in sweat.
Students stared at him, shocked.
His fingers sparked faintly with red mana, unfamiliar.
The instructor, Professor Shirone, froze mid-sentence.
"You… You just activated a Worldbind glyph."
Lyrium blinked.
He didn't rember casting.
Didn't even know how.
But sothing had awakened.
Not just power.
Clarity.
He looked down at his trembling hands.
Not cracked with power.
Not cursed with runes.
Just hands.
Just a chance.
And sowhere, deep in his bones, he heard the echo of Margaret's voice.
"You don't need more power. You need to rember."
He looked out the window.
At the world before it burned.
At the people before he broke them.
And whispered to himself,
"This ti… I won't beco a god."
"This ti… I'll beco sothing else."
*****
He thought it was over.
He thought stepping through the light, returning to the Academy, ant the pain had ended.
But the mont Lyrium blinked again…
…the visions returned.
Not gently.
Not with warning.
Whoosh—!
The classroom, the sky, the students gone…
He stood in a void.
Not black, not white.
But mory.
Around him, shards floated.
Like broken pieces of stained glass.
Each shard held a vision.
Each vision a life.
Each life a scar.
A whisper swam through the silence.
Velvet, cruel, intimate.
"You've seen what you beca when you had everything."
One shard pulsed.
It showed Lyrium seated on his obsidian throne.
His face hidden by a helm of runes.
He didn't move.
He didn't breathe.
He wasn't human anymore.
The world beneath him burned without end.
"And what you were with nothing."
Another shard floated forward.
The forgotten boy.
Bones poking from skin.
Blood on his sleeves.
Ignored.
Invisible.
Alone.
Always.
"But now, you must see the ones you never knew."
"The Lyriums you could've beco…"
Suddenly, the void fractured…
Whoosh!
*****
Chains dragged behind his footsteps, clinking with the weight of a thousand decisions.
This Lyrium stood in a courtroom of gods.
He wasn't powerful.
He wasn't divine.
He was their executioner.
For each god that had toyed with mortal fate, he forged a chain from their regrets.
Bound them to his justice.
He did not rule.
He did not kneel.
He judged.
The gods called him King of Chains.
And he… was utterly alone.
Even Margaret, in this world, was turned to stone, immortalized as a statue he visited every solstice.
*****
And then another…
This Lyrium never fought back.
Never awakened.
He lived as a vessel.
Controlled by a cult that had erased his mories.
His body a weapon.
His soul, sealed in a crystal cage.
He killed for others.
Smiled when told.
Slept only when drugged.
And deep within the puppet's glassy eyes…
Was a scream.
Not loud.
But eternal.
*****
This Lyrium wore a jester's grin.
Blood painted his lips.
He danced through wars with delight, wearing madness like a crown.
He believed the world was a ga, and every piece, his to burn.
He didn't mourn.
Didn't rember.
Didn't feel.
But when no one was watching, he would sit by an empty chair.
And whisper a na.
Margaret.
And then he would laugh again.
Louder.
Because it hurt.
*****
This Lyrium…
He had power.
He had love.
He had fate in his hand.
And he refused it all.
This Lyrium stood at the heart of a ritual that would make him a god, and stepped back.
He abandoned magic.
Abandoned glory.
And lived as a naless doctor in a border town, healing wounds instead of causing them.
He died quietly.
In peace.
Forgotten.
But he smiled.
Because for once, his hands were clean.
*****
Lyrium stood among the shards.
Breathless.
Trembling.
Tears burned down his cheeks, not from pain, but from the weight.
Every version of him…
Was real.
Every version of him…
Was possible.
And the voice spoke once more.
"You have one chance, Lyrium."
"Only one thread to follow."
"So tell …"
"Who will you beco?"
And in the distance…
He saw a final shard.
Flickering.
Unstable.
Empty.
He reached for it.
And whispered…
"Soone new."
Whoosh—!
*****
Reviews
All reviews (0)