The world changed with a scream of splintering wood.

  One moment, Bryan was savoring the last taste of the apple from his mouth. The next, the roof above him erupted.

  A thunderous crash shook the very ground, and the world dissolved into a storm of shattered beams, spinning debris, and choking dust.

  A heavy timber caught him across the shoulder, throwing him backward into the wall.

  The air left his lungs in a pained gasp as he slid to the floor, buried in a cascade of broken thatch and splinters.

  Through the swirling dust and the new, gaping hole to the sky, a figure descended. Not falling, but stepping down through the air as if on an invisible stair.

  A girl, who didn’t even look older than him, her silver-blonde hair stark against the settling chaos. A faint, violet-silver shimmer warped the space around her hands—spatial magic, raw and precise.

  Before the dust could settle, the hut’s door—the one he had carved and hung himself—exploded inward, torn from its hinges by a force of pure strength. A knight filled the doorway, his black plate armor scarred and dusty, his face under the helm grim and unyielding. He was a mountain of steel and purpose.

  Then, light.

  A warm, golden radiance pulsed outward from the doorway, engulfing the broken hut, the clearing, the very air. It hummed with a profound, sacred energy that made Bryan’s teeth ache and his skin prickle. It wasn't just light; it was a law. A declaration: nothing dark may enter, and nothing within may leave. A cage of divine might.

  Through this glowing threshold stepped the source. A girl of serene, heartbreaking beauty, her eyes holding a depth of sorrow that seemed ancient. Saint Yuna. Her presence calmed the very air even as it sanctified his prison.

  Three figures. A mage, a knight, a saint. All staring at him, a wild, dust-covered boy pressed against the wall of his ruined home.

  Bryan’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum of pure animal terror. He scrambled backwards, splinters digging into his palms, until the rough wall stopped him. He was trembling violently.

  The mage—Aria—spoke first. Her voice was calm, clear, and held a weight of absolute, tragic conviction that belied her youthful face. “I am sorry, Bryan. But for the sake of a city, and all the souls within it… you cannot be allowed to live.”

  The words didn’t make sense. They were stones dropped into the well of his fear, sending up ripples of incomprehensible shock. He stared, mouth agape.

  Yuna, the Saint, flinched almost imperceptibly. Her lips parted, but she pressed them together, sealing in whatever protest or prayer lived there. Behind her, the armored knight, Markus, stood as immovable as a monument, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  “Wh-Who are you?!” Bryan finally choked out, his voice a raw scrape. “I haven’t done anything! What is this?!”

  Yuna’s voice, when it came, was melody laced with grief. “I am a Saint of the Dawn. I have been shown a vision. One month from now, a corruption will bloom from this place. It will call monsters from the deep woods, and they will swarm the port city of Dunarva. Thousands will die.” Her luminous eyes settled on him, brimming with pity. “You are the source, Bryan. You are the catalyst.”

  The cold hand of dread clenched around his heart. “No! That’s insane! I don’t even know where Dunarva is! I’ve been here! Alone! For years!” His words tumbled out in a desperate, panicked stream. “Please, you have to believe me—I’m innocent!”

  Aria shook her head, a small, weary motion. Her silver-blue eyes were relentless. “A prophecy is not a possibility. It is a future warning. Every one we couldn’t act upon has come to pass. Our only choice is how we respond.”

  She took a small step forward, her boots crunching on debris. “I cannot let those people die. I cannot stand by while children are slaughtered in their beds. So we are here, before it begins. And it was not an easy journey.”

  For the first time, Bryan saw past their terrifying power to their state. Aria’s elegant cloak was torn at the hem, stained with mud and what looked like blood. A fresh, thin cut marked Yuna’s cheek.

  The knight’s armor was dented and scorched in one place. They looked exhausted, frayed at the edges, like they’d fought their way through the very forest to reach him.

  That truth was somehow more terrifying than if they’d arrived pristine and powerful. They had suffered to get here, to kill him.

  “Wait! Please!” he begged, tears of terror now mixing with the dust on his face. “Don’t hurt me! I’ve never hurt anyone! I just… I just want to live!”

  Aria’s voice softened, but its core of steel remained. “I believe you. I believe you don’t want to cause harm. But the vision does not care for intent. A path lies before you, Bryan, that ends in a city’s ashes. I must cut that path off at its root.”

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  “You’re talking like I have no choice!” he screamed, the frustration and fear boiling over. “Like my life is just a… a bad story someone already wrote! Then why was I even born?!” The question was a wail, torn from the lonely, aching core of him.

  “I’ve been alone my whole life! And the first people I finally meet… tell me I have to die for a crime I haven’t even thought of?”

  The silence that followed was broken only by the gentle, haunting hum of Yuna’s golden barrier.

  Yuna took a step forward, her own tears now tracing clean paths through the dust on her cheeks. “Your birth was not a curse, Bryan,” she whispered, her voice trembling with emotion.

  “You were not created for evil. This is… a cruel twist of fate. You have a soul. You have free will. You have such… quiet strength in you.” She looked at his hands, calloused from survival, at the neat hut now in ruins. “But that strength… the prophecy shows it being twisted, turned into a beacon for darkness.”

  Bryan’s eyes narrowed, a hot, defiant anger rising through the panic. “How is that any different?” he spat, his voice cracking. “It still means I was born broken! That no matter what I do, what I want, I’m just… a weapon waiting to go off! How is being a doomed ‘catalyst’ any better than just being evil?”

  Yuna had no answer. She simply bowed her head, the tears falling freely now, a saint weeping for an impossible choice. The golden light of her barrier seemed to dim, just for a moment, as if sharing her grief.

  In the shattered husk of his home, surrounded by these weary, resolute executioners, Bryan’s short, hard life narrowed to a single, inescapable point.

  They saw a future calamity. He saw only the present injustice. And between them, hanging in the dust-moted air, was the unbearable weight of fate.

  Aria stepped forward, her hand lifting not with a flourish, but with the grave finality of a true commander.

  The air warped beside her, compressing and solidifying. Not from summoned earth, but from fragmented space itself—a jagged spear of crystallized void and stolen matter hummed into existence, its tip vibrating with contained, lethal potential.

  “You will die innocent,” she said, her voice a low, strained thread of sound. The spatial construct trembled slightly, not from uncertainty, but from the immense, precise force required to hold a fragment of space in a compressed state. “Is that not a kinder fate than to live long enough to become a catastrophe?”

  Her silver-blue eyes glistened with unshed tears, even as her expression remained carved from ice. “The sin of this act… I will carry it. Forever.”

  She adjusted her aim, the spear of warped space aligning with Bryan’s heart.

  Bryan stared, utterly paralyzed. The firelight caught the single, silent tear tracing a path through the grime on his cheek. His legs folded beneath him. He squeezed his eyes shut, a silent scream echoing in the prison of his mind.

  I don’t want to die. I haven’t even lived.

  But the killing blow never came.

  “Aria!” Yuna’s voice sliced through the tension, sharp with alarm. “The barrier—three presences, northwest edge! They’re testing the ward!”

  Aria’s eyes snapped from Bryan to the wall of the hut, as if she could see right through it. Every trace of conflicted sorrow vanished, replaced by instantaneous, chilling command.

  “Markus. Secure him.”

  Her words were a clipped order. In the same breath, the space around her folded. There was no dramatic leap. One moment she was inside the shattered hut, the next, the air where she’d stood rippled like water, and she was simply gone.

  Markus moved with the suddenness of a sprung trap, crossing the small space in two strides to stand between Bryan and the ruined doorway, his sword now gleaming in his hand. “By the Commander’s will,” he stated, his voice a low rumble of pure duty.

  Bryan knelt on the broken floor, trembling, struggling to process the shift. The imminent, personal terror had been replaced by a confusing, external threat.

  He was still alive.

  Outside, at the treeline where Yuna’s golden dome met the wild forest, three figures cloaked in grim, travel-stained black stood bewildered.

  The lead man, his hood thrown back to reveal a sharp, weathered face, scowled at the glowing barrier. “What in the blighted hells is this? The intel said weak. A squatter with no spark.”

  The woman beside him, her arms crossed tightly, shook her head. “He is weak. Or careless. I’ve watched him for a week. He forages, he sets pathetic snares. He talks to squirrels. No magic. No discipline. This…” she gestured at the humming dome, “…this is Saint-class warding. It’s impossible.”

  The third, a lean man with a nervous gaze, tapped the barrier with a dagger. A golden ripple repelled it with a soft, sizzling sound. “It’s not him. He’s got guardians. We’ve walked into a wasp’s nest.”

  “Did we miss someone? A patron?” the leader hissed.

  “No. He’s been utterly alone…”

  Before she could finish her thought, the world around them twisted.

  It wasn’t an attack of earth or wind. The very ground beneath their feet seemed to lurch sideways in perception. Space compressed in front of the leader, hurling him backward into a tree with a sickening thud.

  For the woman, the distance between her and a cluster of boulders vanished, and she slammed into stone, the air knocking from her lungs.

  The lean man cried out as the terrain around his legs folded, trapping him up to his thighs in suddenly compacted soil and rock.

  From the center of this localized spatial chaos, Aria manifested. Not from a gust of wind, but from a smooth, silent step out of a compressed pocket of air. Dust settled around her boots. At twelve years old, standing before three enemies, she looked like a pale, deadly ghost.

  Her voice was flat, colder than the mountain stream. “State your purpose. You have one opportunity.”

  The leader, wheezing as he pushed himself up, looked at her—really looked. The silver-blonde hair, the eyes like frozen sky, the spatial distortion still fading from her fingertips. His blood drained from his face. “That’s no normal mage… That’s the Astralis girl. The Archmage.”

  The woman, struggling against the stone, spat blood. “A brat in a fancy robe! Tear her apa—”

  Aria didn’t let her finish. With a flick of her wrist, the space around the woman’s head constructed, applying immense, silent pressure. The woman’s shouts turned into a choked gurgle.

  “Your answer,” Aria repeated, her gaze fixed on the leader.

  Panic and fury warred in the leader’s eyes. He made his choice. With a guttural yell, he launched fireballs and ice spears towards her.

  Aria didn’t dodge. She partitioned. A vertical slice of space in front of her became a wall, a sheer plane of altered reality. The fireballs and ice spears hit it and faded, scattering harmlessly, chaotic vibrations that made the nearby trees shudder and shed leaves.

  The difference in power left him staggering.

  Aria’s expression didn’t change. She raised her hand, fingers poised to clench. “Last chance.”