Root floated in silence.
There was no body. No system prompt. No battlefield left to break.
Only a void stitched together by the absence of structure—before ink, before page. It was the stillness between chapters. The pause in a god's breath. And Root stood in the center of it all, hollow-eyed and still holding the weapon that had shattered fate: the Hollow Quill.
A single prompt bloomed from the darkness. But this one didn't carry the sterile tone of the System.
It came from him.
[AUTHORITY GRANTED]
You may now write your next incarnation.
• Destroy the System from without – Burn the Codebase. Collapse the Timeline. Return to nothing.
• Re-enter the System from within – Choose Class. Forge False Identity. Infiltrate and Rewrite.
Root studied the first option.
It was the path of vengeance—quick, brutal, honest. One flick of the quill, and the System would vanish into a ruin of fragmented quests and broken logic. No more Editors. No more cages. No more players devoured for failing to fit.
But it would be the end of everything.
A blank book. A silence that would never speak again.
No Lyra. No Klem. No Veyr.
Only unspoken stories and dust.
He turned toward the second.
Re-entry.
A fake name. A fake life. The perfect infiltrator born from the very mouth of the machine. The System would nurture him, promote him, trust him.
And he would gut it from the inside.
Selection Confirmed: Re-enter the System
New Identity: Alden Veras
Class: Summoner – Crowned Initiate
Trait Potential: Max (Hidden)
System Access: Spoofed
Memory: Preserved
Summon: Bound – Status: Dormant
Evolution Tier: 0/5
Light broke across the void like sunrise cracking a sealed vault. Reality folded into his bones. Uniforms stitched themselves onto skin. A name settled over his soul like a crown forged of lies.
Root was no longer Root.
He was Alden Veras now—student, prodigy, elite.
From the edge of the fade, a voice like a whisper caught in static curled around him:
"You're seriously going back in? Idiot."
Root smiled softly.
"You think I'm going back in?"
He gripped the Hollow Quill as it melted into his spine.
"I'm going to win from inside."
And with that, the world welcomed him back.
The first thing Root felt was weight.
Not pressure—presence. Gravity returned like a binding signature, as if the world had accepted his body again. His boots pressed to marble. Air filled his lungs. The scent of polished stone, glyph-seared steel, and spring flowers reminded him that fiction had rules, even if he no longer followed them.
He opened his eyes.
White towers stretched skyward in elegant, calculated symmetry. Trees lined the path—grown to perfect height, trimmed with obsessive care. Students in crisp uniforms crossed the courtyard in arcs too neat to be natural. Laughter echoed in a way that sounded like it had been rehearsed.
Crownshade Academy.
The elite training ground for summoners marked by the System. The birthplace of chosen heroes. The furnace of fiction.
He was here again.
Not as the broken cageborn rebel.
But as Alden Veras—the ideal.
A translucent interface hovered in front of his vision:
Welcome, Alden Veras
Status: Crowned Initiate
Class: Summoner
Trait Tier: Max Potential (Hidden)
Authority: Normalized
Memory Visibility: Concealed
Assigned Summon Egg: Hatchery Room B
Evolution Path: Unknown-Bound (0/5)
Root dismissed it instantly.
No glitches. No warnings. The System had swallowed the rewrite whole. There was no trace of the Hollow Quill. No flag on his record. Not even a whisper of the sealed vault, the Editor, or the Counter-author.
The System had forgotten him.
But Root remembered everything.
He moved like a shadow through the courtyard, passing beneath golden archways and listening as conversations buzzed around him. Students spoke of rankings, first summons, mana affinities, and ego-stitched battle gear. None of them looked his way.
Good.
His identity wasn't just forged—it was flawless. A top-tier candidate born from a noble line that didn't exist, registered through a digital baptism he'd penned himself during the rewrite.
But he wasn't focused on his status.
He was focused on the egg.
The entity he'd embedded in this new timeline.
The summon that would grow beside him.
The one he couldn't afford to awaken too soon.
Because it wasn't just a creature—it was Veyr.
Unaware. Dormant. Contained in a shell of System-approved narrative, locked behind an evolution sequence designed to suppress the truth. It would be weeks before anyone suspected what it was. Maybe months.
But Root would train it.
And when the final form emerged?
The world would remember.
The Hatchery was silent—too silent.
Unlike the busy courtyards and echoing lecture halls, this place was insulated from sound, magic, and even curiosity. Most students weren't allowed in until their assignment letters arrived. Root's letter had appeared in his inbox seconds after his rewrite—convenient, clean, unquestioned.
He stepped inside the egg chamber.
Rows of polished pedestals stretched into the dim-lit room, each one topped with a glowing summon egg. Some were golden and pulsing. Others dull and dormant. A few cracked with faint glyphs of activation, their future partners days or hours away from awakening them.
Root ignored them all.
His was at the farthest end of the hall—on a pedestal slightly raised above the rest. It radiated no power. It flickered with no aura.
But it watched him.
The shell was matte black, wrapped in silver bands like fossilized thread. Every few seconds, a soft pulse echoed outward from within it—not a heartbeat, but something deeper. Like memory trying to breathe.
Root's hand hovered over it.
No System prompt.
No glow.
No fanfare.
Entity Found
Classification: Unknown-Bound
Evolution Tier: 0/5
Identity: Locked
Affinity: Null – Suppressed
He placed his palm against the surface.
It was warm.
Then—cold.
Then—something else entirely.
"I know you."
The voice wasn't Veyr's, not exactly. It was raw. Younger. Unaware. As if the creature inside wasn't fully born, but already reaching out across the narrative bindings Root had wrapped around it.
It didn't remember.
But it felt him.
Root clenched his jaw, willing his expression calm. The walls had ears. He couldn't speak. Not yet.
But this moment? This linking?
It would seed the bond that would eventually restore Veyr's true self.
He lifted his hand. The egg glowed once, then dimmed.
Summon Bond Registered
Summoner: Alden Veras
Entity: Sleeping
Awakening Estimate: 3 days (accelerated training available)
Footsteps echoed from outside the hatchery.
He turned just as the door hissed open and a girl with short auburn hair and a clipboard stepped through. "Crowned Veras?" she asked. "You're due for orientation."
Root offered her the perfect polite nod. "Just finished linking. Lead the way."
She nodded. "You're early. Most wait until the second cycle."
"I don't like waiting."
She gave a half-smile. "Of course. This way."
As Root followed her into the pristine light of the academy halls, he glanced once over his shoulder.
The egg sat silent.
But he knew better.
It had already begun.
And one day, it would remember everything they'd buried.