It seemed the members of the Beyond the Enigma Society had reached an unspoken agreement: no one would disturb the third-ranked AGMT prodigy while he was “recharging.”

  They dispersed naturally, turning their attention to their own plates.

  The wooden hall slowly filled with sound again—casual conversations typical of mage students. Complaints about looming final exams. Praise for the rich flavor of properly cooked steak. Arguments over whether the latest magic staff model on sale in the Kingdom Zone was actually worth the discount.

  Mira chatted animatedly with Boris while he was fully occupied carving through a thick cut of meat. She glanced around the dim, almost sacred-looking cabin and seemed about to launch into what would have been her eighth ghost story this month.

  But she never got the chance.

  Marten Blackleaf approached with his plate and sat down beside her—directly across from Rein and Boris, a little too deliberately.

  “Congratulations on today’s win,” Marten said with a serene smile, trying to ease the silence.

  Rein only nodded. His mouth was full, and gratitude could wait.

  “Seriously—thanks to you, Rein, I walked away with a full 1,000 AC from the bets.”

  HACK.

  Rein nearly choked.

  He thumped his chest a few times and grabbed his water, swallowing hard.

  So you people just sit there cheering and walk off with almost as much as the champion’s prize… earned with sweat, bruises, and one ruined pair of boots.

  What a fair world.

  He wiped the tears from his eyes and shot a sharp look at Boris.

  The former creditor pretended not to notice, calmly savoring another bite—as if victory tasted especially sweet when it was free.

  “If I had to guess,” Rein said, more curious than annoyed, “the ones taking the bets were mostly third-years. Or was it someone else?”

  Marten shook his head. “Not this time. Most of it came from Timothy’s group. They opened the betting themselves, thinking they’d make easy money. From what I hear, they got wiped out pretty badly.”

  He poked at his food, thinking.

  “Honestly, Rein… doesn’t it worry you? You didn’t just embarrass the Viremonts—you cost them a lot of money.”

  Rein didn’t answer right away. He set his glass down slowly.

  There was no point explaining that, to him, Timothy ranked near the bottom of his list of concerns—far below the mysterious intruders that night, the infiltration by a false Bell, or the growing frequency of spatial-temporal glitches.

  “You’re noble-born too, aren’t you?” Rein asked instead. “Why aren’t you siding with them?”

  Marten took a sip of his drink. “I suppose I could.” He shrugged lightly. “Most nobles are unpleasant, sure—but not all of us. I hope.”

  He glanced toward the others seated further down the table.

  “Those of us in Beyond the Enigma are more interested in moving past old magic than clinging to bloodlines. Heritage and class are just chains—at least, that’s how they feel to me. Don’t you think?”

  He ate his vegetables with casual indifference.

  “Um… would it be okay if I asked a bit more about that Lycan story?” Mira cut in, unable to contain herself.

  “Killian?” Marten’s expression tightened. “I don’t know much, honestly. He’s from the main branch. I’m from a minor one—we only met at annual family gatherings.”

  He stirred his food again, a nervous habit.

  “He studied here years ago. Brilliant. Obsessed. His experiments were… dangerous. Then he vanished. As for whether the Lycan in the pine forest is really Killian—there’s no solid proof. Just fear.”

  He set his fork down.

  “It damaged the Blackleaf name badly. And as you can see… I inherited the suspicion.”

  Rein caught the faint bitterness in Marten’s eyes.

  So that’s why they gather here.

  Cast aside by old beliefs. Looking for answers elsewhere.

  The conversation drifted on—light, fragmented. Marten, in particular, seemed eager to bond, as if trying to prove name did not curse simply him.

  Eventually, Kellen stood.

  “Before anything else, let’s thank Jalara Louden once again for this wonderful dinner.”

  Polite applause followed. Jalara lifted her glass slightly, her smile cool and distant.

  “And now,” Kellen continued, excitement returning, “the moment we’ve all been waiting for. As president of the society, I’d like to invite Rein to explain his revised Corvus Topology.”

  Rein’s discomfort was obvious. Kellen noticed and leaned closer, whispering, “Just the short version. Please.”

  Rein didn’t even have time to refuse before Mira started clapping enthusiastically—far too enthusiastically. The others followed.

  She’s acting like a plant I hired.

  Resigned, he stood, wiped his mouth, took another drink, and walked to the blackboard—just like he had that morning in Room 402.

  The explanation was smooth. Dana and Curt asked a few technical questions. Then, at the end—

  “As you can see, excessive mana load causes a bottleneck at Node 17. Originally, the traditional Corvus structure aimed to enhance detection through—”

  “And how do you know,” Jalara interrupted, calm and precise, “that the old structure was wrong?”

  Her gaze was sharp. Testing.

  Rein exhaled softly.

  The feeling was familiar.

  Uncomfortably so.

  “How do you know, Rhys,” an elderly professor had asked in that suffocating examination room,

  “that dark matter can create perturbations in the quantum field without collapsing the Standard Model?”

  “If dark matter had no interaction at all,” a younger Rhys replied, steadying his breath as he stepped forward,

  “then energy conservation at the particle level would be perfect. But the collision data shows consistent losses—small fragments of energy disappearing into a fourth dimension.”

  He paused, allowing the weight of the anomaly to sink in before his voice regained its sharp, intellectual edge.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “It hasn’t been lost.” It’s transferred, through quantum coupling between our dimension and the one dark matter occupies. I only built the equation to describe that bridge.”

  CRACK!

  The sound split across Rein’s hearing—sharp, intimate, like it lived inside the skull.

  It yanked him out of the memory.

  For an instant, the scene in front of him warped—faces, candlelight, the blackboard—then snapped back together in a blink, as if nothing had happened.

  “Wait… that was—” A bead of sweat surfaced on his brow.

  He could see everyone watching. Jalara’s brows drew together slightly. She began to lift her hand again, slow and deliberate—

  “And how do you know that—”

  She didn’t finish.

  Rein cut in—voice clean, decisive, almost perfectly in sync with her breath.

  “—that the old structure was wrong.”

  Silence dropped on the room.

  Jalara’s eyes widened. So did everyone else’s. They blinked at him.

  Damn it.

  Rein’s heart hammered.

  The glitch again.

  My timing—off.

  LIZ… you didn’t see that? Just now?

  A translucent blue interface flickered into view for him alone,

  right in the middle of the stares.

  [LIZ: I didn’t see anything off. At least—nothing obvious. Which means… it might be hitting you first. It feels like it’s brushing against long-term memory.

  Like déjà vu. Or—]

  Or what? Rein pressed.

  [LIZ: Or… it’s touching me too. If something’s interfering with space and time here, it won’t just touch you.

  Anything tied to Arath gets pulled in.

  Including me. Because I run through you.]

  [LIZ: You might be the only one noticing because of Rhys. He doesn’t belong entirely to this world.

  Whatever reset happened here… it couldn’t scrub him clean.]

  A bitter line slid down Rein’s spine.

  You’re saying… Is my mind outside the world?

  Like an observer?

  [LIZ: It’s just a hypothesis. Honestly… you shouldn’t be able to notice this at all. The fusion between you and Rhys is still stable.

  Ninety-eight percent. For now.]

  So there’s still a gap, Rein shot back. Nearly two percent.

  [LIZ: Yes. And that gap might be enough for something to wake that observer back up.]

  “Rein! Are you okay?”

  Mira’s voice cut through. She rushed in, catching his arm as he stood with a hand pressed to his temple.

  “Did you get hurt when you fought Timothy?

  Internal injuries?”

  Rein forced his eyes around the room.

  Jalara remained frozen. Dana looked worried. Curt shifted, suspicion building in his posture. Kellen looked like someone had yanked the floor out from under him.

  They were staring at Rein the same way people stared at bad omens.

  “No… I’m fine,” Rein managed. “Just… a headache.”

  He moved to a wooden chair and dropped into it like his bones had turned heavy.

  “Sorry,” he said, lifting his gaze to Kellen. “Can I sit for a minute?”

  “Y-yes. Of course,” Kellen blurted. “Rest. I’ll… I’ll keep things going.”

  Boris came closer and set a hand on Rein’s shoulder, squeezing once—steadying him, checking him.

  “You sure?” Boris murmured. “You look pale.”

  Rein gave him a thin smile, just enough to stop Boris from asking more.

  Inside, though, his thoughts were a storm.

  A trigger brought it back? What trigger?

  He closed his eyes and tried to sort the mess.

  If LIZ was right, then his brain was trying to process two versions of reality at once—like watching the same film on two monitors: one the original cut, the other a warped edit that kept slipping frames. Keep that up long enough and something would burn out.

  He opened his eyes again, scanning the hall.

  Kellen was at the board, arguing at some point with Dana. Curt stood off by the window, still watching the dark outside like it might blink first. The others had fallen back into uneasy normalcy.

  Rein stood abruptly.

  Heads turned.

  He crossed to the corner of the room and dropped to one knee beside an inscribed rune line. The seam of the spatial expansion circle. He ran his fingers along the carved pattern in the old wood.

  LIZ. Check this.

  Behind him, footsteps gathered—Kellen, Dana, Mira… even Jalara, curiosity pulling them in despite themselves.

  “Rein?” Mira asked softly. “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer her. He looked up at Kellen instead.

  “How many anchor points?” Rein asked.

  “How many inscribed nodes?”

  Kellen frowned, thinking. Then pointed. “Four. Including that one. Why?”

  His voice brightened, pride pushing through the confusion.

  “I only made this expansion work a few weeks ago. I failed so many times. Then I tried inserting a few new runes—just minor adjustments—and suddenly the structure stabilized.”

  “It’s my best work, honestly.”

  He indicated a cluster of symbols that looked subtly newer than the rest—too sharp, too clean, shaped by a different hand.

  Rein exhaled.

  …So this is your best work. Seriously?

  He didn’t argue.

  He moved, checking the other three points in sequence.

  The dizziness came in waves.

  For a moment, the floor didn’t feel where it should be.

  LIZ? he asked, holding onto focus by sheer habit.

  The chat paused.

  Just a fraction too long.

  [LIZ: The inserted runes don’t match Arath’s baseline parameters. Deep analysis suggests their structure has been modified—]

  A beat.

  [LIZ: They don’t belong to the world you’re standing in.]

  Rein’s brow tightened.

  Meaning what?

  An alternate reality? Don’t be absurd.”

  [LIZ: They feel like Arath—only… slightly wrong.]

  Rein pursed his lips.

  [LIZ: Like someone rewrote the same language with a different logic.This isn’t random. The differences are consistent. Systematic.]

  He let out a long breath, feeling a cold prickle crawl along his spine. Then he turned back to Kellen and pointed at the strange symbols.

  “Kellen,” Rein said.

  “Be honest.”

  “Where did you get these runes?”

  Kellen hesitated. Then glanced at Dana, who stood beside him.

  “From the book she found in the basement,” Kellen said. “You remember, right?”

  Dana nodded quickly, filling in the details.

  “Yeah. When we first cleaned this cabin to use it as the society’s base, we found an old rune tome in the basement.”

  “Kellen read it,” Dana said.

  “He said the structure could patch the leaks in his spell.”

  As she spoke, her eyes slid toward Marten Blackleaf.

  Marten was still by the board—too still. Watching them.

  Not blinking.

  “Wait,” Mira whispered, voice trembling. Her face drained. “Don’t tell me…”

  She swallowed.

  “This place is Killian’s private study?”

  Jalara, arms crossed, clicked her tongue and gave a small, irritated laugh.

  “Oh, come on,” Jalara said flatly.

  “What are we—three?”

  “A rotting cabin in the woods doesn’t become a monster’s lair just because someone tells a scary story.”

  Rein ignored the bickering behind him. His eyes stayed locked on Kellen.

  “That rune book,” he said. “Where is it now?”

  Kellen blinked a few times, then answered quickly. “I only copied the parts that looked usable into my notes. The original… I put it back where I found it.”

  Rein took a small step back. His gaze dropped to the old floorboards beneath their feet.

  “So you returned it to the basement,” he said.

  A pause.

  “…under this cabin.”

  Kellen was just about to confirm—

  Curt, who’d been nursing his drink by the window the whole time, suddenly snapped upright.

  “Hey—everyone. There’s someone outside.”

  Boris, closest to the window, moved in at once. He peered into the dark.

  The fog had thickened—wrongly so.

  As if it had made a decision.

  It pressed in from every side until the line of pine trees was gone, erased behind a moving gray wall.

  The air around the cabin turned heavy, oppressive. Shadows of branches swayed inside the fog like twisted limbs, too slow, too deliberate.

  But in Boris’s eyes… there was nothing out there. No figure. No movement that wasn’t mist.

  He swept the view again, just to be sure, then looked back at Curt.

  Curt wasn’t looking at Boris at all.

  His eyes were wide. Trembling. Fixed on the treeline as if whatever he saw had hooked into his spine and refused to let go.

  His jaw clenched so hard the vein at his temple bulged. He set his glass down on the sill without realizing it.

  Curt swallowed, his throat dry.

  “…It’s looking at us,” he whispered, forcing the words past instincts that screamed at him to stay silent.

  His hands clenched into tight fists.

  “I don’t see anything,” Boris said, frowning. “Just that fog—”

  He started to turn toward Rein.

  “You think—”

  He didn’t finish.

  CRASH!!!

  The thick window exploded into a storm of shards.

  A huge hand—black as pitch—tore through the frame.

  Claws like hooked knives tore the air.

  They missed Boris’s face by less than a foot. The wind of it sliced his cheek; blood welled in a thin line.

  The target was obvious.

  The claws opened—

  and closed around Curt’s head.

  “Gh—!”

  Curt’s cry died in his throat as his entire body was yanked through the shattered window like a rag doll, weightless in the grip. One violent pull.

  Gone.

  It took less than two seconds.

  All that remained was the gaping hole, the freezing night pouring in, and the stunned stillness of everyone who hadn’t been taken.

  For a heartbeat, the cabin fell into a cold, dead silence—

  Then Kellen’s scream tore it open.

  “CURT!!”

  And in that exact moment, Rein’s world… slipped.

  Reality in front of him warped, doubled—overlaid by a different version of the same room.

  The cabin was no longer clean.

  It was drenched.

  Blood.

  Too much of it.

  The floor slick beneath his feet.

  The walls were carved open with massive claw marks, boards ripped into splinters and hanging loose.

  And worst of all—

  Kellen was on the ground, not far away, half-submerged in red. His chest was caved through, torn open into a grotesque hollow.

  Yet in that image—

  Kellen still moved.

  With the last shred of strength left in his body, he dragged a finger through the blood and drew an arrow on the floor—

  Pointing straight toward the large oak cabinet in the corner.

  CRACK!

  The real world snapped back in an instant.

  Rein flinched hard, breath catching. The metallic stink of blood still clung to his nose like noted poison. He heard Dana break into sobs—thin, shocked sounds—while the others stood frozen, unable to decide what to do first.

  Rein didn’t explain.

  He moved.

  He lunged for the oak cabinet and started shoving it with frantic force.

  Kellen, shaking, stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Rein! What are you doing? How do you know that’s—”

  “The basement hatch,” Rein cut in, not even turning his head.

  He drove his shoulder into the heavy cabinet again. It scraped and slid aside, revealing a wooden trapdoor with an iron ring set into it—an opening into blackness below.

  “You told me,” Rein said, voice flat.

  Then, softer—colder—his eyes fixed on the darkness.

  “Just not like this.”

  He paused at the edge of the hidden stairwell.

  “It was your dying message.”

  Rein didn’t look back.

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Magic & Spell Techniques

  A medium-scale ritual magic construct used to increase physical interior space within a fixed structure, such as the Beyond the Enigma Society's cabin. The runes inscribed into the floor act as anchor nodes. Rein later discovers that some of the runes don't belong to the known world of Arath, suggesting external or alternate-universe influence.

  A mysterious book discovered beneath the cabin, which Kellen used to expand the Society's meeting room. It contained runes not native to Arath, marking a potential contamination point for foreign magical logic. The origin is implied to be Killian Blackleaf’s private study.

  Rein begins to experience memory or reality distortions, including vision overlays, sound breaks (CRACK!), and déjà vu-like phenomena. LIZ hypothesizes that Rein's hybrid nature with Rhys allows him to detect timeline inconsistencies that others cannot.

  Mentioned again here as a missing, possibly rogue former student and prodigy from the Blackleaf family. It is increasingly implied that the cabin may have once been Killian's personal study, linking him to forbidden magic and dimensional experimentation.

  A senior member of the Beyond the Enigma Society. Sharp, skeptical, and highly intellectual. She tests Rein with academic precision but is visibly disturbed when he completes her sentence before she speaks—a result of Rein's glitch-induced foresight.

  Rein experiences a double-layered perception of reality, where a blood-soaked, destroyed version of the cabin overlays the present. In this vision, a dying Kellen leaves a blood-written message pointing to the oak cabinet, revealing the trapdoor to the basement. These events suggest fixed points in time, traumatic memory echoes, or alternate futures.

  Revealed beneath an oak cabinet in the cabin. Confirmed to be where the rune tome was returned. Serves as a narrative turning point as Rein deduces its existence from a dying vision of Kellen, adding a time-loop or foreshadowing element to the mystery.

  A fellow member of the Beyond the Enigma Society. His abduction by a shadowy clawed entity signals the breach of magical safety in the cabin and sets off the chapter’s climax. Notably, only Curt can see the creature before the window shatters—indicating magical camouflage, perception targeting, or a psychological attack.

  An unnatural fog that surrounds the cabin at night. It is described as behaving with intention, erasing the treeline and compressing the environment. Implies the presence of a magical or monstrous intelligence targeting the group.

  While previously introduced, this chapter deepens their identity: a collective of young mages dedicated to redefining old magical laws, abandoning bloodline elitism, and experimenting with dimensional and spatial theories. The society may have unknowingly triggered something dangerous by using foreign rune structures.