Kael turned off the television with a satisfied sigh.

  One last sarcastic line on the screen, one final bite of pizza… then silence.

  He stood up, crossed the shadowed hallway, and entered his room.

  There, on the desk, awaited what he desired most:

  Cogito ergo sum.

  The book almost seemed to be watching him in the dimness.

  He sat down in the chair, rested his elbows on the desk, slowly ran his hands through his hair, his eyes lost in the void.

  Even if I know she isn’t real…

  It’s too hard to tell myself that she isn’t.

  He clenched his teeth.

  The memories were still too close. Too vivid.

  His fingers trembled for a moment.

  The same smile. The same gaze. The same way she spoke to me.

  He lightly slapped his cheeks twice.

  Just enough to steady himself.

  “Alright. Focus.”

  He reached out. The old binding creaked beneath his fingers.

  Cogito ergo sum.

  He opened it without ceremony. Dove into it. And vanished.

  The first lines struck him like a blade of light.

  It was direct. Brutal.

  No ornamentation.

  Only one objective: to place the being face to face with itself.

  Kael turned the pages slowly, not out of fatigue, but out of respect.

  Every word seemed to speak to him.

  Every sentence carried the weight of a silent revelation.

  He was not simply reading.

  He was absorbing.

  He drank the concepts like a man dying of thirst in the desert.

  Each paragraph opened a new corridor in his mind.

  Each footnote seemed to whisper a forgotten truth between the lines.

  The book spoke of consciousness.

  Of being.

  Of the rupture between what one believes oneself to be, and what one truly is.

  The more he read, the more he felt watched… by himself.

  The book was holding up a mirror he had never dared to look at directly.

  “Thinking is not enough. One must know who is thinking.

  And what the thinker’s shadow thinks.”

  A cold sweat beaded at the nape of his neck.

  He mentally annotated every idea, every mechanism.

  It wasn’t a book.

  It was a door.

  And behind that door, the truth.

  A few hours had passed.

  Kael rubbed his eyes, his pupils still saturated with words and ideas.

  He glanced at his phone: 00:43.

  He stood slowly, his muscles numb, and stretched at length with a sigh.

  Then, drawn by the nocturnal light, he approached the window.

  The sky was of an unreal clarity.

  The stars shone brilliantly, frozen in an almost divine calm.

  And the moon…

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “… It’s so small?!”

  A crease of incomprehension marked his brow.

  He remained there for a few moments, motionless.

  The moon seemed distant, evasive… almost foreign.

  “Why is it so high? It looks like… it’s running away.”

  It has never been that far… normally, it’s much closer than that.

  He rubbed his eyes again, hoping to dispel an illusion.

  But no.

  The moon was up there, minuscule, as if hanging at the edge of another world.

  “One more strange rule in this place,” he muttered, trying to reassure himself.

  He stepped back, closed the curtains, then returned to sit at his desk.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  There, in front of him, another book was waiting.

  A very different book.

  Cause.

  He stared at it.

  A hard stare, as if he were challenging something.

  Someone.

  He reached out, let his fingers run slowly across the smooth cover.

  Then he opened it in a sharp motion, brutal, almost irritated.

  Nothing.

  Not a single line. Not a single letter.

  The void. Always.

  Kael ground his teeth and shut the book with a dull snap.

  “What are you waiting for to write yourself?”

  But the book remained mute.

  Silent.

  As if it, too, were waiting for something.

  Something Kael had not yet found.

  Kael lay still, eyes open in the darkness.

  The silence pulsed softly against his temples.

  And, in the middle of the quiet flow of his thoughts, another idea began to take shape.

  “If Remanence is accepting the lack…”

  “Then Dissonance is drowning in it.”

  He frowned slightly.

  The images returned — the warmth of the kitchen, his mother’s laughter, the smell of pizza.

  Simple moments. Perfect ones.

  Too perfect.

  “Even if I know she isn’t real…”

  “It’s too hard to tell myself that she isn’t.”

  The sentence echoed in his mind like an accusing refrain.

  He remembered the softness of the evening, the light on his mother’s face, her voice full of life.

  And himself, laughing. Forgetting everything.

  Until he forgot that he was no longer supposed to be able to live that.

  “Dissonance… that’s what it is,” he murmured.

  Letting oneself be swallowed by the illusion.

  Believing in what one knows is false, simply because it is gentler than the truth.

  He inhaled slowly, his eyes fixed on the invisible ceiling.

  “It’s wanting to relive what no longer exists.”

  “It’s refusing to let go of the memory, even if it means being trapped inside it.”

  He felt a tightness in his throat, an emotion he refused to name.

  “And maybe that’s the real trap of the Trial.”

  Remanence and Dissonance…

  Two reflections of the same pain.

  One frees.

  The other imprisons.

  And Kael, his eyes half-closed, slowly understood:

  “I have tasted both.”

  “And the ouroboros… waits to see which one I choose.”

  He straightened abruptly, as if pierced by a silent call.

  His gaze shifted to his saber.

  A simple saber, modest in appearance.

  A dark wooden scabbard, almost black, veined like ancient bark.

  The guard, golden, formed a four-leaf clover — a fragile promise of luck in a world that rarely offered any.

  And the hilt…

  Wrapped in fine, precise black braiding, forming perfect diamond shapes along its entire length.

  A magnificent object, Kael thought.

  But it wasn’t the weapon he was staring at.

  It was what it carried.

  A strip of white fabric, tied at the base of the scabbard.

  The Needle-Case Band.

  A relic from another time.

  A fragment of what his mother once was.

  A fragment of what he himself once was.

  White fabric does not exist in the Broken Crown.

  Or, if it does, it never remains white for long.

  And yet… this one had endured the years.

  Pure. Precious.

  Kael had stopped wearing it on his forehead long ago.

  Not out of forgetfulness.

  He had tied it to his weapon.

  So that she — his mother — would accompany him into every battle.

  Not as a weakness.

  But as a presence.

  A memory knotted to war.

  He reached out, brushed the fabric with his fingertips.

  “This is all I have left of her…”

  It was neither regret nor complaint.

  Just… a truth.

  Heavy. Silent. Persistent.

  Kael slowly lay back down on his bed.

  The saber resting beside him, the Needle-Case Band almost vibrating with a familiar presence.

  He stared at the ceiling, his arms crossed behind his head, lost in the complex weave of his thoughts.

  “I hold the cause… and the consequences of this ouroboros.”

  He knew it. He felt it.

  The cause was that absence. That void.

  And the consequences… two clearly marked paths: Remanence, or Dissonance.

  To understand oneself in order to heal…

  Or to shatter in order to be reborn.

  But something was blocking him.

  “Then… why isn’t that enough?”

  He frowned.

  He saw again Dubium’s gaze, and his words — veiled, yet heavy with meaning.

  He saw again the chessboard, and that moment when he had understood.

  That tension in the air. That click.

  And above all…

  That question he had left hanging.

  “What would happen if someone chose a third option?”

  He straightened slightly.

  His heart quickened.

  He saw himself again, standing before Dubium, half trembling, half struck by revelation.

  When the idea had taken root in his mind like an anomaly.

  “A third choice…”

  Neither introspection.

  Nor refusal.

  Something in between.

  Or beyond.

  A point of strangeness.

  A refusal to play according to the very rules of the system.

  “And what if that’s it…”

  What I am meant to do… or not do?

  He stared into the void, his eyes wider than ever.

  Maybe the only way to break the ouroboros…

  Was not to choose.

  But to refuse the choice.

  To disturb the balance.

  To create a dissonance within the very structure of the Trial.

  An impossible act.

  Or a silence, instead of a step.

  His eyelids grew heavy.

  He surrendered to the fatigue, slowly drifting…

  And murmured, in a final breath of consciousness:

  “Here we go… for the third loop.”

  …

  Soft sounds.

  The scratching of quills on paper.

  Muffled whispers.

  Then a steady, calm, mature voice:

  “Can someone tell me what causality is?”

  Kael blinked, grunted in his throat.

  Honestly… not the best way to wake up.

  He rubbed his face, still half-asleep. Opened his eyes.

  And noted, without much surprise…

  That he was back.

  In the classroom.

  In his seat.

  “Mr. Kael?” the teacher’s voice repeated.

  He straightened up with difficulty, stretched at length. Then, yawning:

  “Yes, yes, I’m here…”

  A few laughs echoed through the classroom.

  The teacher, however, remained serious.

  He adjusted his glasses on his nose.

  “What is causality?”

  Kael straightened, his gaze sharper now. He understood.

  Three loops. Three different questions…

  He took a deep breath.

  Then answered in a clear, steady voice:

  “Causality is an endless cycle of causes and consequences.

  A consequence is born from a cause… which itself is born from another consequence…

  And so on.

  It is not a line. It is an ouroboros.

  A serpent devouring its own tail.”

  Silence.

  The entire class was frozen.

  The teacher blinked, unsettled. Then replied, almost uncomfortable:

  “… I… I had never seen it that way.

  You are… probably right.”

  Kael allowed himself a faint smile.

  The third loop had begun.