Those Who Ignore History

I came to gasping.

The first thing I felt was cold metal under my back. The second was the steady pulse of something foreign threading through my veins — not mana, not electricity, something else entirely.

My eyes adjusted slowly. I was in a room that looked like a cross between a laboratory and a tomb. Pale light pulsed in glass tubes along the walls, each heartbeat synchronized to the rhythm pounding in my chest. Thin silver wires ran from a lattice of conduits overhead and burrowed into my skin. Each pulse made the veins beneath my flesh shimmer faintly — like ink bleeding through wet paper.

I didn't understand what they were feeding into me, but I knew one thing: I was still the Viraloid's prisoner.

My breathing steadied. My mind sharpened.

The wires hissed as I grabbed hold of them and ripped. Sparks flared. The air filled with the scent of burnt metal and ozone. Pain blossomed across my body, bright and brief, and then it was gone — replaced by something else. Something vast.

I stood up. The motion was instinctive, fluid. Only then did I notice the chill on my skin. Naked. Great. But honestly? I'd been dissected, drugged, and wired like a test subject — modesty ranked pretty low on the priority list.

The priority was escape.

Something chittered behind me.

I turned just as a cluster of insectile shapes crawled from the shadows. Their forms shimmered between the solid and the unreal — like living mirages of carapace and voidlight. My stomach twisted. I'd seen them before — copies of my friends in the dream-state, masks worn by the Viraloid Queen's spawn.

Now they were real.

"Stay back," I warned, though my voice came out lower, rougher than I remembered — laced with something that wasn't entirely human.

They didn't listen.

Of course they didn't.

They scuttled forward, jointed limbs glinting, eyes glowing with pale yellow hunger.

I braced for impact — but before they reached me, something shifted inside. A tide turning.

It wasn't mana. It wasn't my Arte.

It was something far older.

"The realm builds another cage," I whispered, the words forming without thought. They tasted like starlight and smoke.

I thrust my palm forward.

The air folded.

Reality creased.

The lead creature froze mid-lunge, its entire body turning brittle, edges hardening like dried pulp. Then it shattered — not into blood or gore, but into a burst of radiant confetti, each piece shimmering like a fragment of night sky. The pieces swirled around me in lazy spirals before burning out, leaving motes of golden dust hanging in the air.

I stared, breathing hard. My palm still glowed faintly — veins of ink and light running across it in constellations.

"What—" I didn't even finish the question before the next one leapt.

Reflex took over. My body moved, and the words came with it.

"The dragon wills all to bow their head."

Power coiled around my leg — translucent paper-thin scales wrapping from thigh to ankle. When I kicked, it wasn't just a kick. The air itself rippled outward in concentric rings, folding space like a deck of cards being reshuffled. The abomination's skull crumpled inward under invisible pressure. A heartbeat later, its whole form imploded, collapsing into a neat stack of folded starlit ash that drifted away like origami burning from the inside.

I staggered, half in awe, half in terror.

My heart was racing, but the fear wasn't panic anymore — it was exhilaration.

Stars pulsed faintly beneath my skin. When I flexed my fingers, I could see the paper threads coiling from my fingertips, each one thin as thought, weaving symbols in the air before dissolving. The scent of parchment and smoke lingered faintly.

I laughed under my breath, shaky but real. "Okay… definitely new."

More of the creatures appeared at the far end of the corridor — dozens of them this time, crawling along the ceiling and walls. Their bodies twitched and contorted as if glitching between shapes, some sprouting wings, others fracturing into geometric distortions.

I backed up a step. The walls around me pulsed — panels of transparent crystal revealing silhouettes of dormant clones suspended in fluid. The hum of the facility grew louder. The Viraloid Queen was aware now.

The creatures shrieked in unison and lunged.

Fine.

I raised my hands, palms out. The constellations beneath my skin ignited again — brighter this time.

"Everything has a price," I said quietly, "and I'm done paying with fear."

The threads shot out from my hands, weaving themselves into vast sheets of glowing paper that filled the air — pages covered in sigils and constellations. They fluttered like wings, then folded sharply, slicing through the oncoming horde. Each impact erupted in a burst of silent light, erasing the creatures where they stood.

It was beautiful and horrifying.

Each time the light flared, I saw brief flashes within it — faces, memories, echoes of voices that weren't mine. The power felt familiar and foreign, divine and monstrous. I didn't know where it came from, only that it answered me, obeyed me, flowed through me as if I'd always known how to wield it.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The last creature lunged from the shadows. I caught it by the throat. Its body spasmed, chittering, claws raking against my arm — but it couldn't break free.

I leaned in close. Its eyes reflected a thousand tiny stars.

"Tell your queen," I said softly, "that this cage doesn't hold me anymore."

Then I closed my fist.

Light. Silence.

When it cleared, I was alone again. The only sound was the low hum of the machines winding down. The only movement was the faint drift of ash, folding itself midair into faint spirals before vanishing.

I stood there, chest heaving, covered in faint scars of ink-light that traced constellations across my skin. My reflection in the darkened glass of a containment tube met my gaze — calm, alien, resolute.

I didn't know what I'd become.

But I knew this much — I was no longer afraid.

***

"How… how did he acquire this?"

Morres's voice trembled — not from fear, but disbelief. His six eyes flickered in the dim glow of the scrying orb, the corrupted reflection of Alexander's realm pulsing within its core. The surface rippled with starfire and confetti light, fragments of torn space folding in on themselves, reforming, collapsing again.

The boy was rewriting reality.

Ranah leaned closer, arms crossed, her golden braid flicking over one shoulder like a serpent. "Okay, let's think this through logically," she said, voice calm but rapid — the kind of tone she used when she was only seconds away from panicking. "Remember how Alexandria is the mirrored satellite of this Alexander? One is the reflection of the other, bound through shared resonance?"

Morres nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving the orb. "Yes…"

"Well then," Ranah continued, eyes glinting. "What happens if multiple satellites — multiple reflections — agree to converge? To merge their energy back into the core individual? He's not just pulling power from his cluster's local field. He's drawing from them — from every echo of himself that agreed to the link."

Leraje, perched upside down on the ceiling like some velvet-coated bat, laughed softly. "In other words, our Alexander is absorbing his other selves."

Ranah gestured toward the orb, where Alexander unleashed another burst of starlit confetti that tore through a Viraloid beast. "Exactly. He's utilizing multiple Clusters' techniques at once — layering them. And this realm's framework is responding to it. He's not just channeling mana; he's rewriting the domain itself. In essence… he's become a Dominus in all but name."

Silence.

Then Temptation, sitting cross-legged on the table, shook his head. The form he wore today was that of a pale boy no older than ten, though the weight of countless ages lingered behind his eyes. "Nope," he said flatly. "Not in name. Not anymore. Word gets out about this, the Sovereigns will demand his ascension. You think they'll let a creature like that walk around unsupervised?"

His tone made the others flinch.

The room fell quiet again, save for the hum of the Gloss panels projecting streams of data around them.

Gin finally broke the silence — sprawled lazily across a couch, one leg hanging over the armrest, playing some flickering rhythm game on his console. He didn't even glance up. "What? You think I'm gonna tell them?" he said with a grin that was equal parts smug and dangerous. "Grandis no. You have any idea how much paperwork I'd have to do if the Sovereigns noticed this? Besides—" he flicked a finger, and the orb's projection zoomed in on Alexander, standing amid his paper-star storm — "—watching the kid improvise divine-level metaphysics is the most fun I've had in three cycles."

Barbra grunted from where she stood near the observation pillar, arms folded tightly over her chest. "You're all missing the point. Look at the structure of those threads. That isn't an Arte. That's direct Skillcube manifestation without a regulating vessel."

Her gaze was hard, her voice cold. "That kind of overload will shred his mana lines. He's channeling multiple systems — Cultivation threads, Arcane sigils, even Divinist sealcraft — through an untrained human vessel. If he keeps that up, he'll burn out every channel in his body before he takes ten more breaths."

Leraje flipped down from the ceiling, landing silently beside her, eyes gleaming with scientific interest rather than concern. "Perhaps," he said, brushing invisible dust from his cuffs, "but his mana lines are far from ordinary. You see the spectrum bleeding from his pulse points? That isn't mortal resonance. That's hybrid composition. I'd wager his ratio's leaning… hmm… forty percent star mana, thirty nature, twenty crystalline, and only ten dimensional."

Barbra scowled. "That much star mana would kill a normal human."

"Exactly," Leraje replied cheerfully. "He's not normal."

Ranah sighed, rubbing her temples. "None of us expected him to be this abnormal. Dominus-like output with mortal framework alignment? That shouldn't be possible. And yet…"

Her voice softened as she stared at the orb again.

Alexander — their student, their lost experiment, their hope — stood within the chaos, light spilling from his skin, eyes burning with defiance. His entire body glowed with that impossible constellation of paper runes and stellar veins.

He was surviving.

"Do you think he knows we're watching?" Morres asked quietly.

Gin finally looked up from his console. "He knows," he said simply. "He always knows. He just pretends he doesn't. That's his little game."

Temptation let out a low whistle. "If he makes it out, the whole balance of the Clusters will change. The last time someone bypassed the Sovereigns' ladder, we lost half a realm to existential decay."

Ranah shot him a glare. "You're assuming he'll break the same way they did. He's different. His Providence is self-balancing. Everything has a price. He's already accepted that law."

"And what do you think the price for this will be?" Barbra asked, her tone sharp enough to cut glass.

Ranah didn't answer.

Morres spoke instead, voice low, almost reverent. "Freedom. That's what he wants. Always has. Perhaps that's the only price that matters — the one he keeps paying, over and over again."

The orb pulsed — Alexander's aura flared once more, this time in a massive burst of radiance. The paper runes unfurled like galaxies, spinning, folding, rewriting the very logic of the chamber he was trapped in.

For a heartbeat, the watchers saw something impossible.

The boy's outline split — fragments of him branching outward, like multiple realities blooming from the same root. Each one bore a different weapon, a different Arte, a different destiny — yet they all looked back toward the same unseen point.

Toward them.

Morres gasped. "He—he saw us."

Gin smiled faintly, tilting his head as the orb flickered. "Oh, he didn't just see us. He waved."

The light grew unbearable.

For a moment, the orb showed nothing but a storm of glittering pages and stars collapsing inward — and then, silence.

When the image cleared, Alexander was gone.

Only his echo remained — a single line etched into the shattered reflection of the orb:

"Every debt must be paid."

Ranah exhaled, a small, trembling laugh escaping her lips. "He did it."

Temptation frowned. "No… he escaped."

Gin closed his eyes, leaning back with a grin. "Good. About time the kid learned how to break a cage."