An elaborate, dream-like crystal glowed faintly within twilight’s grasp, spinning in a dazzling display of refracted colors. All around it, scrolls and books could be seen flying with purpose toward the distant colossal bookshelves orbiting the dreamy amethyst.

“Experiment Log #13053 ended in disappointment. Perhaps a change in the ratios is required again?”

Within the crystal, a child-like figure levitated freely while mumbling things to himself—his golden amber eyes shifting from one surface of the crystal to the next as the lights within them formed holographic screens. Some depicted the Faerie Laboratory with empty scrolls being filled with information, while others showcased different sections of the enigmatic space being repurposed as experimental locations for spell testing.

There were also screens showcasing replayed memories of Soren’s past experiences—some more relevant to his recent encounters with the Living Shadows, but also analysis on some of the things he had witnessed in the Cathedral of Aeons. Though, the progress on that research seemed to have slowed down significantly as of late…

The librarian watched the screens coldly then shook his head. He turned back his gaze toward another surface of the crystal—this time reflecting not a holographic screen but his own grim expression. Biblion looked exactly similar to Soren when he was a child, only his hair was multitudes longer. It had grown without him realizing it.

He nodded to himself quietly. This is indeed an accurate depiction.

Compared to the original Soren, Biblion had not exactly lived for as long as he has. Although he did inherit his memories and experiences, it still felt akin to seeing a movie or reading a book—to him, these experiences had never truly been his from the beginning. He felt a strange and unexplainable detachment from them.

That was why he hoped to differentiate himself from the original by taking on the form of a child. It was indeed far more accurate to his identity at the moment all while establishing a sense of uncertainty for the future… The possibilities open to him were endless, after all, similar to that of a newborn who has yet to discover their purpose.

Suddenly, his vision once again shifted toward a different screen. This one was slightly unique compared to the rest—it depicted not a past memory nor was it monitoring a certain aspect of this enigmatic space. Instead, it was showcasing the reality his master was facing at the moment.

Within the holographic panel, Soren could be seen standing amidst the rubble—a woman with violet-colored hair peered over the wreckage from behind him, her expression frozen in terror and confusion. Both of them seemed to be staring at something beyond the cloud of debris…

He nodded swiftly. “Interesting… He was able to break the loop after only three cycles.”

Biblion immediately ordered the Soul Weapon to [Record] a new entry for Soren to read. The instructions were fairly simple and quick to understand—he knew there probably wasn’t much time for his master to mull over his next few decisions.

After sending it out, he finally leaned back and began to think back on everything he had witnessed in just the past two or three hours. It was strange to say the least. Soren would likely never believe his testimony without proper evidence—it was simply that outlandish of a truth:

Time within the Hyades Castle seemed to have reset without anyone’s knowledge!

Of course, to anyone’s knowledge but his. Biblion was likely the only one who could notice this anomaly. After all, [The Faerie Court] rests within a place beyond the purview of space and time. These concepts had no influence here. And from everything he was able to witness through his connection to Soren’s Avatar and the one and only Anchor present in that world, this strange phenomenon had happened multiple times without anyone’s awareness.

The first timeline he witnessed was in the ballroom itself. In this loop, Soren had completed his dance with Ynixia and guessed her original identity incorrectly. This caused her to leave the banquet hall alone in order to explore the castle while he continued his investigation of the strange game they were now trapped in. And indeed, this immediately led him to finding Victoria who explained her circumstances all the same.

Except… Rather than changing his mind, Soren inevitably followed through with his original plan of making her his dance partner. Since he was a shadowless anomaly, guessing his identity incorrectly would result in her own mask shattering without a swap in identities occurring, allowing her to free herself from the game’s grasp. The timeline was reset with Victoria losing her mask but never being able to return with her original body.

The second timeline began exactly when Soren approached Victoria. However, there was a slight change in the information within the Beyond this time. Because Soren had [Eyes of the Fairy] active the entire time, his decisions were mostly influenced by what he was seeing within that unfounded realm. Namely, knowledge about the castle’s inner workings, and its suspicious custodian…

Cassilda.

Whatever magecraft was responsible for the time loop had a suspiciously similar anima signature to hers. This caused some overlapping to occur between their information, which made Soren’s mystic eyes more sensitive to her incessant monitoring. He had been able to thoroughly discover her presence and some clues regarding her circumstances.

This led him to changing his mind—he no longer wanted Victoria as his dance partner. Why investigate one of the victims when he could simply locate the source of this mystery? And since he knew that Victoria was likely going to keep most parts of her new identity even with the mask shattering, he found it useless dealing with her first.

Curious about why Soren changed his mind, Cassilda inadvertently approached him through a disguise which the Traveler immediately saw through. This led to him initiating his dance with her instead of Victoria who had now escaped the ballroom with a new assigned task.

The dance continued as usual with Soren still plotting to complete his original plan of using his status as an anomaly to free Camilla from her mask and allow her to break the order of the game naturally. Except, since their masks had been shattered due to Guardian Spirit simply removing them from the game, the nobles had to face their sins more directly in this loop.

Their original identities were never fully restored—only their connection to House Azrathiel and the mask’s powers over assimilating to that identity had been severed, effectively exiling them from the family. Which meant, once the ballroom was no longer isolated from the remaining castle’s subspace, the roaming shadows of the remaining Hyades people that had been dragged in with Soren and Ynixia had free reign to take their revenge. The timeline was reset with Soren and Camilla watching the massacre unfold coldly and her eventually deciding to join them in death.

The third and final timeline began once again at Soren’s discovery of Victoria and her circumstances. However, because of the added interference due to the time-resetting magecraft’s anima being more similar to Camilla’s own signature, his [Eyes of the Fairy] was able to pick up far more information than the second loop. His initiation at a dance with the Duchess came with a similar plan formulating, but that added knowledge brought inevitable changes to their conversations.

Namely, knowledge regarding his and her relationships to Ynixia.

Soren knew from the information he had gathered that both Ynixia and Camilla had at one point been close friends in the past. He didn’t know the extent of their relationship or why Ynixia didn’t remember their shared past, but it did make him think rather deeply about his own circumstances that connected him to them.

After Camilla asked him that fateful question, he couldn’t help but see the similarities between his actions when dealing with both of them. She was indeed right—Soren hated Ynixia. She was a constant reminder of his past failings, and her connection to the Nameless Mist was equally as disturbing. Not to mention the possibility of her being Guntharion’s daughter.

And yet, he decided to aid in her mission anyway. The same could be said about his connection to her former friend, Camilla. This girl’s circumstances were also forced upon him by her sister who seemed to be aware of his maskless nature. And despite there being numerous ways for him to achieve his goal without aiding her, Soren still decided to do so anyway.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The answer for why either of these decisions were made was rather simple: Curiosity.

It was the driving force behind every one of his actions in this forsaken world. The only thing that was compelling him to continue moving forward, despite his current nihilistic approach to his own existence. And the irony of having to make the same decisions with Camilla that he made with Ynixia ultimately results in his acceptance of this defining quality of his. So much so, it literally becomes the unifying principle of his Soul Realm’s willpower. The definition from which his Magecraft Persona was forged:

The Cabinet of Curiosities.

To his left, another holographic display layered atop the crystal’s surface could be seen. He read the contents quietly:

Status

Name: Soren Andersen

Race: ???Age: 23

Vocation: Traveler

Magi Persona: Cabinet of Curiosities

Magi Rank: Adept (3rd Circle)

Magi Affinities: Mesmerism (10 Spells), Ephemera (3 Spells)

Soul Realm: The Hermit’s Eye (Kindled Stage)

Soul Weapon: The Records (Unique) (Tier 2 - Grimoire)

Conduit Connection: Unstable

Skills:

[Record] (Rank 2) - Chronicle the information around you.

[Eyes of the Fairy] (Rank 2) - See the unseen.

[Cards of Insight] (Rank 2) - Pass on the information around you.

[Hymn of the Unseen] (Rank 2) - Sense the hidden rhythm of the world.

[Worldsong Murmurs (Rank 2)] - Give form to the world’s melody.

[The Faerie Court] - Enter the Realm of Realms.

Blessings: N/A

Anchors: [Julie-Anne Kafka] (Earth), [Tazzith] (Yarian), [Ynixia] (Carcosa)

Rune Collection: [Fairy Witness] (2 Expression and 1 Insight) [Cantor’s Crown] (3 Insight) [Somnium] (1 Insight, Unmerged)

Reading through it, Biblion could only sigh. These changes were indeed responsible for the alternative ending in the final loop. Because Soren was able to shatter through his Soul Realm’s barrier immediately after forging its new defining principle, he was much more inclined into testing the new spells they had been researching all along…

Ever since his arrival in Carcosa, Soren was presented with newfound mysteries to understand and decipher. The most important of which was related to the Beyond within this forsaken world.

According to the Axiom Codex as well as other books they had read, there was a known phenomenon in the field of magecraft called simply as ‘Affinity Attraction.’ Scholars from all across Yarian have observed that Material Runes of the same affinity tend to always be scattered and hard to discover. But once a location was mapped to them in the Beyond, they tend to form clusters and groupings, as if attracting other material runes of the same type to the same location.

They theorized that this was likely how certain regions in the Beyond obtained their identities. Places like the Fae Sword Field or the Runic Constellations were simply representations formed from these clusters of material runes representing the same governing concept. And since Affinities tend to emerge due to phenomenon that already exist in the natural world, the concepts that influence the natural world the most tend to acquire more representation, leading to these ‘biomes’ growing bigger and bigger within the Beyond.

Of course, this was all simply a theory. Most scholars have no formal understanding of Phantasms or the field of Soul Alchemy as a whole. They likely cannot fully grasp the existence of Abstract Runes and their influence over the formation of Material Runes. These were topics covered by Pendragon and His research which has mostly been dismissed as nonsense in most legitimate institutions across Yarian.

But that was why this topic was so compelling to Soren. Because unlike Yarian—a complete world full of its own unique realizations and history—Carcosa was anything but normal. It had no ‘true’ history. Everything regarding its existence depended on the erasure of other existences.

Aside from Ynixia and Soren, they have yet to actually find a true living settlement. Everything seems to be made of Living Shadows and their forgotten halves. Beings whose only salvation was achieved through Remembrance.

Worst of all, none of them seemed to share a common identity. There were settlements Soren and Ynixia had discovered in the Outer Boundaries that seemed to belong to foreign realms neither of them have actually heard of. Even this Hyades Castle they were now stuck in seemed to possess visitors from other planes of existence too.

This was of course paradoxically incompatible with Biblion’s current understanding of the Hyades people and their supposed ‘nativity’ to this land. But even more pressing was where Carcosa’s Beyond fit in all of this…

In the beginning, neither Soren nor Ynixia had any clue what the Beyond actually looked like in this world. Through earlier probes with [Eyes of the Fairy], Soren was met with only disappointment as the entire unfounded realm seemed to be nothing more than an empty void of ashes, soot, and dark mist. Wherever he looked, he would only find an abyss staring back at him coldly, and worse yet, the strain on his eyes to try and look deeper countered any gains he might have had due to the ability’s rank upgrade.

Eventually though, they did finally discover something incredible. Hidden beneath layers of shadows and uncertainty, were clusters of Material Runes that glowed faintly upon discovery!

The Affinity Attraction principle had once again been demonstrated. And most miraculous of all, the runes that were clustered together were not just from the same affinity, but of the same world origin too!

Just like the strange human settlements in Carcosa that resembled forgotten locations and histories from differing worlds, the Beyond seemed to reflect this quality also, forming clusters of material runes of all types—treasure troves that didn’t even require Soren to rely on his now unstable Conduit for Runological Divinations.

Although these clusters were mostly formed of groupings of affinities unrelated to them, Soren was still able to find plenty that were linked to Wards and most curiously, Ephemera which was slightly more common than Mesmerism. This ultimately allowed them to research plenty of new spells. In total, their combined research allowed them to come up with seven new ones in total—five for Mesmerism and two more for Ephemera.

Historic Recital was one of those two newly created spells. Although its restrictions were fairly debilitating, it was still fairly miraculous when used properly. Its ability to rewrite history cannot be understated at all.

Though, it had to be mentioned that the removal of one aspect of the historic event being recreated was only a temporary measure. Once the spell ended its activation, the newly formed history from Soren’s alteration would immediately reverse and return to its usual state. This was due to the Beyond’s self-corrective properties. If the game hadn’t ended from the altered conditions Soren created, the masks would have immediately returned as a factor in the history of that recreated event.

Of course, this issue never appeared because the problem was solved before the spell had fully concluded. Soren’s decision to remove the masks from the historical timeline allowed for the nobles to fully remember their true identities completely. It didn’t matter how many identity swaps they had conducted—without the masks existing at all, that history would have been erased too, allowing them to return to their original status.

And since they had already been exiled by Camilla—the Guardian Spirit—their life and death no longer mattered to the Castle’s duty. Their disappearance due to Ynixia consuming their Living Shadows marked their end completely. As for the visitors of other realms, they too would likely have returned to their original worlds, awakening there as if everything they had experienced was nothing more than a dream.

Except for Victoria, that was…

Biblion sighed. Soren may have been able to break out of that demented game without time resetting this time, but what came next was also fairly important. After all, all three loops would have technically still ended in Soren and Ynixia’s escape. What drove those resets was still largely a mystery, but he could tell that the manipulation of time was to the benefit of someone indeed…

That woman named Morgan.

From his connection to the Anchors, Biblion was able to witness Ynixia’s battle against Her. After seeing the reset in the ballroom the first time, he was later able to see the same thing happening to Ynixia too—albeit in a more limited way. Morgan had used Her magecraft to reverse time of Albert’s beam attack, giving Mordred a second chance to dodge it.

After the second loop ended with Soren, he decided to use his authorities to sneak another message into the [Card of Insight] handed to Victoria at the start of the third loop. Now, the future rested in both of their hands.

“What will you do from here…” A soft smile tugged on his lips for the first time in a while. “I’m fairly excited for this newly formed script, Soren… Don’t be a disappointing character to follow.”