Sleep didn't come easily after my first day of classes. My body ached with fatigue, but my mind refused to slow down.
Sophie and I had forgotten to have lunch because we had lost track of time in the library, but we had both devoured our evening meals. However, now that I was back in my room, I couldn't help but be unsettled by Professor Hawthorne's voice. Something about the way he had spoken - passionately warning his fresh batch of students, telling us to be wary of the past. It dug into me like a splinter I couldn't reach. Festering just beneath the skin, a warning I wanted to pick away at. The Magisters weren't always saviours, neither was Merlin. They were both tyrants, driven by their lust for magic. The world had been built on lies and who knows how many deaths.
I lay in bed long after the lights had dimmed, staring at the ceiling of my dorm room, watching the shadows slowly pool like blood. The silence of the university wasn't always comforting - it was at times like this oppressive, too still, like a breath that had been held for too long.
I could feel my grimoire, like a second heart. Held within its void, it felt like a second heart. Slow, rhythmic. Beating along with my chest like an echo.
Eventually, exhaustion claimed me.
But it didn't feel like sleep.
It felt like falling.
—
The world I awoke in was wrong.
The sky above seeped like an open wound - split open, oozing rays of sickly golden light that bled across a canvas of dying blues and purples like infected veins across a bruise. The sun, if it could still be called a sun, was swollen and bilious, its light not warm but feverish, pulsating in the sky like a diseased boil about to burst.
Ash fell like snow. It clung to me, settled on my skin, filled my lungs with a dry taste.
The land beneath my feet was barren, cracked, and marred. There were no trees, no grass. Just dust and husks of things that had once been alive. Towers crumbled in the distance, their bones jagged and white against the crimson horizon. There was no sign of birds, no breeze. Just the faint sound of weeping - soft, distant, hopeless.
I wasn't alone.
I knew that immediately.
I wore grey robes that trailed behind me, heavy with dust and blood, torn by battle. The shadows at my feet moved with a will of their own, writhing and twitching as if they were alive. My hands were older, broader - stained with ink, blood, and time. I walked with a heavy purpose, the weight of every step dragged like chains behind me.
And inside… inside was something vast.
It wasn't just magic. It was deeper, more condensed. And much, much older. A well of power that hummed beneath my skin, a violent storm waiting to be unbound. It didn't provide comfort, or reassurance.
I was no longer a man, or even remotely human. I was a vessel.
And I was hungry.
'The Grey King…'
The title wasn't spoken aloud. It simply existed. Like a truth etched into the bones of this world. And as I walked through the ashen plains, the title echoed through every whispering ruin, every fractured monument, every hollow corpse that stared into the sky with sunken sockets.
I had come to a battlefield.
No - the battlefield.
The last of this world.
The ground was carved by spells cast long ago, trenches infused with glass, craters blistered with dying embers of magic. Bodies were scattered like forgotten hopes and dreams. Knights in silver armour. Monstrosities made of flesh and bone. All fallen.
Above it all, a fortress lay decimated. A once great palace of onyx and steel, now little more than a gaping maw, teeth from the earth.
I walked through the ruins, reaching the heart where a mirror stood.
Not of glass, or even metal.
Obsidian. Taller than I was. Its surface rippled, not like water - but like oil. Reflecting the last colours that remained in this world.
I peered into the mirror.
And saw myself.
Crowned in silver and gold. Cold eyes, void of warmth and love. A man, or something more. Something primordial and relentless.
I reached out for it hesitantly, but it didn't want to reach back.
Behind the reflection, there was pain…
Betrayal. Rage. A sea of loneliness that could drown a fish.
And beyond the malice, there was something worse.
Doubt.
I turned at the sound of footsteps - six of them, clad in flowing robes of white and red, untouched by the rot of the world, their grimoires hovering in the air beside them.
Each one glowed with a different hue - sapphire, emerald, gold, violet, crimson, and pure white. Forming a circle of celestial defiance around me. Their faces were not those of tyrants or monsters. They were calm, determined. Worn by years of sacrifice, perhaps even regret. But they didn't tremble or hesitate.
They were Magisters.
The last of their Order.
Their presence did not bring hope.
Only finality.
This would be the end.
The one who stepped forward was tall, with raven-black hair twisted into braids. Her eyes glistened with grief, and when she spoke, her voice didn't echo - it resonated.
'You went too far,' she said, not in anger but mourning. 'Even if we stop you now, we can't survive this. Nobody can survive here.'
I recognised her face, it tugged at my heart. I had cared for her once upon a time.
My silence was my answer.
I raised my hand.
The ground shrieked.
It split with a cry of shattering stone as ignited veins of black ink erupted from beneath the earth. Shadows unspooled around me in tendrils - sharp, wild, alive. Fire followed in its wake, not orange and red, but violet and black, curling through the air consuming the light.
It wasn't an attack, it was my judgement.
The Magisters didn't flinch.
Their grimoires snapped open, inscribed with runes I couldn't recognise. Light spilled forth - each colour distinct, yet harmonised into one blinding prism of radiance that bathed the ruins.
Chains lashed outward, golden and burning. They writhed through the air with purpose, casting runes, commands. When they struck the shadows, the darkness withered - overcome by the light.
They were not casting spells.
They were weaving verdicts.
I retaliated.
I summoned blades of dusk in the air - curved like crescent moons, forged by fury. I cast storms of razors that cut through the air, tearing the battlefield into molten fragments.
The sapphire Magister summoned a dome of crystallised water, absorbing the barrage before liquefying into the ground.
The crimson Magister burned. Literally. His body was engulfed in flames, every feature flinging arcs of annihilation, meteors of compressed fire that exploded into pillars of inferno.
The emerald Magister raised a hand, summoning roots that broke free from the ashy floor. They moved like charging rhinos, snarling as they entangled with shadows, dragging my magic into the ground to be devoured by the world.
I cast again.
This time I drew from deeper.
From the festering wound inside me.
My grimoire burst into reality beside me, emerging instantly from its hazy mirage. Pages tearing away into the air like dying leaves. The air thickened as the heat rolled in. The blistering sun reignited in its final blaze of glory.
I became a tempest.
One of the Magisters was caught in the aftermath - struck by the onslaught of glass, shattering their protective barrier. The force of the barrage lifting them up into the air, impaled by the shards of glass. The Magister was left mangled in the air, their body covered in glass, descending back to the ground as gravity took hold of them.
The body landed with a sickening thump.
I soared into the air and came crashing down like a falling god, slamming into the ground with enough force to carve a new crater, flattening a hundred meters of ground into molten glass.
The others didn't stop.
The violet Magister wept as she retaliated, her tears glittering like starlight as she carved symbols in the sky - portals through which the cosmos rained.
The white one floated, untethered by the earth, summoning a lattice of runes so complex my eyes strained trying to perceive them. Unleashing a beam of entropy and purity, neither light nor dark, that erased everything in its path.
We fought across the bleeding sky and fractured ground.
Spells collided with the fury of a thousand suns. Mountains turned to dust. Reality itself began to fracture. The stars bled. The ground ruptured until even the bones of the earth were exposed.
And still I fought.
Not for victory.
Or even survival.
But because I couldn't stop.
Because I had to be right.
The remains of the fortress crumbled behind me. Obsidian teeth withdrawing, burying the last sanctuary beneath the earth.
The black-haired woman raised her hand one final time.
Her voice was barely audible now, carried on the final breath of a dying world.
'I loved you once.'
That - That - pierced deeper than any spell ever could.
She brought down her hand.
And the others followed.
Their powers aligned, forming in the sky - one final unison in an otherwise fractured world. It fell like a spear, without remorse.
I raised my arms. Not to block it.
But to embrace it.
The light consumed me.
Consumed us.
I wondered in that moment -
If I had stopped.
If I had let the world be, rather than trying to remove the rot -
Would they have stayed?
Would she have stayed?
I saw her eyes again.
Filled with sorrow.
I reached out with the last remnants of my humanity.
Too late.
There was only light.
And ash.
And silence.
—
I woke up choking on my own breath. It felt like I had been torn from my own grave. Like my body had been pulled backwards, dragged through a void. It left a raw ache in my chest.
My sheets were drenched in sweat. My hands clenched around invisible blades. My heart pounded like a war drum. I could still taste ash on my tongue, still feel the searing pain of the chains ripping through me.
The room was dark, but not empty. My grimoire was floating above me.
One word written in trembling, blazing strokes that slowly scratched into the pages:
Remember
I sat up, my hands shook uncontrollably, my skin still clammy.
The memory - it was a memory, not a dream - still burned behind my eyelids. And worse, part of me… part of me understood.
Not what had happened.
But why?
The Grey King wasn't just a tyrant.
He had been abandoned. Feared. Betrayed by those he trusted most.
And now, somehow. A piece of him was living within me.
Waiting.
Watching.
I stared down at my hands, they were still mine. Weren't they?
Just for a moment, I thought I saw a crown of thorns in my hands.
Not of gold and silver.
But of darkness.