Daniel had mastered keeping his expressions neutral while people grabbed, lifted, and groped his body, so he barely reacted when Renti helped him into a wheelchair and didn’t blink as soldiers lifted it and walked down the stairs—even though falling meant breaking all his bones. So he patiently trusted the four-man team as they carried him down the windy staircase. When he got to the bottom, he saw all of his classmates clapping and cheering for him. He would’ve felt moved if Andy wasn’t also smiling and clapping with his girlfriend with the rest of them, reminding him that two or three or all of them were his enemies, increasing his paranoia.
Get out, he reminded himself.
Yet he could soon tell the people who really cared when people reacted to his condition and how they treated him. The people who cared looked at him with pity. Those who didn’t treated him like someone with Alzheimer’s: alive and there—but spoken about in the past tense.
Yet, in those brief exchanges, he learned everything that didn’t come up by the whims of natural conversation in his bedroom.
“Lots has changed, man,” Darius said, sitting next to him. It was his turn to say his words and mourn. “Jason’s gone. I know you’re probably happy about that.”
Daniel had to suppress his expressions and pounding heart when he heard his words. Thankfully, it was customary not to look or listen when people made their confessions.
“Mary and Brandon, too,” Darius said. “God, they were psychopaths. All of ‘em.”
Her enemies…. Daniel thought. She’s killed all of them.
“It’d be kinda sick if you woke up, now, to be honest,” Darius chuckled and shook his head bitterly. “A lot of shit happened.”
Darius recounted everything: How King Escar tried to execute Sara, only for her to lead a revolution. How Escar and Mary mysteriously died in a fire. How King Lemings and King Quell declared war again, and how she crushed their armies. As Daniel listened, he had to suppress a violent urge to laugh. The news of what had occurred was hilarious. To think, he had done so many dark and raw and twisted things to change the hell that befell the Escaran Kingdom, only to be hit by a rock and wake up to find that everything was the way it was seven years ago. Almost a mirror’s edge, reflecting an alternative reality where everything was the same but different. Now THAT was funny.
Daniel didn’t have selective hearing. Darius did a damn good job at winding and molding Sara’s actions into something virtuous, and Daniel admitted that it was amazing that Sara managed to win the Three-Front Siege with less than 5,000 casualties and virtually no citizen deaths, all while building alliances with Lemings, Quell, and Markon. That was a far cry from what happened when the three kingdoms declared war on Jason. He understood that everyone important was alive, that Jason and Mary deserved to die, that King Escar was destined to imprison Sara like Jason, and that things were markedly different than they were under Mary’s rule. Oh, yes. Daniel understood the virtues of Sara’s rule—
—but it didn’t change the fact that she murdered all her enemies and repeated history! Nothing changed—she just used her knowledge of the “future” to repeat Jason and Mary’s cruel and egotistical ways in a way that maximized the greater good and best suited her image.
And Darius was proof—
—Sara had become the Hero. Not the Resented Tyrant or the Sadist Queen. No—the fabled Hero. The one Jason yearned to be, the beloved leader that would lead Reemada to victory against the demons—something that was all but guaranteed, considering that she had killed Agronus in the last cycle with half the power.
Sara was a virtuous hero in her last life—someone who reluctantly took up the mantle to save the world. Yet, in this life? She had become everything she hated. Just thinking it made his body vibrate as he held in the desire to burst into overwhelming laughter.
“But thank God for Sara, man,” Darius said after recounting everything that had happened. “She’s really pulled through for us. And…. I don’t know, man. This world’s really fucked up. I think we all had this dream that we’d be heroes. Right? That propaganda. I believed it. But after a few weeks of war…. That shit changes you. But….” He laughed. “Imagine if this shit happened during the Thousand Year. Demons…. We’d be so fucked….” He paused for a while but then smiled. “But when she crushed those armies without killin’ that many people…. I don’t know. That shit gave us hope. It’s good shit.”
Daniel internally smiled. Just yesterday, he would’ve questioned his morality after hearing that. Sara (using dark tactics or not) accomplished everything that he planned to before his spell backfired and she retained her memories. Yet now he could only hear a hollow shill, the effect of politics warping someone’s mind and perspectives.
Daniel suddenly didn’t feel so bad about his actions anymore. If the ends truly justified the means, and the end result was the only thing that mattered—
—why shouldn’t he be the Hero? It didn’t matter, right?
“Anyway, I gotta go, man,” Darius said, slapping his legs and standing. “I’m sure someone else will have happier shit to talk about. “Good talkin’.” He bumped Daniel’s shoulder with his fist and walked away.
Then, one after the other, the heroes showed up and told him about what had happened while he was asleep, and Daniel took mental notes about what Sara did, the way she interacted with people, the way she talked, spoke, and acted—and he was just getting started. He would find the things that worked and ensure he didn’t repeat history in the next cycle—or ensure that he repeated everything exactly as she did if he liked it. It ultimately had no consequence. The only thing that mattered was that Sara wouldn’t remember during the next round.
2
Sara sat around the campfire after a long hike, swirling an unopened bottle of Helshma around in her hands.
Raul sat opposite her with Emma, watching the bottle spin, “Kye loves you sober.”
“If Daniel was dead, I’d be smiling instead of spinning this,” Sara replied.
Emma hugged her knees.
Raul took a deep breath. “He’s a vegetable.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then why do you look like you’re gonna kill him?”
“Listen, Raul—Daniel set up paralysis arrays to trap me—those arrays almost killed you. That’s a strict contrast to Jason and Mary, who I didn’t kill—and look how that turned out. They all proved they were dangerous—it’s not some grand conspiracy. So stop chastising me for being anxious.”
Raul stopped talking. After a while, he chose to ask. “Do you plan to kill him?”
Sara looked into the fire, deliberating her words. “Against my better judgment—No.” Raul’s eyes told her that he didn’t believe her.
3
Daniel cultivated his body constitution in the night. Since his entire body was broken except for his bones, it smoothly built muscle in ideal ways from the start. He could almost walk on his own, something he pretended not to be capable of. More importantly, he’d be able to draw arrays soon—he just needed something to draw with. He wasn’t hesitating anymore. There were countless things that he had to make up for—and he refused for his actions to have been for nothing.
4
Sara and her group hiked silently through the Callarm Forest, moving toward the Galsk Trading post. They’d reach it in two days.
5
The next day, a caretaker wheeled Daniel around the castle, moving down the corridors. He looked around slowly, fixing his eyes on locations he wanted to visit. The caretaker used his eyes as orders, and his status allowed him to enter just about any room.
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6
While Daniel was away, an arraycraft specialist approached Lord Winter’s room. Her name was Reea, and she had been in and out of Lord Winter’s room periodically for the last few years for a specific purpose—maintaining the hydration arrays that kept Daniel alive. She was also tasked with another goal: checking for arrays in the room. Why? She wasn’t certain. Yet after Lord Winters awoke, Lord Andy Trent had approached her and gave her a hint.
Daniel was part of Lady Reece’s operation to expose corruption, he had said. So he’s gotta lot of enemies. That’s why he’s been under protection and the reason we’ve been having you check for traps.
It made sense. She asked some questions and he gave her a bizarre and nervewracking order, and that day she was going to fulfill it.
“Hello,” Reea said to the guard outside Lord Winter’s room.
“Still checkin’ up, Reea?” a guard asked.
“Yeah. I’m creating a healing array that’ll automatically activate if he bleeds,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“I’m not sure what the obsession with this kid is, but they’ve spared no expense….”
“You’re telling me,” he said, bending his legs and groaning. “Can you make one of those for us?”
Reea laughed. “I’ll ask.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I?”
“Sure.” He opened the door. “Need help?”
“Yeah. Can you flip the mattress?”
“Sure.”
They went into the room and flipped the mattress. Then, she started marking it with ink. After a few minutes, she turned to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding?”
“I am guarding.”
Reea looked at him with a mocking smile.
“Alright, alright,” he groaned, walking out and shutting the door.
Reea’s heart thudded. She quickly took out a scroll and put up a dampening barrier that lowered the sound in the room. Once it was activated, she dropped to the floor and quickly started drawing an array next to his bedside.
7
Daniel turned toward the west corridor and fixed his eyes on it.
“You wanna see the healing district?” the caregiver pushing him around asked. She was eager to see many things herself—he felt—and he was an access card. “Let’s go,” she said.
They went through a garden within the castle, which had rays of sun coming through via the skylight. It was summer, so it was humid and fragrant with mana herbs growing for elixirs and medicines.
Just a little bit more… Daniel thought, turning away from the healing district and looking down the hall.
The nurse was surprised by his impatient decisiveness. “You remember this place, don’t you?” she muttered.
“I….” Daniel said.
“Interesting… I hope this’ll jog your memory.”
Daniel’s heart pounded when she turned and started moving toward the arraycraft guild down the hall. When they entered, Daniel felt like he was home. There were a dozen people using chalk and ink to draw arrays on jewelry and building materials like bricks and wood.
“Excuse me,” she said when she entered. “I brought someone special.”
To Daniel’s surprise, Roman wasn’t there. But someone recognized him.
“Lord Winters!” Rompa, a man with a long white beard and a characteristically perverted mind behind closed doors, said. “Welcome back!”
“I….” Daniel grunted.
Rompa frowned.
“He’s recovering,” the caregiver said ruefully. “But surprisingly, he remembers this place. So I thought it’d jog his memory.”
“Is that so…?” Rompa looked at Daniel. “You wanna refresher?”
“I… uh….” Daniel said.
The caregiver almost squealed, and Rompa’s eyes widened. “Then what’re we waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s do this.”
Rompa brought Daniel to his workstation and started showing him arraycraft. Daniel focused on it intently, drawing excitement from the caregiver. As he watched, he glided his eyes around, searching for chalk. He found some on the floor behind Rompa’s desk. It belonged to an arraymaster working on a large array on the floor. It was an extra piece. If she moved, he could use raw mana to pull it toward him.
“This is the split rune,” Rompa said, drawing a rune on a brick. “Do you remember it?”
“I…. Uh…. I….”
“Oh, yeah. This’s the good stuff. Two actions are better than one, just like a good threeso…” Rompa remembered the female caregiver standing there. “… three-way lock. You know?”
“I….” Daniel said in agreement. Suddenly, the woman working on the floor left the room with a scroll, and Daniel’s heart pounded. Slowly, yet decisively, he used raw mana like a second hand to grab the chalk. It started rolling toward him.
8
Reea finished loading the array and carefully scrubbed the chalk off the floor. It needed to dry.
9
The chalk had barely rolled to the chair’s wheel when the caregiver said, “I think it’s about time. They want him back by four.”
Rompa grunted in disapproval and looked at Daniel, who looked a bit disheartened. “Sorry, kid.”
“I… uh….” Daniel said, stressed out of his mind. He tried wrapping mana around the chalk, but he had to be dead silent. There would only be one chance.
“I know…” the arraymaster sighed.
She pulled Daniel’s chair back, making him panic. But she stopped only a few inches away, nearly exposing the chalk.
“Can he come back tomorrow, maybe?” she asked. “I’ve never seen him more lively.”
Rompa’s eyes widened, and he looked at Daniel, who rolled the chalk to the wheel again. “That okay with you?”
“I…. Ye… Uh….”
The caregiver gave a gasp. “Are you trying to say ‘Yes?’” she asked like he was a puppy.
Suddenly, the woman working on the floor array said hello to someone in the hallway—she had returned.
“I… Ye….” Daniel said, wrapping his mana around the chalk and lifting it. It wobbled in the air, threatening to drop. If it did—it was game over. And if the arraymaster walked into the room, looked for her chalk, and saw it levitating next to Daniel… fuck! He shouldn’t have been so impatient!
“I think it’s actually helping,” the caregiver said. “I’ll bring him back tomorrow.” She turned the wheelchair around as the female arraymaster walked into the room. The motion hid the levitating chalk next to the wall. Then, Daniel could only internally scream as he rolled out of the room, chalk gradually moving to his hand, wondering how he got away with it. His heart pounded the entire way back to his room. Yet, as he got closer to his quarters, he felt increasingly victorious. That night, he would start regaining his power. Yet he wasn’t even halfway down the corridor to his room when he felt a blast of mana and heard a female let out a blood-curdling scream.
10
Raul walked through the forest with a deep sense of unease. Traveling with Sara had been the best experience of his life, and spending time with Emma was great beyond his imagination. Yet, things changed drastically when Daniel woke up. In an instant, the dark Sara he had begrudgingly accepted as reality like dull trauma had returned. Raul understood her fears, and he deeply wished someone would kill Daniel.
—He just didn’t want Sara to do it.
The thing that bothered Raul wasn’t her fear of Daniel; it was her cold paranoia and mindset that killing people would solve her problems. That was a cruel and slippery slope and made him fear for her future. This trip proved that Sara could find happiness and move on, and Raul believed that she’d lose that if she killed Daniel. It was eating at him, so during the next break, he flat-out asked: “If you’re not killing Daniel, what are you going to do about him?”
Emma folded her arms, clamming up as she turned to Sara.
Sara put her hands in a stream, lifted the water to her mouth, and drank. Then she stood and turned to him with a dull smile.