Chapter 3 When Memories Start Lying
Today, Professor Harglow was writing names on the board.
Ancient orders.
Fallen domains.
Closed gates.
Anil half-listened as her mind drifted to the feather left at her door—how it still clung to her thoughts like a taste she couldn’t spit out.
Cael sat beside her, posture steady, taking notes he wasn’t reading. He was tracking the room instead—the air, the shadows, the kinds of things only someone like him could sense shifting.
Lucien, three seats back, was doodling horns on old portraits in his textbook, pretending not to notice anything at all.
“—and so we come,” Professor Harglow intoned as chalk scraped faintly, “to the Era of Severance. The age when heaven withdrew its armies. The time when the high seraphim forbade interference with mortal—”
He stopped.
Just… stopped.
The chalk hovered mid-stroke. The entire class fell silent.
Professor Harglow stared at the empty space on the board as if something had slipped away from him—something vital.
He blinked several times.
Then turned to the class, eyes clouded and confused.
“Strange,” he murmured. “There was a name. Right there. On my tongue.”
Lucien’s doodling stopped.
Anil felt her pulse tighten.
Cael did not move.
Professor Harglow tried again, voice thin with strain.
“There was a faction… or perhaps an order… no. Not an order. A man?” His brow creased. “A being?”
He sounded like someone forcing puzzle pieces into the wrong picture.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, they were clearer—but emptier.
“Never mind,” he said briskly, suddenly dismissive. “The past is muddled. It’s not important.”
He turned back to the board and resumed writing as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened.
Cael’s fingers dug hard into the desk.
Lucien leaned forward, all humor gone.
Anil felt a cold, ringing dread settle in her ribs.
It wasn’t just that the professor had forgotten.
It was how he had forgotten.
As though something had placed a hand over his mind and gently turned it away.
Erased mid-thought.
After class, they retreated to the far stairwell—one few students used.
Lucien slammed the door behind them. “That was not old age.”
Cael nodded once. “I know.”
“He wasn’t blanking,” Lucien continued. “Someone erased the thought while he was thinking it.”
Anil pressed her spine to the stone wall. “Do you think he was trying to remember Ardan?”
The name felt different now—heavier, sharper. Less like a memory and more like a blade.
Cael exhaled. “Not directly. It was like he brushed against something reality didn’t want him to see. Something that doesn’t belong to the rules anymore.”
Lucien huffed. “So reality got embarrassed and looked away?”
“More like…” Cael hesitated. “It flinched.”
Anil shook her head. “Reality can’t flinch.”
Lucien arched a brow. “Reality can do whatever it wants. We’re just renting space inside it.”
Cael’s expression darkened. “Reality follows structure. That’s what makes magic consistent. That’s why destiny existed. And that’s why whatever Ardan is becoming… is dangerous.”
Not because he broke the rules.
Because he was rewriting them.
They met under the elm tree that evening.
Snow weighed down the branches in pale arcs. Their breaths fogged softly between them.
It should’ve felt peaceful.
It didn’t.
“Do you think he’s doing this on purpose?” Anil asked.
Lucien shrugged. “Everything he does now is on purpose.”
Cael stared at the woods. “He isn’t erasing people—not fully. Sienna still exists somewhere. But he scrubbed her presence from here, as if to test how far reality bends before it tears.”
“Why?” Anil whispered.
“To understand the shape of his reach,” Cael murmured. “To test how the world reacts to him.”
“Experiments,” Lucien muttered.
“On us?” Anil asked, already knowing the answer.
“Through us,” Cael said.
Anil pulled Cael’s jacket tighter around her shoulders.
“It doesn’t feel like he’s trying to hurt us.”
Lucien gave a humorless smile. “People don’t need bad intentions to cause damage.”
Cael didn’t argue.
He knew that truth too well.
The second sign appeared in the library.
No spells. No shattered shelves. No screaming.
Just… a name missing.
They had gathered research on unstable grace and forbidden ascensions—Lucien jokingly called it “light recreational trauma reading”—and settled at a long table by the window.
Anil blinked away tiredness as she scanned an ancient treatise, until—
Something was wrong with the page.
She leaned in.
One circle in a chart of celestial ranks was blank.
Not faded.
Not scratched out.
Omitted.
As if the writer’s hand had skipped it entirely.
“Cael,” she whispered. “Look.”
He moved closer, studying the page.
A long silence.
“I’ve seen this chart before,” he said slowly. “Years ago.”
“And?” Lucien asked.
“That circle wasn’t empty.”
Anil’s stomach tightened. “What was written there?”
Cael pressed his fingertips to the parchment, trying to draw the memory forward.
“I… don’t know.”
Lucien snorted. “You forgot the name of an entire order?”
“No,” Cael said, frustration flickering. “I remember something being there. But not what.”
Anil swallowed. “Try saying it. Maybe your body remembers even if your mind doesn’t.”
“That’s not how this works,” Lucien muttered.
But Cael looked thoughtful.
He closed his eyes.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Let me try.”
His breath steadied.
His shoulders relaxed.
He reached backward—
through memory
through training
through everything heaven had forced into him.
He felt the outline of the missing word.
Not letters.
Not sound.
Just shape.
A presence.
He exhaled—and spoke softly:
“I think the missing name is—”
He didn’t get to finish.
The ink on the page bled.
Right in front of them.
Lines shivered.
Letters writhed.
The empty circle pulsed—once—like a heartbeat—
and every candle in the library flickered out at the same moment.
The darkness was absolute.
Lucien cursed. “That wasn’t me.”
Anil’s pulse hammered.
“Cael,” she whispered. “What did you almost remember?”
Cael opened his eyes.
They glowed faintly—not with light, but with recognition he didn’t fully understand.
His voice came out like a breath torn from the wrong century.
“I remembered something I was never supposed to know.”
A cold wind swept through the stacks.
Far above them, a book fell from the highest shelf.
And in the darkness, something whispered—
“Not yet.”
