The black tome pulsed.

  Not visually, its pages didn’t glow, no runes crawled across the surface, but Raven felt its rhythm like a heartbeat.

  Like something alive was inside it, listening for him to slip.

  He swallowed hard.

  “Alright… let’s see what you are.”

  The pages flipped on their own, slowly, deliberately, until they stopped at a section inked with strokes so dark it was as if the paper had been cut open to reveal night itself beneath.

  Words formed.

  [The Eighth Veil is not a celestial one serves.

  It is a celestial one survives...]

  Raven’s jaw tightened.

  Cryptic warnings irritated him more than frightened him.

  “Just tell me who it is,” he muttered.

  The library did not appreciate impatience.

  The air turned heavier, like a deep ocean pressing down.

  Shadows at the edge of Sector Delta-9 stretched toward him without moving, somewhere far behind him, shelves groaned in complaint.

  Then the page reshaped itself.

  Letters bled upward like ink reversing gravity.

  [THE EIGHTH VEIL

  Erebus

  Celestial Authority: Eternal Darkness & Concealment

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Designation: Primordial god

  Status: Active. Unbound. Watching...]

  Raven felt a pulse of cold dread, not fear, but recognition, like he had just stumbled across a memory he didn’t know he lost.

  “Erebus…” he murmured. Wolfton do mention that name a lot, but—

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  The page answered instantly:

  [You asked that question once before.

  You were warned not to ask it again...]

  Raven’s eyes widened.

  “Once before…?”

  The cadence wasn’t metaphorical.

  It wasn’t prophetic.

  It was literal.

  He flipped the page violently.

  More ink surfaced, sharp, jagged, like something clawed the message directly into the paper.

  [THE CHAMPION OF THE EIGHTH VEIL

  A Champion is chosen under three conditions:

  (I) The Champion exists outside destiny but inside consequence.

  (II) The Champion carries a fractured essence.

  (III) The Champion bears the Mark of the Forgotten...]

  Raven stopped breathing. Fractured essence?Outside destiny? Mark of the Forgotten?

  Every hair on his body stood on end.

  “That’s not me,” he whispered.

  “It can’t be me.”

  But then the ink twisted again, this time forming a silhouette.

  A simple black outline.

  Stick-thin, A stickman.

  Raven staggered back.

  “No. No, that doesn't make sense, Wolfton said—”

  He stopped, because the silhouette wasn’t just a stickman, It was him.

  Specifically him.

  The pose, the stance, the slight tilt of the head he always had when reading.

  The book had drawn Raven’s body language.

  His blood turned to ice, before he could form another denial, the next line appeared:

  [Champion Identified: Raven Stoneheart...]

  A gust of freezing air hit him in the face, except the room had no drafts.Sector Delta-9 had no airflow, no temperature fluctuations.

  The cold came from the tome.

  The shadows around him tightened, converging like jaws.

  Raven reached for his own shadow reflexively, invoking his essence, but it felt sluggish, resistant, as if something far older and far darker overlapped with it for a heartbeat.

  A presence stirred inside the book.

  Not a voice, voices were mortal.

  This was awareness.

  [You returned in time.

  You rewrote consequence.

  You denied your first end...]

  The ink paused, then:

  [Erebus does not like loopholes...]

  Raven’s breath caught.

  “My… first end?”

  A memory stabbed into him, a memory that didn’t exist.

  A battlefield.

  A sky split in two.

  A shadow devouring his very soul.

  He collapsed to his knees, clutching his head.

  “No, no, no, no. what is this!?”

  The book didn’t wait for him to recover. It turned the page on its own, revealing a final statement written in a style unlike the prior text, far smoother, far more intentional, almost elegant.

  [You died once, Raven.You won’t die the same way again.

  But know this—]

  "Stop saying crap, I died once and that was during the war with the Archmage, this I'm seeing is—"

  A shadow moved behind him. Slow, deliberate, aware.

  Raven spun around, nothing there, but the air reeked of something watching.

  He turned back to the book, one last line had appeared.

  Handwritten, not with ink, but shadow.

  [The Archmage was right to call you traitor...]

  The tome slammed itself shut, the chains reassembled around it like metal serpents snapping awake.

  Sector Delta-9 dimmed.

  The runic lights flickered.

  Alarms hummed in the silent distance, quiet but urgent, as if the library itself knew a boundary had been crossed.

  Raven stood frozen, processing one horrific realization: The Archmage didn’t call him a traitor to intimidate him.

  He called him a traitor because he knew Raven had been someone else’s Champion in a different timeline he no longer remembered.

  Raven’s heartbeat pounded in his skull.

  If this was true…

  Then the Archmage wasn’t his future enemy.

  He was his executioner.