The throne room of the Aurelion Kingdom pulsed with gold-veined obsidian and sun-sigil banners. At its center sat High King Arcturion Solvaine, draped in a cloak that shimmered like the inside of a star. His fingers tapped the armrest slowly as he read the latest intelligence reports.
"So… the boy truly exists," Arcturion said coldly. "And the Originis Lineage has been named."
A dozen high generals knelt in silence. Among them, a masked woman in gleaming crimson armor bowed her head.
"Your Majesty, confirmation has been double-verified. The System has acknowledged the Originis syntax. The Kingdom of Virelia has publicly accepted Ari Solen as heir to that lineage."
"Then our window to silence him has closed," the king said with a flare of his gaze. "We shift from silence to destabilization."
He stood, raising his hand to summon the Grand Strategos.
"Dispatch covert skirmish squads across the border. Sever their supply lines. Collapse the trade roads. Make the world remember that revival of forbidden bloodlines will be punished."
"As you command, Radiant Sovereign."
In Virelia's royal bastion, a glowing war map updated in real-time with markers—red for lost outposts, blue for strongholds, and now a growing spread of gray, signaling disrupted territories. Officers and mages bustled, tension crackling through the air.
King Caelus IV stood beside several generals and the Echo Vault envoy.
"They're not striking our capital," a war mage muttered. "Just everything around it."
"Classic Aurelion," said General Vexien. "Death by a thousand cuts."
"We've lost three eastern outposts, three supply convoys have vanished near the border, and the northwatch tower at Mistpass was obliterated by Solar Sigilcasters. Aurelion's forces have advanced spell superiority."
Caelus slammed his fist against the table.
"We cannot afford open war. Not while Originis is still in flux."
The Echo Vault representative, robed and masked, spoke up in a tone of veiled concern:
"And if Ari falls into their hands, we lose control of the deepest fragments of the old System—maybe of reality itself."
Ari stood in the arena alone. The stars had just emerged, and the chill of uncertainty was creeping into every corner of the continent.
He had been watching the war reports too.
Three lines of defense had fallen.
No one had told him directly—but the whispers, the shifts in mood, and the sudden absence of professors on "emergency assignments" said enough.
He wasn't just a student anymore.
He was a political weapon. A flag. A reason to kill or be killed.
Cerys found him sharpening a fractured mana-core, threading his own code through it. She spoke gently.
"The skirmishes aren't going well."
"I know."
"And yet you train alone."
"Because if I'm going to be hunted," Ari said, "then I should be ready when they stop sending scouts and start sending kings."
She didn't argue. She only stepped beside him and activated her own spellcircle—joining him in silence.
On the borderlands, the Aurelion war machine advanced.
Their soldiers bore solar-forged armor, and their Sigilcasters were trained in overclocked battleweaving. The terrain warped beneath them—burned paths, collapsed sanctuaries, and Threaded citizens taken as prisoners or experiments.
And then… came the Scorchmages, elite commandos who used inverted Signum, designed to devour enemy spellcraft.
In a single night, seven frontier wards fell.
The world began to take notice.
Aurelion was not attacking Virelia out of spite—it was fear.
The Originis had returned.
And the world, once rewritten, was no longer safe.
That night, Ari dreamt not of flames or spells—but of a field of white void and static threads—unmoving, ancient.
The child from before—the one who called himself the System's Embodiment—appeared once more.
"Do you understand now?" the child asked. "Reviving what came before doesn't just awaken power… it awakens enemies who remember."
"I don't want to destroy the world," Ari said quietly.
"But you will. Not because you want to… but because it was never meant to hold someone like you."
And then he woke.