126 – You Haven’t Changed a Bit

Mal jolted back into his throne.

The hard stone rock thudded against his back. He instinctively gripped the armrest and cracked it from his sheer strength.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. I don't have that strength anymore. What's happening?

Torches flickered against the wall, shadows rolling aginst the black stone.

This is my… castle. But how?

A glimmer of light gold hit his eye. He jumped to the side and out of his chair. A lightning-fast strip of metal cut straight into where he'd been, then into the throne. With a loud boom, it cracked apart the obsidian black stone and sent pieces of rock flying everywhere.

Mal landed in a smooth roll, and his eyes stopped on his attacker.

It was the woman who'd stabbed him just a little bit ago.

Spiked pain stabbed into his head, and he rocked backward with a groan.

Mal pressed the heel of his palm into his temple. “Who are you? You’re not—”

The heroine crossed the distance between them in two steps and slashed her sword horizontally. Mal reached for a Void Orb before he remembered—

Dark magic. Not an option.

The spell halted midway through and recoiled into his chest. Pain lit up his spine from top to bottom. He forced himself to move back and dodge the strike, despite the way his legs screamed at him.

Before the heroine could react, he reached his mana out to touch his Bramble Vine bracelet.

But there was none. It wasn't there.

His hands were pale white, the color of chalk, or marble. His lungs heaved for air like he hadn't breathed in hours.

“Wait, wait, time out!” Mal shouted.

The heroine paused. Her blade lowered by half an inch.

“What?”

Mal's veins burned, both with frustration and the pain of an interrupted spell.

“What is this?” he asked.

“I am here to put an end to you, like I once did in a time long gone.”

“But that doesn't make any sense!” Mal said. “That time is gone—you said it yourself. You don't exist anymore.”

Mal could maybe buy Spiritseason having allowed for some strange miracle to occur with somebody he'd killed in the past—but the past that this specter came from was nonexistent...

Wasn't it?

“I do not possess the answers you seek.”

“Okay. Fine.” Mal straightened his back. “Then answer me this: why are you trying to kill me?”

The heroine's fist clenched tight around her sword.

“I've changed my ways,” he said. “I'm not the person I once was. I've saved lives.”

“Don't lie to me.”

Her voice was as soft as a December snowfall, so quiet Mal barely caught it.

“I've been watching you,” she said. “You think that I can't see what you're doing?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“They're not people to you.”

Mal's breath caught in his throat.

She strode up to him and wrapped her hand around his collar, forcing him back with a sharp tug.

“Can you look me in the eye and say that you helped Rolam merely out of the kindness of your heart?”

Mal opened his mouth, the yes just on the tip of his tongue.

“It doesn't matter,” he said instead.

“It does.” She slammed him against the wall, and the air was driven out of his lungs. “Your intentions matter, Endbringer.”

“Everyone's going to be saved, regardless!”

He shoved her back with a quick push of his arms. He glared at her, every bit of hot rage that had been contained inside of him spewing out at once. Every inch of his skin was on fire, his head hot and heavy, his cheeks fevered enough to burn paper.

“I slew a demon. A professor is alive who would have died if not for me. All of your friends are stronger than they should have been because of me. So why don't you get off your high horse and recognize that what I'm doing is the best way possible?”

She tilted her head at the mention of a horse before she continued speaking.

“Nothing matters as long as the result is good?” she said. “As long as the outcome is achieved, it doesn't matter how many lives you trample on, how much devastation you cause—it's all for the greater good.”

“Yes! Yes, it is!”

She didn't speak for half a minute. The way her posture dropped, her head downturned by the slightest margin, it screamed disappointment.

“You haven't changed one bit.”

The heat drained from Mal's body in one fell swoop. A cold shiver ran down his spine, and all of the energy that had been propelling him forward disappeared at that single sentence.

She brought her sword up for a clear vertical slash straight down. Mal pushed aside the feelings of the cold grip that had taken his heart.

I need to dodge,but she might anticipate it. Left, or right?

Her hand twitched.

Mal made his bet.

He took a sharp step to the right, and the blade followed exactly where he was going to move. Time slowed to a crawl. Not because of Mal's time magic, but merely from how fast his mind was racing.

The blade crept ever closer. It just started to touch his hair when—

A crack ran straight through his vision. The heroine skidded backward from a sudden pressure. Her eyes locked on him, the exact amber shade of Lusia's.

Mal's breath caught in his throat.

“I will find a way to you,” she said. “Mark my words, Endbringer.”

The crack expanded, and Mal's vision was covered in white.

Mal's eyes snapped open.

He rolled straight out of the bed and hit his knee against a drawer. He scrambled to turn around, mana just at the edge of his wrist and about to enter into his Bramblevine bracelet—

He stopped. He'd rolled off a bed. There was a row of them, and a table on the other side of his bed with various herbs and glass vials.

Cassandra stared at him, arms crossed. “You done?”

Mal lowered his hands, then nodded. Bits of sweat flew off from the motion, his head absolutely soaked in liquid.

Cassandra kept her arms crossed. She stepped around to the side and leaned against the wall. There were dark bags under her eyes, and her shoulders were slumped.

Why is she so exhausted-looking?

“Rolam came in here screaming up a storm,” she said. “I did everything I could, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Nothing seemed to wake you.”

“I—” Mal gripped his head, then drew it back and checked his hands. White, but not unnaturally so.

“How long was I out for?” Mal said.

“Only a day.” She scoffed. “I say that as if it wasn't that much of a concern.”

The room fell into silence.

“Do you remember what might have caused this?” Cassandra said. “Did you see anything, ingest anything before your collapse?”

Of course, telling the truth was impossible. It would be a ludicrously terrible idea.

“Not a thing.”

Her eyes narrowed into thin slits.

“Are you sure?” she said. “This was serious, Mal. You were completely unresponsive.”

“So you said.”

“Apprentice.”

Mal tapped his index against the drawer in a rapid motion before he forced his hand into a fist.

“I think it had something to do with Spiritseason,” he said.

Mal would have to be careful not to give too much away, just the absolute bare minimum needed for her to make some sort of diagnosis.

“What?”

“I saw something—” His heart sped up inside of his chest. “A ghost, or a specter, or something—”

“And it attacked you?” Cassandra's eyebrows furrowed together. “That's impossible.”

“I'm a Shattercore, though, so maybe—”

“No, Mal. It's impossible. The dead and the living are a separate world. The veil can lower, but it can't disappear entirely.” She pressed her knuckles against her forehead and stared at the ground. “I can believe that you saw something. Extraordinarily powerful witches are sensitive to spirits, and someone like you—you might be sensitive enough to outright see them. But they aren't able to physically affect the material world. It's a fundamental law.”

“So what happened?”

“I have no idea.” She bit her bottom lip. “It may have been a mental attack. If we're particularly unlucky, you might have some sort of condition. Maybe something to do with the soul?” She shook her head. “It's beyond my expertise. That side of witchcraft is so far beyond mystical—I was never going to be a talent at that.”

“So what now?”

She pushed off of the wall and looked him over from head to toe.

“Well, if it did have something to do with spirit season, then this likely won't happen again until next year.”

“So I have a year to take care of things?”

“You do.”

She stepped back and looked away from him.

“I might have a few options. I'll need to send out some feelers to some old friends of mine.”

“Are you going to disclose my secret?” Mal said.

“No. Of course not. I'm only going to refer to you as my apprentice, and we'll try to avoid an in-person meeting if at all possible, though—”

“—though it may end up being necessary.”

“We'll try everything prior to that,” she said. “I'll look into my own library and see if I can find any symptoms.”

“I'll do some research of my own, as well.”

She stared at him for a little bit longer, something strange crossing her eyes.

“You're telling me everything, right, Mal?” she asked.

Mal's next words were so smooth that he nearly managed to fool himself.

“Of course I am.”

Cassandra had prescribed further bedrest, though she'd eventually left Mal alone to stew on his own thoughts. The darkness of the outside left the clinic nearly pitch black, the only illumination coming from the moon outside.

Mal had to believe that it was a hallucination—an attack of the mind. Perhaps one of the vessels was in possession of an ability like that, and had decided that it would be hilarious to get into Mal's head.

The alternative was an idea too fearful to even contemplate. That somehow, the heroine had followed him back through the corridor of time.

But then that begged the question—how? And why would her appearance be so different than his own? Why didn't she travel to her former body? Why was she in the form of a ghost?

Her words rang back in his head. He stuffed his head under the pillow and clenched his eyes tight.

You haven't changed a bit.

You haven't changed a bit.

You haven't changed a bit.

His hands tangled up in his hair, and he tugged hard enough to send sharp, knife-like pain up and down his scalp.

She was wrong. It was wrong. Whatever that was, they couldn't be right. Mal had changed. Mal was different. Mal would avoid the mistakes of the past.

His sleep was restless for the rest of the night.