The lecturer raised his staff again and when he spoke, his voice amplified.
"Time to learn a new truth and this time, there is no need to beat around the bush. Long ago, during the Fluxwave Phenomenon, the First Great War began. It was a war between the Fluxers and the Fluviums. The war lasted from the year 1340 to 1350. In that crucible, the Golden Age of Fluxers was born."
Golden Age. I heard that phrase before but in MoDS, it was always dropped like a flashy trailer tagline. I wasn't expecting to hear it in a place where people actually bowed their heads when it was mentioned.
"You've all heard the myths that the Five Goddesses looked down upon the world during the Phenomenon and gave Flux to everyone. That humanity was equalized overnight and every man, woman, and child awakened to new gifts."
The hall stirred to murmurs and nods. I nodded too because yeah, that was what I knew. That was literally what the opening cutscene of Masquerade of Dreams Shattered told me. But then the lecturer smiled.
"That is not the truth."
The room froze. For a moment, even my own brain short-circuited. The lecturer raised his staff again and silenced the whispers before they could even rise.
"The Five Goddesses did not give Flux to the world. Flux already existed millennia before them. However, they publicly gave Flux to five humans. And from those five came all the rest."
I swear I could've heard a pin drop. Every student leaned forward and even I felt my pulse spike.
"Five beings were chosen not as champions, but as architects. They were the original wielders of the Combat, Elemental, Psyche, Alteration, and Concept Flux types. And unlike the powers you wield today, theirs were not diluted. Each of them stood at the Deka Category of the Seventh Awakening, the absolute summit of strength."
I blinked hard, trying to process. Seventh Awakening Deka? That's… top tier endgame power. MoDS always treated that like myth-level status and he was telling us the first Fluxers started there?
"These five did not receive gifts to bask in them. They were given purpose. The Fluviums had risen, bent on tearing apart the order of the world. And so the Fluxers marched. They built armies of mortals and infused them with fragments of their power. For ten years, they bled, burned and endured. And they won. In 1350, the Fluviums were banished. Victory was ours but in that victory, the Fluxers realized something greater. Their powers could be more than weapons. They could be foundations. They could guide, shape and protect."
He began pacing the stage, his staff dragging lines of light across the stone with every step.
"And so, the original Fluxers chose to divide their gifts. They formed factions called Houses. Each House embodied a rule of Alteration, Combat, Psyche and Elemental. Together, these became the six Radiance Houses. Alongside them rose the Aiding Houses, expanding their reach, preserving their legacies."
I was scribbling mental notes like crazy. The entire lore base of MoDS was… wrong.
"Yet, not all were blessed. There were those who remained human. And from among them, arose the one who would wield the fifth rule, Concept. He was granted his gift by the Goddesses as well but he gathered the rejected and powerless. For one hundred and fifty years, he built four cities hidden from the rest of the world. They became sanctuaries of humanity, carved from exile."
He lifted his staff and light shimmered into an image in the air. Four shadowed cities were there, cradled in darkness.
"The first Concept Flux wielder was an Argemenes. And from him came the House of Argemenes, which would be the leader of what would become the Abyssal Houses, which are four Houses born from humanity alone, standing in contrast to Radiance."
Every head turned on me like I had just grown horns. Even Asmarion's gaze cut sideways. I slouched instantly, running a hand down my face.
"Seriously? Just because I'm an Argemenes, you're all going to stare at me like I'm the ghost of the guy himself?"
A ripple of laughter broke across the hall. The lecturer didn't laugh. He just narrowed his eyes at me.
"Back to the lesson, the Twelve Houses are absolute. They are not subordinate to governments. They are not funded by ministries. They are not controlled by kings, presidents, or parliaments. They are factions unto themselves beyond the reach of any country's authority."
He stopped and let that sink in. The room was quiet except for the faint scratching of pens. I didn't bother writing it down. I already knew this much but hearing him frame it so bluntly reminded me that for most people in here, this was shocking, maybe even terrifying. For me, it was just common knowledge.
"Think of the Houses as storms. Governments can build their walls and pass their laws, but a storm doesn't care. A storm obeys no borders. The House of Rameses, for example," he nodded toward the back where I was sitting with Asmarion, "does not answer to the Egyptian government because they rule the Kingdom. They answer only to themselves. And no one would dare move against them."
I could feel the weight of stares boring into me and Asmarion again. I didn't have to look around to know people were stealing glances, whispering. I was a House heir.
"Now, your assignment. By next week, you will submit a full report on the First Great War. Sources are in the archives, but you'll need to interpret them, not just copy them."
Groans rolled across the hall. The First Great War wasn't a "light" subject. But I leaned back, folding my arms, because this was the part where I wanted to see how much the school version of history lined up with the truth buried in Phasnovterich's memories. Beside me, Asmarion smirked.
"You'll like this one, Phaser. The First War's a bloodbath story."
He wasn't lying.
As the lecturer continued, the veil of official history started to tear. He spoke of the Fluviums like they were nightmares given flesh.
"They were not merely animals. They ate both Fluxers and humans. They hunted indiscriminately. Most Fluviums manifested in twisted humanoid forms of animals like wolves that walked upright, serpents with shoulders, birds with skeletal arms and so on. Their faces were horror itself."
I've seen them before in pixelated approximations in Masquerade of Dreams: Shattered. Back then, they were scary in that uncanny, "unclean code" way.
"They consumed not out of hunger, but compulsion. A Fluvium devoured Flux not as food but as instinct. To exist was to consume."
Asmarion leaned toward me, his voice low. "Bet you didn't think wars were this brutal, huh?"
I gave him a small smile, but inside, I wasn't thinking about brutality. I was thinking about what I wasn't hearing because I knew something the lecturer wasn't saying. He shifted the subject toward strategy, how the first Fluxers supposedly shared their powers with armies of soldiers to combat the Fluvium tide. And that's where the story broke apart. Phasnovterich's memories burned at the back of my mind like a second conscience, correcting it.
The first Concept Fluxer didn't share his power. He didn't raise an army like the other four. He didn't hand out sparks of Flux like candy at a festival.
He stood alone.
The First Argemenes was a solitary figure carved the House of Argemenes into existence by his own two hands. It was just him, his Flux, and a vision that no one else could touch.
So when the lecturer talked about "armies raised by the first Fluxers," I felt my jaw tighten. It was propaganda. Maybe not even a lie, exactly because that was what the world knew but for the Concept Flux? It was a complete fabrication.
Only the Argemenes blood carries the Concept Flux, who are the descendants of the First Concept Fluxer. That rule hasn't broken in millennia. I couldn't tell anyone that. If I opened my mouth, half this hall would see me as a miracle and the other half would see me as a threat that needed to be erased.
The lecturer droned on, shifting to timelines, treaties, the so-called "turning points" of the war. I nodded along, pretending to listen, while Asmarion filled in details under his breath. He had that casual tone of someone who grew up inside the stories, like they were family anecdotes instead of ancient history.
Meanwhile, I kept circling back to the truth hiding beneath it all. The Argemenes weren't conquerors by numbers. That's why the Concept Flux was feared not because it spread, but because it didn't. It wasn't shared so it was still at the maximum.
The lecturer closed the session with a final remark.
"Knowledge is power. The Houses survive because they remember. Governments fall because they forget. If you wish to stand among the Twelve, remember that."
Chairs scraped. Papers shuffled. Students began murmuring to each other about their assignments. I stayed still a moment longer, absorbing it all. Lore here wasn't trivia. Lore was leverage and a weapon.