Joseph reached the school campus and was immediately confronted by multiple banners promoting army recruitment. They hung from every pillar, every wall—bright, aggressive posters demanding that young men sacrifice themselves for a nation's ambitions.
Nearly 90 per cent of the Penraven army was lost in the last conflict, he noted grimly to himself, analysing the situation with cold logic. The victory belongs to the new government, not to the people. This drastic reduction in academic time for boys, compelling them toward military service, is a direct consequence. They're breeding soldiers from the ashes of the old ones.
A familiar sound came from behind him. "Hey, Joseph."
His friend rushed up, panting slightly. The boy's expression was tense, worried. "Everyone's sombre about Anni today. Try not to bring up yesterday's incident."
"I understood," Joseph replied simply, though his mind was already churning with what had happened—the hospital, the battles, the truth about himself that Johan and Jennifer had spoken.
I wish I could forget it myself, he thought, watching the anxious expression on his friend's face.
They entered the classroom, which hung heavy with an atmosphere of profound sadness. Most desks were empty—many students had stayed home, unable to face school after witnessing a classmate's suicide attempt. Those present maintained a mournful silence, some quietly praying for Anni, their lips moving in whispered supplication.
Joseph settled into his desk, trying to make himself as invisible as possible. His gaze drifted toward the window, seeking escape from the suffocating grief that filled the room.
On the pavement below, his eyes fixed on the Principal engaged in a strained, insistent conversation with a group of army officers. They wore crisp military uniforms, their bearing rigid and authoritarian. They looked like men who had never questioned an order in their lives.
Joseph opened the window just enough to catch their words. The sound drifted up, urgent and desperate.
"Commander, I know this is a government order, but I implore you to understand the situation," the Principal was requesting, his voice low and pleading. "Our students are deeply shaken by yesterday's tragedy. They have witnessed a suicide—she is one of our best students. They are not mentally resilient enough to process any form of military recruitment advertisement right now."
The Army Commander laughed—a harsh, cruel sound that made Joseph's skin crawl. "Do not fret, Principal. The government will soon mandate compulsory army service for all sixteen-year-old boys. This is just a formality."
"And will those boys be deployed to the front line?" the Principal asked, his tone tight with fear and concern for the students under his care.
"Undeniably, if a war-like situation comes," the Commander stated with brutal honesty, as if the lives of children meant nothing. "And as for the girl, tell her parents to cease her education immediately. We require men to serve the nation, not weak, useless insects."
Joseph's hands clenched into fists.
The casual cruelty of it—the dismissal of Anni's suffering, the indifference to the children he was supposed to protect—it ignited something fierce in him. He slammed his fist down on the desk in sudden anger, the sound loud enough to draw glances from nearby students.
I will never join them, he swore internally, his voice iron in his mind. They are not serving this country—they are consuming it. They are vultures feeding on the bones of the desperate. And I will never leave my family to such duress. Never.
The intensity of his own emotions surprised him. Where had this protectiveness come from? This willingness to defy orders, to refuse the government's demands?
The classroom door opened. Miss Lara, their teacher, entered. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her voice noticeably sad from yesterday's incident. The students stood up respectfully and wished her, "Good morning, Miss Lara."
"Good morning, you all," she returned the greeting, though her smile was fragile, barely held together."Anni is fine. She can talk now."
The relief that swept through the classroom was palpable—a collective exhalation, a loosening of tension. Students who had been sitting in rigid silence finally allowed their shoulders to relax.
"Is Martha coming today?" Miss Lara asked them.
One of the students stood up to answer. "She was scared by yesterday's incident. That's why she didn't come today."
"Today's classes are postponed," Miss Lara announced, "and we are going to the auditorium for a government announcement. After that, we go to see Anni in the hospital."
The irony wasn't lost on Joseph—the same government that wanted to take young men and send them to die would now make speeches about duty and sacrifice to traumatised children. The intention is clear to manipulate, brainwash, and spread their propaganda for their own benefit.
All the students started moving toward the auditorium, a river of uniforms and sadness flowing through the hallways.
But Joseph separated from them and went to the library instead, moving against the current with quiet determination.
The vast library was empty. No students, no teachers, just the towering shelves and the smell of old paper and leather. It was a sanctuary of knowledge and silence.
But he found one student of his class already there—Theo, quietly reading a large, leather-bound book. The boy sat in a secluded corner, his expression intense and focused. Joseph recognised the deliberate isolation—this was someone who didn't want to be found.
Joseph went to a nearby shelf and took a book at random, not really interested in reading but needing a reason to be here, to think, to process.
Theo murmured to himself, his voice loud enough for Joseph to hear: "I think I'm not the only one who cares about his family rather than bravery and glory."
Joseph looked up from his book, studying the other student with new interest. "Your accent is not common in Penraven. Are you from Deuchasland?"
Theo raised his eyes from the page, slightly surprised by the question. "How do you know this?"
"My mother lived five years in Deuchasland," Joseph replied, "She sometimes uses that accent."
"Oh, I see," Theo said, returning to his reading. But there was something different in his posture now—a heightened awareness, as if he had recognised something in Joseph.
Joseph glanced at the book Theo held. It was an ancient text, filled with complex diagrams and arcane symbols that seemed to shift and move when he looked at them directly. The pages were yellowed with age, the binding cracked and worn. This was not a normal school book. This was something forbidden, something that carried weight and power.
Joseph's analytical mind kicked into overdrive: I guess he worships the Lord of Knowledge world. He's studying the old texts, the ancient knowledge systems. If he knows that I was that Lord, what will be his reaction? Will he try to kill me? Will he see me as a threat or as something to be revered?
The moment those thoughts crystallised in his mind, everything changed.
Theo's head snapped up. His eyes locked onto Joseph's with sudden, violent intensity. His entire demeanour shifted—the quiet student vanished, replaced by something deadly and focused. Anger flickered in his gaze like flames consuming a city.
He snapped his finger. The gesture was simple, but the power behind it was immense.
"Meer-Endless sea dimension!"
The world dissolved.
The surroundings changed violently, reality itself seeming to tear apart around Joseph. The library vanished. The school disappeared. Everything dissolved like ink in water.
Joseph found himself standing on flat, endless seawater. There was no ground beneath him, just a tranquil blue ocean surface, yet somehow he did not sink. His feet rested on water as if it were solid stone. The sky above was an unsettling, brilliant white void—not clouds, not air, but pure nothingness. It was Theo's emotions, thinking, and part of his memories, his dimension.
He was no longer in the physical world.
This was a dimension—a mindscape, completely isolated from reality. A space where Theo had absolute dominion, where the laws of nature bent to his will. The water beneath Joseph's feet seemed to pulse with life, responding to Theo's thoughts and commands.
Joseph looked across the impossible ocean at Theo, who stood opposite him on the water, radiating lethal focus. Theo's hands were clenched, his expression twisted with an anger so pure, so consuming, that it seemed to darken the white void around him.
"What were you thinking in your mind?" Theo demanded, his voice echoing across the empty seascape, bouncing off invisible walls. "What do you mean that you are the Knowledge Lord?"
The accusation hung in the chilling, silent space of the Deep Blue Dimension.
Joseph's mind raced, his survival instincts screaming at him. He had made a critical mistake—Theo could read minds. Of course, he could. Mind-reading was an ability of the Knowledge World, of those who served the old Lord.
I need to de-escalate. I need to explain. I need to survive.
"Theo, wait, wait," Joseph pleaded, raising his hands in a gesture of peace, though his voice trembled with the shock and fear bubbling up inside him. "I am not who you think I am."
But Theo was beyond reasoning.
The student looked at him with a lethal anger—an anger that transcended personal grievance. This was the rage of someone mourning a master, someone who had lost everything to the man standing before him.
"I listened clearly to what you were thinking. Your thoughts are pure." Theo spat, his voice filled with accusation and fury. "I can read your mind. You are the lord who killed my master, my only family."
He raised his hand, and the water around him responded instantly to his will.
"Rise as a sword," he commanded, his voice echoing with ancient authority.
A tight sphere of seawater rose from the depths of the ocean beneath them, glistening under the white void's light. The water twisted and compressed, becoming denser, sharper, more lethal. Theo squeezed it in his fist, and the water instantly transformed, forging itself into a gleaming, deadly sword of pure crystallised seawater.
THWICK-SHING
The blade was beautiful and terrible—translucent blue with edges sharp enough to cut through steel, through bone, through life itself.
In a fraction of a second, Theo closed the distance between them with impossible speed. He was a blur of movement, his body responding with the precision of someone trained in combat for years. Joseph barely had time to register the motion before the sword came down.
Theo delivered a brutal slash—a vicious, killing stroke meant to end this in one blow.
The water-sword cut clean through Joseph's right hand.
Blood sprayed across the white void—dark and surreal in this impossible dimension, it fell like rain, painting the white nothingness with crimson. The sword also grazed Joseph's ear, leaving a burning line of pain across his face.
Joseph screamed.
The water-sword now stained a faint pink. His lethal anger had not abated; it had crystallised into something colder, more focused. He watched Joseph's suffering not with glee, but with grim satisfaction.
"You feel pain," Theo observed, his voice flat. "You bleed. You are diminished. The stories said you were invincible. A perfect mind in a perfect form. They were wrong."
Joseph's severed hand fell away, tumbling through the air toward the infinite ocean below. The pain was blinding, all-consuming, a sensation that demanded his entire attention. Blood poured from the stump of his wrist, reality beginning to crack around the edges of his vision.
This he had never expected. He was facing death in front of his eyes.