Night fell over Zenith Academy like a velvet curtain drawn by unseen hands. Towers pulsed with soft blue mana-light, and students returned to their quarters, eager to recover from the brutal trial.
But Class Zero didn't sleep.
They trained.
They schemed.
And in Harvey's case—he investigated.
---
Sublevel Archives, 2:17 AM
The academy's Archive Sector was protected by twelve layered security barriers, but Harvey bypassed them with frightening ease.
[Spell Protocol: Ghostwalk - Activated.]
[Mana Signature Suppressed.]
[Optic Trace Nullified.]
He was a ghost in the system, weaving through guards, enchantments, and detection runes like smoke.
This was no ordinary library.
The Archives were a graveyard of forgotten spells, buried conspiracies, and censored truths. Every empire had skeletons in its closet.
And Harvey had come back from the dead to dig them up.
He found what he was looking for in Vault Z-XIX.
A locked tome.
Leather bound. No title.
Just a black mark in the shape of a shattered crown.
[Accessing sealed data... Warning: Memory conflict detected.]
His vision flickered. A flood of buried memories surged up.
Blood. Fire. Betrayal.
His execution.
The Council of Ascension.
The ones who branded him a heretic and erased his name from history.
"The Heretic Protocol was successful. Harvey Luxen has been purged."
He gritted his teeth.
So that's what they'd called it. The Heretic Protocol.
Back then, he hadn't understood why he'd been branded. Now he did.
He'd found something they feared.
And they killed him for it.
---
The Hidden Code
The book wasn't a spellbook—it was a puzzle. Layered encryption bound with forbidden logic and paradox runes. It would have taken weeks to unravel for anyone else.
But not for Harvey.
He pressed his palm to the sigil.
[System Override Request: Manual Decryption.]
[Skill Activation: Arcane Synthesis Lv. 6]
[Beginning real-time reconstruction...]
Pages shimmered and reordered themselves. Symbols reformed into readable text.
At the heart of it all was one phrase, repeated over and over, hidden beneath the surface:
> "The Codebreaker lives again."
His pupils shrank.
That title—Codebreaker—had never been his in the previous timeline. It was something whispered in the shadows, attributed to a mythical figure who could bend any system to his will.
And now?
It was his legacy.
No. It was his warning.
Because someone else in this timeline knew he'd come back.
And they were watching.
---
Class Zero Dormitory, Dawn
When Harvey returned, Cain was already waiting.
"You broke into the Archives," he said flatly.
Harvey didn't bother lying.
"I'm not here to play schoolyard politics," he said. "I'm here to destroy the ones who erased me."
Cain stared at him for a long moment, then tossed him something—a badge.
It had no crest.
Just a single word burned in white:
> "Shadow-Class: Provisional."
"A gift," Cain said. "From someone who thinks you're not just a freak."
Harvey caught it.
So. The secret hierarchy was reacting already.
The pieces were moving.
And somewhere in the academy, someone—maybe another regressor, maybe a god—was setting the stage for war.
Harvey looked down at the badge.
Then he looked at the sky through the dorm window.
"I'm coming for all of you."
---