First thing in the morning, I rushed to the mirror. The whole "hair on fire" phase turned out to be temporary. Fortunately. My hair was pitch black again. My eyes had also returned to their usual state: two absolute, lightless voids taking up the entire eyeball.

  "Alright," I exhaled, touching my face. "Better this than yesterday's inferno."

  The day went by in its usual, well-worn groove. At lunch, I sat staring into my plate while Alexia, following her new habit, ran her fingers through my hair. It had practically become a ritual. I observed the table. Alphus was integrating deeper into the group. He sat right next to Lianel, joking and enthusiastically discussing something. The princesses were laughing.

  I looked at them and thought: What kind of friendship is this? Mutual benefit? Or not? They actually seem like they're having fun. Alphus no longer looked like the terrified roommate; he looked like part of the group. And me? I was just... there.

  Returning to my room, I found it empty. Silence and solitude. I sat on my bed and thought. I'm fifteen. Apparently. Alexia is almost seventeen. Lianel is eighteen. Alphus is seventeen. Anna is probably around the same age. I felt completely out of my element.

  "A fish out of soup," I muttered, mangling the proverb.

  The age gap was only a couple of years, but they spoke about things I didn't understand. Or didn't want to understand. There was a chasm between us that couldn't be filled by even the most delicious pizza.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  The sound came from the window. I frowned. Fourth floor. What kind of lunatic knocks on a window at this height? A kamikaze bird? I walked over and pulled back the curtain.

  Hovering outside the glass (evidently using wind magic) was Anna. I looked at her with a mute question written all over my face: Are you serious? She started gesturing frantically, signaling me to open the window. It was obvious she was struggling. She was carrying something, and that "something" was visibly dragging her down.

  I stood there for a solid minute, just smiling and watching her suffer. Let her hang there for a bit, it's good for the cardio. Finally, when she was starting to turn red from the strain, I unlatched the sash.

  "Catch!" she gasped.

  And she hurled a massive tome right at me. I wasn't expecting the sheer mass of it. I caught it, but the momentum was so immense that I crashed to the floor with the folio on top of me. The book was impossibly heavy. Far heavier than paper and leather had any right to be. It felt like I was holding a slab of lead.

  Anna vaulted lightly over the sill, landing in the room right after it.

  "I have an important delivery," she panted heavily. "My grandfather sent me here to give this book to you. Personally."

  "Heavy as hell," I groaned, trying to shove the "brick" off my chest.

  "Grandpa was dead serious about this," she added, dusting herself off.

  "Why didn't you just knock on the door?" I asked, getting to my feet. "Why the circus act with the window?"

  "Grandpa said no one could see this. It had to be a secret transfer."

  I looked at the book. It looked ancient, the cover worn down by centuries. "Alright. Transferred? Great, now get out."

  "No," Anna hopped up onto the windowsill and crossed her legs. "I want to see what happens. This is a very... strange book."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I sighed. Arguing was pointless. I placed my hand on the cover. The book immediately responded. It vibrated slightly and began to emit a soft, yellow glow. I opened it. The pages were blank. But I felt an instinctual surge of knowledge, as if someone had whispered directly into my brain: Pour in your mana.

  I started pouring my mana into it. And then, it happened.

  The book flared like a supernova. A brilliant, blinding light flooded the entire room, entirely banishing the shadows. My eyes—my absolute black voids—suddenly ignited in response, projecting piercing rays of yellow light.

  Thousands of thoughts began to manifest right in the air in front of me. Not words, not pictures, but raw emotional projections. Memories. My memories. There were so many of them that the sheer psychic weight of it pressed me into the floor.

  First came an incredible Warmth. Love, care, the coziness of a home I couldn't consciously recall. Then—a horrific Cold. The total isolation of a frozen wasteland. Brilliance. Pain. Physical agony from wounds, from profound loss. Then—unbelievable Joy. Happiness. The laughter of friends whose faces I couldn't see, but whose elation I felt in my bones.

  So many moments rushed past in a single second. And then, the world seemed to drain of color. The yellow light was swallowed by a thick, oppressive Darkness. The book began to exude a black aura.

  This was the most horrific era of my cycle. I felt the Terror of Death. Thousands of deaths. The screams of enemies, the crunch of shattering bones, the choking stench of burning flesh. All of it was by my own hands. I was the Destroyer.

  But that wasn't the most terrifying part. The most terrifying part was the realization that it felt good. In that moment, immersed in that absolute darkness, I relished it. It was an intoxicating sense of absolute power and profound peace.

  I began to shake violently. But the Book shifted its wrath back to mercy. It glowed yellow again. Warmth returned. Happiness. The good memories washed over, suppressing the dark.

  About thirty minutes later, the storm finally subsided. I lay on the floor, breathing heavily. I understood now. I had to do the exact same thing. This wasn't an ordinary book filled with written text. It was an artifact that canned the soul. It recorded pure feelings and memories straight from the mind, completely unfiltered.

  I placed a trembling hand on the page. "Record," I whispered.

  I began to pour my current emotions into it. The embarrassment from Alexia's affection. The pride of crushing Karim. The taste of Anna's pizza. The hollow sadness of realizing I was just a "tool." The creeping terror of my own power.

  The Book absorbed it all. The light faded. A crushing exhaustion dropped onto me like a tombstone. My consciousness simply snapped off, and I plummeted into a deep, dreamless dark.

  When I woke up, the first thing I registered wasn't pain, but noise. Absolute chaos reigned in my head. Thousands of memories had collapsed onto me all at once, screaming and shouting over one another. Chronology was dead. I remembered the taste of wine I drank three hundred years ago, directly layered over the smell of yesterday's pizza. I remembered the face of a woman I loved during the Age of Dragons, perfectly superimposed over the face of Alphus struggling to light a fire. Everything was pureed in the blender of eternity. I didn't know where the Past-Me ended and the Present-Me began.

  I lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling, desperately trying to snatch just one coherent thought. The sun was blazing outside the window. Morning.

  I cut my eyes to the side. Only Anna was in the room. She was sitting on a chair beside my bed, arms crossed, watching me intently.

  "Where's Alphus?" I asked quietly. My voice was hoarse.

  "I didn't let him in," Anna replied calmly. "When you passed out, I locked the door. Told him you caught a highly contagious magical fever and sent him to sleep... let's just say, in the hallway. Or in my room, if he managed to find the key."

  I tried to process this. "You were here all night?"

  "Of course," she scoffed, though her eyes betrayed deep exhaustion. "You were sleeping so soundly... You were completely defenseless. I could have smothered you with a pillow in two seconds, and you wouldn't have even squeaked."

  She spoke with her usual biting sarcasm, but I understood the subtext: she was guarding me. She had stood watch over me while I was knocked out from the Book's toll.

  "Well, it looks like you've come back to your senses," she said, standing up. She casually hefted the impossibly heavy Book (she was evidently using enhancement magic). "My mission is complete. Grandpa will be pleased."

  She walked over to the window, threw it open, and prepared to take off. But suddenly, she stopped. She turned around and looked me dead in the eyes.

  "Greg..." her voice trembled, losing its usual arrogant edge. "I'm sorry."

  "For what?"

  "For what I did to you back then. With the pizza. With the training. I... I didn't know who you were. Or what you're going through."

  I didn't answer. A hurricane of a thousand lifetimes was tearing through my skull, making it impossible to formulate a response to a simple human apology. Anna, taking the silence for an answer, nodded to herself, leapt out the window, and flew away, taking the Book and my recorded feelings with her.

  I was left completely alone with my chaos.