The sun had completely dipped toward the west, and the sky over Astra Academy began to turn a deep navy blue.
The noisy, buoyant heat that had swept through the plaza during the day had at some point settled into calm, and in its place bloomed a subtle anticipation for the evening event.
The ornaments hanging from each faculty’s tent swayed lightly in the evening breeze, and people’s footsteps naturally began to gather toward the central plaza, where the highlight of the festival would take place.
The enormous magical lamps set up throughout the plaza were still quietly waiting, holding only the faintest glow before they truly blazed to life.
As the curtain of night descended, those soft clusters of light captured people’s gazes and created a dreamlike atmosphere.
For someone, it might have been the start of an unforgettable romantic night, but to me, it was nothing more than an extension of the dreadful overtime I wanted to cut off immediately.
I quietly slipped out from among the crowd and stepped back.
My legs had gone weak, and even walking felt exhausting.
If I ran off right now toward that dark path leading to the dormitory, no one would know.
A lighting ceremony was more than enough if I could just see the light seeping through the gap in my room window.
But before I could turn around and take the first step, familiar presences approached from both sides.
“I wouldn’t recommend leaving your post at this timing, Yurian.”
On my left, Nadia blocked my escape route with her characteristic gentle voice.
Her smile was flawless as always, but her eyes were seeing straight through me with not even the slightest margin of error.
“It’s right before the lighting ceremony. We have to finish the final residual phase inspection. Where are you going?”
Erka appeared on my right.
In her hand, she was still holding a notebook filled with dense handwriting, and while her gaze was directed toward the magical lamp at the center of the plaza, she was definitely blocking my way.
I felt my stomach tighten and forced the corners of my mouth upward.
“No, well…… I was thinking of going to the bathroom for a bit...”
“Based on your current route, that direction is the shortest path to the dormitory.”
The one who cut off my excuse was Briana, who had been tapping away at a terminal a short distance away.
Without even raising her head, she pointed out only the dry facts and firmly tied me down to my position as special field assistant.
“An unauthorized departure by field personnel will be reflected in the academic records immediately. Your current authority is directly connected to reporting anomalies across the entire plaza. Stand by at your assigned position.”
My throat went bone-dry.
There was nowhere to run.
I wasn’t a suspected troublemaker.
I was necessary personnel, administratively and perfectly surrounded.
At the exhaustion that fact brought, cold sweat ran down my spine.
Resigned, I let out a heavy sigh and turned my gaze back toward the plaza.
The plaza was so packed with people that there was no room to step, but even in that complicated crowd, the pieces I had spent the past few days colliding with and setting into place were each interlocking like gears in their own positions.
At the outskirts of the sparring ground on the Swordsmanship Faculty’s side, Dylan was controlling the crowd with the veins in his neck bulging.
“Please do not cross the safety line! If you step on this line, lighting ceremony or not, I’ll throw you all out!”
Near the entrance to the Reconnaissance Faculty’s maze booth, Rowen was adjusting the spacing between the torches while guiding people’s flow of movement.
Beside him, Mia was wrinkling her nose and inhaling the air.
Even while suffering from the complex smells of oil and perfume in the festival grounds,
she was persistently filtering out any ominous presence that might be hiding among the crowd.
It was peaceful beneath the white tent of the Holy Faculty as well.
Rine and Amelia were handing warm herbal tea to exhausted visitors.
And near the central magical lamp, Seria was glancing at Erka’s notebook while carefully fine-tuning the output of the auxiliary magical lamps.
Thanks to her cautious touch, which immediately lowered the light if the phase was even slightly off, the flow of magic power at the center of the plaza was smoother than ever.
I stared blankly at the scene.
It felt strange.
It was a sense of stability I never could have created if I had been running around alone in a corner, trembling in fear.
The clumsy hints I had left behind while forcibly twisting the trajectory and running away had been accepted by them in their own ways, and now they were holding up this grand festival night.
At the fact that the students of this damned academy were doing their parts far better than I had thought, a sense of relief rose in one corner of my chest without me realizing it.
But I soon shook my head violently.
No.
If I acknowledged this feeling, it would be over.
The moment I took on a sense of responsibility, thinking that I had contributed to this festival running safely, I would be dragged forever into the middle of the original story’s vortex.
I was nothing more than a feeble extra who needed a diploma because he didn’t want to starve to death.
“Yurian, let’s circle the central stage one last time.”
At Nadia’s words, I headed toward the area near the central stage as if being pushed from behind.
The stage was covered in splendid carpets and decorations, and above it was connected a massive lighting device that would soon embroider the night sky.
It happened just as I was passing beneath the stage.
My fingertips tingled ever so slightly.
It was not a massive terror that choked off my breath, nor was it a horrible afterimage as though an explosion were about to happen at any moment.
But like a bitter taste left on the tip of my tongue, a very faint and unpleasant sense of wrongness was rising from beneath the stage.
I stopped walking and looked at the gap under the stage.
One of the auxiliary connectors where countless magic lines were tangled together.
It was near the very spot where the Tail had tried to secretly switch out a spare part, only to flee in surprise at the sound of the bottle I had dropped.
The part itself wasn’t contaminated.
But it seemed that the lingering trace of the failed work the Tail had left behind while fiddling with it had shifted the phase of the connector ever so slightly.
“……Erka. Down there, I think one of the auxiliary connector lines is a little strange.”
I pointed toward the gap in a voice that sounded like it was crawling into the ground.
Erka immediately approached, bent at the waist, and examined the flow of magic beneath the stage.
Her blue eyes sank coldly as they swept over the spell formula as if dismantling it.
I waited for her to speak, tense to the limit.
My hands were damp with sweat.
“The residual phase is a little tangled.”
Erka straightened and spoke calmly.
“But functionally, there’s no problem. It isn’t contamination severe enough to cause a runaway, and it isn’t touching the main power line either.
If anything, with the event right in front of us, if we try to unravel that and touch the line again, there’s a higher chance that the output balance of all the magical lamps will collapse and cause an even bigger error.”
Erka’s judgment was rational.
It was the conclusion of a genius of magical theory, so it was surely correct.
But the unpleasant sense of wrongness lingering around my fingertips did not disappear.
Should I insist and fix that line right now no matter what?
But as Erka said, if I rashly touched it and ruined the lighting ceremony itself, that responsibility would be added entirely to my filthy academic record.
No matter how I thought about it, stepping forward now and making this bigger was suicidal.
“……Right? It should be fine.”
I forced myself to nod and stepped back.
To hide the trembling of my fingertips, I clenched my fists tightly.
It was at that very moment.
Dong— dong— dong—
From the academy’s enormous bell tower, a solemn peal rang out through the night sky, announcing the start of the lighting ceremony.
In an instant, the murmuring that had filled the plaza died down, and every gaze gathered toward the central stage.
Amid the swelling anticipation flowing through the air, I could see Kyle smiling brightly on the stage in the distance.
The most splendid moment of the festival was finally about to rise.
I looked down at my tightly clenched fist and bit my lip.
My heart was pounding wildly.
“Please, just for today, let my senses be wrong.”
Over the silence that filled the plaza, a low and grand vibration began to spread.
It was the signal that the academy’s massive magic reactor had caught its breath and was ready to release its light.
The night sky had already settled into a deep ultramarine, and pushing through that cold darkness, thousands of small magical lamps rose from the ground all at once.
The clusters of light freed from the bonds of gravity created a magnificent sight, as if the Milky Way were flowing in reverse.
Gasps of admiration burst from the mouths of the people filling the plaza, with no one knowing who started first.
I, too, stared blankly at the dazzling sight.
Near the stage, Kyle and Serena stood beneath the splendid lights.
As befitting the protagonist of the original story, Kyle’s blond hair absorbed the cascading light and shone brilliantly gold, while Serena’s neat posture at his side added authority to the festival.
At this moment, they were the most perfect protagonists in the world.
I turned my head and looked around the plaza.
In front of the Holy Faculty’s tent, Rine was smiling brightly and waving at the children.
Her expression, a little more excited than usual, had a warmth that put even those watching at ease.
At the entrance to the maze, Mia stood with her ears perked up as she watched the crowd surge in, and over by the control panel, Erka and Seria were checking the magic gauges with serious expressions, absorbed in the final adjustments.
In the honored guests’ seats, Senior Nadia was among the sponsors, wearing a relaxed smile as she brought the festival’s success to a close.
Every piece was in place.
The dreadful sense of wrongness that had tormented me throughout the preparation period was nowhere to be found.
The safety line I had altered, the stakes I had moved, the supplementary notes I had forced onto Erka—everything was interlocking and moving perfectly like gears.
‘……Maybe it really will pass without incident.’
It felt as though the stone pressing down on my stomach had grown a little lighter.
I leaned against a shadowed corner beneath the stage and swallowed dryly.
If the final burst of fireworks for the lighting ceremony went off like this, my long hell of work would come to an end for now.
But before that relief could completely fill my body—
“……!”
Along with the sensation of my heart plummeting violently to the floor, a chilling cold ran down my spine.
It was the instant the enormous “central magical lamp,” the core of the central stage, began to activate in earnest.
The moment the tremendous energy spewed from the magic reactor rushed along the conductors and toward the stage, my fingertips began to tremble so violently that I could not control them.
Along with the sensation of my heart plummeting violently to the floor, my vision blurred in an instant as though black paint had been splashed across it.
A fragment of the future, forced open regardless of my will, stabbed into my eyes.
The plaza in reality was still filled with cheers, but the future unfolding before my eyes was a horrific pandemonium.
At the instant the enormous central magical lamp, the core of the central stage, activated in earnest, the residual phase of the auxiliary connector created a dissonance and made the magic power flow backward.
The central magical lamp of the future spat out a sharp metallic shriek instead of beautiful light and shattered into pieces.
Scattered shards of magic power shot in every direction, drawing screams from the audience, and the faces of Kyle and Serena, who had been shining on the stage, twisted with confusion and fear.
Black smoke rising over the darkened plaza, and the sound of people weeping.
That was not the success of the festival, but the academy’s disgrace and the beginning of a disaster.
Back in reality, my fingertips trembled so violently that I could not control them.
Cold sweat running down my spine stung my eyes and blurred my vision.
There was no time.
The misaligned beat I had seen in the future’s devastation was, at this very moment, slowly beginning to pulse within the spell formula of reality as well.
My mouth went dry.
Should I shout here and stop the event? But if I did, the crowd would fall into panic, and I would be recorded as the lunatic who ruined the festival.
On top of that, the phase misalignment had already begun.
If someone did not physically intervene right now, that future would be set.
I forced strength into my staggering legs and moved toward the underside of the stage.