I waited until the moon was high before I moved.
The palace guards were well-trained. Loyal. Predictable.
Which meant exploitable.
I cloaked myself in silence magic—a spell I had refined under Mother's guidance—and slipped through the upper corridors, down past the Moonlight Hall, through a forgotten spiral stairwell behind the royal library.
The air changed the deeper I went. Stale. Charged. Ancient.
Like the ruins of Rome before the world admitted they existed.
At the bottom, I found it.
A chamber sealed by runes not native to this world.
Angular symbols that hummed like electricity, not mana.
And at its center… a mirror.
But not of glass.
It was a portal. One I recognized immediately.
Not because I'd seen it before.
But because it shouldn't exist.
The border shimmered with Earth's digital artifacting. Binary interference. Quantum code stitched into runes.
It bore a small engraving at the base in Roman script:
[ARCHIVE-17: PHASE 1 EXPANSION]
[PROPERTY OF PROJECT AURORA – 2025]
My Earth memories clicked.
Project Aurora.
A theoretical initiative barely leaked to public domains before my death. An attempt to reach alternate realities through synchronized quantum resonance and neural backup transference.
In other words… rebirth by data.
[System Update – Classified Tier Unlocked][You have discovered: "Anomaly Alpha – Entry Point Detected"]
[Would you like to access suppressed Earth-linked memories?]
[Warning: Full Access may cause Emotional Instability or Temporal Feedback Loop.]
I accepted.
And my head burned.
I saw my death again.
Not in pain—but in context.
I wasn't randomly reborn. I was uploaded.
The version of me in this magical world was built from compressed cognitive data, uploaded in 2025 moments before Earth's skies cracked open.
[Global Cascade Event.]
[Earth: 82% destruction.]
[Dimensional Merging: Initiated.]
I collapsed to my knees.
The magic system of this world wasn't born from nature.
It was born from invasion.
And I… I wasn't the only one transferred.
The Spiral Cult?
They weren't just another enemy.
They were remnants. Survivors. Perhaps even fragments of other Earthlings, corrupted by incomplete transfers or by exposure to alien cosmology during the breach.
That meant I had enemies who thought like me.
Worse—some might remember me.
I stood and faced the mirror again.
Behind it, I saw flashes—Earth cities folded into medieval terrain. Skyships burning over forests. Knights wielding railguns. A war of eras.
I didn't touch the glass.
Not yet.
I was still a child. Still growing.
But now I understood the stakes.
I wasn't just building a kingdom.
I was building the last firewall between this world and extinction.
I left the chamber in silence.
Sealed the stairwell with a timed entropy lock.
And sent a silent signal through my system to Mother and Father's personal nodes:
Begin Omega Protocol: Project Flameborn is active.
[Level Up!]
[Current Level: 18 → 20]
[Status Points Gained: +10]
[Unspent: 15]
I split them evenly: +5 Strength, +5 Agility, +5 Mana.
My stats glowed with refinement.
But this wasn't just about leveling up anymore.
I was preparing for war across realities.