Chapter 6: Iris

I blinked at him, still half-deafened by the echo of my own mistake.

“Noble?” I repeated.

The soldier didn’t lower his staff, but the green crystal at its crown stopped pointing directly at my heart and drifted a fraction downward.

“Yes?” he answered, and the single syllable carried real confusion, like I’m the strange one here.

I tightened my grip on the sword without meaning to. I forced my fingers to relax, to look less like a thief caught with stolen goods and more like… whatever a “noble” was supposed to look like in this world.

“What makes you think I’m a noble?” I asked, keeping my tone as steady as I could.

Curiosity sparked under the fear.

If a random armored soldier had taken one look at me and assumed high-born, then that meant something in my appearance—my clothes, my hair, my bearing—was speaking a language I didn’t know I was speaking.

And in a camp where rank decided who got listened to and who got locked in a cell, that language might be worth learning fast.

Maybe I can pretend to be a noble, I thought, the idea sliding into place with the cold practicality the loops had forced into me. If a lie could buy me access. Information, authority, an audience with someone who mattered. It might be worth the risk.

The soldier’s helmet tilted slightly, as if he were studying my face through the narrow visor. His voice sharpened, skepticism creeping in.

“You’re not a noble?” he asked.

I didn’t answer immediately.

He continued, as if the explanation was obvious.

“It’s that only nobles still bother to play with swords.”

The words landed oddly. As if the blade in my hand wasn’t a weapon at all.

I almost laughed, but it came out as something closer to a surprised breath.

“Really?” I said. Then, despite myself, enthusiasm bubbled up. Genuine, childlike, the part of me that had grown up watching heroes in films swing steel with impossible grace. “But swords are so cool.”

The admission felt stupid the moment it left my mouth, yet it was also true.

I couldn’t remember much about Kaspar’s childhood or even many concrete details about him at all.

But in my previous life, I had been raised in a world without magic. There were no spells, no crystals, no arcane forces shaping reality.

There were, however, swords.

Growing up in a Catholic, religious household, I heard every kind of tale imaginable. Knights riding off to the Crusades, Arthurian legends, heroes, and defenders of honor. Nothing made a child’s eyes shine brighter than the thought of standing atop a kingdom’s walls, sword in hand, an endless horde of enemies surging below.

Perhaps that was what led me to become a firefighter.

Or perhaps not.

It wasn’t something I had thought about in a very long time.

The soldier raised an eyebrow beneath the helmet. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the expression in the pause that followed.

“…So either you’re a noble,” he said at last, “or you have gold to spare. Who else would waste time with a sword when they could be learning magic?”

His voice shifted slightly when he mentioned magic. Like it was obvious. As if the entire society was built around mana and circles and rings of light, and steel was just an old tale.

He added, almost as an afterthought, “Well, there are the Knights and the Northern Barbarians, but they’d never be in an expedition like this.”

Knights. Barbarians.

The world widened by a fraction with those words. It wasn’t just an Academy and a gate. There were factions, histories, ways of war I hadn’t even begun to grasp.

I glanced down at the sword again.

So to them, swords are obsolete, I thought.

Aloud, I said carefully, “I understand. Still… I don’t think I’m a noble.”

The soldier made an impatient sound, something between a huff and a scoff.

“What do you mean you don’t think?” he asked. “Either you are or you aren’t.”

I could try to bluff. Claim noble blood. Demand to be left alone. It might work for five minutes, until someone asked for a name, a crest, proof.

Or I could tell him something closer to the truth.

I hesitated only a heartbeat.

Then I took the risk.

“I’ve lost my memory,” I admitted.

The words felt dangerous the moment I spoke them. But I weighed it quickly, the way I’d learned to weigh risks now: Worst case, they arrest me. The day restarts.

This soldier, this armored figure with the green-crystal staff, didn’t sound like Blut. He wasn’t snarling. He wasn’t performing cruelty for an audience. There was suspicion, yes, but also confusion. Maybe even restraint.

He doesn’t seem too hostile, I thought.

The soldier tilted his head. The scrutiny in his posture intensified. He didn’t step closer, but the staff angled up again ever so slightly.

“Lost your memory?” he echoed. “That’s quite convenient.”

“It’s the truth,” I insisted. “I remember my name is Kaspar. That’s all.”

My fingers tightened around the sword’s hilt. It felt suddenly incriminating.

I swallowed and took the next step.

“Do you… know me?” I asked. “Sir?”

The armored figure stiffened as if the word had struck him more sharply than any blade.

“First off,” he snapped, “cut the sir crap.”

His tone carried irritation, but not the kind Lieutenant Blut used.

Before I could respond, he reached up and unlatched his helmet.

Metal shifted. Leather straps loosened. And then he lifted the helmet free.

A cascade of raven-black hair tumbled out, messy from being pinned beneath steel. Torchlight caught the strands and turned them glossy, like ink catching a flame.

It’s a girl.

Her face was sharp in a way that felt deliberate. High cheekbones, a refined jaw, lips pressed into a line. Her eyes were the most startling part: deep blue, vivid enough to feel out of place, like a piece of clear sky trapped underground.

Along her right cheekbone ran a faint scar. It didn’t ruin her face. It made it real. Proof that she’d survived something that had tried to mark her.

My surprise must have shown, because her gaze narrowed.

“Second,” she continued, never taking her eyes off me, “you’re Kaspar?”

“As in… the Kaspar?” Her voice sharpened. “Kaspar, the Bastard?”

My stomach tightened reflexively, remembering Blut’s sneer, the way other students’ eyes slid past me as if I were something lesser.

“I… don’t know about the Bastard part,” I said, the confession bitter on my tongue. Then I forced myself to be firm. “But yes, Kaspar.”

For a heartbeat, something almost like amusement flickered in her eyes.

“Actually,” she said, voice dry, “in your case it’s fair to say you are and aren’t a noble.”

My brow furrowed. “How so?”

Her eyes flicked briefly to the sword in my hand, then back to my face. “Have you truly lost your memory?” she asked. “Have you considered speaking with one of the professors or officers?”

The question made a sharp laugh threaten to escape me.

Professors. Officers. Blut.

I remembered chains clamping around my wrists. A cell door slamming shut. The helplessness of listening to screams from behind bars. If I went to them again with confusion and questions, I wouldn’t get answers. I’d get punishment.

But telling her that, telling her too much, could be dangerous.

So I lied.

“They think I’ve gone mad,” I said, making my voice sound tired rather than afraid. “That’s why I’ve been hiding.” I watched her as I added, “Yes. I lost my memory.”

If she was the kind of soldier who punished weakness, I’d see it in her posture.

Instead, she exhaled and muttered something that sounded half like a curse and half like surrender.

“What a mess,” she said and stepped closer.

Surprisingly, she sat down on a nearby rock as if we were two travelers meeting on a road instead of a patrol soldier and a suspicious boy with a stolen sword.

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My heart eased by a fraction. Not because I trusted her. Simply because she wasn’t shouting. She wasn’t calling guards.

“Forgive me,” I said, keeping my tone respectful without falling back into “sir.” “What’s your name? Now that you know mine.”

And beneath the words, another thought threaded through: If I loop again, I need to remember this. Names matter. Allies matter. Even brief conversations matter.

She gave a small nod. “Iris,” she said.

Then she added with a touch of pride, “Second Circle Mage and Flammenknecht.”

“Flammenknecht.”

The word lingered in my head after Iris introduced herself. It felt like a title. It was the second time I’d heard a rank like that, something that wasn’t simply soldier or mage, but a name for a place in the world’s hierarchy.

I didn’t have the luxury of caring what it meant.

I shifted my grip on the sword and kept it low, angled toward the ground so I didn’t look like a threat.

Far below, the camp was beginning to wake. Faint voices, the clink of equipment, the distant murmur of a system that never stopped moving.

I forced myself to focus on the woman in front of me.

Iris sat perched on a higher rock, one knee drawn up, the other leg hanging loose, as if she’d done this a hundred times.

“Now that you know I have no memory,” I said carefully, “may I ask you some questions?”

Her blue eyes narrowed, studying me the way a guard studies a door that might be hiding something behind it.

“It’s still hard to believe,” Iris admitted. There was no softness in the words, just honesty. “But if it doesn’t get me into trouble, I’ll answer what I know.”

Then her gaze flicked past me, toward the faint glow that marked the upper camp’s patrol routes.

“But we need to be quick,” she added, voice lowering. “My superiors will start looking for me when they notice I’m late for my patrol.”

Time. Always time.

My mind felt like a room crammed with questions, all of them screaming to be answered at once. What’s an artifact? Why am I called Bastard? Why do I have no mana? How do I stop the gate from opening? How do I kill a wyvern?

I swallowed and forced myself to start with something basic.

“What is a Circle?” I asked.

Iris blinked, eyebrows lifting.

“Wow,” she said, and there was a hint of disbelief in her tone. “Your memory really is gone.”

My stomach tightened. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that she believed me, or ashamed that I’d just proven how ignorant I was.

“Circles are measures of mana mastery,” she explained.

I stared at her, waiting for the words to arrange themselves into meaning.

They didn’t.

My confusion must have shown, because Iris let out a quiet breath that sounded almost like a laugh.

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s how they explain it in the academies.”

She shifted her staff across her lap and extended one hand toward me, palm up, like a teacher about to demonstrate something.

“Let me simplify it. Pay attention.”

I did.

I leaned in slightly, keeping my eyes on her hand and my ears tuned to the sounds of the camp beyond the rocks.

“Everything is made of mana,” she said. “It’s the fundamental energy that exists everywhere. Think of it as the lifeblood of the world.”

“Each person can process and manipulate different amounts of mana,” Iris continued, “and different types of mana.”

I nodded slowly, trying to keep up.

“This ability comes from the mana cores within our bodies.”

Iris watched my face, making sure I was following.

“But raw energy alone doesn’t do much,” she went on. “The Circles represent your skill in channeling that mana into spells. Each Circle you achieve allows you to perform more complex and powerful magic. With more Circles, you can better use mana to create, change, or destroy.”

Then she demonstrated.

The air around her wrist shimmered.

Two luminous rings formed out of nothing, hovering just above her skin. They rotated slowly, orbiting her wrist with quiet grace.

The sight hit me with a blunt, breath-stealing awe.

It wasn’t like a trick.

It wasn’t like a spark or a flash.