Clayton
Clayton's desk was a battlefield—big scrolls, stray cards, runic ink stains, and half-drunk coffee cups crowding its surface. The Monocle of Insight lay unused beside his notes, as if even it had no answers today. For once, he wasn't trying to optimize his deck or decipher rune theory.
He was trying to organize history.
Not the world's. His.
Or rather, the version of the world he remembered from the novel—Arcane Gambit: Crown of Ashes.
Timeline. Events. Triggers.
He'd written it all out in rough chronological order: Meeting with Lily, Stynt with Cynthia, and then training together. Winning a duel against Charles. The recruitment offers. The first illusion card appearance, which, in the original plot, didn't happen until later and they were cleaned and more like normal recruitment offers.
Now?
It had already begun. Early. Messily. Unannounced.
Mirage Cascade, Phantom Bloom, and—the cards' other students got.
"Deviation's not just happening," Clayton muttered. "It's compounding."
He rubbed his temples, then stared at the ceiling. Something he had done, some small butterfly-wing decision, had nudged the world off-script. At first it had been little things—who he trained with, how he dueled—but now?
Now, things were unrecognizable.
He had known changes would happen. But not like this.
Not to this degree.
Now illusion cards were appearing early. Now Eric was watching them. Now Cynthia had become… interested. And Charles? Charles was supposed to be a minor foil, not a near-villain.
Clayton sat down and rubbed at his temple.
And Eric…
That was another deviation. In the novel, Eric Ashford was calculating, proud, and mostly neutral. A background rival. But here?
Eric had joined them. Not for camaraderie. Not for justice.
But because he said they'd owe him.
He'd refused to say more. He hadn't even revealed anything. But Clayton could feel it—something was off.
He glanced toward the warded window, where faint clouds danced under moonlight.
"Characters aren't who I remember."
That thought felt heavier than it should. The novel was fiction. A script. But here?
Here, they were people.
Asher wasn't always composed. Cynthia wasn't just the elegant support. Charles wasn't just arrogant. And Eric… Eric wasn't just a foil.
"This isn't a story," Clayton murmured. "Not anymore."
They weren't side characters in Asher's world. Everyone was the main character of their own journey now, and that meant chaos. Complexity. Conflict.
Clayton paused, pen tapping absently on the desk.
Now, Asher was just another player. A big one, yes. But not the only one.
Everyone was a protagonist in their own story. And that meant unpredictability.
He thought of Eric, the ever-polite golden boy of the Warwick Union. In the novel, Eric had been clever but restrained. A background strategist, mostly content to let Asher shine unless national interests were involved.
But now?
Clayton had watched him these past few days. The small smirks. The deliberate pauses. He was calculating. He wasn't afraid. And he wasn't exactly the same Eric Clayton remembered.
"That's the problem," Clayton muttered. "This world isn't a story anymore. It's real. And people change when no one's writing their lines."
He sighed, letting his head thud gently against the edge of the desk. The cards were real. The dangers were real. And so were the people.
No cheat codes. No save points.
And certainly no overpowered, brooding teacher to tell him he had a hidden god-tier affinity and dragon blood or something.
"Why," Clayton said to the ceiling, "couldn't I have transmigrated into a regular fantasy world?" You know, the type with 'SSS-Rank Talent: Infinite Mana Devourer' and a talking sword that solves politics for me?"
He tossed his pen aside.
"But nooo. I get Arcane Gambit. A death-chess game with cursed loot boxes."
He closed his notebook and stood. No point wallowing. He had theories to chase and people to outmaneuver. And one of them—Eric—was acting just suspiciously enough to make it worth digging deeper.
Asher
The courtyard was quiet, the kind of stillness that only came after dusk—when training fields cooled and students returned to their towers. Asher Augustus stood alone, hands tucked behind his back, watching the floating arc lights above the practice rings.
He had always known life at the academy would be dangerous.
But this?
This was ahead of schedule.
The illusion cards weren't supposed to appear this early. The power plays between factions weren't supposed to escalate until after the Spring Trials. And no one—absolutely no one—had ever mentioned cards showing up without records, without cleansing, and without a trace of origin.
It felt… orchestrated. But not by any player he could name.
Back home, they trained him to see patterns. They'd taught him to predict ambition, to read deception. Yet the speed of all this unnerved him.
"As if someone pushed the dominoes too soon," he muttered.
He didn't mean Clayton. Not exactly.
But the boy was unusual. An outsider who kept managing to be in the right place at the wrong time. Asher had started tracking interactions, watching ripples. Clayton seemed to bend scenes around him without realizing it.
And then there was Eric.
Eric Ashford had always intrigued him—a prince in all but title, from a coalition barely held together by old treaties and sheer economic stubbornness. The Warwick Union was a patchwork of merchant nations, run like a parliament but behaving like rival noble courts.
Eric, son of the sitting president, had arrived with all the polish and polish-resistant smugness one expected. And yet, lately...
He was acting strangely.
Too helpful. Too interested.
The Eric from formal banquets and state-level duels would never offer free aid to a pair of lower-ranked students—especially not without some benefit. And while Asher knew Clayton believed it was all about leverage, he wasn't so sure.
Eric's eyes had a knowing gleam to them. Not cruel, not mocking—just... distant. Like he already knew how the game ended and was watching it play out with idle curiosity.
That made Asher uneasy.
People like Eric didn't take risks without a reason. And if he had taken a card, he hadn't admitted it.
Which meant either he was clean... or hiding something more dangerous than both of them combined.
Asher turned away from the courtyard, pulse steady but mind racing. The situation was accelerating. He didn't know who was pulling the strings—but the stage was being set for something bigger than mere schoolhouse politics.
He needed more time.
More allies.
More control.
His eyes flicked down to his rune-slate, where a soft pulse of light blinked.
A message.
From Eric.
Just two words.
"Mirror Room. Midnight."
Asher stared at the words for a moment longer, then slipped the slate back into his coat.
The pieces were still moving.
And the next move?
Would be made in reflection.