The walk back to House Argent was the longest journey of my life.
We moved through the Academy grounds, past the manicured lawns and the laughing students who were still buzzing from the Assembly, but I didn't see any of them. I was trapped inside a body that suddenly felt like a rented room where the landlord had just used the master key without knocking.
I walked. My legs moved. My lungs inflated. My eyes blinked. But with every step, a cold, corrosive question ate away at the back of my mind: Am I doing this? Or is he letting me do this?
I refused to speak to him. I felt Ronan's presence in our mind—a heavy, looming weight of guilt and readiness—but I slammed a mental door in his face. I didn't want his explanations. I didn't want his noble justifications. I just wanted to get behind a lock.
I reached the heavy oak door of the dorm room. I opened it, stepped inside, and closed it with a definitive thud.
I threw the iron bolt. Then I dragged the heavy desk in front of the door. Then I checked the window latch.
The room was dim, lit only by the weak afternoon light filtering through the heavy curtains I had bought with our laundry money.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I looked down at my hands.
They were shaking.
I flexed my fingers. Open. Close. Open. Close.
They obeyed. But the memory was burnt into my nerves—the feeling of the muscles contracting, the tendons pulling, the arm raising, all without a single signal from my brain. It hadn't been a spasm. It had been a hostile takeover.
"How long?" I whispered.
The silence in my head stretched out, thick and suffocating. Ronan didn't pretend not to hear me. He didn't try to deflect with a joke or a strategic observation.
'Since the beginning,' Ronan replied. His voice wasn't the boisterous, confident tone of the Paladin. It was quiet. Resigned.
"Define 'beginning'," I said, my voice trembling. "Since the sewer? Since the Awakening?"
'Since the alley,' Ronan admitted. 'Since the moment we woke up in this city. Since Ludo rebuilt the vessel.'
The breath left my lungs.
I stared at the stone floor. "So... the whole time? The desert? The years running the gas station?"
'No,' Ronan corrected gently. 'In the desert, I was truly a passenger. The connection was... muffled. Broken. But here? In this world? In this body that Ludo crafted?'
He paused.
'I have always had the keys, Murphy.'
"You lied," I hissed, pacing the small room like a caged animal. "You let me struggle. You let me panic. You let me think I was the one keeping us alive. 'Oh, Murphy, you have to do it, I can't interact with the world!' That was a lie?"
'It was a choice,' Ronan said.
"A CHOICE?!" I screamed.
"You watched me!" I shouted at the ceiling, at the air, at the ghost in my skull. "You were just... sitting there? Watching me flail around like a toddler with a steering wheel made of plastic?"
'I can't tell you why,' Ronan argued, his voice gaining a defensive edge. 'If I had taken control... if I had simply taken over.. I truly am sorry, Murphy. I simply cannot tell you why right now.'
"I AM IN CHARGE!" I roared, slamming my fist against the stone wall. The pain was sharp and grounding. "This is my life! I'm the one who remembers the dying! I'm the one who remembers the pain!"
'I know,' Ronan said softly.
"Don't give me that noble bullshit," I spat, turning away from the wall, cradling my bruised hand. "You didn't do it for me. You did it because it was convenient. You got to be the backseat driver. You got to criticise my form and judge my choices without ever having to risk your own neck."
'That is not true,' Ronan snapped. 'I risked everything today to save us from Vane.'
I stopped pacing. The anger was draining away, replaced by something much colder. Something hollow.
"If you can take control whenever you want," I whispered, staring at my reflection in the dark window glass. "Then what am I?"
'You are Murphy,' Ronan said firmly.
"That's a name!" I yelled. "That's not an answer! Why can you drive? Why is your grip on this body stronger than mine?"
I waited.
'Tell me,' I demanded. 'Explain the mechanics, Ronan. You're the magic expert. Why does the 'Passenger' have override codes for the Host?'
Silence.
"Tell me!"
'I cannot,' Ronan said.
It wasn't a refusal. It was a plea.
"You mean you won't."
'I mean, I cannot explain it without...' Ronan's voice faltered. I felt a wave of profound fear radiating from him. He wasn't afraid of me. He was afraid for me. 'There are truths that are structural, Murphy. If you pull the wrong brick, the wall collapses. I am keeping this door shut to keep you safe.'
"Safe?" I laughed, a jagged, broken sound. "You think I feel safe? I'm trapped in my mind with the spirit of a paladin who turns out to be a pathological liar! I don't want safety, Ronan! I want the truth!"
'The truth will break you,' Ronan stated. The absolute certainty in his voice chilled me to the bone.
I sank to the floor, leaning my back against the bed frame. I pulled my knees to my chest.
"I'm just a bystander," I whispered into the gloom. "I thought we were partners. I thought we were the Sultans. But we're not. You're the Sultan. I'm just the instrument."
'Murphy, please...'
"Shut up," I said. "Just... shut up."
I sat there in the silence, listening to my own breathing.
I had spent a thousand lifetimes running from death. I had survived torture, starvation, and war. But I had never felt this.
I felt evicted.
And the worst part was, I couldn't even leave.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. The skin felt raw.
"Fine," I whispered, my voice rough. "You can't tell me why you have the keys. You can't tell me how the engine works because you think I'm too fragile to handle the manual."
I looked up at the ceiling, staring into the dark grain of the wood.
"But if I'm just the passenger... then tell me who is driving."
I took a shaky breath.
"You're not just a Paladin, are you? You're not just some soldier who got lost in the mail. A soldier doesn't make a High Elf Sword Master freeze with a hand signal."
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"Tell me the truth, Ronan. All of it. Who are you? Really?"
The presence in my mind shifted. For months—years—Ronan had made himself small. He had compressed his spirit to fit inside the cramped quarters of our shared existence, sitting in the corner like a polite guest.
Now, he stood up.
I felt his presence expand. It wasn't aggressive, but it was massive. It felt like standing at the foot of a mountain that had suddenly decided to reveal it was actually a sleeping giant. The air in the room didn't change, but the atmosphere inside my skull became heavy with the weight of centuries.
'Very well,' Ronan said. His voice had lost the modern inflexion he used to blend in with me. It resonated with the cadence of an older, harder world. 'I will tell you what is safe. I will give you the history.'
He paused, gathering the threads of a life he had kept hidden.
'I am Ronan Sunstrider,' he began. 'But that is a title, not an origin. My father was a mortal man, a King of the First Age. My mother...'
He hesitated, a ripple of complicated grief passing through him.
'...My mother is the Matron of Light. The Goddess who watches over this world.'
I froze. I sat perfectly still on the floor.
"A goddess," I whispered. "You're... a demigod?"
'I was,' Ronan corrected. 'Once. Long ago.'
The image formed in my mind, projected by Ronan with a clarity that made the room fade away. I saw a golden city. I saw banners snapping in the wind. I saw a man in armour that shone like the sun, standing on a white wall while the sky burned.
'It was the Third Age,' Ronan narrated. 'The Siege of Aethelgard. The Celestials—the gods who play games with this world—had cornered my mother. They found a loophole in the Divine Laws, a way to extinguish her light and plunge the realm into shadow.'
The memory shifted. I felt the heat of magical fire. I felt the despair of a losing battle.
'She was checkmated,' Ronan said softly. 'To save the world, she had to sacrifice her divinity. To save herself, she had to let the world burn. It was an impossible choice.'
'So I made it for her.'
I saw the golden man—Ronan—step into a beam of blinding light. I felt the agony of a soul being ripped apart, of divinity being shredded to patch a hole in reality.
'I sacrificed my birthright,' Ronan said. 'I gave up my place in the heavens to seal the breach. The backlash... it banished me. It cast me out of this reality entirely.'
The golden city vanished, replaced by the grey, static fuzz of the Void, and then... Earth.
'That is why I was on Earth, Murphy. That is why I met you. I was an exile, serving a sentence in a prison without magic.'
I sat there, stunned. The scale of it was crushing. I thought we were just two guys trying to survive. But he was... he was myth.
"And now?" I asked, my voice small. "Why are we back? Why did Ludo bring us here?"
'Because the Game isn't over,' Ronan said, his voice hardening into steel.
'The gods... they play a Game of Ascension. Every thousand years, they pick champions. They move mortals like pieces on a board. The winner gets to reshape the world. The loser gets erased.'
He showed me the board. Not literally, but the concept. A cosmic map of influence, where wars were just moves and tragedies were just gambits.
'My mother lost the last round,' Ronan explained. 'Now, Ludo has brought me back as a Wildcard. A piece that shouldn't exist.'
'My goal is not just survival, Murphy. I intend to win the Final Tournament. I intend to reclaim the divinity I sacrificed. And when I ascend...'
I felt a surge of righteous, terrifying anger from him.
'...I am going to change the rules. I am going to break the board so that no one—not you, not my brothers who died on the battlefield, not anyone—has to be a pawn ever again.'
Silence descended on the room.
I processed it. The Demigod. The Game. The Tournament. It was a hero's journey. It was epic. It was beautiful.
And I wasn't in it.
"Okay," I said, my voice hollow. "That's... a lot. You're here to save the world. Great."
"But where do I fit in?" I asked. "If you're the hero... am I just the armour? Am I just the vehicle you drive to the finish line?"
'You are my partner,' Ronan insisted.
"Partners share information!" I shouted, the hurt breaking through the awe. "Partners don't have secret meetings with the faculty!"
I stood up, pointing at the door.
"How does Elrend fit into this? He's a teacher. Why did you signal him?"
Ronan sighed. It was the heavy sigh of a commander who had been caught fraternising with the troops.
'Elrend was my Lieutenant,' Ronan confessed. 'In the Third Age. He stood on the wall with me at Aethelgard.'
'When we arrived at the Academy... I saw what he had become. A broken shell. I couldn't leave him like that. So... a few nights ago, while you slept...'
'I took a Clone,' Ronan said. 'I went to the arena. We fought. I proved who I was.'
He showed me the memory. The clash of steel in the mist. The look on the Elf's face when he realised his Commander had returned. The wine pouring onto the floor.
'He knows, Murphy. He knows I am back. He is our ally. He is the one holding back the administration, the one covering our tracks.'
I backed away until I hit the desk.
"You have friends," I whispered. "You have a history. You have a mother who is a goddess and a lieutenant who would die for you. You have a destiny."
I looked down at my hands. The hands that had stolen bread and scrubbed floors. The hands that had never held anything of true value. I suddenly felt incredibly small.
"I have nothing," I said, the realisation hitting me like a physical blow. "I don't have a past. I don't have a family. I don't even have my own body anymore, apparently."
I looked up at the ceiling, where I imagined Ronan was floating.
"You have a whole life happening while I'm asleep," I said, tears stinging my eyes. "You're playing 4D chess with gods, and you let me... what? Run a laundry scam? Play with slime?"
'Murphy, the gold is essential...'
"It's busy work!" I snapped. "You gave me busy work to keep me distracted while you did the real work. You treated me like a child, Ronan. Like a mascot."
I slumped into the chair, burying my face in my hands.
"I'm just the meat suit," I mumbled into my palms. "I'm the vessel Ludo scraped off the bottom of the barrel because you were too expensive to bring back whole."
'That is not true,' Ronan said, and for the first time, his voice cracked. 'You are not a vessel. You are...'
He stopped.
I looked up. "I am what? Say it."
He didn't speak. He couldn't.
And in that silence, the gap between us didn't just widen. It became a canyon.
"Say it," I demanded again, my voice cracking.
Ronan remained silent. The weight of his presence in my mind felt heavy, like a stone at the bottom of a well.
I stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the stone floor. I couldn't sit still. The energy in the room—the suffocating secrecy—was making my skin crawl.
"You told me who you are," I said, pointing a shaking finger at my own chest. "You're the Son of Light. The Hero. The Chosen One."
I took a step toward the window, then spun back.
"But who am I, Ronan? If you're the driver... who is the guy screaming in the backseat?"
'You are Murphy,' Ronan said softly. 'You are my partner.'
"Stop using that word!" I shouted. "That's a label that means nothing anymore! I want to know who I was before!"
The question tore out of me, a jagged piece of shrapnel I had been carrying for a thousand years.
"Why did the Curse follow me?" I asked, my voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "If I'm just a vessel... why did the universe spend a millennium torturing me? Why did I die in the trenches? Why did I burn in fires? Why did I starve in deserts?"
I grabbed my hair, pulling it tight as the tears started flowing freely.
"I remember every single second of it, you know. Why? What did I do to deserve an eternity of punishment?"
I looked up, pleading with the empty air.
"WHO AM I?!"
The silence that followed was absolute. It wasn't the silence of ignorance. It was the silence of a man holding a door shut against a hurricane.
'I am so sorry, Murphy,' Ronan whispered finally. His mental voice was thick with a sorrow so deep it felt like drowning. 'I cannot tell you. Please. Do not ask me to.'
"You know," I realised, stepping back. "You know exactly who I am. And you won't tell me."
'If I tell you...' Ronan's voice broke. 'If I speak the words... I fear there will be nothing left of you to hear them.'
I stared at the wall. The refusal hit me harder than any truth could have.
If the truth was that dangerous... what was I?
My mind, honed by centuries of paranoia, began to spiral. It didn't go to the light. It went straight into the dark.
What if I'm not a victim?
The thought bloomed like black ink in water.
What if I'm not the hero's sidekick? What if I'm the reason he was banished?
I looked at my hands.
Maybe I'm a monster, I thought, horror rising in my throat. Maybe I'm a demon he trapped inside himself to save the world. Maybe I'm the Evil God that hitched a ride back. Maybe the Curse wasn't trying to kill Ronan... maybe it was trying to kill Me.
"I'm something bad, aren't I?" I whispered. "That's why you watch me. That's why you won't let me have the keys."
'No!' Ronan shouted. It was a command, sharp and desperate. 'Stop this! You are spiralling!'
"Then tell me!"
'Enough!' Ronan roared.
He didn't take control of the body, but he slammed a mental wall down in front of my panic. He forced a pivot. He grabbed the conversation by the throat and twisted it.
'You want to talk about secrets?' Ronan demanded, his voice hard. 'You want to talk about who is driving? Then let us talk about the Tavern.'
I blinked, thrown off balance. "What?"
'The Stonekettle Inn,' Ronan pressed, his focus razor-sharp. 'The first night. You were sitting at the table. I was listening to the bard. And then... I wasn't.'
He pushed the memory to the forefront.
'I lost time, Murphy. One second, I was there. Next, I was waking up in a fog. The waitress... she looked at you. She looked at your left hand.'
I instinctively covered my left hand with my right.
'She said, "I could have sworn you only had..."' Ronan quoted perfectly. 'She saw a stump. And then she saw a hand. What happened in that missing time?'
I stayed silent, my heart hammering against my ribs.
'And today,' Ronan continued, relentless. 'Outside the Assembly Hall. You saw a beetle. A common, iridescent beetle. You didn't just step on it. You recognised it. You looked at it with the same fear you had when you looked at Vane.'
You have information I do not possess. Where did you get it?'
I opened my mouth. The truth was right there.
Your mother was here. The Goddess. She stopped time. She fixed our hand. She was throwing out weird nonsense insults… but in the end, she told me to save you.
But as the words formed, a cold, divine warning echoed in my memory.
"If Ludo discovers I have broken this pact... he will cast Ronan back into that timeless nothing."
If I told him, I wouldn't just be breaking a promise. I would be erasing him. I would be sending the only friend I had back to the void.
I realised then that I was standing on the exact same precipice Ronan was.
He was keeping a secret to protect me, and I was keeping a secret to protect him.
We were mirrors. Broken, jagged mirrors reflecting each other's lies.
I lowered my hand. I let the anger drain out of me. It didn't leave peace behind; it just left exhaustion.
"I saw something," I admitted quietly. "That night in the tavern. I had a... vision."
'A vision?' Ronan asked, sceptical.
"A warning," I corrected. "About 'The Hunger' coming for the city. A hunger that uses insects somehow. That's why I stomped the beetle. I have a feeling Vane is connected somehow."
'Who gave you this warning?' Ronan asked. 'Was it Ludo?'
I shook my head. "I can't tell you."
'Murphy...'
"I can't," I said firmly, meeting his mental gaze. "If I tell you the source... it puts you in danger. It puts us in danger. The same way you think telling me my origin will break me?"
I took a deep breath.
"Telling you this might unmake you. So you have to trust me, Ronan. I'm not keeping it from you to hurt you. I'm keeping it from you to save you."
The silence returned. But this time, it wasn't heavy. It was fragile. It was the silence of a truce.
Ronan processed it. He weighed the logic. He felt the sincerity in my fear—not fear for myself, but fear for him.
'We are a pair of wretched liars, aren't we?' Ronan murmured finally, his voice tired.
"Yeah," I said, rubbing my face. "We are. But we're lying for the right reasons."
'The Hunger,' Ronan said, shifting gears. He accepted the boundary. He accepted the secret. 'If the warning is true... if Vane is involved.'
"Then the clock is ticking faster than we thought," I finished.
"We might not have six months, Ronan. We might not even have six weeks."
'Agreed,' Ronan said, the Paladin taking over. 'We need to accelerate. We are Dark Blue. That is impressive for a first-year student, but against a this? Against an Inquisitor? We are kindling.'
"We need Green," I said. "We need to break the next threshold."
'The ambient mana isn't enough,' Ronan stated. 'Even with twelve clones running the Solar Crucible, the passive intake is too slow. To hit Green in a week, we need density. We need to consume cores.'
"Blue Beast Cores," I nodded. "High grade. And lots of them."
I looked at the five gold coins on the desk—Everything we had left from our laundry profits.
"We can't buy them, and we can't farm them with iron swords and leather armour. A five-man clone squad gets wiped by a single Dire-Wolf Pack leader without magical gear. Simple Dire-Wolf kills could work and send back pale cores to sell, but then all the remaining clones would need to constantly meditate to keep the hunting party up, which means no one is cycling ambient mana and building the core."
'Then we are stuck,' Ronan said. 'We need gold to buy gear to farm cores to get strong. But we need to be strong to get the gold.'
I looked around the room. My eyes landed on the desk. Specifically, on the pile of textbooks I had thrown there after class. Advanced Runic Theory. The Geometry of Aether. Imperial History.
I thought about Thaddeus Vex. I thought about the runes. I thought about Grace and her "glitchy" golems.
A thought sparked in my mind. It wasn't a soldier's thought. It was a scavenger's thought.
"We're looking at this wrong," I murmured. "We're trying to play their game. We're trying to be adventurers."
'We are adventurers,' Ronan noted.
"No," I corrected. "We're cheats. We don't grind. We exploit."
I walked over to the desk and picked up the heavy tome on Runic Theory.
"We can't afford rune-enchanted gear," I said. "It costs thousands. But the materials? A plain sword and a chisel? That we have..."
'You want to enchant our own gear?' Ronan asked, sounding dubious. 'Murphy, you failed the last test. You barely know the basics.'
"Because I'm trying to learn it the old-fashioned way," I said, tapping the book. "But where's the fun in that?"
I turned to the clones.
"We don't farm beasts," I announced, a grin spreading across my face. "We farm knowledge."
'What are you proposing?'
"The Twelve-Man Study Group," I said. "We have twelve clones. Twelve brains. But we share one memory bank."
I pointed at the door.
"The Great Library closes at sunset. But the books are still there. If we go in there with twelve clones tonight... each reading a different book. After an hour, I dispel the clones and consolidate the knowledge, and we start again..."
'We could absorb a semester's worth of theory in a single night,' Ronan realised, the possibilities dawning on him. 'Brute-force learning.'
"One last problem," I said, looking at the heavy oak door. "The Library is locked. Warded tight."
I paused.
"Can your Lieutenant get us in?"
I felt a ripple of grim satisfaction from Ronan.
'Elrend should have a Master Key to the grounds,' Ronan said. 'And he knows the patrol routes better than the guards. If I ask him...'
'He will open the door,' Ronan promised.
I grabbed my cloak.
"Then let's go to school," I said. "We start tonight."