Anomaly of Fate
Chapter 62: A New Title

Chapter 62: A New Title

The magic airship cut through the sky, humming its engines in a steady rhythm as it soared back toward the kingdom. Through the windows, the vast ocean stretched endlessly beneath them, glimmering under the moonlight. The academy’s exam had ended, but for Velren, questions remained unanswered.

Lying on the bed of his personal quarters, he stared at the ceiling with both arms tucked behind his head. The airship’s quiet hum filled the silence, but his mind refused to settle. Even though the exam had officially concluded, a lingering unease filled in his chest, a feeling that something about all of this whole exam was deeply wrong. He had faced combat, experienced surprises, and endured hardships throughout the exam, but nothing had unnerved him quite like this.

Cloaky.

That thing—whatever it was—wasn’t human. That much was obvious. But what unsettled him the most was the way it had erased magic as if it were nothing. It wasn’t just a simple resistance or counterspell—it removed magic entirely, as if negating its very existence. No conventional spell could do that. He had heard about mages with nullification abilities before, but even they had limitations. They disrupted magic, suppressed it, but they never outright made it vanish from reality. Cloaky did.

The memory played over in his mind, sharp and clear despite the chaos of the battle. The way the spells were wiped from existence, not dissipated or deflected, but erased. As if they had never been there in the first place. He had relied on his instincts at the time, but now that he thought about it, there had been a strange void left in the wake of that erasure. A space where magic should have existed, but didn’t.

And then there was the academy’s reaction. The sudden postponement of the exam, the lack of any official statement about the intruder. If it had simply been some rogue element or outside threat, the academy would’ve at least acknowledged it. Instead, they buried it.

Why?

Why hide something so blatantly dangerous?

Velren let out a frustrated sigh, shifting on the bed. He turned his head slightly, watching the soft glow of the control panel near his bedside. The room was comfortable enough, a personal quarter granted to students aboard the airship, yet he felt no ease here. The questions in his mind churned, refusing to let him rest.

With nothing else to do, he summoned his Codex, expecting the usual interface to greet him. Instead, the moment the holographic display formed before his eyes, his body stiffened.

Something had changed.

His eyes immediately scanned through the text:

Nam3: Velren

Rac3: Human (An0maly)

Titl3(s): Fat3’s An0maly | Harb1nger 0f the Unwritt3n | [??]

Aff1l1at10n: N0ne

Skills:

[0bs3rvat10n] [Inst1nctiv3 Res1stance] [Predat0ry Acumen] [Mast3ry 0f the Sw0rd]

Anomaly Traits:

[Fate D1vergenc3] [Syst3m Interf3rence Det3cted]

V1talCr3st:

[A World Not Mine]

Velren frowned, sitting up straight. He immediately locked his gaze onto a new entry under his titles.

’Harbinger of... the Unwritten?’

Since... when?

Velren scrolled down and clicked on the title. Immediately, a message appeared:

[Harb1nger 0f the Unwritt3n]

’Y0u have deviat3d from the scr1pt. The we1ght of the unwr1tten n0w ling3rs up0n you.’

Velren exhaled through his nose, dragging a hand down his face. So now he had two titles tied to being an anomaly. One was confusing enough, but this? "Deviated from the script"—what script?! Who was writing it?!

His Codex never failed to notify him when he gained a skill or when his abilities evolved, yet for titles like this one, there was only silence. Was this just how it worked? Or was something deliberately withholding that information from him?

He then hovered his fingers over the still-locked title next to it, the one marked by ’??.’ If Harbinger of the Unwritten wasn’t the mystery title, then when had he even gained it?

Maybe... when he defeated Cloaky? When and where else had he done something outside the norm during the exam?

Velren stilled.

There was something else—something he hadn’t fully processed in the heat of the moment.

Back then... when Cloaky twisted its head toward him.

Its voice had been distorted, layered, like multiple tones speaking at once. But the word—he remembered it clearly.

"Irregularity."

Not anomaly, not error, but an irregularity.

Velren’s fingers tightened. The term felt deliberate, different from what the system labeled him as. Did that mean Cloaky—or whatever the hell it was—wasn’t using the same classification? Or maybe... did it come from something else entirely?

He leaned back against the wall, his mind racing. Irregularity. The word itself suggested something that shouldn’t exist within a given structure. Not just a mere outlier, but something fundamentally wrong within the system itself. Unlike an anomaly, which could simply mean something unexpected or outside the norm, like him, an irregularity implied a flaw—a break in the design.

’A... disruption...’

That single word carried weight, more than Velren had initially realized. If Cloaky had truly seen him as an irregularity, then that meant something else recognized his presence as a disruption.

But what? The system? The world itself?

No matter how much he tried to rationalize it, the truth was clear.

Cloaky had acknowledged him.

And that, more than anything else, sent a cold shiver down his spine.

Velren closed the Codex, letting it dissipate into fragments of light. He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension. He needed answers, but for now, all he had were more questions.

A hollow chuckle escaped him.

"How am I supposed to sleep after all this?"

Even though he muttered the words to himself, they carried the weight of his lingering thoughts. His mind was still tangled in the web of unanswered questions, and his body was still thrumming with the aftershocks of the battle, of the encounter with Cloaky, of the strange new title that had appeared without warning.

But thinking about it now wouldn’t change anything.

He exhaled through his nose, forcing himself to roll onto his side, letting his head sink into the pillow. For now, let’s just focus on heading home first. Other things can be handled later.

Easier said than done. Even as he closed his eyes, even as he willed himself to rest, his mind refused to quiet.

Sleep felt distant.

Then, just as his body finally began to drift, the airship’s intercom crackled to life, followed by the chime of an incoming announcement.

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