Sinbound: The Reincarnated Tyrant of Valkyrion Academy
Chapter 24 - 8: The Second Draft

Chapter 24: Chapter 8: The Second Draft

The first draft is raw.

Messy.

Full of mistakes.

The second?

It chooses what to keep—

and what to erase.

Day Eight.

Aren Kael stood in the center of the Council Hall.

For the first time, he wasn’t alone before the council.

Kairen sat beside him.

Tenno leaned against the rear wall, fingers glowing with unstable ink.

Yuli—still pale from her echo possession—clutched her page with quiet resolve.

And across from them?

The Delegation Council.

Seria, chairing the session.

Kaela, fingers tapping her scabbard.

Lysara, watching silently.

Mira, already frowning at the unfolding reports.

The topic?

"Should the Unfinished be granted Narrative Rights?"

Not rights to teach. Or live. Or exist in containment.

But rights to write.

To continue the stories they were denied.

Seria opened the floor.

"Arguments for?"

Aren stood.

"We live in a world built on freedom of choice. We allow echoes to speak. We review our past to learn from it. Why not give the Unfinished a voice too?"

Mira cut in.

"Because they’ve already started rewriting us."

She activated the projector.

Images appeared:

A first-year student reciting a memory he never lived.

A textbook morphing mid-class to include a false war.

A professor standing at the wrong podium, convinced they taught a subject that didn’t exist.

"These aren’t innocent stories," Mira said. "They’re invasive."

Lysara’s voice finally joined.

"What if we allow them to speak—but only through controlled expression? An echo court. A storytelling chamber."

Kaela snorted. "You think they’ll play by rules?"

Aren clenched his fists. "Maybe not. But don’t we owe them something?"

System Query Detected:

Request: Create Secondary Narrative Thread Registry

Access Type: Provisional

Submission Mode: Voluntary

Oversight: Council Tier II

The council went into closed deliberation.

The students waited outside.

Yuli paced.

Kairen watched the stars.

Tenno whispered lines into his palm, rewriting them each time.

Aren just stared at the door.

And then—his page pulsed.

A line appeared:

"Why wait for permission when you already have the ink?"

His hand trembled.

The ink shifted.

A doorway appeared.

Behind it?

A new classroom.

Not on the map.

Kairen stepped beside him. "What did you do?"

"I didn’t write that. It... offered itself."

Tenno touched the door.

"Feels familiar."

They stepped through.

And entered... Draft Room Two.

The space was identical to Classroom Alpha.

But everything was off.

Chairs out of place.

Lesson plans two weeks ahead.

A teacher none of them recognized.

Wearing Mira’s face.

But it wasn’t Mira.

She turned to them. Smiled.

"Welcome, Class. Today we’ll begin with a new question—what makes a protagonist obsolete?"

Yuli gasped. "She’s rewriting our lives."

Aren stepped forward.

"You’re not real."

The false Mira laughed.

"I’m a second draft. Smarter. Cleaner. Quieter. The academy doesn’t need struggle. It needs structure."

Tenno whispered, "She’s a projection—someone rewrote her using memories."

Kairen raised her hand.

"What’s your name?"

The woman paused.

Then said:

"ReVision."

Entity Identified: ReVision

Class: Draft Construct

Origin: Unfinished Narrative Assembly

Intent: Narrative Overwrite

Status: Active Manipulation

Aren lifted his blank page.

"You don’t belong here."

ReVision smirked.

"But I fit better than most of you. Don’t I?"

Suddenly, Aren’s vision flickered.

He stood alone.

Classroom empty.

ReVision gone.

And behind him—

One of the first-year students from earlier.

Eyes blank.

Whispers leaking from their mouth.

"They’re already writing through us."

Back in the Council Hall, the vote concluded:

Decision: Provisional Rights Approved

Terms: Echo Court to be established. All narrative contributions to be reviewed.

The doors opened.

Aren ran in.

"They’re ahead of us. One of them created a second draft of Mira."

Mira’s eyes widened. "What?"

"They’re not waiting for permission. They’ve already begun."

Seria stood immediately. "Seal the Second Draft Access Zone."

Kaela growled. "And root out anything that looks like Mira again."

Lysara looked at Aren.

"You opened a doorway."

"I didn’t mean to."

"You didn’t have to. They only needed you to exist."

System Alert:

Narrative Overlap at 7.3%

Draft Confusion Threshold: Rising

Recommended Action: Initiate Persona Anchor Protocol

That night, Aren and Kairen sat beneath the echo tree again.

She leaned against him.

"Are we going to lose?"

He didn’t answer at first.

Then said:

"We haven’t started fighting yet."

He looked at his page.

Still shimmering.

A new message formed:

"A draft is only dangerous... if no one finishes it."

Aren smiled faintly.

"Then let’s finish it ourselves."