The Veilwalker - Chapter 4: Orbital Rings

Carn wakes up from a vivid dream where he spent a thousand years as a gargoyle, guarding a demon lord's tomb.In this dream, he possessed supernatural powers, including the ability to teleport and instantly kill anyone within range who broke eye contact with him. Heroes, saintesses, adventurers, all fell before him.When he returns to his normal life, things take a strange turn. Carn realizes he still has the gargoyle’s powers, and the world he has woken up to seems different.But adjusting to the new reality is not the real issue. Carn brings back something nobody in this world has imagined. Not only he imports his powers to this alternate Earth, but he also carries over his gargoyle instinct and his hobby. He loves snapping human necks.Whether it's ordinary humans, explorers, super soldiers, cyborgs, mutated beasts, monsters, or mysterious entities from other dimensions, Carn eagerly anticipates snapping their necks, one neck at a time...In secret, of course.

Ten Years after the Descent to Earth of a Radical And All-Knowing System Called Arkadia, Life has changed in ways we could only surmise given we lived in a comic book. People with superpowers, Monsters, Heroes and Villains, Hell, there were even Other races coming out of the woodwork like Elves and such. Still, it wasn’t until The Extraterrestrials Invaded that things went from bad to worse.Yet, as if hope truly existed, 5000 of us Earthlings were given the opportunity to Head back into the past, only we didn’t know at the time there was a cost for doing so. By sending us back, the Descent Clock began, as Arkadia was pushed 10000 years into the Future, and it was up to us Returners to get things set back on course by changing the past to mold the Future.And I, being a boogieman of a Villian in what I dubbed the Origin Timeline, have come up with thousands of potential ways to affect my new life, like stealing popular franchises to earn some long-term funds or….hunting down notorious Serial Kills and Solving long-standing Cold cases I had been curious about since I was a teenager.

It was in the middle of the night that the woman who would be the Duchess came to see me.

She said my father and mother died, and my kind uncle became king.

She said it’s not worth it for me, the crown prince, to be living in hiding, too.

“A while ago, Your Highness had been hiding from me. With all due respect, is that for the sake of survival? Just because your parents died doesn’t mean you have no reason to survive. Actually, that fact alone made it all the more reason why you should live. If you die now…”

If I died now?

When I asked her while looking at her eyes, the woman eventually brought out the harsh truth with empathetic eyes.

“It’s like a dog’s death.”

“That’s rude….”

It’s been a long time since I said that. In a short while, he has been treated as a madman and beaten to death just by saying similar things. She loosened her arms that held me and I suddenly stiffened up due to it. Because I thought she might have loosened her arm to hit me. But she didn’t.

She knelt down with one knee in front of me, just like a knight.

“Hastred’s Sarian raised her salutations. May you accept it gladly.”

My first knight is beautiful and kind.

“Are you on my side?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

It was all a lie.

Failing at the ceremony, Ethan became a Broken Carrier, the worst and weakest of them all.In this world where abilities had to be created and found through the Patterns, Ethan had no choice but to risk everything to change his fate.“So this is my Construct?” Ethan gazed at the massive gears of his core, preparing to harness a new power.The weakest carriers could always become the strongest, all that was needed were methods, desperate and risky, just like the world itself.