The quiet follower

He opened his eyes weakly. His head and body felt fully recharged. A slight smile of satisfaction lingers on his mouth. It's been a long time since his last deep sleep—

Sleep!? Didn't I still in the cave?

Only then did his brain begin to work again. His blank eyes before start to realize what he stares at. It's totally, literally the ceiling in his villa from his first visit on the Mages Valley island. He raised his body and stood still. His hand grasped his hair, and tried to make sense of what happened.

Strangely, there were no memories after that.

He reached out his hand to pick up the letter that floated on the water's surface, and with a blink by his eyes later,... The memories strangely stopped right there.

After a day resting at the villa, only by spaced out, ate and slept again, he concluded there's nothing to dig out from his memory further. He also has lost interest in all the things on the island, and so he decided to go back to his country, meet his friends and ask for their help over his new collection.

By evening, he flew back to his home country.

A man who only does adventure based on his feelings and curiosity, now that all of that is gone, he decided to go back home and write a book after the collection from his journey in the Veil of the Forgotten. He's totally mbti with F, feelings!

———✯｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+—————

A hand swept across the screen, closing the glowing words that had pulled him into another time. A long breath followed, deep, heavy, almost trembling. It wasn’t just a sigh. It was the weight of wonder, disappointment, and yearning tangled into one quiet exhale.

Dylan stared at the dim ceiling of the ancient library, where dust hung in still air like floating history. He had just finished reading an article on the man he’d admired for half his life, the man whose words had changed his world, and now, ruled it.

Addison Von Virelios.

Once a wild wanderer, a chronicler of forgotten relics and mysteries whispered by time.

Now a king.

And yet... the story felt incomplete.

Though the article recounted the highlights, his adventures, the dreamlike island, the rise of Virelios, it was stitched with too many gaps. Too many unanswered questions. Dylan’s mind raced, aching for the pages that had never been written.

But he knew.

He knew those answers would never come. The king himself had admitted to losing fragments of memory during the fated Mages Valley expedition. And truthfully, Dylan suspected that Addison had been so consumed by wonder and discovery, he hadn’t truly stopped to observe. To record the little things. The surrounding lives. The voices. The hidden meanings.

Still, that man had published books that shook the foundations of Dylan’s heart.

From his earliest years as a reader, Dylan had admired him. The first book he picked was random, something about caves, artifacts, the spirit of lost civilizations. Dylan, who had never left the city’s edge, devoured every page as if drinking the wind of distant lands.

Addison didn’t just describe.

He uncovered.

He documented not only the facts of history, but the soul behind them, the people, the buried truths, the legends turned real.

Each book drew Dylan deeper.

Even the ones about politics, topics he once found dry, too tangled in egos and law, felt magnetic in Addison’s voice. They were filled with honesty, theory, philosophy, and occasionally, beautiful sadness.

But then... the books stopped.

The man became a monarch.

King Addison Von Virelios, the first ruler of the techno age.

He brought luxury, intelligence, and peace.

He rewrote the way the world functioned.

But he never wrote about his adventures again.

Instead, only two political books appeared since his rise to power:

• Virelios: Foundations of Unity and the Future We Build

• The Power of the People: Governance Beyond the Crown

Dylan had read both. Twice. Brilliant, yes, but they were not the same.

Not the crackling embers of firelight on ancient ruins.

Not the salt in the air of foreign coasts.

Not the thrill of chasing truth into shadowed forests.

The King had closed that chapter.

But Dylan had not.

He lay there, sprawled on the cool stone floor of the empire’s oldest library, his workplace, his sanctuary. He had worked there full-time since he was twenty. Now, at twenty-eight, it was more home than any apartment he ever lived in.

No one came here anymore.

Not since the world turned digital.

Not since knowledge became downloadable, instant, clean.

The library had ten robots and only three human staff.

His colleagues called him “genius brain”, half-teasing, half-awed.

They spent most of their time sipping coffee, playing holo-games, letting the bots do the work.

And Dylan?

He read.

Every article. Every book. Every preserved scroll.

And still, still, it wasn’t enough.

Today, something snapped.

He sat up with a force that stirred the old air and sent a page fluttering from a forgotten shelf. His heart thudded like a war drum. His eyes burned with clarity.

“If no one else will chase the story... I will.”

His phone screen still glowed beside him.

A photo of a young Addison. Barefoot on a beach. Laughing with a wolf pup in his arms.

Untamed.

Alive.

“I’m going to the Mages Valley Island,” Dylan whispered to no one.

To the forest that veiled itself in myths.

To the place where memory had broken.

To the root of an empire born from dreams.

A lifelong bookworm had just decided to write his own chapter.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***