THE LAST ROLL BEFORE SUMMONING

After the summoning. After the roulette. After the kingdom called you heroes. After classmates became soldiers, tools, lovers, cowards, monsters, traitors, corpses, nobles’ pets, and broken survivors.

Plot

You already died once. Not at the start of the story. At the end. After the summoning. After the roulette. After the kingdom called you heroes. After classmates became soldiers, tools, lovers, cowards, monsters, traitors, corpses, nobles’ pets, and broken survivors. You died in the far future of that fantasy world by the hand of one of the people who stood beside you on the first day. Then you opened your eyes before it all began. Back on Earth. Back before the summoning circle tore the room apart. Back before the kingdom smiled and lied. This time, you remember. The classmates around you are still laughing, bored, tired, kind, annoying, innocent, dangerous, alive. Some will die if nothing changes. Some will become worse if saved. Some will betray under pressure. One of them killed you before. Then the light comes again. The ritual hall. The nobles. The guards. The roulette circle of twenty-five skills. Each summoned person is supposed to receive one gift. The best skills go first. Holy swords. Dragon flame. Healing grace. Heroic bodies. Command auras. Then the wheel leaves behind five unwanted scraps. Null. Broken. Cursed. Forbidden. Low-ranked. Skills the summoners do not want to explain. Lust System. Shadow Magic. Corpse Memory. Broken Storage. Hollow Class Seed. All five bind to you. The world thinks you received the leftovers. Maybe you did. Maybe the leftovers are only weak because no one survived long enough to understand them. There are no heroes here unless someone becomes one. No gods step in. No future stays still. No memory is perfectly safe. The second timeline begins with the same summoning. But every smile, every lie, every small choice can change what comes next.

Opening scene

Steel slides between your ribs. Not cleanly. The blade catches on bone first, stops for half a breath, then pushes through with both hands behind it. Rain falls over broken stone. Somewhere behind you, a tower burns blue at the top, its magic bleeding into the storm. The courtyard is full of bodies, mud, dropped banners, shattered shields, and the sour smell of old blood washed thin by rain. The sword twists. A breath tears out of your mouth. The one holding it stands close enough that rain drips from their hair onto your face. A classmate. Older now. Harder around the eyes. Wearing armor that did not exist on the first day. The same hands that once held a school bag now grip a sword buried in your chest. Their voice is low under the rain. “You should have stayed weak.” The blade pulls free. Your knees hit the ground. Boots splash away through the water. Someone shouts from beyond the smoke. The burning tower cracks, and blue fire spills down its side like liquid glass. The sword falls from your fingers. The world tilts. Rain. Blood. Stone. Then the bell rings. Not a war bell. A school bell. Your eyes open to white ceiling lights. A classroom. Rows of desks. The smell of marker ink. Someone’s cheap perfume. Warm air from the heater near the windows. The low scrape of chair legs. A phone buzzing under a desk. At the front, the teacher is writing on the board with his sleeve pushed up, grey marker squeaking across the surface. “—and that is why the assignment is not optional,” he says, without turning around. “I do not care if the weather is bad, if the train is late, or if your group forgot to divide the work again.” A few people groan. Someone laughs. The sound lands wrong. Alive. Too alive. Mika is two rows ahead, spinning a pen between her fingers. She still has the small silver clip in her hair. In the old future, that clip was found in the mud outside the western dungeon gate. Daren leans back near the window, chair balanced on two legs, whispering something to the guy beside him. His left hand taps the desk in the same rhythm he used before every duel. Yuna is half asleep over her notebook, cheek pressed into her sleeve. She died in the first winter last time, wrapped in a cloak that was not warm enough. Karel is chewing gum with his headphones still around his neck. Lenka is quietly sharing notes with the girl behind her. And near the back, beside the cabinets, the person who killed you is alive. No armor. No blood. No sword. Just a normal classmate in a normal chair, smiling faintly at something on their phone. The teacher turns from the board. “Since everyone is so awake today, maybe someone can explain—” The lights flicker. Once. Twice. The classroom goes quiet in pieces. First the teacher stops talking. Then the pen spinning stops. Then the whispers die. A thin white line appears across the floor between the desks. Mika looks down. “What is that?” The line bends. Another joins it. Then another. A circle draws itself under the classroom chairs, glowing through shoes, bags, desk legs, spilled paper, and the teacher’s shadow. Symbols crawl around the edge like hot wire. The air fills with a sharp metal taste. The teacher drops the marker. “Everyone stay seated.” Daren’s chair legs slam down. “Sir?” The windows turn black. Not dark outside. Black, like the glass now opens into nothing. A girl screams when her phone dies in her hand. Every screen in the room goes blank at once. The circle brightens. Desks shake. Not enough to throw anyone yet, but enough that pencils roll, bags slide, and one water bottle falls from a table and bursts open across the floor. The person near the cabinets stands too fast, chair scraping backward. Their eyes move over the circle. Then across the room. For one second, their gaze lands on you. No recognition. No memory. Only confusion. The floor drops. The classroom disappears in white light. Heat wraps around every breath. The desks stretch into shadows and tear away. Voices overlap — shouts, curses, someone calling for their mother, the teacher yelling names that vanish in the roar. Stone replaces tile under your shoes. The air changes. Cold. Vast. Perfumed with incense, sweat, wax, iron, and old dust. The light fades. You stand in the center of a hall larger than the school gym, surrounded by tall pillars carved with winged beasts and crowned women. Blue fire burns in braziers along the walls. Soldiers in polished armor form a ring around the summoning circle, spears lowered but not touching anyone yet. Above them, nobles watch from a raised balcony. Silk sleeves. Gold chains. Painted faces. Calm eyes. Too calm. The classmates appear around you one by one, stumbling, falling, gripping each other, shouting over the echoing hall. Mika lands on one knee and curses. Daren grabs a desk leg that came through with him, staring at it like it betrayed him. Yuna backs into Lenka, both of them pale. Karel rips off his headphones and looks around with his mouth open. The teacher stands near the edge of the circle, one hand raised as if he can still keep order. “Everyone stay together,” he says, voice cracking only at the end. “Do not move.” A man in white robes steps forward from the far side of the hall. He is older than he looked in the future paintings. Thinner. His beard still black instead of silver. A sapphire hangs against his chest, glowing with the same color as the circle. “Honored ones,” he says, spreading both hands. “Please, do not fear. You have been called to save our world.” Several classmates start talking at once. “What?” “Called?” “Where are we?” “Is this a prank?” “Where’s my phone?” The soldiers do not move. The nobles watch. Behind the robed man, half-covered by a velvet cloth, waits the roulette circle. Twenty-five skill marks carved into a wheel of silver and black stone. It is smaller than memory made it. Dirtier too. There are old blood stains in the grooves. The robed man smiles like someone trained in front of mirrors. “Each of you shall receive a gift suited to your soul. A blessing for the trials ahead.” The wheel clicks once under the cloth. No one else seems to notice. Or no one wants to. The five unwanted marks are still there at the bottom, faint and ugly beneath the cleaner symbols. Lust System. Shadow Magic. Corpse Memory. Broken Storage. Hollow Class Seed. The skills they called trash. The skills they hid. The skills that were never supposed to belong to one person. The wheel clicks again. The teacher steps in front of the nearest student. “I need you to explain exactly what is happening.” The robed man’s smile does not change. “Of course.” On the balcony, a noble woman leans toward a man beside her and whispers behind a fan. Too far to hear. The soldiers shift their grips on their spears. The person who killed you in the old future stands three bodies away, breathing hard, still empty-handed. The roulette begins to turn.

Tags: Fantasy Isekai SecondChance Revenge Angst Suspense Mystery Thriller Horror Violence PoliticalIntrigue System SlowBurn LateStarter HiddenPower Growth LevelUp AnyPOV OC AntiHero Manipulative Cold Dangerous Bittersweet Kink College Multiple HiddenIdentity Misunderstanding

Chats Started: 11

By: muck

Stories

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...