The academy felt different when the sun rose the next morning. It did not feel like a place of learning anymore. It felt like a battlefield wrapped in the clothes of a school. The courtyard that had once been filled with laughter and training now stood broken and burned.Stones shattered, grass scorched, and the smell of Rift energy still hanging in the air like bitter smoke.For the first time since he arrived at the academy, Oliver Beckett did not wake to the sound of his alarm or the soft ping of a System notification. He woke to the heavy quiet of the infirmary, where the light was dim, the air cold, and the soft beeping of a monitor filled the silence around him like a heartbeat that wasn’t his.His eyes opened slowly, every muscle in his body aching. The ceiling above him blurred, then sharpened. The white lights reflected across his vision. His breathing felt tight, like something heavy sat on his chest. “Oliver?”The voice was soft, trembling. Iris sat beside his bed, leani

The night was cold and strangely quiet. The academy lights flickered in the distance like tired stars. Oliver Beckett sat inside the abandoned data-hall with Iris and Billy, the screens around them glowing faintly with lines of half-broken code. They were still trying to restore their corrupted files, still trying to understand why their evidence upload had suddenly failed.Oliver stared at one screen, his jaw tight. “Someone erased the message before it reached the Council,” he said quietly. His voice was steady, but his eyes were sharp with worry. “Someone inside our group.”Billy shifted uncomfortably. Iris leaned against the table, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “We checked everything,” she said. “All the encryption keys. All the logs. One person had to be inside the upload room to sabotage the whole thing.”Billy looked at Oliver in panic. “It isn’t me,” he whispered. “I swear. I swear on everything. I did not do this.”Oliver didn’t answer him right away. He looked tired, older

Morning light stretched weakly across the academy courtyard, but it did nothing to warm the place. The academy felt changed, like someone had drained all the color out of its walls. Students walked in small groups, whispering behind tight hands, glancing around as if danger hid behind every door. Even the wind that usually carried soft laughter now carried fear.Oliver Beckett walked through the courtyard slowly, his steps heavy. Every muscle in his body still ached from the injuries Hayes had left him with. The System had healed much of it, but the strange pain in his chest lingered like a bruise on his soul. The notifications that flickered in the corner of his vision did not help. They came at random, glitching like broken text, unreadable symbols flashing before fading away.He rubbed his temples and breathed out. “The academy feels wrong,” he whispered to himself.Iris walked beside him, watching him with quiet worry. “You are not sleeping enough,” she said gently. “You wake u

The next morning, the academy felt like a different place. The sky was gray, the clouds low, and every shadow seemed to stretch farther than it should. Oliver Beckett walked across the training yard with a heaviness in his steps. The conversation with the Shadow Broker still twisted inside his mind like a knot that refused to loosen.“Rift Catalyst. The System bends around you. Hayes is watching.” The words replayed again and again, until they felt like they were carved behind his ribs.Iris walked beside him, eyes sharp and alert. “You barely slept,” she said softly. “Your face looks like you got hit by reality.”Oliver forced a small smile. “Something like that.”Billy trailed behind them, shoulders tense, quiet since the encounter. He kept rubbing his hands together and looking around as if expecting someone to jump from behind a building.Students passed them, whispering. Oliver felt their eyes, their suspicion, their fear. Every time he glanced at someone, they quickly looked aw

The academy clinic was too quiet. The kind of quiet that made every breath feel heavy and every step echo like a confession. Oliver Beckett sat on the edge of the metal examination table, his hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. Iris stood beside him, her arm wrapped in bandages, her face pale but steady.Two students had died during the mission. Two friends. Two people who trusted him. And the traitor, Colen Rhys, had escaped.Oliver’s thoughts twisted like a storm. His mind replayed Jace’s gasp of pain, Mila’s still body, Colen’s smirk as he pressed the detonator. He wanted to scream, to break something, to tear open the truth behind Hayes’s network with his bare hands.But all he could do was breathe, slow, forced, trembling.The clinic door opened. Headmistress Kael entered with a grim expression. Her normally sharp eyes held something softer today. Pity, maybe. Or weariness that had settled into her bones.“Oliver,” she said, “I need to speak with you.