All Chapters of MAGE ACADEMY : LEO'S FRACTURED SYSTEM : Chapter 11 
				
					- Chapter 20
				
28 chapters
				Chapter 11: Self Erasing truth 
			
The discomfort in their group had solidified into a collective aim, a silent objective. Leo had seen through a narrow opening in his vision, but had made a long shadow. The rebuilt rune, now in an innocent radiance upon their study table, was more of a college triumph than of a door to a prison which now all stood before. The insatiable aim at perfection that Aria had been pursuing had been turned off her course; her keen intelligence was now bent upon matching the design of the rune with the references of rare historical sources on magical government anciently, her brow forever set in permanent furrow. It was the essence signature which Mira analyzed until she was pale and trembling, talking about systemic decay and soul-fatigue. The project was not about a grade anymore. It was the autopsy of the Academy itself.Kael broke the academic stalemate at last. Doing nothing, this, we said, declared he, banging a heavy volume on binding theory. "We're circling the drain. We need primary so
				Chapter 12: Mirror of Merit
			
A cloud of nervousness was hovering over the Grand Athenaeum, denser and stronger than at orientation. It was not a welcome day, but a judgment day. The First Trial. The "Mirror of Merit." The gossiping among the assembled initiates resembled the air in a dangerous laboratory, the rumors of students who had confronted their greatest fears and disintegrated, their brains shattering under the glare of the mirrors, the realization of their own perceived incompetence. In the case of Leo, the anxiety was a physical burden, a leaden cloak thrown over his shoulders. The thought of looking through another magic mirror seemed an act of self-murder after the nightmare experience of the Black Library in Kael.It is not what you are, which was the announcement made by the proctor, a harsh-looking woman with iron-filing hair, made by the middle of the dais. It leaves you what you hate to be. Your greatest failure. Your facing it, you own it, and you pass. Make it devour you, and you will be unfit 
				Chapter 13: The Mirror's Verdict 
			
That quiet in the sanctum of Riven was no longer an element of preconceived possibilities, but of condemnation. It was a dense, stifling blanket that covered the usual odours of ozone, of old paper, of the subtle and coppery scent of dry blood. Leo did not wait to be invited, did not sink into the official, used hug of the leather armchair. He was stiff in the middle of the room, his physique like a drunken, smouldering energy that was fury and despair, pure, despairing soul. The broken pieces of the Mirror of Merit appeared to shone in his eyes, each piece a minute splinter of his fractured personality. Not mere letters were the words, Destined Divergent, but a brand, burnt into his retinas and into his very self-image.To his lingering presence there still seemed to attend the echoes of the room in which the Mirror had broken, the rustling of the broken glass, the silent sighing of the artisans who had escaped, and the low moaning of the magic which would not lie down. Word would al
				Chapter 14: The Architects Guilt
			
It was not his life that Leo had lived. It had been a palimpsest, the new tragedy written over the old, bloody writing of another. His head turned inward, and he was now looking toward the middle distance at a ghost that only he could see. “Charismatic. Violently, gloriously mighty. The System to him was no gift of God, but a cage. An artificial, constraining telescoping of the infinite, anarchic possibilities of real magic. Some training wheels left on thousands of years. And the worst thing, Leo, was that he was right. Riven smiled bitterly at himself in self-reproach. He approached me with his theories, with his great, beautiful vision of a more free, more organic, more alive form of magic. And I, with my pompousness, thought I could assist him perfect it. Turn his genius to a refuge. I was his tutor, his friend. His friend.” Leo could have done nothing but listen, and then, frozen by his anger, he was enclosed in ice of this terrible history. He was not a boy with a problem anym
				Chapter 15: The Bleeding world
			
The divide between Leo and Riven was a rift which tinged all. During the weeks following his announcement in the sanctum Leo was roving through the Academy as a lone satellite, circling around the buildings of authority but ceasing to land with them. He was in his required classes, but his brains were not on the work, but like stones that monstrous things were buried beneath. Riven, on his part, gave him a broad berth. They dealt with each other very formally, in an ice dance of etiquette that was more irritating than enmity. The covert training was terminated. Leo was truly on his own. In this condition of suspended suspension had come the word: their first Field Studies mission. This was referred to as “The Mortal Crossing.” An electric current of nervousness spread among the initiates. The Mortal Realm was a legend to the majority, a source of origin and was talked of in low, near pitiful tones- a world asleep ignorant of the wonderful magic that was vibrating so near the Veil. I
				The cost of living 
			
It was more than spell-bound silence in the scrapyard. It was the chagrin of silence, of reality re-stepping into place round an impossible gesture. The atmosphere was still crackling with the residual shock of the nothingness that Leo had directed, a psychological bruise upon the ordinary reality. The Amnesiac Echo that had been forgotten in the conflict was throbbing somewhere nearby...it was a small matter now.The first to make a move was Aria, who was educated in her profession, and her horror was subordinated to it. She hurried to the place where the rift had been and her hands were following the air. "The resonance is gone. Completely. It did not merely close, but was, as it were, airtight. Permanently." She turned back to Leo, still cowering on his knees, with his ragged breaths. Her wide violet eyes were not fearful of him, but with a dawning, horrific comprehension of what he had just accomplished--and what had been pursuing them.Kael helped Leo to his feet. “All right,” he
				Chapter 17: The Gilded Cage
			
Their innocence had been sent back to the Academy in funeral procession. The Transference Chamber, which had been, in old times, like a door to a miracle, was now like a kind of antechamber to an execution. As soon as they tripped over the gleaming gate, the dead, still air of the Mortal world was withheld by the heavy oppressive hum of the Arcane Veil. It was as though they had been thrown into a deep sea following a breath of empty air in a vacuum -a relief and a burden.Professor Hemlock did not receive them with his good-natured visage. They were instead met by a group of four stone-eyed proctors in harsh high-collared robes, with their hands tied behind their backs. The female proctor, the woman whose face was like the hatchet, and who pulled her hair in a very painful tight bun, came forward. She was Proctor Valerius, and her head of Academy Discipline.“The mission is terminated. You will all come with us. Now.” They could not argue with her voice. The terror was instant, a col
				Chapter 18: Cost of Ascension 
			
The Headmaster’s protection was a gilded cage, and each stare Leo now got was full of new signification. The fear or the mockery which had been there before was replaced by a wary and calculating respect. He had already battled a Hunt-Killer, and survived, and the greatest man in the Academy had openly supported him. He was not merely the Unmaker anymore, he was the idiosyncrasy of the Headmaster himself. The burden of that attention was greater than any restraint.Three days later, after the inquiry being made, a single, stark line of text appeared in his Codex, without any ordinary medium. It was from Riven.‘Sanctum. Now.’The mistrust between them was a living entity, but one that was known. The manipulation by the Headmaster seemed to be a thousand times more threatening. Riven was waiting in the messy, dark room when Leo entered it, and his face was graver than usual. He made no reply, but turned on a small gadget on his desk that hummed lowly. It was as though the atmosphere in
				The Memory Thief
			
The dust and the metallic flavor of ancient magic filled the air of the maintenance shaft. They moved in silent single-file, and the only noise made was the gasp of their exhausted breathing, and the rustle of their robes in the cold metal. It was a phantom limb, a pain which would not heal, the horror of the Archives. They had not gotten away to the real danger, but they had taken the real prison with them in their heads.With clothes open at the neck, and shaken down, they came into a deserted laundry-conduit way in the foundations of the Academy. For a long moment, no one spoke. The simple faith which they had acquired was now an ugly treaty, sealed in the greenish light of the mummified dead.Kael was the first to burst, and he spoke, his voice uncharacteristically small. "They were just... kids. Like us."Mira crossed her arms over herself and shuddered in spite of the hot air. “All that potential... just... put away. Like failed experiments.” She gazed at Leo with a new and horr
				Chapter 20: The Warden in the Mirror 
			
The grim comradeship born in the Archives and sealed in Leo’s quarters was instantly put to the test. The Academy, still reeling over the intrusion into the West Wing, an event officially attributed to a “rogue dimensional fluctuation,” reacted not by intellectual inquiry, but by redoubling. Another Trial was declared, which was obligatory to all initiates. The “Trial of Essence.” The proctors said it was meant to compel students to have a perfect symbiosis with their Codex, to make their will conform to the System which directed them. To Leo, the announcement seemed to be less of a test, and more of a trap being thrown.A fatal decision fell upon the student body. The almost disaster of the Mortal Crossing and the rumors of the lockdown in the West Wing had caused a feverish intensity to compose itself. The initiates were not merely competing to get a position anymore; they were competing to get to lifeboats of a sinking vessel. The preparations were speedy and frantic, and a scrambl