The sky over Adesuwa University darkened earlier than usual, clouds thick as though the heavens themselves sensed the storm building among the students. Inside the Health Sciences faculty building, the atmosphere was tense—too quiet, too cold, too heavy.Rick walked down the hallway with a stiffness that betrayed the storm in his mind. The confrontation with Valentina the previous night hadn't left him. She had vanished again, leaving behind questions that screamed inside his chest.What is she hiding from me? Why does she look at Collins that way? Why does it always feel like she’s running?But Rick wasn’t the only one restless.At the other end of the building, Collins Lutherchris leaned on the metal railing, eyes fixed on nothing. His heartbeat was slow, almost painfully calm, but his mind—a battlefield.He had finally read the message Valentina sent him:“We need to talk. About everything.”Everything.He clenched his fist. He knew what “everything” meant.The truth he had been ru

The emergency light flickered again, humming softly as though it sensed the tension thickening in the air.Valentina—Ariana—no longer hid her trembling.Rick wasn’t trembling.He was burning.“Explain everything,” Rick said. “Now.”Collins Lutherchris looked at both of them and drew in a long, steady breath.“We’re dealing with a syndicate called The Veilborn Circle,” Collins began.“They operated underground for years—moving weapons, information, and people. Ariana’s family was tied to them. But when her father refused to deliver something they wanted… the Circle burned everything.”Ariana flinched.Rick gently moved closer to her.“Ariana’s father stole something from them before he died,” Collins continued.“No one knows what it is. Except Ariana.”Rick glanced at her.“You know?”Ariana didn’t speak at first.Her silence was the answer.Then she whispered:“They call it The Atlas Key.”Rick frowned.“What’s that?”Ariana shook her head.“I don’t know what it opens. Only that my fa

The campus night had never felt so silent.Not peaceful—silent like a held breath.Rick, Ariana, and Collins regrouped inside an abandoned classroom on the second floor, where no student ever came because the lights always flickered and the walls carried old, strange echoes.Tonight, those flickers and echoes had purpose.They hid them.Collins locked the door and pulled the blinds.“We need to assume,” he said quietly, “that the Circle already knows the Shadelurker failed.”Ariana sat on a broken desk, catching her breath. She looked pale—her body still recovering from shattering her family’s oath.“What happens now?” she asked softly.Collins turned toward the cracked whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and drew a single circle.Then another, overlapping it.Then a third.Three rings.Rick leaned forward.“What’s that supposed to be?”“This,” Collins said, “is how the Circle attacks. They follow a pattern. They always begin by sending a summoning creature—like the Shadelurker—to test bou

The courtyard fell into a frightening stillness.Only the crackle of dying torch flames and the distant groans of wind rose through the night as Mara stood frozen, unable to tear her gaze away from the man approaching—her father.Except… he didn’t look like her father.The softness she remembered, the warmth, the careful way he had once lifted her as a child—none of that lived in his eyes now. They were sharp. Calculating. Carrying the kind of coldness that came from power misused for too long.He stepped into the torchlight, the shadows flickering across his obsidian cloak.“Mara,” he repeated, voice firm. “Enough running.”Rick stepped in front of her instinctively.“She isn’t going anywhere with you,” he growled.Mara’s father tilted his head, almost amused.“Always the stubborn one. Still pretending to be her shield.”Collins Lutherchris stepped forward, jaw set.“You sent your people to attack the academy. You put every student here in danger.”The man’s gaze flicked to Collins,

The academy woke before dawn.Not because of routine—but because of fear.Every tower, every courtyard, every hallway hummed with nervous energy.Students whispered.Professors marched.Wards glowed and flickered like restless flames.But Rick?Rick wasn’t thinking about wards.He was thinking about the man who had looked him in the eyes and called him “the Bridge.”The same man who threatened Mara.The same man whose magic felt ancient and wrong.Rick sat on the training grounds at sunrise, hands wrapped, knees bent, breathing uneven.He tried to meditate.He tried to calm the storm inside him.He failed.Lira approached quietly, her steps gentle as morning wind.“You’re shaking,” she said softly.Rick opened his eyes slowly.“Didn’t sleep.”“I figured.”She sat beside him.“You’re carrying too much alone.”Rick’s jaw tensed.“I’m not alone.”Lira studied him for a moment.“Then stop acting like you are.”Rick looked away.“I should’ve stopped him,” he murmured.“You couldn’t have,”