"I am offering you a deal, Adam Cook," Elara said softly. She trailed her perfectly manicured fingernail over the glowing crystals. "I know you are starving. I know your aura leaks because you cannot feed the infinite hole inside you. The Old Academy gives you scraps. I can give you a feast."She pushed the box slightly toward him."You will be my personal hound," Elara commanded. "You will investigate these murders quietly. You will use the Gryphon Squad. You will track down this Blood Mage. And when you find them, you will kill them. No trial. No public arrests. You make them disappear."Elara crossed her arms. "If you solve this problem for me, I will completely clear your criminal record. The Inquisition will not touch you. You will be a legal, protected citizen. And, I will send you a box of High-Tier reagents just like this one, every single week. You will never go hungry again."Adam stood in the middle of the beautiful office.He stared at the glowing mana cores. He felt the i

Adam Cook did not walk. He ran. He moved so fast he looked like a blur of black smoke. The heavy mahogany doors of the Royal Alchemy Club swung shut behind him. He did not care about the dead noble on the floor anymore. He only cared about the bloody note in his hand. “Come find me before I eat the Ice Witch.”Adam sprinted through the wide, beautiful hallways of the West Wing. His boots slammed against the polished marble floors. Smack. Smack. Smack.Behind him, Lyra and Kael tried to keep up. Lyra used bursts of orange fire from her boots to push herself forward. Kael used wind magic to make his body light. But they could not match Adam’s terrifying speed. Panic was a powerful fuel.Adam’s heart hammered in his chest. He remembered the day Catherine ran barefoot through the cold to save his life. He remembered the Primordial Frost she used to hold his broken soul together. She was the only person in the entire Academy who saw him as a human being, not just a monster or a tool.If

Adam remembered the day it happened. There was a terrible magical fire in the training arenas. Marcus had been trapped under a burning pillar. The healers could not save him. The entire Academy had attended his funeral. The casket was closed because the fire had burned him so badly, but everyone saw the Headmaster bury the box in the school graveyard.Marcus Thorne was dead."You are lying," Adam said coldly. "Or you were scared in the dark and you saw wrong. Marcus is dead, Emily. I watched them put dirt on his grave.""I am not lying!" Emily screamed hysterically. She clawed at the muddy ground. "I know it makes no sense! I know he is dead! But I saw his face, Adam! He looked right at the bookshelf. His skin was pale. His eyes were totally black. But it was Marcus! I swear it was Marcus!"Adam stared at the sobbing girl.Emily was superficial, selfish, and weak. But she was not a liar. And she was far too terrified right now to be making up a ghost story. She had definitely seen so

Kael stood perfectly still for a moment, letting his magical web feel the shape of the building."This way," Kael said. He began to walk confidently down a narrow aisle between two massive shelves.Adam followed closely behind.They reached a set of stone stairs leading down. As soon as they stepped onto the first stair, the magic of the library woke up.A loud, grinding noise echoed through the dark stone stairwell. GRRRRRND. It sounded like massive stone gears turning inside the walls.The staircase suddenly jerked. It started to rotate to the left, trying to turn them around. The stone walls around them began to slide, closing the path forward."Don't move," Kael ordered sharply. Kael pushed more silver threads from his fingers. The threads shot into the cracks between the moving stone blocks."The library is trying to confuse us," Kael explained. He pointed a finger to the right, straight at a solid stone wall. "The real path down is not the stairs. The spatial magic is tricking y

The secret sub-basement of the Great Library was a nightmare. The air smelled of old pennies, burnt sugar, and rotting meat. The heavy brick door at the top of the stairs had slammed shut. The heavy iron locks had clicked into place. Adam and Kael were completely trapped.In the center of the butcher’s shop, the three metal operating tables were empty. The dirty white sheets lay on the wet stone floor.Three stitched-together monsters stood between Adam and the stairs. They were called Death Thralls.Adam looked at them. His dark eyes widened. These were not random pieces of meat. He recognized parts of their faces. He recognized a boy with blonde hair who had gone missing in October. He recognized a tall girl from the Farm District who had disappeared just before winter.The killer had not just murdered these students. The killer had chopped them into pieces and sewn their best body parts together with thick, black thread. One of the Death Thralls had four arms. Another had legs tha