“The next hand that touches this armor doesn’t come back attached to an arm.”Tristan’s voice carried flat and certain across the Academy gates, drawing a ripple of nervous murmurs from the gathered students who’d stopped to watch, drawn by the sight of an arrest warrant being read aloud against a boy most of them remembered as the zero Aether washout.Commander Vane’s guards didn’t hesitate, their Aether infused spears blazing bright with lethal enchantment as they lunged forward in a coordinated strike meant to end the confrontation before it began.Tristan drew his father’s reforged sword.What followed happened too fast for most of the watching crowd to properly track, a single fluid arc that swept through the air almost lazily, carrying with it a microscopic, invisible pulse of Primordial Mana flowing from Tristan’s palm directly into the blade. The sword met the first spear’s enchanted shaft and simply continued through it without resistance, the heavy magical reinforcement wove