The dust from the ruins slowly settled, falling like dirty gray snow in the middle of the completely destroyed control room. Particles of shattered obsidian mixed with thin wisps of smoke smelling of sulfur, cheap alcohol, and pungent magic ozone. There was no longer a roar splitting through dimensions. There was no longer the hiss of corruptor poison melting stone. All that remained was a silence so thick, so heavy, and so deafening that it made the survivors' eardrums ring with pain.In the back wall of the control room, a giant hole gaped open. The edges of the hole were jagged and rough; they were the marks of brutal, desperate, panicked claws. Boulders the size of horse carriages lay scattered across the floor, and the dark tunnel leading down into the deepest earth layer still billowed heat from the friction of the Corruptor Dragon's claws. A twenty-meter-tall mythical entity, a calamity said to be capable of bringing down kingdoms, had just dug a hole like a terrified mole and

Vice Headmaster Thorne lay unconscious on the granite floor, his breathing shallow but steady. The Silver Griffin knights and healers remained frozen in place, their brains yet to reboot after the reality they had just witnessed. Amidst the awkward silence, the sound of calm, measured footsteps echoed from the ruined corridor.Professor Balthazar stepped into the control room. Unlike Thorne, who had rushed in with a flaming broadsword, Balthazar walked with his hands clasped behind his back. A fist-sized Memory Recording Crystal hovered above his left shoulder, emitting a soft blue light that captured every corner of the room. His face remained calm, but his eyes swept across the chamber with the sharp focus of a scholar verifying a grand theory.Balthazar ignored the unconscious Thorne. He ignored the giant hole in the wall that was still billowing smoke. He ignored the students sipping ginger broth with traumatized, zen-like expressions. His gaze locked onto a corner of the room whe

Red brick dust still clung to Aster Vale's messy hair, remnants of his efforts to tear down the back wall of Vale's Junk Shop the night before. He was sitting on a stack of burlap sacks filled with miasma-radiated Slumber Moss, scrubbing a worn wooden board with a filthy, jet-black rag. In front of him lay a rusty iron sledgehammer and a few bent nails he had salvaged from the rubble."If I can sell these nails as 'Post-Disaster Architectural Relics' to antique collectors," Aster muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing sharply behind his Used Reading Glasses as he scanned every curve of rust on the nails, "I might be able to get three copper coins apiece. But the cost of cleaning off the rust is more expensive than the selling price... Damn it."Suddenly, a polite yet firm knock sounded from the front door of the shop, which he had just makeshift-reattached using rope and fish glue. Knock. Knock. Knock.Aster grunted in annoyance. He wasn't opening the shop today. Today was a sacred d

The dust from Viktor's Earthshaker spear strike had still not fully settled over the parade grounds. Fine stone particles floated through the air, creating a gray haze that enveloped the steel boots of the Ironforge soldiers and the worn cloth sandals of the Aethelgard students. Amidst that suffocating tension, where the threat of military dominance still echoed in everyone's ears, Kaelen stood rigid in the front row of Team 1.His heart was pounding, not out of fear of Viktor's giant stature or the physical power that had just shattered the academy's stone paving. His heart was pounding because a sudden memory rushed into his consciousness like an unstoppable tidal wave.As his eyes locked onto Viktor's rugged face—the haughty square jaw, the thick eyebrows drawn into a sharp scowl, and the pair of small horns at his temples—the world around him seemed to fade away. The roar of the armored soldiers and the low snarls of their wolf mounts grew distant and faint. All that remained was

Night had fallen over the Commercial District of Aethelgard Academy, bringing a bone-chilling cold and a heavy silence. The streetlights flickered faintly, casting long shadows that danced between narrow alleys piled high with scrap metal and junk. Amidst the quiet, a small junk shop with a lopsided sign—Vale's Junk Shop—glowed dimly from within.Inside a room cramped with burlap sacks, rusty copper pots, and strange wooden offcuts, Aster Vale sat cross-legged on the floor. In front of him lay the main source of his frustration that evening: a Broken Market Scale.The scale was made of brass, blackened by age, with two dented pans and heavily rusted chains. Aster was trying to weigh a bundle of scrap copper wire he had found near the dungeon ruins earlier that day. He placed the wire on the left pan and began sliding the iron counterweight across the right arm.Creak... creak...The sound of grinding, rusted metal echoed loudly in the quiet shop. Aster scowled, his eyes narrowing behi