"They are writing off the entire student body as collateral damage?" Lysandra’s voice dropped into a register so dangerously cold it made the air in the room seem to freeze. She stopped pacing, her fingers biting into her crossed arms. "Thousands of students, staff, and apprentices, and they are drafting an excuse letter?" "It’s not just an excuse letter, Lysandra," Eldric muttered, catching the silver letter opener between two fingers with a sharp clack. "It’s an institutional vanishing act. By the time the regional magistrate arrives to investigate the seismic anomaly, the Board will be three provinces away, sitting comfortably in their private manors with their pockets lined by whatever they managed to siphon out of that crystal sink." "We can't let them do that," Merovin said, his voice shaking slightly as he uncurled his legs from the chair. He looked around the circle of faces, panic warring with a stubborn glint in h

"Because if we stay, our burial will be completely free of charge," Eldric added, pushing off the doorframe with an easy, fluid motion that completely failed to hide the rigid tension in his shoulders. He slipped the silver letter opener into his inner pocket, his eyes darting toward the heavy oak door. "And frankly, I prefer a different architectural aesthetic to my tomb. The damp stone down below has character, at least." "It has more than character, it has falling masonry," Merovin muttered, though he dragged his feet off the armchair and stood up. His hands trembled as he reached for his satchel, checking the clasps with frantic, clumsy fingers. "Fine. We go. But if we die down there, I am haunting your dorm rooms for the rest of the term, Alarion." "Deal," Alarion said, not smiling. The marrow in his bones was singing a frantic, warning note, vibrating in rhythm with the subterranean pulse that only he seemed able to feel with such agon

"If you blow a gasket and turn our bones to gray ash, I'm still making you pay for my textbooks," Eldric muttered, stepping up beside Alarion and clapping a heavy hand onto his shoulder. The bravado in his tone was paper-thin, transparent enough to reveal the wild, frantic pulse hammering against the skin of his throat. "So pace yourself, Star-Child. Some of us actually plan on graduating." "Focus, Eldric," Lysandra commanded, her voice slicing through the tense air of the subterranean vault like a silver blade. She dropped to her knees beside the massive, circular depression in the center of the stone door, her fingers flying over the intricate, faded glyphs carved into the cold basalt. "Alarion, put your hand where the cracked rod went. Exactly in the center. If your calculations are off by even a millimeter, the feedback loop will cook your internal organs before you can even scream." "Comforting. Thank you for the vote of confidence," Al

"They aren't just bleeding, they're screaming! Can’t you hear that? It sounds like glass grinding against glass!" Merovin’s voice cracked, his hands clamping over his ears as the stone door groaned—a deep, tectonic protest that vibrated through the very marrow of their bones. Alarion didn’t answer. He couldn't. He had pressed his palm against the center of the basalt, and the world had instantly transformed into a screaming vortex of raw, unrefined mana. His nerves weren't just firing; they were being flayed. It felt like needles of white-hot lightning were threading through his veins, stitching him into the machine. "Alarion!" Lysandra lunged forward, her fingers trembling as she traced a secondary stability pattern in the air near his head. "Steady! The energy isn't moving through the door; it’s pulling back into you! Break the seal!" "I can't," Alarion gasped, his eyes rolling back, veins

"I said keep your eyes on the tunnel, Merovin!" Lysandra shrieked, her voice fraying at the edges as the violet discharge licked at her skin, turning her knuckles a bruised, angry grey. She felt the mana tearing through her own pathways, a predatory current seeking an outlet, but she slammed her iron will against it. She didn't let go of Alarion. She couldn't. With a final, desperate shove of her own reservoir, Lysandra jammed a grounding hex into the seam where Alarion’s skin met the basalt slab. The result was instantaneous. The air didn't just snap; it imploded. A vacuum of silence rushed into the corridor, sucking the very oxygen from their lungs, followed immediately by the heavy, grinding thud of the stone slab sliding into the floor. Alarion collapsed, a limp doll of sweat and ozone. Lysandra fell with him, her lungs heaving, her fingers charred and trembling. "Eldric," she wheezed, not looking up. "Clear. T