The team emerged from the dungeon into pale afternoon light. The training grounds were crowded with students who had already completed their examinations. Some sat on the grass, exhausted. Others stood in clusters, comparing experiences. A few looked toward the eastern entrance as Aren’s team appeared—the last team to exit. The standby medical staff saw the blood first. They were already moving before Seraphina had taken three steps, their eyes fixed on the dark stain spreading across her torn uniform. One of them—a woman with short gray hair—reached her first, hands already glowing with diagnostic magic. “Blood—she’s injured! Get the healing kit!” Seraphina raised a hand, stopping her. “I’m fine. I healed myself. The wound is closed.” The medic’s eyes swept over her, assessing. The uniform was torn, the fabric soaked dark red. But the skin beneath was unbroken. No wound. No blood. Nothing. “You healed yourself?” The medic’s voice was skeptical. “This much blood—” “The claws

The days after the examination had blurred together. Seraphina had thrown herself back into her routine—classes, training, research—trying to pretend that everything was normal. But nothing was normal. She woke each morning with her hand pressed to her chest, half-expecting to find blood. She caught herself holding her breath, then gasping, as if her lungs had forgotten how to work. And she watched Aren. He had agreed to work together. He had shared what he’d found in the dungeon—the breach in the outer wall, the disabled runes, the suspicion that someone inside the Academy was responsible. But he hadn’t explained how he knew. He hadn’t explained anything. She couldn’t stop thinking about the spell. The word he’d spoken as she lay dying. The light that had pulled her back from a place she couldn’t describe. The feeling of her heart starting again, of air flooding her lungs, of her body remembering how to live. What was that? The question followed her everywhere. It followed h

The rumors started the day after the examination. At first, they were quiet—whispers in the dining hall, glances in the corridors. Students talked about the third level. The monster hound. The team that had walked out alive when so many others had failed. Then the stories grew. “Veyl fought the hound with his bare hands.” “Seraphina Aurelion was covered in blood when she came out.” “They said the hound ran away from him. Like it was scared.” Aren heard every version of the story as it circulated through the Academy. He found them mildly amusing and entirely irrelevant. The investigation was more important. The breach in the dungeon wall. The disabled runes. Instructor Vellis, whose nervous glances toward the training grounds had grown more frequent over the past few days. Aren had been watching. Waiting. Vellis would slip eventually. They always did. But in the meantime, there was another problem stirring. Theo. Theo had been avoiding Aren since the forest. Tha

The morning after the forest, Theo woke with a pounding headache. He remembered going to the forest edge with Zepes. He remembered waiting in the trees. He remembered watching Aren approach through the darkness. And then… nothing. Just fog. He didn’t remember the fight. Didn’t remember drawing the spell blade. Didn’t remember the golden light or the shockwave or Aren’s cold voice telling him to forget. But the spell blade was still in his coat. Unused. What happened? he thought, pressing his palms against his temples. Why can’t I remember? He returned the blade to Cedric that afternoon. “Instructor,” Theo said, keeping his voice low. “I never got the chance to use it.” Cedric’s jaw tightened. He took the blade, turning it over in his hands, checking for damage. There was none. “What do you mean you never got the chance?” “The hound—” Theo hesitated. “I don’t know. I remember going to the forest edge. I remember Veyl approaching. Then nothing. The next thing I knew, I was b

The eastern ruins stretched before them—a maze of broken columns, collapsed archways, and weathered stones half-buried in the earth. Lyssa moved through the space with careful reverence, her sketchbook open, her pencil moving in quick, precise strokes. She paused at every intact carving, documenting each symbol with a scholar’s patience. Seraphina kept watch from a few paces behind, her eyes scanning the shadows between the stones. Her hand never strayed far from her sword. Aren walked among the ruins with an unreadable expression, his attention fixed on the symbols carved into the ancient stone. The script was familiar. Not intimately—he hadn’t seen it in thousands of years—but he knew it. A language that predated the war. A language that had been dead for three thousand years. So this place is old, he thought. Older than I expected. He traced a finger lightly over a faded inscription. The characters were crude by modern standards, but the magic woven into them was unmistakab