After warning the Prince, Aurora left the spire and ran through the academy searching for Kai.

  Finding him didn't take long. He was already moving toward the main building with clear purpose.

  "You're here." Aurora seemed relieved.

  "Hey, have you seen any of the others? I can't find anyone." He asked, though his mind didn't seem fully present.

  "No. But Aurelius will find Mary, and they'll help them." She reassured him. "Where are you going?"

  "Silvani. I think I know what they're after." Kai replied without slowing down.

  "Then I'll protect you." Aurora said it without hesitation, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Kai took a second to glance at her, smiled slightly, then kept moving. There was no time for delays.

  They made it about halfway there, right before the stairs, when the sound of walls being destroyed reached them. Not once. Over and over, rhythmic and getting closer, like something very large was taking the most direct route possible regardless of what was in the way.

  They stopped and looked at each other.

  Then Garrick burst through the wall directly in front of them, sending chunks of stone skidding across the floor. He stopped, looked up at the staircase, and seemed to be calculating the jump.

  "Hey," Kai said. "The door is right there."

  Garrick ignored him completely.

  He bent his knees, preparing to jump, but Aurora was faster. One quick movement and her blade had cut across the back of both his legs. Not deep enough to sever, but enough to buckle them. Garrick went down on one knee with a grunt that shook the corridor.

  "Who the hell are you?" He twisted to look at Aurora, who stood with her sword already back in guard.

  "This is Aurora, Garrick." Dorian's voice came from behind Kai, who turned around fast enough to nearly trip. Dorian stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking like someone who had simply taken a wrong turn. "And the other one is Kai."

  "Who?" Garrick was already back on his feet, the cuts on his legs sealed over with dark corruption.

  "The unranked student. The one you said you didn't care about."

  "Right, right." Garrick rolled his neck. "Still don't. And who's Aurora again?"

  All three of them stared at him.

  "The S-rank," Dorian said patiently.

  "Oh!" Garrick's face lit up like someone had just told him it was his birthday. "Perfect, I'll take her, you can have him."

  "Ka—" Aurora started to tell Kai to step back and let her handle them both, but Garrick's hand was already around her head. He grabbed her with one arm and launched her through the hole he'd made in the wall, then jumped through after her, creating a second opening on the way out.

  The corridor went quiet.

  Kai stood alone with Dorian.

  "I always get the complicated ones," Dorian said, more to himself than to Kai. He looked genuinely put out, like someone reviewing a bad work assignment. "Every single time."

  "Don't worry," Kai said, his right hand already starting to move. "It won't take long."

  Vera wasn't making any progress on her private mission.

  She'd found Greystar's study without much trouble, but the professor herself was nowhere to be seen. Vera spent a few minutes examining the research left out on the desk, hoping to find something, anything, but it was all class notes and student evaluations. Administrative work.

  Had Greystar really abandoned her actual research for this? The thought made Vera genuinely uneasy in a way that the ongoing invasion hadn't.

  She gave herself six extra minutes to search before she'd leave and help the others, though she doubted any of them actually needed it. Garrick didn't need help, he needed to be aimed. Nyx never needed help, she needed to be stopped. And Dorian could take care of himself.

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  She checked every room she could in the time she had left. Greystar wouldn't be on the frontlines. That would be tactically stupid, and Greystar was never stupid. And if Emberheart was busy elsewhere, then who was guarding her?

  She was so lost in thought she didn't notice the trap.

  When she stepped over the threshold into the courtyard, a mana seal activated beneath her feet and her legs simply stopped responding.

  "What?!" She stared down at the circle. "I only have a minute and thirty seconds left!" She drew her shortsword and looked at the seal with genuine irritation. "Sacrifices must be made in the name of progress."

  She was lowering the blade when she heard footsteps on the other side of the courtyard. She looked up.

  Two students. That counted as a finding.

  She straightened up, smiled, and put on her best lost and frightened expression. "Heeey, could I get some help? I'm a little stuck."

  Mira stopped at the courtyard entrance and studied the seal, then studied Vera, then smiled with quiet satisfaction. "That trap only activates when something without mana walks through it." She tilted her head. "And I would know if you were actually a student, so you can drop the act."

  Erick wasn't paying attention to either of them. He was looking at Vera with his head slightly tilted, the way someone examines a puzzle they find interesting. "You're here for Greystar, aren't you? She says she's a bit busy for visitors right now."

  Vera's whole demeanor shifted. The frightened student vanished, replaced by something sharper and far more eager. "She knows I'm here." Her eyes went wide with excitement. "She's watching right now, isn't she? This is a test." She dropped her sword entirely and pulled out her notebook. "What does she want to see? Loyalty? Power? Should I kill you both?"

  Mira looked at Erick.

  Erick looked back at Mira with a grin that didn't promise anything good for the girl stuck in the seal. "She's still trapped, yeah?"

  "For another few minutes," Mira confirmed, already forming a barrier.

  "Great." Erick cracked his knuckles, the runes on his bracers beginning to glow. "Let's not waste them."

  The library had been Nyx's territory for about ten minutes now.

  The guards had tried to stop her at the entrance, which was unfortunate for them. Not because they failed, that part she'd expected. Just because it was over too quickly. A proper fight needed some back and forth.

  The corruption she'd released now sealed off the exits, thick and slow-moving, enough to deter anyone trying to slip past. If the student hiding somewhere in the stacks tried to run, they'd hit a wall and have nowhere to go.

  Now it was just a matter of finding them.

  "I wanted a group," Nyx admitted to no one in particular, wandering between the shelves with her dagger spinning lazily in her hand. "But this is better. Hunting one is so much more honest than herding twenty." She paused, tilting her head to listen. "Where are you?"

  On the fourth floor, Lina crouched in the corner behind a shelf, frantically flipping through a book on corruption magic.

  Anything she could use. Anything at all.

  But people didn't really fight corruption. It wasn't something you punched or outmaneuvered. It was a force of nature that consumed everything it touched, and the book in her hands kept emphasizing that rather than offering solutions.

  The library's dampening field didn't help. She couldn't sense mana at all, which meant she had no way of knowing how close the woman with the dagger was. Could be three rooms away. Could be right on the other side of the shelf.

  She felt the tears before she realized she was crying.

  She should have asked Kai for a rule. Something protective, something defensive. A rule that kept her safe or made her invisible or simply kept her alive. She'd been so focused on cataloguing and testing his power that she'd never thought to ask for something for herself.

  Could he rule that she didn't die today? Just that? Would it work? Would he do it?

  At this point she didn't care about side effects or unintended consequences. She'd accept whatever came with it. She'd study the results afterward if she survived.

  But he wasn't here. She had to do something herself.

  Lina stood up. She stepped out from behind the shelf.

  The aisle was empty.

  She let herself breathe. Maybe the guards had managed something after all. Maybe the woman had moved on. She started making her way toward the stairs, one careful step at a time, holding onto something fragile that felt like hope.

  "There it is." The voice came from directly behind her. "The hope. I always wait for that part."

  In the forest, the barrier around the boy began breaking down at a pace that made no sense.

  Anya was on her feet before she fully understood why. Serin moved past her, positioning between Anya and the frozen figure, the spirit's body low and tense.

  Within a minute, the boy had regained movement. Slow at first, stiff, methodically testing each limb like someone reviewing equipment after a long time in storage. He wasn't looking at Anya. He was looking at his own hands.

  "You..." The word came out before Anya could stop it, and then the rest wouldn't follow. Because saying it out loud would make it real. That what was standing in front of her wasn't her brother. That her brother had been gone for a long time.

  The boy finally noticed her. His empty eyes moved from her face to Serin and back again. Then he smiled.

  "Big sis!"

  It was wrong. She knew it was wrong. The shape of the smile was close, just close enough to make her chest ache, but the warmth behind it wasn't there.

  "You're not him." She forced herself to say it.

  "What do you mean? Of course I am." His head tilted. "He's still here, inside. He's been waiting for you this whole time. He's begging for your help right now." A pause. "Are you going to abandon him, big sis?"

  Serin growled.

  If there was even a chance, the smallest chance, that her brother was still somewhere in there, Anya had to take it. No matter how irrational. No matter how dangerous. Whatever was left of him, she had to reach it.

  She had to try.