I used Blink to close the last of the distance and rise directly beside my professors, only to find my body holding steady in open air.
"I can — fly?" I said, staring down at the wreckage below with something between disbelief and vertigo.
Marlowe allowed himself a small, knowing smile. "Wove a levitation spell into your aura while I was sealing her summons. Thought you might need it."
"Thank you," I said, meaning it more than the words probably carried.
Garlock let out a booming laugh despite everything. "Looks like it's the three of us, then."
"Must you stroke your beard in the middle of a crisis," Marlowe muttered.
"Helps me think," Garlock said, entirely unrepentant.
The sky itself had turned against us by then — black clouds churning, violet lightning splitting the air with every pulse of Mizawa's power. Marlowe raised a blinding shield of Light that flickered and dimmed under her dark tendrils; Garlock threw up a second wall of steam and stone that groaned under the strain of her assault.
I wove through the storm on wings I still didn't fully trust, Fire and Air combined with everything my Assassin skills could offer, throwing concentrated fireballs into the chaos. Most of them barely registered against her — deflected or simply absorbed, her power swallowing the effort whole.
"Hold your ground!" Marlowe's voice cut through the wind, strained but unbroken. Garlock summoned a wave of boiling water and molten fire together, and the collision with Mizawa's own storm shook the mountain beneath us to its foundations.
My mana held — it always did — but the physical toll was mounting fast, exhaustion creeping in at the edges no matter how much I pushed against it. I kept moving, Blink and Explosive Blink carrying me through gaps in her assault that shouldn't have existed, the sheer pressure of the air around us crushing regardless.
Mizawa, sensing something close to victory, drew everything she had into one final storm — the sky gone fully black, violet lightning splitting it apart in every direction.
Garlock and Marlowe found something further to give anyway. A reinforced wall of earth and fire from Garlock, straining under the weight of the coming storm; a shield from Marlowe pushed to its absolute limit, a shadow woven around the three of us for whatever protection it could offer.
Hovering on the edge of collapse myself, I reached into my Item Space and drew the Wrath of God, its runed blade catching what little light remained. I channeled everything I had left directly into the steel and hurled it, fire and all, straight into the heart of her vortex.
The explosion staggered her completely. For one brief second, the clouds tore open, and the ruined grounds below lit with something almost otherworldly.
Garlock didn't waste it. He slammed both hands together, and the ground answered with an earthquake violent enough to shatter her concentration outright, chunks of earth raining down around her.
Marlowe followed with a beam of concentrated Light straight into her falling form, and I threw everything that remained of my own strength into a last flurry of fire, forcing her to burn through whatever power she had left just fending us off.
Her storm guttered. Her shield flickered and failed. And finally, spent, she dropped to her knees on the shattered ground, aura dimming visibly.
"You may have won today," she spat, hatred and exhaustion tangled together in her voice, "but the Demon Lord is coming. You cannot stop what's approaching."
"Surrender, Mizawa," Marlowe managed, barely staying upright himself. "The academy stands. Yield."
Her eyes burned with something that hadn't cooled at all, even in defeat. "Do what you must." Her voice dropped to something almost private, carried off on the wind. "This was only ever a prelude."
She vanished into black shadow, and the storm she'd been holding together collapsed with her, leaving the academy grounds cratered and burning in the sudden quiet.
Garlock's face went white as the earthquake he'd summoned caught up with him — he scanned the wreckage desperately until he spotted Krisha and the others, safe beneath the barrier Marlowe had raised earlier, and let out a breath that seemed to empty him entirely.
I dropped out of the air, barely conscious, and hit the rubble hard. Marlowe and Garlock descended more slowly beside me, robes torn, faces streaked with soot, both of them carrying the visible cost of the fight in every line of their posture.
Krisha reached me first, sprinting across broken stone, her face tight with worry. "Kazu — are you alright?"
"Fine," I managed, though the ragged pull of my own breathing said otherwise.
She took my hand, steady and warm against the shake still running through me. "I'm here," she said quietly, and I let myself hold onto that for a moment while my strength slowly found its way back.
Nearby, Garlock and Marlowe surveyed the ruin with a mix of relief and exhaustion neither of them bothered hiding.
"We drove her off, at least," Marlowe said, voice worn thin.
"That's true," Garlock said, wiping soot from his brow, something heavier passing behind his eyes for a moment before he pushed it down. "Though I doubt we'll ever fully account for what this cost us."
Marlowe was quiet a beat before answering. "We'll rebuild what can be rebuilt. The rest, we'll carry."
Garlock let out a tired, low chuckle despite it. "At least we've got an excuse to skip regular lessons while the repairs are underway."
They sat together on the shattered stone a while longer, spent but alive, some fragile version of relief settling over both of them even as the losses of the day sat plainly between the lines of it.
One week later, the academy was still far from its old grandeur, but the rebuilding had taken hold in earnest — magic and manual labor working in tandem to raise walls back where they'd fallen. Our routines had resumed almost exactly as before, Krisha joining me for the morning exercises now as a matter of course.
A letter arrived from Garlock summoning all five of us to the partly restored Grand Hall, and we gathered to find him waiting at the front, pride plain on his face.
"Today, we honor Kazu," he said, "for his courage during the invasion. Exceptional skill, exceptional bravery — a debt this academy won't soon forget."
The room applauded, and I stood there still faintly recovering from the aftermath of it all, humbled more than I knew how to properly say. Krisha stood close beside me, glowing with something like pride of her own as I accepted a small golden medal, the room settling into a renewed, hard-won sense of hope.
The days that followed blurred together in the best way — training, meals, the slow work of rebuilding, almost all of it shared with Krisha at my side. I noticed, somewhere in the middle of it, that whatever I felt toward her had stopped being simple friendship a while back.
One morning, walking the courtyard together, I finally worked up the nerve to say something about it.
"Krisha—" I stopped, started again. "If a friend of yours liked you — would that be alright?"
"O—of course," she said quickly, something hopeful flickering behind the words. Is he about to—
"Never mind," I said, losing my nerve entirely. "Forget I said anything."
"Alright," she said, disappointment carefully hidden, and changed the subject before it could turn awkward between us. "I read there's supposed to be a strong chance of shooting stars tonight. Want to watch them together?"
"That sounds great," I said, relieved at the shift. "I'll get ready."
"See you tonight," she said, and watched me go, wondering — not for the first time — why I hadn't just said what I meant.
Far from the academy's slow recovery, Mizawa knelt before Rostiel in his throne room, the Spear of Destruction resting in his hands as he studied it without looking up.
"My lord. I've destroyed Soradia's capital, and its finest warriors with it."
"Well done," he said, flat and cold.
"I wasn't able to finish the academy, however," she admitted. "Their instructors countered all six affinities together, and there's a boy — Kazu—"
"A boy?" He turned to face her fully. "Who are they, exactly?"
"They're the ones who stopped me from taking Druzka's heart entirely. I apologize, my lord, for the failure."
His grin, when it came, held nothing warm in it at all. "No matter. I'll pay this place a visit myself." He studied her a long moment. "It's no small thing that you returned to me alive at all."
"Thank you, my lord."
"And Kazike?" he asked, tone dropping colder still. "Did you bring the assassin to our side?"
Something flickered behind her glowing eyes. "I was not successful."
"Then you're prepared for him to become collateral, when our conquest reaches that far?"
She swallowed hard, and nodded without hesitation. "Yes, my lord."
His smile widened. "Good. Soon, the three remaining nations fall, and this world belongs entirely to us."
"Yes, my lord," she said, steady, though something behind her eyes suggested the cost of that steadiness ran deeper than her voice let on.
Beyond the fortress walls, ranks of demons stood assembled in the dark, waiting only for their numbers to swell enough to finish what had already begun.