The star-steel tip of Vane's spear pressed into the fine, silver-threaded fabric of Isaac's uniform. It created a microscopic ripple in the air, a distortion that threatened to unravel the Monarch's very heart. In that fraction of a second, the Iron Cathedral seemed to hold its breath. Vane's silver mana was a razor-thin line of absolute intent, vibrating with the raw rejection of the Silver Fang. The professors in the observation room were no longer watching a student evaluation: they were watching a lethal collision. Their hands hovered over the emergency termination runes, waiting for the sound of a chest plate being pierced.
But inside the stillness of that moment, Isaac Glacium was not looking at the spear. He was looking through it. He was looking at the boy holding it. A flurry of images, sharper than any frost, surged from the depths of Isaac's memory.
