Damian's POV
The dorm room was quiet. Finn was off somewhere yapping about runes, Thrain was probably bench-pressing a building, and Sylvia had her nose buried in a book thicker than my head. Good. I didn't need an audience.
That's when I saw it. A slim, black wax-sealed tube, just lying there on my damn pillow. Like it owned the place.
No scent. No magic buzz. Just… a thing that shouldn't be there.
My guts went cold. Shit.
I didn't touch it right away. I stood there, listening, my Veil of Stillness already wrapped around me like a second skin. Nothing. The air didn't even twitch.
Slowly, I picked it up. The wax cracked under my thumb. Inside, a single rolled parchment. I shook it out.
It was a map. Sort of. A nasty, hand-scribbled mess of lines and cross-hatches, labeling the underbelly of the Academy—the service tunnels, the old sewage runs, the forgotten storerooms. The kind of places you go if you want to disappear forever.
My eyes locked on one spot, deep in the maze. A chamber was circled in angry red ink. Next to it, a symbol: a flaming droplet smashing down on an anvil.
Forge-Flame Essence.
The words hit me like a punch to the throat. That wasn't just a Fire-attuned herb. That was the good stuff. The kind of thing that could turn my sad little Ember Palm into something that actually hurt. A full Grade jump, maybe. From E to D. Real power.
At the bottom of the page, in neat, boring script that gave nothing away:
"One night only. The Watcher is diverted."
The Earth-Watcher. Lyra. She'd just 're-assigned' me to a safer room. 'Diverted.' Was this her move? A test? A trap? Or was it from the cult? Vorlan's nasty smile flashed in my mind. A gift with poison in it. Or Gareth. A nice, dark hole to cut me up in.
The System was dead silent. No quest. No warning. Just the empty hum in the back of my skull. It was leaving this one to me.
"Damn it all," I muttered, crushing the parchment in my fist.
This was a sucker's game. Walk into a pitch-black basement because someone left a candy trail. Only idiots and the desperate did that.
I looked at my hands. One could make a spark. The other could make the shadows dance. I was both. And I was so damn tired of being the weakest thing in the room.
I needed that fire. Not just for cover. I needed to hit something. To burn a problem away for once, instead of slinking around it.
But walking into a trap was just suicide with extra steps.
I sat on my bed, thinking. The whistle was in my pocket. Clarrisa's 'favor'. I could blow it, ask her. But that would mean showing my hand, admitting I was desperate. And what would she do? Tell me not to go? That wasn't an alliance. It was a leash. I couldn't owe her more than I already did.
No. This was mine.
I looked at the map again, burning the path into my memory. Then I held the parchment over the small, ever-glowing runelight by my bed. I touched a trickle of Fire mana to it.
Ember Palm.
A small, controlled flame licked from my fingertip. The parchment caught, blackened, curled into ash. I let the ash fall into a cup of water I hadn't drunk. It sizzled, then was nothing.
No evidence.
I had a few hours until 'night' in a place with no real sun. The academy's great crystal dome dimmed on a schedule. I used the time.
First, I checked my gear. The two short swords from the dwarf, sharp and hungry. My few remaining healing salves. The High-Grade Darkness Stone was a last resort—a nuclear option that would light me up like a beacon to anyone who knew how to look. I left it hidden under a loose floor tile.
Then, I prepared.
I went to the new training room, 7-B. Lyra's 'gift'. It was smaller, dustier. The runes on the wall were basic—just output meters. No creepy purple spider-webs. I didn't cultivate. I just stood there, feeding a tiny, steady stream of Earth mana into the room's sensor for a full hour. Building a record. Damian Snow was here. Being boring.
When I left, I made sure a couple of lower-ranked students saw me heading back toward the dorms.
Then, I vanished.
Veil of Stillness at max, clinging to the deepest shadows in the corridors. I wasn't invisible, but I was forgettable, a blur of nothing that your eyes slid right over. I slipped into a maintenance closet marked on the map, and found the rusted grate leading down.
The air changed the second I dropped into the tunnel. It was cold, damp, and stank of old stone, mildew, and something else… something metallic and sour. Like bad blood and rust.
"Lovely," I whispered to the dark.
The map was in my head. Left at the junction with the crack in the wall. Right after the pipe that dripped greenish water. Down the narrow shaft where the rungs were slimy with moss.
It was a maze of piss and echoes. I moved like a ghost, every sense screaming. My Analyze Weakness was on, painting the world in shades of threat. That wall was unstable. That puddle was slightly too still—probably bottomless. That patch of darkness ahead… it just felt wrong.
I froze.
The wrong darkness shifted. It wasn't empty. It was a shape. A man, leaning against the wall as if waiting for a bus.
He stepped into the faint, fungal glow of the tunnel. He was big. Not Thrain-big, but wide, solid. He wore dark, practical leathers, not robes. His face was plain, forgettable, except for his eyes. They were the color of dirty ice, and they were fixed on the spot where I was standing.
He could see me. Or at least, he knew I was there.
"Took you long enough," he said. His voice was a gravelly scrape. "Was starting to think you had more sense."
Gareth. The enforcer. Third Order. Soul-Manipulation.
Every muscle in my body went tight. Run? He'd catch me. Fight? I'd die. My mind raced, cold and clear.
"You're the diversion?" I asked, letting the Veil drop. No point in wasting the mana.
He snorted. "The note? No. That was Vorlan's clumsy bait. He thinks you're a greedy little rat. I just followed the smell." Those ice-chip eyes looked me up and down. "You killed Conan."
It wasn't a question.
"I heard he was dead," I said, keeping my voice flat.
"Don't," Gareth said, taking a single step forward. The air grew heavier, colder. A pressure started behind my eyes, a digging, probing sensation. It wasn't pain. It was worse. It was violation. "I can smell the lie on you. I can taste the shadow in your soul. It's… fractured. Interesting."
The probing dug deeper. My soul, my 55% shattered mess, quivered under the attention. The System flared a warning in my mind.
[SOUL SCAN DETECTED! Intensity: High. Attempting to sever connection…]
"You're not even connected to the Universal System," Gareth murmured, more to himself. "An anomaly. The Pale Father will want to peel you apart."
The pressure spiked. My vision swam. He was going to pull my soul out through my nose just to look at it.
No.
Not like this. Not in a fucking sewer.
I didn't have the power to fight him. But I didn't need to win. I just needed to survive.
My hand dipped into my pocket for the small, smooth Fire Mana Stone. The Low-Grade one.
As Gareth took another step, his hand rising, fingers curling like claws aimed at my chest, I acted.
I shoved pure, raw Fire mana into the stone—to overload.
I threw it at the wet, moss-covered wall right next to his head.
"Forge this," I spat.
The stone exploded.
It wasn't a big blast. But in a confined stone tunnel, it was a thunderclap. A flash of blinding white light and heat. Chunks of rock sprayed. The unstable wall I'd marked earlier groaned.
Gareth flinched, his soul-scouring focus shattered for one critical second.
That was all I needed.
Shadow Step.
I wasn't faster than light. I was just… somewhere else. I blurred backward, around the corner, into the dripping green darkness. I scrambled, fell, rolled, using the chaos, the dust, the sudden flooding of Earth and Water mana from the shattered rock to mask my Shadow trail.
I heard a roar of pure fury behind me, a sound that promised endless pain.
Then, a different sound. A deep, grinding rumble.
The ceiling was coming down.
I ran like hell was at my heels. Because it was.
I didn't follow the map back. I just ran, turned, climbed, following the faintest pull of fresher air. I burst out of a different grate into a deserted courtyard, covered in slime, my lungs burning, my ears ringing.
I lay on the cold cobblestones, gasping. The academy's fake stars twinkled above, stupid and peaceful.
I was alive.
And Gareth knew what I was.
The trap had been sprung. I'd escaped the jaws, but the hunter had my scent now. And I'd gotten nothing. No Forge-Flame. Just a face-full of death and a collapsed tunnel.
[New Quest: Hunted Prey]
Objective: Survive the next 72 hours.
Reward: 1,000 Credits. Unlock: Panic Button (One-Time Use).
Failure: Death. Or worse.
I pushed myself up, my body aching. I was covered in tunnel filth. I stank of fear and failure.
But in the chaos, as I'd run, my foot had kicked something. A small, warm, metallic-feeling vial that had rolled free from a niche in the tunnel wall. I'd grabbed it without thinking.
I pulled it out now. It was a tiny ampoule of glass, sealed with lead. Inside, a liquid swirled like molten copper and crimson flame.
Forge-Flame Essence.
It had been there. The map was real. The bait was real. Gareth had just been waiting past it.
A nasty, grim smile cut across my filthy face.
Not a total loss after all.
Now I just had to live long enough to use it.