The professor's footsteps were slow, as if the ground might crumble beneath him. His shadow stretched long and thin on the ravaged training yard, a frail thing compared to the scar that now marred the earth.
He paused at the epicentre, where the air still hummed with the aftershock. His voice, when it came, was deceptively calm—not with anger, but a hollow tone of a man staring into an open grave.
"...A cadet did this?"
The question hung, lingered in the air unanswered. Not because they were afraid of him, but because the truth was too vast to speak aloud. The wind carried away plumes of dust, each particle glittering, glinting like dying embers before vanishing mid-air.
"It's devastating, the mana wreaked havoc as if filling an unseen hole. Look."
He lifted the brittle leaf as it disintegrated between his fingers, not into fragments, but into nothingness—as if the universe plucking its existence mid—fall.
It was no longer a battle between cadets. It was a disaster that landed.
To think a cadet has this kind of ability.
"...Humanity's future sure is bright."
His smirk twisted his lips—not a sarcasm, it was a bitter truth, held by every student. The obligation of the younger generation is to stop the impending doom as they walk through the dungeon.
With eyes that screen the place, he says, "It's to be expected from the heir of the Magic Tower."
The other professor went silent as though his throat were pinched by something unseen. As he turned around, the other professor began opening his mouth.
"...This aftermath is not from the Magic Tower heir's spell."
He squinted his eyes, looking at the other professor beside him as if asking what else it would be. The one who was called a genius and the promising cadet, a world beyond words that he should know.
"Then who?"
The name dropped like a guillotine blade, a name that he never expected to hear.
"Cadet Erik, the rumoured knight."
For the first time, the professor's mask slipped. His hand twitched toward the pendant at his throat—an old habit, a warding gesture.
The wind howled through the skeletal trees as their branches clawed at the sky, now too bright, too cruel.
Somewhere, the bell tolled, not for the dread, but for the thing that had just been awakened.
The bell's echo faded, leaving the academy's hallway in silence. There's no chatter from the students, no scrape of boots on the stone—only the sound of the wind chimed, carrying the scorched scents from the training ground.
Erik walked alone as he grasped his chest.
Each step was a betrayal, his breath ragged thing trying to claw its way out of his throat. The wall bore his weight, a cold stone against his palm as his finger painted it with a streak of crimson.
A cough tore through him—wet and ruinous. A crimson splat was carved into the tile he walked on like an overripe fruit bursting underfoot.
"....so this is the price," he joked to the empty corridor, yet the shadow didn't even laugh as he swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The copper tang lingered, thick as sin inside his mouth.
The hallway ahead wavered, the edge of his vision blurred—bleeding into the shadow. A technique that he was not supposed to be able to use in the early game.
He walked, choosing the longest way to avoid bumping into others. yet, that very hope was shattered as a lonely footstep could be heard echoing through the empty corridor.
From his rear, a deliberate step was taken, and slowly the sound became clearer as he continued walking—unhurried, as though they were approaching the hunted prey.
He didn't turn. He knew the cadence of that step—the measured rhythm of someone refused to hurry even if death were looming.
"Erik."
Her boots clicking deliberately as her voice came like a winter sunlight—serene, brittle, fracturing at the edge like a thin ice underfoot "The technique you used,....."
Erik halted as silence came to fill the hallway, "Yes,..." The word left him like a stone dropped into a well.
Edna didn't react. The devastation around them was familiar—no, not the power itself, but the aftermath. The way the mana had torn through the air like a starving beast, gnawing at the fabric of the world itself until tatters remained. The rune lay scorched and lifeless as their majesty reduced into a mere scar, the Mana Disaster.
"Why go that far?"
Erik leaned against the wall as his legs threatened to betray him. Blood painted his lips, a slow deliberate trickle. "That spell isn't meant to be used here,...."
His voice cracked, "Everyone could die,...."
She bit her lips, and a crimson line came down from her cherry lips. She knows if he hadn't stopped Kian, the training ground would now be a tomb.
The hallway seemed to shrink around them, the air thick with things neither could say. Edna's mind reached through possibilities. She was hesitating to change the flow, yet the man in front of her was already taking his step onto a thin wire
'He knows,....and should I,....'
Her hand clenched, "You reckless, self-sacrificing—"
"Hero?" He said, cutting her speech.
"Fool," there's no weight in her voice, just bone-deep weariness and understanding.
She reaches out his hand, pulling it as she tries to help him walk. "Let's go,....I will take you to the infirmary."
"No," he said. "It's not something bandages can fix."
With a low voice, he added, "It would be great if we had healing magic."
With her eyes still upfront as she adjusts her grip, she says, "Keep dreaming."
"We wouldn't need a psychiatrist or even a doctor if such a thing existed."
No argument followed. Only the solid weight of his body leaned towards Edna's slender body as she slid her arms around his waist. Their shadow merging as the sun slides through the horizon, basking the corridor with its majesty as they walked. Step by unsteady step, the two moved towards the inevitable—two people who already knew the impending doom that loomed around them.