I activated [Exorcist's Gaze], bracing for the searing pain from before—but this time, it never came.
Instead, a dull, creeping pressure settled behind my eyes, like someone had pressed their thumbs against my eyelids. The world flickered, edges blurring into hazy outlines before sharpening again.
And then I saw them.
Thin, pulsating threads of energy—faint, almost translucent—weaving through the air like veins. Most were scattered, drifting aimlessly, but a cluster of them converged in one direction, taut and purposeful, as if pulled toward something unseen.
There.
I followed the trail, stepping over unconscious students and shattered furniture. Twenty meters in, the threads coiled tighter, knotted around a single point in the courtyard's far corner.
An egg-shaped mass hovered midair, its surface rippling like liquid mercury, except—red. Deep, arterial red. It pulsed in time with the threads, a sickly heartbeat thrumming through the illusion's roots.
