The transportation back to the Academy happened exactly on schedule, one moment we were in the Possibility Parlor finishing the last drops of our tea, and the next, we materialized back in front of the Academy's unnecessary majestic teleportation gate. The same unimpressed fifth-year administrator who had processed our paperwork earlier stood waiting, her silver-trimmed robes catching the light as she motioned for us to approach.
"I trust your excursion was educational," she said, not sounding like she trusted that at all. Her narrow eyes flicked between the three of us, clearly searching for signs of mischief or contraband. "Limiter, please."
I extended my wrist, where the silver probability limiter bracelet had been steadily growing warmer over the last twenty minutes. Now that I was paying attention, it felt almost uncomfortably hot against my skin. The administrator tapped it once with her wand, muttering an incantation, and the bracelet clicked open.
The moment it left my wrist, the world tilted sideways.
"Whoa—" I staggered, my vision swimming with sudden vertigo. The night sky infested with constellations seemed to ripple like water, the ambient stars seemingly pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
"Asher?" Gavril's voice sounded distant, echoing as if down a long tunnel.
I tried to respond, but the words caught in my throat. A metallic taste filled my mouth, and I coughed violently. Something warm and wet splattered against my palm.
Blood. Bright red against my skin.
"Ardent!" The administrator's tone shifted instantly from bored to alarmed.
I heard Finn curse as he caught my arm, preventing me from collapsing completely. "What's happening to him?"
"I don't—" I began, but another coughing fit interrupted me, more blood spattering onto the polished floor. Each breath felt like dragging air through broken glass.
"The infirmary," the administrator snapped, all pretense of disinterest gone. "It's on the other side of the Academy grounds."
"That's too far!" Gavril's voice had risen an octave with panic. "He can't walk like this, and we can't carry him that distance fast enough."
Through my blurring vision, I saw the administrator's face harden with decision. "Stand back."
She drew a complex pattern in the air, her wand leaving trails of blue-white light that formed a perfect circle around me. Ancient runes flickered into existence around its circumference.
"Wait," Finn protested, "isn't teleportation inside the Academy—"
"Regulated, yes," she cut him off. "Forbidden to certain areas, absolutely. But this qualifies as a medical emergency." She completed the final sigil with a flourish. "When Lady Althea tries to expel you from her infirmary, tell her Magistra Kareena authorized the breach."
The circle beneath me flared with brilliant light, and the world dissolved into streaks of color. For a brief, terrifying moment, I existed nowhere at all, suspended in a void between places. Then reality snapped back into focus with brutal abruptness.
We materialized in the center of the infirmary, all three of us, plus Magistra Kareena, who must have expanded the teleportation circle at the last moment to include herself and my friends. The sudden arrival in a forbidden zone triggered an immediate response: protective wards flashed crimson, and a resonant alarm tone filled the air.
Lady Althea appeared almost instantly, materializing from thin air, her form coalescing from motes of golden light. Her normally serene expression was replaced by one of cold fury that lasted precisely as long as it took her to register my condition.
"Put him on any bed," she commanded, the alarm silencing with a gesture of her hand. "Now."
Finn and Gavril half-carried, half-dragged me to the nearest bed, which wasn't easy given that I was still coughing blood and struggling to remain conscious. The moment they laid me down, something changed. The crushing pressure in my chest eased slightly, and the violent coughing subsided to a ragged wheeze.
"What happened?" Lady Althea demanded, her hands already moving in diagnostic patterns above my body, gathering data I couldn't see or understand.
Magistra Kareena stepped forward. "The probability limiter. It was removed after their approved excursion to Lumina City, and he immediately began exhibiting these symptoms."
Lady Althea's movements became more precise, her fingers tracing sigils that glowed with increasing intensity as they revealed whatever she was searching for. I felt a strange tingling sensation spreading from my center outward, like invisible fingers probing through my insides.
"Extraordinary," she murmured, but not in the pleased tone of a researcher discovering something fascinating. It was the kind of "extraordinary" that doctors use when they find something impossibly wrong. "The limiter wasn't just containing his probability field, it was actively draining his life force to do so."
"What?" Gavril and Finn exclaimed simultaneously.
I tried to sit up but found myself gently but firmly pressed back down by a wave of Lady Althea's hand.
"These limiters are calibrated to contain a standard range of probability fluctuations," she explained, still working her diagnostic magic. "But Mr. Ardent's... unique condition appears to have overwhelmed its capacity." She glanced at Kareena. "Instead of initiating emergency protocols and teleporting him back early, the limiter began tapping his vital energy to maintain its function."
"That's not possible," Kareena objected. "Those limiters have safeguards specifically to prevent—"
"Indeed they do," Lady Althea cut her off. "Which means either this particular limiter was defective, or someone tampered with it."
My blood ran cold in a way that had nothing to do with my physical condition. Someone actually tried to kill me.
"Can you fix him?" Finn asked bluntly, hovering at the edge of my bed like an anxious guard dog.
Lady Althea made a complex gesture, and a vial of iridescent liquid appeared in her hand. "His condition is serious but reversible. The damage was caught before any permanent harm could occur."
She held the vial to my lips. "Drink all of it, Mr. Ardent. It will taste like your worst fear and your fondest memory simultaneously."
She wasn't exaggerating. The liquid burned and soothed in equal measure, tasting somehow of both bitter failure and sweet triumph. I grimaced but managed to swallow it all, feeling it spread a peculiar warmth through my body.
"The limiter will need to be examined," Lady Althea continued, turning to Kareena. "Thoroughly, and by someone with the appropriate clearance. This level of tampering suggests sophisticated knowledge of both probability mechanics and the Academy's security measures."
Kareena nodded grimly. "I'll take it directly to Headmistress Astra." She hesitated, then added, "Will he be well enough to participate in the tournament?"
Of course that would be a concern. The great Equinox Tournament couldn't possibly proceed without its lowest-ranked participant available for ritual humiliation.
To my surprise, Lady Althea's response carried a note of protective irritation. "He will be, provided he gets proper rest now. Which means," her gaze swept over Finn and Gavril, "you two need to leave."
"But—" Finn began.
"No arguments," she said, her tone gentle but immovable. "Mr. Ardent needs rest, and the infirmary is not a social hall."
Gavril placed a hand on Finn's shoulder. "She's right. We should go."
They both looked at me apologetically. "We'll come get you in the morning," Gavril promised. "For breakfast, yeah?"
I managed a weak nod. "Don't eat all the good pastries before I get there."
Finn cracked a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "No promises, Ardent. Your portion's fair game if you're late."
As they turned to leave, Kareena paused. "I'll inform your professors of your absence from evening classes," she said with surprising gentleness. Then, more strictly: "But I expect you back for tomorrow."
After they'd all gone, Lady Althea drew a curtain of shimmering light around my bed. "Privacy screen," she explained. "And it will help accelerate the healing process. The elixir I gave you works by redirecting probability currents to favor rapid recovery, which as always, seems to work the best for you."
"Someone tried to kill me," I said, the reality of it finally sinking in.
Lady Althea's expression was carefully neutral. "It appears that way. Or at the very least, to incapacitate you severely."
"Who would—" I began, but she raised a hand to silence me.
"That is a question for the Headmistress and security council, not for you to dwell on tonight." Her tone softened slightly. "Right now, your only task is to rest. Your body has been through a significant ordeal."
As if on cue, exhaustion crashed over me in a wave. Whether from the elixir or simply the release of tension, I felt myself sinking deeper into the infirmary bed.
My last conscious thought before drifting off was of Elias's knowing expression as we parted ways in Lumina City. Had he somehow foreseen this too? And if so, why hadn't he warned me?
****
I awoke to sunlight filtering through the privacy screen, casting rainbow patterns across the white infirmary sheets. For a moment, I lay disoriented, unsure why I wasn't in my dormitory room. Then the memories of yesterday flooded back, the trip to Lumina City, the meeting with Elias, the limiter, the blood...
"Look who's finally rejoining the land of the living," came Finn's cheerful voice as he poked his head through the privacy curtain. "We've been waiting for almost twenty minutes. I nearly started gnawing on the furniture."
Gavril appeared beside him, rolling his eyes. "He's exaggerating. It's been seven minutes, and he's already had two nutrition bars from his pocket."
I pushed myself up, surprised to find no pain or dizziness. In fact, I felt better than I had in weeks, the bone-deep fatigue from my punishment detail seemed to have vanished overnight.
"Lady Althea's quite something, isn't she?" Gavril commented, noticing my surprise. "Her healing techniques are legendary."
"She is the Personification of Vitality after all," Finn said, glancing over his shoulder, "By the way, she said you're cleared to leave as soon as you're ready. Apparently, your 'probability field has stabilized remarkably well overnight.'" He attempted to mimic Lady Althea's clinical tone but failed spectacularly.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, testing my stability. "Any word on the limiter?"
Gavril shook his head. "Nothing official. But the rumor mill is churning at full capacity. Half the students think you somehow sabotaged it yourself; because obviously, the Academy's punishment for nearly destroying reality wasn't enough for you."
"And the other half?" I asked, standing up.
"Think it's part of some elaborate test," Finn supplied. "Or possibly that Lady Fortune herself is trying to eliminate you for violating some ancient probability law."
I snorted. "If Liora wanted me gone, there are far more efficient ways to do it."
"Getting used to her first name, huh?" Finn waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
"Shut up," I muttered, feeling my face warm slightly.
"Where are my clothes?" I continued, noticing I was wearing an infirmary gown that shimmered in different shades of lime green.
Gavril pointed to a neatly folded stack on the bedside table. "Fresh uniform courtesy of the infirmary staff. Apparently, yours was, quote, 'saturated with anomalous probability residue and had to be incinerated.'"
"Great," I sighed, grabbing the clothes. "So not only did someone try to kill me, they also destroyed my best uniform."
"Look on the bright side," Finn offered, "now you only have your second-best uniform to worry about."
Despite everything, I found myself laughing as I ducked behind the privacy screen to change. Something about nearly dying seemed to put petty concerns into perspective.
"Breakfast?" I suggested, sudden hunger gnawing at my stomach.
"Now you're speaking my language," Finn declared, throwing an arm around my shoulders. "I hear they've got those pastries filled with time-shifted berries today, you know, the ones that taste like they were picked five minutes into the future?"
As we made our way out of the infirmary, Gavril filled me in on what I'd missed: Professor Nihil was reportedly furious about the "security breach" caused by our emergency teleportation, Valentina is working on something besides the bone density spell, and Elias had been seen consulting ancient tomes in the Restricted Archives section of the library.
"How does he even get access to those?" I wondered aloud as we navigated the corridor leading to the Great Hall. "I thought that was limited to third-years and above."
"It's Elias," Finn said, as if that explained everything. And in a way, it did.
The smell of breakfast hit us before we even entered the Great Hall, freshly baked bread, spiced fruits, and the distinct aroma of mage-brewed coffee. My stomach rumbled audibly.
"Sounds like someone's ready to eat half the buffet," Gavril chuckled.
I grinned back at him. "After yesterday? I think I've earned it."
As we stepped through the massive archway into the Hall, I braced myself for the usual wave of stares and whispers that followed me everywhere. Instead, I was met with something almost worse, dozens of students suddenly trying very hard to look like they hadn't been talking about me just seconds before.
"Well," Finn said cheerfully, "at least you're consistent, Ardent. Most people have to try for years to be this notorious."
"Lucky me," I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
But as we made our way to our usual table, I felt a strange sense of resolve settling over me. The tournament was coming. Someone had tried to seriously harm me. Elias was playing some complicated game of his own. And somewhere in all this chaos was a truth about my connection to probability that I was only beginning to understand.
For now, though, there were time-shifted berry pastries to devour. The rest could wait at least until after breakfast.