The following days at Tokohashi Academy were a study in polarized reactions. To some, Barry Crimsonwood was a dark, intriguing anti-hero. To others, he was a dangerous anomaly that needed to be expelled. To Jax Bracken and his growing faction of sycophants, he was a blood feud waiting to be settled.
Barry navigated it all with an air of detached indifference. He attended classes, performed the minimal required magic—always his "gravitational manipulation"—with flawless, cold precision, and spent his free hours not in the common rooms, but in the deepest, dustiest archives of the library, searching for any scrap of information on blood magic, ancestral possession, or memory-alteration spells. He found nothing but sanitized histories and warnings about "corruptive energies."
The Voice was a constant, grating companion.
"You waste your time with these scrolls, little shadow. The answers you seek are not written in ink. They are written in blood. My blood. Your blood."
Quiet, Barry thought, slamming a heavy tome on elemental theory shut. I'm not letting you out for a history lesson.
"You will," it purred, smug and certain. "The cage you have built for us is strong, but the locks are weakening. I can feel it. She can feel it."
She. Belinda. He'd caught her watching him more than once during practical demonstrations in their shared Magical Theory class. Her gaze was no longer just suspicious; it was analytical, puzzled, as if she were trying to solve an equation that refused to balance. Every time their eyes met, a jolt of that strange, cold static passed between them, and Barry would feel the ghost of a headache behind his left eye, where the black blood waited.
The tension came to a head during Advanced Combat Application. The class was held in a smaller, more brutal version of the Crucible Arena called the Sand Pit. The professor, a scarred veteran named Kano with a prosthetic arm made of enchanted wood, believed in realistic, high-pressure scenarios.
"Today's exercise is simple!" Kano barked, his voice like grinding stones. "Two-on-one sparring! The pair's goal is to subdue the single. The single's goal is to survive for five minutes. This teaches coordination for the pairs, and situational awareness for the solo. First up! Bracken, Volkov—you're the pair. Crimsonwood—you're the solo."
A grim smile spread across Jax's face. His partner, Ivan Volkov, was a hulking earth-mage with a reputation for being relentless. This was no coincidence.
The rest of the class formed a ring around the sand pit. Belinda stood at the front, arms crossed, her expression unreadable.
Barry stepped into the center, rolling his shoulders. He felt no fear, only a cold focus. This was just another variable to control.
"Begin!" Kano shouted.
Jax didn't hesitate. He didn't use a big, showy fireball. He and Ivan had clearly planned this. Ivan slammed his hands onto the ground. The sand in front of Barry erupted, forming thick, stone shackles that shot up and clamped around his ankles, rooting him to the spot.
At the same moment, Jax unleashed a precise, concentrated beam of white-hot fire, not at Barry's body, but at his face—aiming directly for the obscuring hood and bandana.
It was a clever, vicious strategy. Pin him, and force him to reveal what he was hiding or get his face burned off.
Barry's mind worked at lightning speed. A gravity shield would stop the fire, but the stone shackles would remain. He needed to break contact.
He didn't use a spoken spell. He simply dropped his weight.
Graviolus Intima.
The effect was instantaneous and shocking. The sand beneath him compacted with a sound like grinding bones. The stone shackles around his ankles, not designed for such a sudden, immense downward force, shattered into dust. The moment he was free, he canceled the spell and moved, a blur of black cloth.
Jax's fire beam seared through the empty space where his head had been.
Barry reappeared several feet away. "Predictable," he muttered.
Jax snarled, enraged that his plan had failed. "Hold him, Ivan!"
Ivan grunted, stomping his foot. A wave of sand and stone rippled toward Barry, aiming to engulf him. At the same time, Jax created a net of swirling fire, throwing it wide to cut off any escape routes.
Trapped between earth and fire.
Barry's options were narrowing. He could use a powerful gravity wave to disrupt both attacks, but it would be flashy, destructive, and would likely earn him another trip to the Headmaster's office. He needed something more subtle.
He focused on the net of fire. He couldn't stop it, but he could change its path. He extended a hand, not to push, but to pull. He created a microscopic, high-gravity point just above and to the left of the net.
The fire, seeking the path of least resistance, veered violently off course—and slammed directly into Ivan's wave of earth.
The two spells collided in a shower of superheated rock and steam, the concussive blast throwing both Jax and Ivan backward onto the sand.
The entire class gasped. Professor Kano's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
Barry stood untouched amidst the dissipating energy, his breathing slightly elevated. He'd used their own power against them, expending only a fraction of his own.
Jax scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of pure, humiliated fury. He'd been outmaneuvered again, and in front of everyone. Reason left him. With a scream of rage, he conjured a jagged shard of molten rock and charged Barry, not with magic, but with the shard held like a dagger—a blatant violation of the sparring rules.
It was too fast, too close. Barry sidestepped the initial lunge, but Jax twisted, and the glowing hot tip of the rock shard grazed Barry's forearm, slicing through his sweatshirt sleeve.
A line of searing pain flashed up Barry's arm.
Drip.
Crimson red blood welled from the cut, soaking into the black fabric.
Time seemed to slow. Barry's focus shattered. The pain, the sight of his own blood—it was a key turning in a lock deep within him.
The sand around the fallen drops of blood began to twitch. Tiny, hair-like tendrils of absolute darkness seeped from the blood, skittering across the ground like malignant insects. They were faint, barely visible unless you were looking directly at them.
But someone was.
Professor Kano took a step forward, his trained eyes narrowing. "Crimsonwood? What was—"
Jax, blind with rage, was already lunging for another attack.
No. No. No! Barry's mind screamed. He clenched his injured arm, his mind racing. Fifteen minutes. I have fifteen minutes before it fully manifests and I crash. Hide it. Now!
He couldn't stop the blood, but he could stop the shadows from being seen. He slammed his foot down on the sand.
"Graviol Condens!"
It wasn't a powerful spell. It was a focused, incredibly precise one. The gravity in the immediate area around his blood—a circle no wider than a dinner plate—increased a thousand-fold for a fraction of a second.
The effect was brutal. The sand compacted into a solid, glassy disk. The skittering blood-shadows, caught in the intense pressure, were utterly annihilated, crushed out of existence. The few drops of blood on the surface were pressed into the glass, becoming faint, rust-colored stains.
It was over in a heartbeat. The entire confrontation had taken less than three seconds.
Jax halted his charge, confused by the sudden, localized crunch of glassed sand.
Professor Kano stared at the spot, then at Barry, his expression a mixture of deep confusion and dawning suspicion. "Crimsonwood... that technique..."
"Sub-atomic friction compression," Barry said, the lie coming to his lips instantly, his voice shockingly steady despite the storm raging inside him. He could feel the clock ticking down. Thirteen minutes. "A side-effect of intense gravitational shearing. It's in the theory books, sir."
It was a complete bluff. But he delivered it with such absolute conviction that Kano, for a moment, looked less sure of himself.
The professor finally shook his head. "The match is over! Bracken, that was a prohibited physical attack. You're on sanitation duty for a month. Both of you, get to the infirmary. Now!"
Jax shot Barry a look of pure, venomous hatred before stomping away. Ivan followed, looking dazed.
Barry didn't move. He could feel a warm trickle of blood running down his arm. He could feel the Thing inside him, stirred awake by the blood, pacing at the edges of his consciousness. And he could feel a pair of icy eyes burning into him.
He turned his head.
Belinda Frostvale was staring directly at his injured arm. Then her eyes lifted to meet his. Her usual cold disdain was gone. In its place was a sharp, piercing intensity. She hadn't seen the shadows—his gravity crush had been too fast. But she had seen the blood. His crimson blood. And for a reason she couldn't possibly understand, the sight of it made her own shoulder, the one she'd been shot in a decade ago, ache with a phantom, sympathetic pain.
She didn't say a word. She just held his gaze, and in that silent look, Barry saw the terrifying truth: the wall around her memories wasn't just cracking from his side. It was cracking from hers, too.
He turned and walked quickly out of the Sand Pit, the first few drops of warm, black blood beginning to seep from under his bandana like tears of warning.
Ten minutes.
He needed to get somewhere alone. Now.