Chaos was a language Barry Crimsonwood understood. It was a calculus of variables—trajectories, threats, priorities. While students screamed and professors shouted panicked commands, Barry's mind became a silent, cold engine of assessment.
The Headmaster was frozen, a statue of indecision carved from ice. His worldview had just been shattered. The purifiers he'd been ready to hand his student over to were now dismantling his life's work.
Barry didn't waste a second on him. His eyes, sharp and devoid of panic, scanned the courtyard below through the shattered window.
Assessment:
* Enemy Force: Approximately two dozen Order operatives. Disciplined. Armed with rune-etched blades and sun-metal staves designed to disrupt magic. Four skiffs providing aerial suppression.
* Primary Objective: Survive.
* Secondary Objective: Protect Belinda. (A variable he acknowledged with cold efficiency, not sentiment).
* Tertiary Objective: Neutralize immediate threats.
* Liability: Headmaster Frostvale. Status: Compromised. Ineffective.
"Belinda," Barry's voice was a flat, calm command, cutting through the alarm's wail. "Your cryomancy. Can you create a layered shield? Twenty-centimeter thickness, thirty-degree angle from the main entrance."
He didn't ask if she was okay. He didn't offer reassurance. He gave a tactical order. It was the only language that mattered now.
Belinda, her face pale but her jaw set with a newfound determination, nodded. "I can."
"Do it. Now."
She didn't hesitate. She thrust her hands out, and a wall of shimmering, diamond-hard ice erupted from the ground, intercepting a volley of sun-metal projectiles that had been aimed at a group of fleeing first-years. The projectiles shattered against it.
Barry didn't praise her. He was already moving. "They're focusing fire on the shield. It will fail in seven seconds. We're leaving."
He turned and strode from the office, not as a fleeing victim, but as a soldier abandoning an untenable position. The two guards who had come to arrest him were now crouched by the door, useless.
"You," Barry's voice snapped their attention to him. He pointed to one. "Secure the west stairwell. It's clear." He pointed to the other. "You, with us. Rear guard." He didn't wait to see if they obeyed. He simply expected it. And such was the absolute authority in his tone that they complied without question.
The Headmaster finally found his voice. "Crimsonwood! Where do you think you're—"
Barry didn't even break stride. "You can stay and die with your principles, or you can follow and live. Your choice is irrelevant to my mission."
He was already in the corridor, Belinda and the bewildered guard following. The guard fumbled with his weapon. "What's the plan?"
"We descend. We evade. We exit," Barry stated, his words economical. He paused at a junction, listening. "Two hostiles. One floor below. Moving east."
"How do you—?" the guard began.
Barry ignored him. He pointed to a large, ornate window at the end of the hall. "That's our exit."
"That's a fifty-foot drop!" the guard protested.
"It's fifty-three feet," Barry corrected, his tone devoid of emotion. "And it is the path of least resistance." He looked at Belinda. "Can you manage the descent?"
She took a deep breath, pushing down her fear. "I can create a slide."
"Do it."
As Belinda began weaving ice into a glistening ramp that spiraled down the outside of the tower, the two Order agents burst into the hallway from the stairwell. They raised their staves.
The guard moved to engage, but Barry was faster.
He didn't use a grand, dramatic spell. He didn't bleed. He simply raised a hand.
"Gravio Pulsus."
The air in the corridor rippled. It wasn't an attack aimed at the agents' bodies, but at the space immediately in front of them. The sudden, violent fluctuation in air pressure hit them like a concussive blast from a shotgun. It was silent, invisible, and brutally efficient. They were thrown backward into the stairwell, crumpling against the wall, unconscious.
The guard stared, his mouth agape. He hadn't even seen the attack.
Barry was already stepping onto Belinda's ice slide, not waiting to see if they followed. "Time is a resource we can't afford to waste."
They slid down the graceful, frozen spiral, landing softly in a courtyard that was a warzone. The air sizzled with conflicting magics. Professor Kano was a whirlwind of motion, his wooden prosthetic arm deflecting a sun-metal blade before he drove a fist of compacted earth into an agent's chest.
Elsewhere, the academy's best were making a stand. Final-year students, their robes singed and faces smudged with soot, fought with desperate courage. A group of hydromancers combined their power to create a localized tidal wave that washed a squad of agents off their feet. Geomancers raised earthen barricades, and aeromancers created buffeting winds to disorient the attackers. Their efforts were brave, but ultimately useless against the Order's brutal, military precision. They were a delaying action, buying seconds with their sweat and will, being steadily and ruthlessly pushed back.
And through it all, Barry moved. He was a ghost in the chaos, a paragon of lethal economy. He didn't engage in extended duels. He identified threats and eliminated them with terrifying precision.
An agent lunged at a downed student. Barry didn't turn. He made a slight flicking motion with his fingers.
"Gravio Impactus."
The agent was slammed into the ground as if by an invisible giant's foot, his armor cracking. Barry was already ten steps past him.
He was cutting a path toward the eastern gate, the most lightly defended. Belinda fought beside him, her ice shards striking with sniper-like accuracy, freezing agents in place. They moved in a deadly sync, a silent understanding between them forged in a rainy alley and tempered in fire.
But the agent from the alleyway—Jade—was watching. She had anticipated Barry's path. She emerged from behind a shattered statue, not with a weapon, but with her hands weaving a complex, golden sigil in the air—a binding seal.
"The abomination ends here, boy," she hissed, her jade eyes gleaming with triumph.
The sigil shot toward Barry, a net of pure light designed to cage his magic and render him helpless.
Barry didn't dodge. He couldn't. He was herding Belinda and the guard. Instead, he did the one thing she would never expect.
He let it hit him.
The golden light wrapped around him, and he grunted, falling to one knee. A feint. A calculated risk.
Jade smiled, stepping closer. "All that trouble, and you fall to a simple—"
"Gravio Reficio," Barry whispered.
The binding seal didn't break. It *reversed*. The golden energy, designed to contain magic, was suddenly and violently compressed by Barry's gravity field into a tiny, hyper-dense marble of light in his palm. The feedback from her own spell being so perverted made Jade gasp, her concentration breaking for a split second.
It was all he needed.
He flicked the marble of contained energy. It shot forward, not at Jade, but at the ground at her feet.
KA-BOOM!
The released energy, compounded by Barry's gravity compression, exploded, throwing Jade backward into a wall. She slumped down, dazed.
Barry stood up, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. His expression hadn't changed. It was still a mask of cold, detached focus. He looked down at her.
"Your seal was inefficient," he stated, as if giving a poor grade. "You left a twelve-percent variance in the seventh harmonic. A critical error."
He turned away from her, already assessing the next threat. He was the unshakeable center of the storm. The abomination they feared was the only thing holding their world together.
He finally reached the eastern gate. It was damaged but still standing. A few more seconds.
And then, a new presence washed over the battlefield. A cold far deeper than Belinda's, a pressure far heavier than Barry's.
From the largest skiff, a figure descended, landing gracefully in the center of the courtyard. He was clad in a Commander's black coat, the red half-sun tattoo stark on the left side of his neck. He was a man of imposing stature, his face hard and lined with the authority of countless purges. This was Commander Silas, the right hand of Lord Greimore himself.
He didn't need to speak. The fighting around him stuttered to a halt. All eyes were drawn to him.
His gaze swept over the destruction, over the defeated agents, and finally landed on Barry, who stood protectively in front of Belinda at the gate.
Commander Silas's eyes held no personal hatred, only the cold, empty look of a man following orders. He raised his voice, magically amplified to reach every corner of the courtyard.
"By the authority of Lord Greimore and the Order of the New Dawn, this academy is hereby condemned for harboring a Class-A forbidden magic user. Stand down. The target will be relinquished. Any further resistance will be met with terminal force."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The cold finality in his tone was more terrifying than any shout.
Barry met his gaze. His body was still, his breathing even. No fear. No anger. Just analysis.
New Variable: High-level threat. Commander-class. Direct agent of "Lord Greimore." Unknown capabilities. Primary objective of enemy unchanged: Extract.
He reached back, his hand finding Belinda's wrist. His grip was firm, unemotional. A tactical necessity.
"The plan has changed," he said, his voice so low only she could hear. "We run. Now."
For the first time, the unshakeable abomination had encountered a variable he could not immediately calculate. And his protocol was clear: Retreat. Reassess. Return.