Veyra's first real memory of the dash that followed Varin's fall was the taste of blood and rust on her tongue. The corridor tilted in her sight, not because the iron grate swayed—though it did, warping upward as vent pressure stuttered—but because her balance had torn loose with the rope. Wind slashed her coat, trying to scalp the breath from her lungs. Somewhere behind, Thorn's roar still rang, but the sound felt muffled, as though she heard it through a frozen window.
She stared at the empty gap where Varin had stood. Bronze jaws were shuddering back together, teeth red-hot from friction. A single inch of hemp rope dangled, frayed into black threads that twitched in the gale like a dying spider.
No way. Impossible. Ledger man Varin, who knew the weight of everything—he would calculate a way out, summon a clever knot, swing to a ledge. Yet the void gaped, humming disdain, and the second hinge bolt sheared with a shriek, dropping orange sparks into nothing.
"Go!" Kael's voice cracked behind her, a bark scoured to its bones. She spun. His face looked carved from sheet metal, lips bloodless, eyes black, but the Nullglaive's seam roared silver down its length, light strobed so hard the air around the blade seemed to quiver. His gauntlets were torn, rope-burn welts already blistering, but he still herded Gerrin upright.
Thought slowed. Veyra's body responded faster than grief. She lunged, snatching Gerrin's elbow with one hand while her other flung the fox mask forward. The figment hit the mesh three strides ahead, weightless until she forced Essentia into its paws; three-second tangibility flicked on, claws biting iron, tail pointing the route. Gerrin wheezed thanks through chattering teeth; the coil on his back rattled like brittle bones.
Steam roared from vents overhead, peppering her with needles of scald. She felt layers of her coat crisp into powder at the shoulders. Liora's healthy archer fired another frost arrow, crystal petals blooming to intercept droplets, but one shard missed and burned through Veyra's hood. She smelled singed hair, then the wind scraped sensation away.
They pounded past the catastrophe of bronze jaws. Thorn led with the mule, massive shoulders hunched as though he could carry the whole cohort by stubborn intent. The mule screamed once when a steam burst licked its flank; Thorn's retainer roar deafened the panic, and the animal plunged after him, ears flat.
Veyra's lungs felt raw from alternating freeze and boil, but her mind refused illusions: she would not look over her shoulder or the hollow would eat her. Instead she focused on the slate-grey floor ahead, on the rope scars in Kael's gloves, on the fox mask burning Essentia like a candle stub to keep three-second footholds.
The arch of daylight approached—brighter, warmer, impossibly foreign after corridor cold. Kael forced Gerrin through first, then Rei with the mule, then Liora's archers. Thorn strode out after, shield rim dragging sparks, and Veyra followed, fox vanishing in mid-step as she released the grip on its form. Kael alone remained inside, Nullglaive reversed to guard their retreat, eyes never straying from the bronze jaws.
The last vent eruption rattled ceiling bolts. Mesh plates flexed. Kael backed through the arch, blade last to clear the threshold, and the hallway behind him groaned like a dying leviathan. A final clap thundered—jaws slamming, perhaps a collapse—and then only windless hush, late-afternoon smell of grape leaves, sun beating colour back into the world.
Veyra stumbled to a sandstone plinth just beyond the portal. Heat soaked up her boots, miraculous after corridor chill, but her whole body trembled. She bent double, palms on knees, gagging on grief. Inside her head the ledger closed—two columns: Varin's laugh, Varin's careful fingers flipping pages, Varin's freckles, Varin's weightless fall. Numbers could not hold him; illusions could not replace him.
She heard Gerrin sob Sena's name, then messily add Varin's, voices running together like ink in rain. She heard Thorn's long exhale, something between a growl and prayer. Kael said nothing, yet his silence pressed heavier than Thorn's shield. When she looked up, his gaze had fixed on a distant figure wearing torn Malkyre crimson at the marble stair's base—Daric Rhal. Sunlight caught the Nullglaive; its seam pulsed like a vein in a predator's throat. Murder glowed there, bright as midday.
Veyra shivered. She had never seen Kael's eyes like that. Grief had not merely hardened them; it had sharpened them into a smith's file. She understood in that instant something simple and terrible: a ledger only mattered if someone paid the debt. Rhal's account had come due.
Elias smelled liquorice tincture and singed wool each time he wheezed. His cracked lens flickered static, half-blind from Essentia over-flow; recalibrating in mid-flight had burned runes along the inner rim, but the brace still functioned—just. He kept one hand splayed against the mule's flank to leech stability, the other clutching his satchel with the bone-white knuckles of a drowning man.
Coming out of the corridor felt like stepping from winter into high summer: lungs expanded too fast, air too sweet, light gouging pupils starved on gloom. Thorn collapsed to one knee, Rei whispering fierce nonsense at the mule to keep it from bolting straight off the platform. Elias tasted blood. Behind him Liora's wounded archer whimpered, burned sleeve sticking to blistered forearm.
He searched instincts for equations to soothe dread, found none; numbers couldn't equalise Varin's absence. The accountant had always hovered on the edge of Elias's peripheral vision, balancing ration counts, scheduling watch rotations, trading frost shards for dried fruit. Without him the world felt unsupervised, dangerous in a raw, childlike way. Elias half expected the sky itself to tip over.
Kael stood five strides in front, back rigid, shoulders pinched up toward ears as if all grief crystallised there. Elias measured posture like angle of incidence: every degree of tension screamed catastrophic potential. Nullglaive tip tapped sandstone once, twice—an impatient metronome.
He glanced down the marble stair: banners of House Malkyre, Eastreach, innumerable minor baronies flapped above a grand pavilion already jammed with spectators. When Rhal emerged, blood-specked and trembling, nobility thrummed with excitement; word of heroic tragedy would race like wildfire through academy channels by nightfall. Elias saw Rhal's shoulders slump forward then square again, as if Rhal pushed guilt into some trapdoor behind his sternum.
Kael's fists whitened. A surge of heat pulsed along the Nullglaive seam. Elias flinched. Do not break equations you haven't solved, he wanted to whisper, but the words shrank in his throat. Better a mathematician hold his numbers than challenge grief dressed for war.
He had never seen Kael so dangerously still. He tried to estimate the impact force if Kael sprinted the hundred metres to Rhal, factoring in slope, friction, blade length. The result—innumerable joules of kinetic rage—offered no comfort.
"Never thought he'd look at another man that way," Elias murmured to Rei.
She tightened the mule's lead, eyes locked on Kael. "He's looked at nightmire beasts with less hate."
"Can we—"
"No." Her voice left no space. "We can only walk behind and catch him if he breaks."
Elias swallowed, adjusted cracked lens, and followed.
Kael's shoes rang each step like hammers forging a verdict. The marble stair descended through tiers of carved balustrades into the Hall of Witness—a bowl of white stone banded by colonnades and banners. Thousands of eyes pivoted his way, shock rippling like wind across wheat. Parents gasped, their grief upended; cadet tutors froze quills; nobles whispered wagers undone. The ash-sweet smell of incense mingled with citrus wood and fear.
He focused on Rhal alone. The Malkyre heir stood in a ring of professors, cloak torn but arranged to show wound and courage in equal measure. Blood streaked his cheek, perhaps real, yet Kael tasted ashweed poison behind the theatrics. Words drifted upward—heroism, sacrifice, last stand. Rhal's voice wavered perfectly for pity.
Kael did not feel his feet leave the final stair; Thorn's shadow loomed right, Rei's balanced left, but even their presence blurred. The Nullglaive hummed louder than the crowd; each heartbeat punched silver light through seam etchings.
He strode across the dais floor. Marble mosaics depicted ancient founders forging gateway chains—Varin had loved that symbolism, ledger of progress bound by anchor points. The thought stabbed deeper than the frost corridor ever could.
Rhal's speech faltered as awareness swept him. His eyes met Kael's; pupils shrank. The steward's hand on Rhal's shoulder twitched toward sword hilt but stalled before Ashwin banners overhead.
Kael spoke—voice raw stone dragged over stone. "He stole the coil. Left Varin to die."
Gasps detonated; air sucked from lungs of hundreds in an instant. Professor Veyl jolted upright, lightning weaving between fingertips. House Maera rose on upper balcony, braid swinging like a pendulum about to strike.
Rhal's mouth opened and closed. "Kael, please—"
Fury severed restraint. Kael drew back the Nullglaive. Thorn slammed shield rim to stone beside him with a gong that rattled flag chains; the vibration fed Kael's blade instead of diffusing rage. Rei flicked wrist, daggers blossoming in palms. There was no room for second guesses; the ledger demanded Rhal's blood.
Kael lunged. Thunder cracked—Professor Veyl's storm barrier erected between steel and flesh. Nullglaive hit the aether-glass with a shriek, sparks spiralling like comets. Kael's shoulders jarred; he pushed harder, seam searing arcane lattice until hairlines of energy fissure raced across the dome. But it held.
Veyl's voice boomed through lightning roar. "Enough."
The word wove command through every shard of air. A pulse rippled; force hammered Kael's chest, flinging him back two staggering steps. Thorn grabbed coat collar before he fell; Rei's dagger aimed for any gap in the professor's focus but her daggers clattered on the barrier like hail on glass.
Kael snarled—sound wilder than nightmire beasts he'd fought—and swung again. Shield braced, Thorn tried to pull him off line; Rei tugged his sleeve, muttering his name. Marble beneath boots began to craze under storm heat.
Rhal's steward barked, "Subdue the traitors!" Guards in lion livery surged forward, blades half-drawn.
Before steel clashed, Maera's voice lanced down from balcony height—an icicle sharper than any glaive. "No swords inside the Hall."
Every guard halted. Even lightning paused. Storm barrier dimmed to faint shimmer, still impenetrable. Maera descended stair by stair, each heel-click exact. Her gaze pinned Rhal first; the Malkyre heir swallowed, cloak suddenly scant protection.
Then she turned to Kael. The air cooled, static dissipating. He lowered the Nullglaive tip inch by inch but did not sheathe it. Grief and fury still boiled, but a lifetime of Ashwin etiquette thrummed under rage. He met his grandmother's eyes, seeking—what? Permission to kill? Forgiveness for failing Varin? Perhaps only confirmation that truth could still exist among banners.
Maera's gaze softened, for a breath so brief it may have been illusion. She reached out, brushed dirt from Kael's torn lapel with knuckles that once guided his first sword posture. Voice low, she said, "We measure debts in daylight, not in frenzy, my hawk."
Kael's throat tightened. The Nullglaive's hum eased, seam fading to ember glow. He stepped back half a pace, Thorn exhaled, Rei lowered daggers.
But still he said, loud enough to echo, "Rhal killed him."
A storm of murmurs answered. House Malkyre steward snarled but did not draw. Professor Veyl dispelled the barrier with a sigh that sent faint sparks crawling up her sleeve.
"Quarantine," she pronounced. "All surviving cadets." She pointed to floor glyphs already swirling Essentia threads. "Healing first. Verity Sigil at dawn."
Maera nodded once. "We welcome truth."
Guards of neutral Academy colours—not Ashwin, not Malkyre—stepped forward. They carried stretchers lined with white silk and etched with sedation runes. Thorn bristled, but Kael flicked two fingers—stand down. The big retainer surrendered shield edge-first and allowed healers to guide him. Gerrin collapsed onto a litter, coil lifted from his shoulders. Rei walked on her own, daggers reversed to harmless pommels, yet every step promised future reckoning. Liora's archer pair accepted slings and salves, their grief turned numb resolve. Veyra let the fox mask leap onto her chest, tails wrapping her throat like a furred scarf of memories.
Finally Kael allowed stretcher bearers to lower him. They would bind the glaive in a rune scabbard; he did not resist. Varin's ribbon was gone, but his memory weighed heavier than steel. As they lifted, the hall tilted overhead—banners bleeding into haze.
A faint glyph glimmered across his blurred vision:
Gate-completion rewards distributed.
Nothing more. No digits, no icons. Just the quiet stamp of survival. He thought of ledgers Varin would never balance, illusions he would never see, frost coils he would never lubricate with biting jokes. The grief rose black and thick, heavier than the stretcher poles.
He let eyelids fall. In the dark behind them, wind still howled, rope snapped again, red ribbon spiralled. Then came nothing, not peace, but a lull—a held breath before the price of justice could be paid.
Kael Ashwin slipped under.
The world fell to silence, but in the galleries, whispers already bartered blame and vengeance like coin.
Arc 1 - Welcome to the Gatewalk - Completed