The weeks bled into a month. The tracking compass in the north continued to give false positives, leading Damien's Syndicate teams from one empty cavern to another. My lie was holding. The distraction was working.
But while Damien chased ghosts in the snow, I was wrestling with demons in the dark.
I had established a dangerous routine. Every second night, I descended the spiral stairs into the Verboten Archive. I sat before the red iron cage. I opened The Heartstone Protocols.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done. Harder than the sword training. Harder than breaking Thomas.
The book was alive.
It didn't speak in words. It spoke in urges. As I read the scorched text, intrusive thoughts would batter the walls of my Frozen Keep.
Why do you hesitate? the book would whisper into my mind, its voice sounding like my own, but distorted. You want to save them? You want to fix the boy's mind? You want to bring the girl back? I can do that. I can rewrite reality. Just let me in. Just a little crack in the door.
It knew my guilt. It weaponized my own desire for redemption. It offered me the power to undo my crimes, if only I would surrender to it.
I sat on my mental Throne, my hands gripping the edge of the desk in the real world until my knuckles turned white. Irrelevant, I told the voice. Illogical. The price of your power is the self. To save them, I must exist. If I surrender, I cease to exist. Therefore, your offer is a paradox. Rejected.
I fought the book with logic, page by agonizing page.
And as I read, the true, horrifying nature of Damien's goal became clear.
The Heartstone was not a simple artifact. It wasn't a jewel you put in a staff to shoot bigger fireballs.
It was a Heart.
The entity known as the Heartstone requires a chest to beat in, the text read. It cannot exist in our reality without a biological anchor. The ritual of bonding requires the subject to surgically remove their own Mana Core and replace it with the Stone.
I shuddered. Damien didn't want to wield the artifact. He wanted to become it.
But the next passage was what truly chilled me.
The Stone is dormant. It sleeps. To wake it, to prepare it for bonding, it must be fed. It does not eat food. It eats instability. It feeds on the resonance of a breaking soul.
Despair. Betrayal. Rage. These are the nutrients of the Abyss. A location saturated in such resonance acts as a beacon, calling the Stone from the void.
I stopped reading. The silence of the archive pressed in on me.
A location saturated in breaking souls.
My mind flashed back to the last few months. Thomas Fell, screaming in the courtyard as his magic turned against him. Mara Stonecroft, sobbing in the dining hall as her world collapsed. Leonidas val Aris, roaring with a murderous, grief-stricken rage in the arena.
The academy.
I looked at the dates in my mind. The intensity of the events.
Damien hadn't just been "testing" me. He hadn't just been eliminating rivals. Whether he knew it or not, he had been terraforming the academy. He had been saturating the very stones of this floating island with the precise emotional frequency needed to wake a Heartstone.
He was turning the Aldren Royal Academy into a dinner bell for the apocalypse.
And I... I was the chef.
I slammed the book shut. The whispers cut off instantly.
I paced the small area of the archive, my breath coming in short, cold gasps. This changed everything.
I had thought the threat was in the mountains. I thought that as long as Damien didn't find the "Sigil," we were safe.
But if the book was right, the location didn't matter as much as the resonance. If the academy became dark enough, desperate enough... the Heartstone might not need to be found. It might manifest. Or worse, if one was already buried here—hidden by Roric Alastair centuries ago—it might wake up.
I rushed to the section on "Containment." I needed to know how to stop the resonance. How to clean the stain.
I found a reference to a counter-ritual. The Rite of the Still Water.
To blind the eye of the Abyss, one must impose absolute order upon the chaos. A suppression ward of the highest tier, anchored by four nodes of Starlight Silver.
Starlight Silver. The rarest, most conductive metal in existence. It was incredibly expensive, strictly controlled by the Imperial Crown, and used only for the highest-grade royal artifacts.
I needed four ingots of it. And I needed to place them at the four cardinal points of the academy's foundation without anyone noticing.
It was an impossible task.
But then, my eyes caught a margin note, scribbled in Alastair's shaky hand.
I have laid the foundations. The anchors are already there. But they are sleeping. They need a spark. Not mana. Intent. A mind of pure order must touch the four cornerstones.
I froze.
The anchors were already there. Roric Alastair, the paranoid genius, had anticipated this. He had built the suppression system into the academy itself.
He hadn't left a key to the archive. He had left a security system for the whole island.
And the trigger? A mind of pure order.
Me.
I didn't need to buy silver. I didn't need to cast a ritual. I just needed to find the four cornerstones of the academy's foundation and touch them while holding the state of the Frozen Keep.
I could re-seal the academy. I could dampen the resonance. I could undo the damage my cruelty had caused—at least, the magical damage.
I checked the time on my pocket watch. It was nearing dawn. I had to go.
I locked the book back in its red cage.
"You lose," I whispered to the silent, pulsing leather.
I ascended the stairs, passed through the false wall, and emerged into the janitor's closet.
I had a new mission.
Damien was looking for a fake key in the mountains. I had to find the four real keys hidden on the island.
The first cornerstone, according to the mental map I had memorized from the blueprints, was located in the North Tower.
The Astronomy Tower.
It was the highest point of the academy. It was open to the sky. And it was public.
I unlocked the grate and slipped into the service corridor.
Spring was coming. The Equinox—a time of high magical tide—was only a month away. If the Heartstone was going to wake up, it would be then.
I had a month to find four hidden stones in a castle filled with wizards, while playing the role of a villain and hiding the fact that I was the only person saving them all.
I slipped back into my room as the sun crested the horizon.
I looked in the mirror. The face was pale, tired. But the eyes were steady.
The harvest was over. The planting had begun. And this time, I was planting a shield.