Damon walked out of the classroom, closing the door behind him with Ms. Eldara still looking dumbfounded. He turned right, slipped his earbuds into his ears, and reached into his pocket for his phone.
The classroom corridor stretched ahead of him, its high ceiling supported by elegant ivory arches.
The hallway was magnificent, lined with polished white marble and deep royal blue tiles trimmed in gold leaf. High above, an upper-level balcony corridor spanned the length of the hall, casting an open, tiered view of the space.
Tall arched classroom doors lined the right side—the same side with he corridors and concrete railings—each labelled with glowing holographic signs.
On his left, there were no corridors, only massive floor-to-ceiling windows interspersed with ornate blue-and-gold structural columns. At the far end, an enormous glass doorway framed the light-blue sky, its surface reflecting the sun like a sheet of crystal.
As he walked, his face rhythmically brightened and dimmed from passing the alternating pattern of windows and solid wall sections, but he barely paid any attention to it.
"You see, I'm not even surprised you were... what's the word?" Daichi barked as he leaped out of Damon's pocket, landed on a blue and amber star-shaped tile etched in the middle of the hallway, and transformed into a hound larger than before yet still small.
"I wasn't rude." Damon scrolled through his phone, his attention apparently devoted to the screen and absolutely nothing else.
"Borderline. You were borderline rude."
Damon rolled his eyes and tossed his sketchbook into his miniature dimension.
"I was being honest. You're the irrational one for thinking honesty is rude. I mean, look at her face. She was..." He paused as Daichi turned around and began walking backwards, his eyes fixed on Damon with a knowing expression. He didn't say a thing, but his eyes said everything.
"What? Don't look at me like that."
The hound said nothing.
"She was probably just amazed at how much I remembered. She might even use that as a fake reason contact Mom and give me a 'Royal Commendation,' when all she wants is to talk to the Queen, " Damon said with his finger quoting.
"Well, look who's not being honest with himself. And you might get a call home, but I'd call it a disciplinary recommendation." Daichi turned and walked forward.
They passed another row of classroom doors. Small holographic signs projected from the walls beside them, displaying subjects such as Planetary Chronometry, Arcane Engineering, and Astral Mechanics in blue lightning.
"Whatever. Point is, we're out of there now. We just have to escape."
"Where would we go?"
"I dunno." Damon continued scrolling. "But music will tell ussss... just have to find it."
Above one door, a golden crest shimmered briefly as they passed beneath a suspended crystal light. Its silver branches curved around several glowing bulbs, each containing a tiny blue flame.
Damon scrolled past another song, then another, then another, but his thumb stopped when he reached: "Show Me What You Working With (Nola 09 / Nola Bounce)."
'What's this?' he thought, squinting his eyes slightly as he stopped in his tracks slowly.
"What's what?" Daichi said after telepathically reading his mind.
The hound jumped onto Damon's forearm, then climbed onto the top of his head and settled there as though he'd been invited.
"I remember this. It's a song Daiki recommended a while ago." Damon chuckled. "I don't even remember what it sounds like."
"Play it, then!"
Damon clicked it.
The erratic and fast NOLA bounce rhythm immediately hit his ears with the frantic beats and vocal loops rattling beneath the heavy bass drops. He kept his stride for a few seconds, letting the frantic, addictive pulse of the track settle into his chest before he flipped the switch.
"...Wait."
Daichi's ears twitched, but Damon looked at his phone again and noticed the song had been playing for four seconds. He immediately dashed forward to the edge of a junction, where the corridor opened into a wider space beneath the upper walkway.
Standing just inside the lip of the junction, the dark-haired boy with blue highlights peered around the corner, checking the path ahead.
"You sense anyone?" Damon asked the hound sitting on his hair.
"Nope. We have this hall to ourselves."
The song timer ticked from 5, to 6, to 7, to 8... and the moment it landed on 9, he leaped straight out from the corner into the dead center of the junction, a confident smile spreading across his face.
"Good," he murmured.
Right as the track struck the ten-second mark, Damon let the rhythm completely hijack his body. In one lightning-fast isolation, he covered his eyes with a single palm, letting his teeth shine through his lips too, snapped his opposite hand out into a straight line, and vaulted onto his toes.
He began to hop forward in a staggered rhythm, perfectly cutting across the sync of the snare in the song.
By the eighteenth second, Damon executed a blinding spin, making the track sound like some high fever pitch.
As he snapped back to face the alleyway, a brilliant hat of pure light materialized over his head, with a fiery feather hanging on it. A suit jacket of light flared out behind him. Exactly on the twentieth second, the beat drop shattered the silence with unnecessarily decorative wind.
Giving up on his plan to escape, the Chosen One of Heaven's Might let the music consume his senses entirely, transforming his retreat into highly precise choreography as he Hotel Pennsylvania'ed his way... to absolutely nowhere.
Daichi simply facepawed in his large form.
Damon drifted past a large, gold-framed portrait, dancing in front of it with his eyes closed as he absorbed the frantic rhythm.
Inside the glass of the image frame, his reflection did not copy him. It held something entirely different, yet with a sinister similarity.
It mirrored Damon's face.
The figure in the glass stood perfectly alert, staring back out into the hall. Its eyes were wide open—a pair of deep molten red flecked with jagged gold specks. A heavy, dark frown pulled at its eyebrows, twisted in absolute, inhuman disgust.
For a single, fleeting microsecond, the reflection glitched, the sinister details sharpening before Damon continued dancing forward and the reflection faded away.
Daichi, walking behind Damon, paused for a second after moving past the image while Damon danced almost carelessly.
He walked back slowly, growing larger with every step he took. He looked forward in front of him, then turned his gaze to his left, staring straight at the portrait. The air around the frame suddenly felt heavy, charged with a cold, unnatural static that made the hairs on the back of his neck slowly stand up.
'...Hm?'
While Damon was busy performing some moonwalks, a couple of Michael Jacksons, and some Jabbawockeez isolations, he suddenly felt a hand grip his wrist.
Yank.
He was pulled hard to his left into a different hallway; the brilliant hat and all the decorative fashion of light flared out and vanished into thin air. Damon came to his senses, blinking rapidly.
"Nyra, what are you doing?" Damon said with a frown, his voice tight as he tried yanking his wrist back to shake off the sudden disruption to his rhythm.
"Just come with me!" she said with a determined gaze.
"I am coming with you! You're literally pulling me!" Damon yelled back at his sister. "Daichi!"
The hound's ears shot upright. He turned toward the sound, spotted Damon disappearing around the corner with Nyra, immediately abandoned his inspection of the glass, and caught up with them in seconds.
"Where are we going?" Daichi barked as he ran with them.
"Why don't you ask her, Highness? 'Cause I've been trying to, but—"
"Would you two just be quiet for just one second?" Nyra said, cutting Damon off.
Damon simply sighed with a reluctant face, 'This better not be some bullshit.'
After a couple more sprints and turns, they came to a sudden halt right outside an open classroom door. Damon stepped closer, placing one hand against the doorframe as he peered into the classroom.
His eyes widened slightly.
Unlike the ordinary classrooms of Trineum Academy, this one had been constructed in a vast, circular arrangement, with several curved rows of seats surrounding an open space in the middle. Each row rose higher than the one beneath it, forming a steep, cone-like structure that widened toward the ceiling, almost resembling a miniature colosseum.
The lowest circular row stood closest to the central floor, while the remaining seats climbed upward in tiers, giving every student a clear view of whatever took place below.
And judging by what Damon was seeing, it made it seem like that was precisely the intention.
Along the innermost row, defensive barriers had already been raised. Thick shields of compressed light stood between the seats and the central area; a student sat in the front row. Their surfaces formed a protective ring around the students.
The shields were high enough to protect those seated behind them from anything that might come flying out of the centre.
Damon's gaze drifted toward the open floor.
Four girls stood there, positioned around a small space between them. Their bodies were tense, their feet firmly planted against the polished ground as they faced inward with resentful smiles.
Beneath their open palms, different elemental energies began to gather.
One girl's hands radiated a fierce orange glow, flames twisting around her fingers. Another had fragments of earth rising from the floor beneath her palms, the stones trembling as though waiting for a command. The remaining two were similarly prepared, their respective powers of water and air brimming with enough energy to make the air around them visibly distort.
But none of them had launched an attack.
The classroom had grown unusually quiet. Students watched from behind their barriers, some leaning forward in anticipation while others exchanged nervous glances.
Damon narrowed his eyes. '...What's going on here?'
Then his attention shifted toward the small space surrounded by the four girls.
There stood another girl.
Her teeth were clenched tightly, her hands curled into fists at her sides. Her shoulders were tense, yet she remained standing, looking from one opponent to another without taking a single step backwards.
Damon recognised her immediately: Rika Sanezaki.
Damon opened his mouth, turning his face to ask Nyra for context, but the four girls moved simultaneously before he could speak a word.
"Now!" one of them shrieked.
A torrent of compressed air blasted inward from the left, while jagged spikes of earth erupted from the stone floor at Rika's right. Rika ducked backwards under the wind blast by a hair, her body contorting as she rolled backwards in the same breath, barely dodging the rising earth pillars on her left and right.
She landed heavily on one knee, with ragged breaths. But the third girl was already moving—a violent ring of fierce orange fire roared from her palms, forming a wall of flames right behind Rika.
"She's trapped!" someone yelled from behind the light barrier.
The fourth girl unleashed a concentrated pressure blast of wind, driving it straight toward Rika's chest. Rika crossed her arms to block, but the sheer weight of the wind pressure hit her like a battering ram, flinging her backward straight toward the blazing wall of fire.
Rika's eyes widened in sheer panic as the heat singed her back. She closed her eyes, bracing for impact.
FWOOSH.
The wind pressure vanished into thin air.
Before Rika's body could hit the flames, a hand caught her firmly by the back of her uniform jacket, halting her momentum instantly. A subtle, cold spark of light rippled outward from the grip, wrapping the circular wall of fire into a small orb of light in a single pulse.
Damon closed the speck of light containing the fire in his palm.
Rika opened her eyes, gasping for air, and looked up.
Damon stood there holding her effortlessly, his dark hair falling casually over his forehead as his cold, blue eyes locked onto the four girls in front of them.
"Four on one? Seriously?" Damon said softly, his voice echoing through the quiet mini-colosseum. "Considering you're meant to be Nobles, that's pretty pathetic."