The SUV's engine roared as I stepped on the gas.
I confess, for a second, I forgot we were heading toward a mortal danger. The feeling of the leather steering wheel under my fingers, the immediate response of the engine, and the dark road of Beacon Hills unrolling ahead like a carpet of asphalt... it was incredible.
"Slow down, Toretto," my father's voice came from the passenger seat, dry. "The limit is sixty, not 'however much the car can handle'."
"Are we going to hunt a monster or take a walk in the park?" I retorted, but I eased off the pedal a bit. "Besides, you said it was urgent."
"It is urgent," he agreed, his eyes fixed on the side window, glowing faintly blue in the dimness of the cabin. "But I prefer to get there in one piece. If you crash my car, I'll disinherit you before you die."
I let out a nervous laugh, gripping the steering wheel tighter.
"So..." I began, trying to break the tension that grew as we moved away from the city lights. "Why am I driving? I thought you'd want control of the situation."
Marcus turned his face to me. The blue glow in his eyes was more intense now.
"I need my hands free," he replied, simply. "And my mind focused. If I'm driving, I can't prepare the ground."
"Prepare the grou—"
I stopped speaking.
In my peripheral Magic Sight, the world outside changed. The forest, which before was a dark green and tranquil mass of natural mana, was being torn apart.
A red stain pulsed about two hundred meters ahead, off the road. It wasn't just a color. It was a sensation. It stank of iron, of coagulated blood.
"Stop the car," Marcus ordered.
I slammed on the brakes. The car slid a little on the gravel of the shoulder before coming to a complete stop.
"There," I pointed, my voice faltering.
I activated Magic Sight to the max. My mind, conditioned to transform the abstract into data, drew the information box over the red light.
[Mana: 4,200 MP]
I swallowed hard. The number shone in front of me, red and alarming.
I turned quickly to my father. His "chart," in my vision, always showed something stable around 900 to 1,000 MP. It was what I had seen since morning.
"Dad..." I started, my hand going to the gear shift for reverse. "We need to get the hell out of here."
Marcus was calm. Too calm. He was unbuckling his seatbelt without haste.
"Why?" he asked, without looking at me.
"Because that thing..." I pointed to the forest. "In my vision... it has double your energy. Double! If we go down there, you're going to be slaughtered."
Marcus stopped with his hand on the door handle.
He turned his head slowly in my direction. For a moment, his face became unreadable in the darkness. And then... he smiled.
It wasn't a smile of a proud father. It was a predator's smile.
"Double?" he repeated, amused. "Is that what your numbers say?"
"The interface doesn't lie," I insisted, rolling my eyes. "I see your aura. The level stops there."
Marcus let out a short laugh. He opened the car door and stepped out, standing on the gravel.
"Nathan," he called from outside. "Remember what I told you about water? About the tank?"
"I remember, up to the knees, you said!"
Marcus closed the door with a soft thud and leaned into the open window.
"That is what I leave on the surface. What leaks from the faucet so the world doesn't get suspicious," he explained, his voice tranquil. "But you forgot the first lesson of today: Compression. What happens when you hold an entire ocean inside a cup?"
He stepped away from the car and turned his back to me, facing the forest.
"Look again, kid. And tell me what your numbers show now."
And then, he let go.
There was no sound of an explosion. There was no physical wind.
But in my Magic Sight, it was as if a dam had burst in absolute silence.
Marcus's contained blue aura expanded. It didn't just grow; it exploded upwards, piercing the canopy of the trees, rising like a pillar of solid light that touched the sky. The air around the car became dense, heavy as lead. Gravity seemed to have doubled, sinking me into the seat.
The interface in front of me began to blink, the letters trembling, struggling to calculate the new reality.
The numbers spun too fast for me to follow, rising, rising, rising.
[MP: 5,000...]
[MP: 12,000...]
[MP: 18,500...]
The count froze with the sound of a glitch in my head, before stabilizing at an absurd value.
[MP: 24,890 / 25,000]
My eyes went wide, breath caught in my throat. The glow was so intense I had to cover my face with my arm. The 4,000 MP thing in the forest, which seemed so terrifying seconds ago, now looked like a lit candle next to a tsunami.
Marcus lowered his hand, and the gigantic aura retracted in an instant, returning to be that contained and harmless glow from before.
Silence returned.
He turned his face to me over his shoulder.
"Well?" he asked. "How much does that vision of yours mark now?"
"Twenty..." my voice failed. I cleared my throat. "Almost twenty-five thousand."
Marcus nodded, satisfied, adjusting his coat collar.
"Yeah," he murmured, looking at his own hands. "A good volume of water. Deep enough to drown anything that comes out of that forest."
He started walking toward the trees, where the red light had stopped advancing, as if the beast had sensed the crushing pressure and was reconsidering its existence.
"Stay in the car," Marcus ordered, without looking back. "And pay attention. You're going to see how water is truly circulated."
I watched my father's back disappear into the darkness.
I looked at the car dashboard, then at my own hands, which were still trembling slightly.
"Okay," I muttered, leaning back in the seat and letting out a breath, feeling ridiculously small. "I guess I don't need to worry about saving him."
I activated the sight again, just to watch.
Up ahead, the red stain roared.
And my father's blue stain just walked up to it, calm, inevitable, and absurdly large.
I kept watching through the windshield, hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. Outside, the forest had turned into a silent stage of war.
The red creature — now that it was closer, I saw it didn't look like an animal, it looked like a heap of meat and poorly stitched shadows — advanced. It didn't run; it projected itself, tearing up the ground, leaving a trail of dead, gray grass where it passed.
Marcus didn't move.
He just raised his right hand, palm open.
In my Magic Sight, I saw the structure form. It wasn't a simple triangle like the one I used on the cup. It was complex. Several squares rotating inside one another, perfect, mathematical, shining in an intense and solid blue.
"Containment Cube," I whispered, recognizing the logic, but not the complexity.
When the red beast leaped to attack him, the cube expanded in the blink of an eye, enveloping it.
BAM.
The creature slammed against the invisible walls of blue mana. The sound was muffled, like distant thunder.
Marcus closed his fingers slowly, the cube began to shrink.
The thing inside screamed. It wasn't a roar. It was a sharp sound, of tearing metal, of pure static.
Suddenly, my father's voice sounded inside the car. Clear. Crisp. As if he were sitting right next to me.
"Are you seeing this, Nathan?"
I jumped in fright, looking at the empty passenger seat, but quickly realized. He was projecting his voice with magic.
"I am..." I replied to nothingness, hoping he could hear me. "I'm watching."
"Look at its structure," Marcus's voice continued, professorial, completely ignoring the monster thrashing two meters away from him. "Use your vision. What do you see?"
I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the red mass trapped inside the blue cube.
The system tried to analyze.
[Analyzing Target...]
[Error: Mana Source not identified.]
[Warning: Corruption Detected.]
"It has no structure," I spoke, feeling a shiver. "It's... messy. It looks like it's melting. The Sight seems to be glitching."
"Exactly," Marcus confirmed. Outside, he took a step forward, facing the beast. "Natural magic follows laws. Geometry. Physics. It builds. This thing you are seeing? This doesn't build. This corrupts."
The beast threw itself against the blue wall again. Where the red mana touched the blue, my father's light hissed, like acid eating metal.
"This is the Dark Arts, Nathan," his voice became harder. "It is the shortcut of the weak. They don't use their own mana to create structure. They steal life to force reality to obey."
Dark Arts.
The term weighed heavily in the air.
"This thing wasn't born," Marcus continued. "It was made. It is a Construct. Someone took remains of animals, remains of ambient mana, and stitched it all together with hate and blood."
He closed his fist completely.
The blue cube collapsed violently.
There was a flash of light, followed by a wet crushing sound.
The red light went out instantly.
When the dust settled, there was no monster. Just a dark stain on the forest floor and a terrible smell of ozone and rot that invaded the car even with the windows up.
Marcus stood there for a second, looking at the ground. His gigantic aura of 25,000 MP retreated, going back inside him, hidden under the skin as if it had never left.
He turned and walked back to the car.
He got in and slammed the door. Silence returned, but now it was heavy.
He didn't start the car immediately. He kept staring straight ahead, wiping some invisible dirt off his coat sleeve.
"I thought we came to Beacon Hills because of me," I said, my voice low, still processing the calculated violence I had just witnessed. "Or because of the werewolves."
"Werewolves are part of nature," Marcus said, turning to me. The blue glow was gone from his eyes, leaving only tiredness. "They are dangerous, yes. But they have rules. They have honor, in their own way."
He pointed to the dark stain in the forest.
"That has no honor. That is an insult to magic." He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw real concern in his eyes.
"Dark Mages are the only thing that really worries me, Nathan. Werewolves bite the body. Dark Mages bite the soul. They distort the laws that protect us."
I swallowed hard.
"Do you think there's one here?" I asked. "In Beacon Hills?"
Marcus let out a humorless laugh.
"That beast was a scout. A test. Someone wanted to see if the city was protected," he leaned his head back against the seat. "Someone very arrogant or very stupid."
He looked at me.
"You wanted to know why I'm so strict with your training? Why I leave you without answers?"
I nodded slowly.
"Because against a werewolf, you can run," he said, serious. "But against a Dark Mage... if you don't have the strongest structure, if your mind isn't a perfect geometric fortress... he takes you apart. Piece by piece."
I felt a chill down my spine. The image of the cracked mirror in the school bathroom returned to my mind. My structure was still fragile.
"So..." I took a deep breath, gripping the steering wheel. "We aren't here on vacation."
"No," Marcus confirmed. "We are here to clean house."
He gestured to the road.
"Let's go. Your mother will be furious if dinner gets cold. And don't worry too much, your father is very strong."
I started the car, my hands still trembling, but now for a different reason.
Beacon Hills had Alphas. It had Hunters. It had a Kanima.
But now, hidden somewhere, maybe even walking the school hallways, was someone capable of creating monsters of rotting meat and red magic.
And I needed to find out who it was before he discovered that I am just a rookie with a grimoire I can barely read.
"Dad," I called, as I maneuvered the car back onto the asphalt.
"Hm?"
"That cube... will you teach me?"
Marcus smiled slightly, looking at the dark road. "Start with the triangle, kid. If you master the triangle, we'll talk about the square."
I accelerated. The way home seemed much longer now.