28th of Verdant, Year 4339
The two weeks following the "Great sparring session" had been suspiciously quiet. The students had healed, the bruises had faded into yellow-green memories, and the rhythm of the academy had settled into a steady, albeit cautious, hum. Henry had surprisingly taken to his role as an instructor with a natural, albeit lazy, grace. He seemed far more at home leaning against a weapon rack giving critiques than he ever did sitting behind a student's desk.
But the peace was a fragile glass, and it shattered at precisely 9:42 PM.
Serena had just finished a quiet dinner in her dorm room, the moonlight spilling across her desk. She was reaching for a textbook when it happened—a blood-curdling scream that didn't sound human. It was a jagged, tearing sound that ripped through the night air, followed immediately by a chorus of panicked shouts echoing from the lower floors.
She was out of her door in seconds. The hallway was a sea of confused faces and half-fastened robes. Layla was already there, her usual cheer replaced by a pale, wide-eyed mask.
"Serena! Did you hear that?" Layla gripped her arm, her voice trembling. "Where did it come from? It sounded like someone was being turned inside out."
"Outside," Serena said, her hand already drifting toward the hilt of the practice sword she kept by the door. "It came from the grounds."
Wanda stepped out from the shadows of the stairwell, her face grim. "Not just the grounds. I know that echo. It came from the clearing in the forest—the old training site."
"That far away?" Serena frowned. "To hear a scream that clearly from across the woods..."
"Then we need to move," Wanda replied, her voice dropping an octave. "Because whatever made a sound like that isn't finished."
The three girls joined a growing stream of students and a few lower-level faculty members sprinting toward the treeline. The forest was unnaturally still; the usual nighttime chirping of insects had been snuffed out, replaced only by the heavy breathing of the crowd and the snapping of twigs underfoot.
As they broke into the clearing, the crowd suddenly drifted to a halt. The frantic energy died instantly, replaced by a cold, suffocating silence.
Serena pushed through the front rank, her breath catching in her throat.
The Scene at the Clearing
The moon provided just enough light to illuminate the nightmare. In the center of the training ground, where Henry had once stood and mocked them, a massive, intricate circle had been carved into the earth. It wasn't just a drawing; the grooves were filled with a thick, viscous liquid that shimmered with a dark, metallic copper—fresh blood.
Inside the circle, the air seemed to warp around five massive, five-meter-tall wooden stakes driven deep into the dirt and on those stakes corpses hung limp, their heads lolling forward. The uniforms were shredded, but the Academy crests were still visible, pinned like morbid trophies to their chests. The grotesque symmetry of the display suggested it wasn't a murder—it was a consecration.
"Oh, gods," Layla whispered, her hand trembling over her mouth. "Are those... the seniors?"
Serena didn't answer. Her eyes were locked on the viscous, pulsing grooves of the circle. The stench was a physical weight—metallic iron clashing with the sharp, ozone sting of high-level sorcery. It wasn't just a murder; it was a machine made of meat and symbols.
The crowd parted as the Student Council arrived. Diana led the way, her face a mask of cold fury. She didn't hesitate, stepping toward the perimeter of the blood-inked sigils. "Get them down," she commanded her team. "Now!"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
The voice was low, lazy, and carried a weight that brought the Council to a dead stop. Henry and Caspian were walking through the crowd, their expressions uncharacteristically grim.
Diana whipped around to face Henry. "What are you talking about? Those are students Henry. We need to recover them!"
Henry sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's a high-grade blood ritual, probably woven by a Coven or something worse. You step inside that geometry without a neutralizing anchor, and you'll just be the sixth stake. Use your head, Diana."
Caspian didn't wait for the argument to continue. He tapped a device on his wrist. "I'm contacting the State Regulators and the high-wardens. This is officially beyond 'Academy jurisdiction.'"
Morgana arrived moments later, her presence usually a source of warmth, but now she looked like she had seen a ghost. She stared at the five-meter stakes, her face turning ashen.
"You didn't notice this?" Henry asked, his eyes never leaving the corpses.
Morgana shook her head slowly. "I was away at a Council meeting in the capital... but even so, the Academy's wards should have alerted me. This place shouldn't have been out of my sight. How did this happen without me feeling the breach?"
"No wonder," Henry muttered. "They waited for the one person who could stop the ritual to leave. Smart."
Morgana stepped closer to the edge, her eyes scanning the jagged script. "I've lived for a long time, and I've never seen a configuration like this. It's... empty. Do you know what this is, Henry?"
"It's a summoning ritual," Henry said simply.
Serena stepped forward from the shadow of the crowd, her voice steady despite the horror. "Are you saying the thing that was summoned is already here? Is it in the forest?"
The Serial Summoning
Morgana answered before Henry could, her voice tight. "Nothing is here, Serena. My senses cover every inch of this valley. If a creature had manifested, I would have caught it the moment its heart started beating. So, Henry... how is it a summoning if the circle is empty?"
Henry rubbed the back of his neck, looking genuinely annoyed. "Because it's a Serial Summoning. To be blunt, five deaths won't give you a very strong monster. You'd get a mid-tier creature, at best."
Layla blinked, her voice small. "What is a Serial Summoning?"
Wanda, standing behind them, went pale as the realization hit her, but Henry explained it first.
"It's a synchronized ritual," Henry said, looking at Serena and Layla. "It's what happens when sacrifices are made at multiple nodes across the continent at the exact same time. Each circle is just a 'battery' for a single, massive conduit."
He took a long pause, the starlit void in his eyes flickering for a brief second.
"The fact that they dared to put a node here—inside the Academy—means this isn't some small-scale conjuring. My guess? This same scene is being discovered in every major city right now."
"What are you trying to say, Henry?" Morgana asked, her expression full of dread.
Henry sighed, turning his back on the corpses. "I'm saying that whatever they're bringing through isn't going to be 'summoned' into the forest. It's going to be big enough that we won't have to look for it. We'll just have to look up."
The students began to murmur in terror. If the Academy's wards—the strongest in the north—could be bypassed so easily, no one was safe. Henry looked toward the dark horizon, his jaw set.
"Get the students back to the dorms," Henry told Caspian. "And tell the kitchen to brew a lot of coffee. It's going to be a very long night."