Why had Julian Vane asked me about Vesper?
The question hung in the air, heavier than the mana-steam rattling against the windowpanes. I studied him through the fringe of my hair, my pulse steady despite the alarm bells screaming in my mind.
Was he a pointer sent by the Princess's faction?
A hunter from the Kingdom of Utah?
I looked into his eyes.
They weren't sharp with the narrowed suspicion of an inquisitor; they were bright with the scholarly hunger of a man who lived in libraries and lecture halls.
He looked like a man who collected stories the way others collected gold coins.
A coincidence, I decided, though I didn't relax an inch.
In this world, coincidences are just fate being too lazy to hide its hand.
"If a man like that actually existed," I said, turning a page of the Gazette with practiced nonchalance, "he'd be an international headline, not a ghost story whispered in transit."
Julian laughed, a rich, melodic sound that seemed far too bright for the grey, frozen landscape outside. "Fair point. But the most interesting things in this world are rarely printed in ink, Mr. Aristhide. They are written in blood on the borders where no one thinks to look. The common folk want heroes; the Empire wants stability. Neither side wants to admit that a single man with no name could dismantle a legion of battle-mages."
"A dark sentiment for a professor," I remarked.
"Reality is often darker than the theories we teach at Sorenth," Julian replied. He seemed genuinely taken with me—perhaps he enjoyed the challenge of a cold conversationalist, or perhaps he was simply bored. "You have a strange gravity to you. Most travelers would be falling over themselves to impress a Senior Lecturer of the Academy. You? You look like you're waiting for the rain to stop."
"I'm just a man who values his peace, Professor Vane. I've reached an age where quiet is the only luxury worth buying."
"And yet," Julian said, his eyes momentarily sharpening, "I suspect your 'peace' was very hard-won."
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
I turned my gaze back to the window, watching the jagged, snow-capped giants...
The "peace" I had been savoring for the last hour began to curdled. My mother's "Eye"—that wretched sixth sense I had tried to drown in textbooks back on Earth—began to itch at the base of my skull.
The air in the cabin grew dense. It wasn't the steam; it was the intent. It was a sensation I knew from a dozen battlefields—the static charge in the soul that precedes a lightning strike.
"Is something wrong?" Julian asked. His smile faltered as he caught the subtle shift in my weight.
My spine had straightened.
My hand had moved, almost imperceptibly, toward the heavy cane resting against the seat.
I didn't speak. I closed my eyes, letting my internal senses expand.
Three... two... one...
BOOM.
The explosion wasn't an engine failure. It was a rhythmic, focused blast—the sharp, percussive crack of a breach.
The carriage groaned, the metal frame shrieking as the train tilted violently to the left.
Julian was nearly thrown from his seat, but he caught himself with a burst of reflex, his hand instinctively diving into his coat. The luxury cabin, once a sanctuary of cedar and velvet, suddenly felt like a wooden coffin.
"The engine?" Julian gasped, his face draining of color.
"Too sharp for an engine," I said, my voice cutting through the ringing in his ears. "That was a shaped charge. We're being boarded."
"Boarded? Here? We are within the Imperial shadow! The border patrols—"
"Raiders don't care about shadows when the sun is made of gold," I said, standing up. My movements were no longer those of a weary traveler; the lethargic mask of 'Aristhide' was slipping. "This train is a vault on wheels. To the mountain clans, we're just a giant metal piggy bank."
But even as I spoke, a cold sweat broke out on my neck.
A normal raid starts with a blockade or a derailment to stop the train. This was an internal breach while moving at top speed. This wasn't a robbery. It was an intrusion.
And then there was the smell—bitter, like burnt sulfur and rotted sage.
Dark Magic.
"Stay behind me," Julian said. His voice regained its academic authority, though his hand trembled slightly as he drew a wand of polished ash. The tip glowed with a steady, sapphire light. "I am a Professor of Sorenth. I won't let a commoner fall to highwaymen on my watch."
I almost laughed.
A scholar playing hero.
I had seen a hundred like him die because they tried to negotiate with a blade already at their throat.
"If you insist," I murmured, stepping back into the shadows of the cabin door.
We stepped into the corridor.
The train was a cacophony of slamming locks, children wailing, and the frantic shouting of the conductor.
Julian took the lead, his wand tracing a complex geometric pattern in the air—a defensive ward of the third circle. He was talented, I'll give him that. Most mages his age would still be fumbling with the incantation.
CRASH!
A window at the end of the hallway shattered inward, spraying shards of glass like diamonds across the carpet. A man tumbled through the opening, landing in a perfect, predatory crouch.
He wasn't wearing the furs of a mountain raider.
He was dressed in grey rags, his skin translucent and mapped with bulging, black veins. His eyes weren't human; they were entirely crimson, devoid of pupils, leaking a faint, dark vapor.
He didn't look for loot. He didn't demand gold. He looked at us and let out a wet, gurgling growl that sounded like teeth grinding on bone.
"Halt!" Julian commanded, his voice booming with magical reinforcement. "Drop your weapon and identify your—"
The intruder didn't wait for the end of the sentence. He lunged, moving with a twitchy, supernatural speed that defied human anatomy. He was a blur of grey rags and sharpened iron.
"Fulminis!" Julian barked.
A streak of blue lightning erupted from his wand, slamming into the intruder's chest.
The man was thrown back, his body convulsing as the current fried his nerves. He hit the floor hard, sliding to a stop just a few feet from Julian's boots.
"Did you kill him?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"No, it was a stunning jolt," Julian said, breathing hard, his forehead beaded with sweat. "I need to know who sent—"
"Julian, get back!" I snapped.
The urgency in my voice gave him pause, but his academic curiosity was his undoing. He was already leaning over the fallen man, reaching out as if to inspect a laboratory specimen.
The 'robber' wasn't unconscious.
...He was laughing.
A horrific, bubbling sound that spilled out along with black bile. He pulled back his tattered coat, revealing a vest stitched with crude, glowing crystals and vials of unstable, swirling mana-fluid.
"For the... True Path..." the man rasped, his hand hovering over a trigger crystal. "All... must... burn..."
Julian froze.
His academic mind was likely calculating the blast radius, the yield of the crystals, the failure of his wards—all the things that take too long when death is a fraction of a second away.
I didn't calculate.
I moved.
I grabbed the back of Julian's collar and hauled him backward with a strength that shouldn't have belonged to a "commoner." I threw him into our compartment just as the man's thumb pressed down.
"SHIEL—" Julian tried to scream.
The world turned white.
A massive explosion tore through the center of Compartment Four.
The shockwave was a physical fist, shattering the mahogany walls and sending shards of iron flying like shrapnel. The heat was instantaneous, singeing the air.
I threw myself over Julian, using my own body as a shield as the door was ripped off its hinges. The sound was deafening—a roar that swallowed the world.
When the ringing in my ears began to fade, the hallway was a hellscape of fire and twisted metal. The intruder was gone, vaporized by his own zeal. The train was still screaming forward, the wind howling through the massive hole in the carriage's side.
Julian was beneath me, coughing, his expensive coat shredded. He looked up at me, his eyes wide and terrified, his sapphire wand snapped in half on the floor.
"You..." he wheezed, staring at me. "How did you... you moved before he even..."
I didn't answer him. I stood up, brushing the soot from my sleeves. My eyes were fixed on the far end of the corridor.
The explosion hadn't been an isolated incident. From the next carriage over, I could hear the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of more boots on the roof. These weren't robbers. These were suicide cultists, and they weren't after the gold in the safe.
They were after the passengers. Specifically, the ones heading to the Academy.
"Professor Vane," I said, my voice cold and devoid of its earlier warmth. "If you want to live to see Lumeria, I suggest you stop being a scholar and start being a target. Because they aren't done yet."
I looked at my gloved hands. I had wanted to disappear. I had wanted to be Aristhide, the quiet traveler. But as the shadows began to pool in the corners of the burning hallway, I felt the old weight of 'Vesper' returning to my shoulders.
In the modern world, my mother had told me that the gods would devour me if I didn't walk the path. In this world, it seemed the gods had simply sent men with bombs to do the job for them.
"Stay down," I commanded Julian.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice trembling.
"Checking the guest list," I replied.
I stepped out into the smoke. It was time to see if my "unrecognized magic" was as rusty as I hoped it was.