The night air in the Northern Dormitory was sharp, biting through the open window and chilling the sweat on Arthur's neck. He stood in the center of his room, the Speculum Alchemiae resting closed on his desk—a heavy, leather-bound monument to his own naivety.
It was the fourth month of the second semester. Nearly one hundred and fifty days since the obsidian lance tore through his brother's chest.
In that time, Arthur had scoured the deepest recesses of alchemical theory and forbidden lore. And in that time, he had unearthed a bitter, immutable truth: Resurrection was an illusion. It was a pathetic myth, a fairy tale crafted by the weak to pacify the grieving. Cedric was gone. The only thing left was the debt owed for his blood.
Arthur exhaled, a slow, controlled breath that carried no visible condensation, no trace of mana. He raised his wooden training blade.
He stepped forward, intentionally fracturing his stance. He threw his center of gravity entirely over his leading knee—a posture that, according to every law of physics and biomechanics taught in the War God Schools, demanded he lose his balance and fall.
He didn't.
The Nameless Arts refused the laws of the world. Kinetic energy built in the void of his broken posture. Arthur swung. The blade didn't just cut the air; it folded it. For a fraction of a microsecond, the spatial distance between the wooden tip and the far wall simply ceased to exist. The strike landed with a sharp, resonant crack against the stone, traveling faster than muscle fibers could contract, faster than the electrical signals could bridge the synapses in his brain.
Arthur lowered the blade, feeling the absolute rest of mana in his veins. The Nameless Sword didn't consume magic; it nullified it, subjugating reality through sheer, overriding intent.
He walked to his desk and picked up a charcoal pencil, jotting a single symbol on a piece of scrap parchment.
Three Stars. Because the Nameless Arts were completely alien to established doctrine, Arthur had been forced to invent his own metric. He defined 'One Star' as the equivalent of an Advanced-rank combatant, with each subsequent star marking the next major threshold of lethal proficiency.
Currently, he operated at a strict Three-Star capacity—roughly equal to a Saint-rank swordsman. It was terrifying strength. And yet, it wasn't enough.
He closed his eyes, recalling the blur of ash and holy light in the dormitory hallway five months ago. Cedric and the Ash Mage hadn't just been moving fast; they had been countering each other's reality-bending distortions in real-time. They had operated at the Fourth Star at a minimum. Perhaps even the Fifth. He was still leagues below the monsters that had taken his brother's life.
Arthur opened his eyes and looked down at the sprawling ledger open on his desk.
Four hundred and ninety-nine students in the School of Magic. One thousand students in the School of Academia. Over the last several months, he had meticulously tracked, analyzed, and categorized every single resident of the First Sector.
He dragged the charcoal over the final page, drawing a definitive line through a block of names. The hunt within the student body was over. None of the first-years—the prime suspects, the only ones with proximity to Cedric before the attack—were the Ash Mage.
The anomalies, however, had required deliberate neutralization.
His pencil hovered over a familiar name. Rank Eight: Vicktor Vulivar. The Advanced-rank Fire Swordsman was hovering on the very edge of Expert-rank proficiency, fueled by a monstrous, borderline-obsessive nightly meditation routine. He was the strongest first-year in the Academy besides Arthur himself. And yet, Vicktor was entirely neutralized. Because Arthur had flawlessly mediated the boy's social blunders, Vicktor viewed him with blind, indebted loyalty. He was a devastating weapon that Arthur wielded simply by pretending to be his friend.
Arthur's pencil moved down. Rank Six: Alice Noctiliene. An Intermediate-rank Water and Wind Mage, utilizing an unorthodox, highly dangerous form of casting. She had overcome her arena panic and evolved into a combatant easily surpassing Kaelen. More importantly, she was no longer a variable that required managing. To remain distant from a childhood friend would draw unnecessary scrutiny, so they had settled into a comfortable, unspoken treaty. They played their parts, offering each other a platonic, manufactured camaraderie that protected both of their public facades.
Then there was Rank Two: Celeste Devreux. An Intermediate Quad-Elemental Mage on the absolute brink of Advanced-rank proficiency across all four core elements. She trailed behind him during breaks like a feral, wildly overpowered stray dog. She genuinely believed he was her best friend, a delusion Arthur weaponized to solidify his own saintly alibi.
The pencil stopped at the final name, leaving a dark smudge of charcoal on the paper. Derrick Dunwell. Status: Incomplete.
There had been zero contact. Arthur knew, with absolute, chilling certainty, that reaching out to Derrick would result in catastrophic failure. The rage vibrating off his former friend was palpable from across a courtyard. To engage him was to compromise the secrecy Arthur had bled to build. Derrick had to remain a ghost.
Arthur tossed the pencil onto the desk. The image of the Saint he had sought to fabricate was flawless. The masses adored him. The faculty respected him.
But the clock was running out.
His Re-Qualification Exam loomed three months away. He knew he would ace every physical and theoretical metric. He could out-think and out-maneuver any test the instructors devised. But it wouldn't matter. He had fundamentally breached his contract with the Academic Board. He hadn't attended a single one of the mandated therapy sessions.
Expulsion, or at least severe disciplinary action, was inevitable. It was regrettable that he would leave without draining the Academy of its remaining magical texts, but his primary objectives here were complete.
Which left the true suspects.
Noctiliene and the Black Hand. He thought of Alice's mentor. The silver-haired woman who smelled of crushed mint and ozone. The woman whose aura suffocated the air in a room, rivaling the suffocating pressure of the late Headmaster Orrin Drevayne himself. She was a monster hiding in plain sight. Investigating her now would be suicide. He had to avoid her entirely until he achieved the Fifth Star.
The Black Hand, however, was a tangible thread. The cult shared its name with a major Adventurer faction on the continent. The moment he left the floating city, that would be his first destination.
Arthur looked away from the ledger, his amber eyes settling on a small, sealed envelope resting near his inkwell. It was a requisition form from Instructor Vigo's subterranean lab.
He had to leave the Academy soon. But he could not leave empty-handed.
A cold, familiar numbness washed over his chest, silencing the faint, desperate protests of his dormant conscience. The moral splinter he had felt weeks ago—the brief flash of guilt—was cleanly suppressed beneath a glacier of ambition.
Soon, the final elixir would be ready. And waiting in the lab was another test subject.
Arthur reached out, his fingers brushing the edge of the envelope. His reflection in the dark windowpane showed a boy with a gentle, flawless smile.
It would all end soon. The stage was set, the players were positioned, and the true hunt was about to begin.