He went quiet in the middle of a sentence.
Leon had been saying something about the Drakensoul Academy's third year cohort. The ones they'd be facing at the inter-school tournament. The ones Arion had been training with for two years. The conversation had the easy momentum of people who had found a topic worth discussing and were building on it properly. Taro was eating and contributing in roughly equal measure. Cassian had said three things total and each one had redirected the conversation in a more useful direction. Mira was listening with the focused attention that meant she was retaining everything.
Lysander stopped responding.
Not dramatically. He just stopped. His eyes moved from the table to the room.
Leon noticed first. "Vale."
Nothing.
"Lysander."
He looked at Leon. His face had gone inward. The look he had when he was reading something nobody else could hear. But he wasn't doing it consciously.
Nythera, he said internally. Something is wrong.
I feel it. Her voice was sharper than usual. The mana environment. Something in it changed two minutes ago and I didn't—
"You feel that?" Cassian said.
He hadn't moved. His eyes had sharpened. He was looking at the room the way he looked at opponents. Reading. Assessing.
Taro's ears were fully forward. His tail had gone still. The wolf clan sense for wrongness had arrived before anything else could.
"Something's off," Taro said. Not loud. Almost to himself. "The air—"
Elara's hand had gone to the edge of the table. Not gripping it. Just present. Her star element reaching before she directed it to.
Valeria said nothing. She had gone still. Her Perfect Form Memory was recording something that didn't fit any pattern she had.
Sera had looked up from somewhere across the room. Her water element caught something before her mind did.
The people around the table were on their feet before they had consciously decided to stand.
Lysander was already standing.
He was looking at the eastern wall.
The mana environment in that direction was wrong. He had felt it before. In the lower district gate network. In gate nine-four. Modified mana. Monster mana. Something contained that was about to stop being contained.
He had less than a second to understand what that meant.
Down, Nythera said.
BOOM.
The eastern wall came apart.
Not all of it. A section, fifteen meters of stone and plaster and mana-reinforced structural support, hitting the grand hall's floor in pieces and dust. The mana chandeliers swung. Three went dark simultaneously as the crystal arrays disrupted. The ones that stayed lit threw the hall into uneven shadow, warm light in some areas and sudden darkness in others.
Through the gap in the wall: Chimera Beasts.
Not one. Not two. Seven of them entering simultaneously through the breach, more sounds of impact from the southern wall suggesting another entry point, screaming from the direction of the main entrance suggesting a third.
Students who had been talking and dancing and laughing thirty seconds ago were now running or fighting or frozen. Their minds hadn't caught up yet.
The table had scattered.
Leon was already moving. Solar element activating, warm gold light around him, hand on his blade. He had been trained for exactly this.
Cassian was between two students and a Chimera Beast. Metal element active. Cold and precise. He didn't say anything.
Taro had moved in front of Sera. Instinct, not thought. His wind element crackled at his fingertips. Ears flat.
Lysander was looking at the hall.
Nythera.
I see it.
The Chimera Beasts were a distraction. Effective, genuinely dangerous, students panicking and unable to see past the immediate threat. But a distraction.
The operatives were moving through the chaos. Three of them, coordinated, moving with a direction that had nothing to do with the beasts or the students.
Moving toward Elara.
He looked for her.
The hall was chaos. Overturned furniture, dust from the breach, sounds of combat from multiple directions. He found Valeria backed against the wall, ice element active, a barrier between her and a Chimera Beast pressing against it harder than it could sustain. He found Taro still in front of Sera, wind element visible, fighting something significantly larger than him.
He found Elara.
She was not where she had been sitting. She was near the eastern service door. Not voluntarily. Two operatives had her. A third was at the door.
She was fighting. Her star element was active. She was buying seconds, buying them better than most would have. The Moonveil training making itself useful in a context it was never designed for.
But she was losing ground. The operatives were modified. They moved wrong. Made, not trained. They weren't fighting her. They were moving her.
The system activated.
Not a mission notification. Something he had never seen from it before. Red. The full display shifted. Three simultaneous alerts:
ELARA MOONVEIL — CRITICALTARO STORMFANG — CRITICALVALERIA FROSTBORN — CRITICAL
He looked at the three names.
He was one person.
He looked at the hall. Chaos everywhere, no clear picture yet. He found Taro. Found Valeria. Found Elara near the service door with two operatives on her and a third at the exit.
Thirty seconds. The whole thing had taken thirty seconds.
The math was not in his favor. It never had been. A blessingless commoner in a story written for someone else, standing in gaps the plot never planned for, surviving things that weren't designed to be survived.
He looked at Elara at the door.
System. His voice in his head was not calm. Who do I go to first.
The system responded immediately.
ELARA MOONVEIL — extraction in progress. If she goes through that door the trail goes cold. Taro Stormfang and Valeria Frostborn — critical but still in the venue.
He understood what that meant.
Elara first. If she leaves the building she doesn't come back.
He moved.