The air at the North Gate didn't just smell of smoke; it smelled of absence. As Matthew and Lyra sprinted through the vaulted stone corridors toward the outer wall, the very atmosphere felt thin, as if the magic that usually held the Citadel's stones together was being evaporated.
The Great Ebb had turned the Academy's greatest strength into its most terminal flaw.
They burst onto the battlements to a scene of absolute carnage. The North Gate—a five-story-tall slab of reinforced star-iron—was groaning. On the walkway, dozen of Elite students in shimmering silver robes were doubled over, clutching their chests. Their mana-veins, suddenly emptied of the pressure they had relied on since birth, were undergoing "Vacuum Shock."
"They're useless!" a voice roared over the wind.
Matthew looked up to see Professor Silas. The old veteran wasn't glowing with power, but he was the only one standing tall. He held a heavy iron partisan, his leather duster flapping in the unnatural gale. Beside him were the F-Classers—Sarah, Jax, and David. Because their cores were weak or erratic, the Ebb hadn't crippled them; they were used to fighting for every scrap of energy.
"Matthew! Ignis!" Silas barked, not missing a beat. "The Miasma is conjuring 'Hollow-Husks' at the base of the wall. They aren't real monsters—they're constructs of pure anti-mana. If they touch the gate, they'll dissolve the hinges!"
"I've got the rampart!" Lyra shouted. Her eyes were still burning with the violet-white fire Matthew had funneled into her. She leapt onto the crenellations, her sword trailing a wake of stabilizing heat that allowed the nearby F-Classers to finally breathe.
Matthew looked down the sheer face of the wall. Hundreds of grey, featureless shapes were scaling the stone, moving like spiders. They were the Husks—beings of the Ebb.
"Matthew, wait!" Andre skidded onto the battlements, carrying a bulky, steam-hissing apparatus on his back. "The Aegis Dampers won't be enough if you jump down there! Take this!"
Andre tossed a heavy, blackened cylinder. Matthew caught it—it was a Gravity-Anchor, a mechanical device that used compressed springs instead of mana.
"Go!" Andre yelled, already turning to help Jax stabilize a wounded Elite.
Matthew didn't hesitate. He stepped off the ledge.
The world blurred. As he fell, he opened the "Void-Well" in his chest to its absolute limit. Usually, this would be suicide, but in the center of the Great Ebb, Matthew was the only thing with "suction." He became a gravitational center. The Miasma, the smoke, and the very cold of the night were pulled toward him, forming a swirling cloak of darkness.
He slammed into the muddy earth at the base of the gate with the force of a falling star. The shockwave didn't blow the Husks away; it pulled them in.
The Husks rushed him. They had no faces, only jagged holes where mouths should be. As the first one lunged, Matthew swung his iron dagger.
Under normal circumstances, the dagger would have snapped against the anti-mana hide of a Husk. But Matthew wasn't just swinging steel. He was swinging a vacuum. As the blade touched the creature, it didn't cut; it erased. The Husk collapsed into a pile of grey ash as its internal structure was sucked into Matthew's Aegis Dampers.
One. Ten. Twenty.
Matthew was a whirlwind of black motion. He moved with the "Ghost-Step" Silas had taught him—efficient, low to the ground, and brutal. He wasn't a Mage casting spells from afar; he was a butcher in the pits.
Above him, he heard a rhythmic thud-thud-thud.
"Archers, loose!" Silas's voice echoed.
The F-Class students were raining down heavy, non-magical iron bolts. They couldn't use fireballs, but they knew how to aim a crossbow. The bolts tore through the Husks that Matthew had grouped together with his pull.
On the wall, Lyra was struggling. The violet-white energy Matthew had given her was powerful, but it was volatile. It fought against her natural Ignis flame.
"It's too much!" she gasped, her sword shaking. A Husk had managed to crest the wall and was reaching for her throat.
Suddenly, a blue shield flickered into existence in front of her. It was weak, flickering like a candle in a storm, but it held.
"Don't stop!" Andrew panted, standing behind her, his face pale and sweating. He was using his "Mana-Conduit" core to act as a filter, taking the raw, jagged energy Matthew was radiating from the battlefield below and smoothing it out before passing it to Lyra.
"Andre! Stabilize the Conduit!" Andrew yelled.
Andre slid next to them, jamming a brass rod into the stone and connecting it to Andrew's belt. "Grounding the feedback now! Burn them, Lyra!"
With the three of them linked—the Genius, the Leader, and the Flame—the North Wall became a wall of literal fire. Lyra unleashed a horizontal wave of violet heat that incinerated every Husk on the upper stones.
Below, Matthew stood alone in a circle of ash. His chest felt like it was made of molten lead. He had consumed so much of the Ebb that his skin was glowing with a faint, ghostly purple light. His breath came in ragged, frozen plumes.
The Miasma began to recede, curling back into the darkness of the Whispering Woods. The "Ebb" wasn't over, but the first wave had been broken.
Matthew looked up at the battlements. He saw the F-Class students cheering, holding their mundane crossbows high. He saw Lyra, Andrew, and Andre leaning on each other, a trio of Elites who had survived by relying on the "misfits" they used to ignore.
Professor Silas walked to the edge of the wall and looked down at Matthew. There was no praise in his eyes, only a grim, soldier's acknowledgment. He raised his partisan in a silent salute to the son of the Brave One.
Matthew tried to return the salute, but his knees finally gave out. He collapsed into the mud, his Aegis Dampers hissing as they bled off the excess energy into the damp earth.
They had held the gate. The Academy still stood. But as Matthew looked at the blackened woods in the distance, he knew this wasn't a victory. It was a stay of execution.
The world was dying, and he had just learned that he was the only one who could eat the poison.