Jeremiah sat in the front passenger seat of the Alliance transport vehicle as it cut through the upper eastern stretch of BayPort City. The streets here were wide and clean, Alliance-controlled lanes threading between secured towers and gated facilities. According to the map glowing faintly across the dashboard, they were a little over two kilometers from the Alliance Scholastic Annex.
Something felt off.
Jeremiah frowned, eyes unfocusing as his awareness pushed outward. The mana ahead of them felt… muted. Not empty—compressed. Mana didn't flow the way it should. It folded back on itself, like sound swallowed by thick walls. His chest tightened as recognition clicked into place.
Another Veil.
He'd felt this before—less than twenty minutes ago, when they crossed the outer concealment field around the annex. This was different. Denser. Built to isolate.
"We just crossed another veil," Jeremiah said quietly. "Mana's being dampened."
Mariah's hand was already at the edge of her glasses. The lenses flickered, runic threads struggling to resolve overlapping distortions. A second later, her jaw set. "Confirmed. Isolation veil." She exhaled, then—unexpectedly—smiled.
Not a relieved smile.
A predatory one.
"Well," she said, easing off the accelerator, "this mission just got a whole lot more interesting."
Jeremiah glanced at her, cautious now. That grin didn't inspire confidence. It meant she'd switched modes.
Tessa leaned forward from the back seat. "Alright, Captain," she said, energized rather than alarmed. "I know that look, so new plan. What is it?"
Mariah slowed the vehicle and brought it to a controlled stop at a three-way junction—one road leading straight toward the annex, the others cutting through adjacent Alliance infrastructure.
She brought the map up between them, mana traces blooming faintly across it. "Veils like this don't sustain themselves. There's an anchor—an artifact generating the field." She tapped the display. "My optics can track its mana signature. It's active and not coming from the annex."
Her finger slid across the map.
"Opposite direction," she continued. "Which means whoever set this up expected responders. They want us blind and delayed."
She looked at both of them. "So we split."
Jeremiah didn't wait for them to assign it.
"I'll take the annex."
Both of them turned to him.
Mariah's brow furrowed. "That's the side with the unknowns."
"Yes," he said. "And it's where the mana's loudest."
Tessa tilted her head. "Loudest?"
Jeremiah nodded. "This veil dampens output, not activity. Whoever's using power inside is bleeding through it." His gaze stayed fixed on the road ahead. "If Nyx is still fighting—or being forced to—she's not hidden from me."
Mariah studied him again, longer this time.
"You're saying you can track her through the veil," she said carefully.
"I'm saying," Jeremiah replied, "that even like this, I can feel where mana's being used. If I get closer, I won't miss it."
Silence stretched.
Tessa broke it first. "That would've been nice to know earlier."
Jeremiah shrugged. "You didn't ask."
Mariah exhaled once, then nodded. "Alright. You push straight. We take the artifact."
She met his eyes. "Don't get killed."
A faint smile touched his mouth. "I will try my best but it's a known fact that I am very hard to kill."
Mariah's fingers tightened on the wheel. "Once we break the artifact, comms should come back."
She paused, her voice dropping to a quieter, more personal note. "My grandmother doesn't place her trust lightly. If she's willing to stake this much on you…"
She met his eyes, steady and resolute. "Then I'm all in, too."
Jeremiah blinked, a genuine smile cracking through his guard—quick, surprised, and surprisingly warm. "All in, huh?"
He gave a small, confident nod to himself. "Guess I should probably bring my A-game, then."
From the back, Tessa snorted, breaking the tension. "You two done gambling with our lives yet, or…?"
Jeremiah reached for the door handle, that grin still tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Relax, Tessa. I've got good odds."
Jeremiah stepped out first, boots touching down on quiet pavement. Mariah followed, already scanning the surroundings, while Tessa hopped out last, stretching her shoulders like she was warming up before a spar.
Jeremiah lifted a hand.
Mana answered.
His sword formed in his grip with a soft, familiar weight, steel resolving from condensed energy into something solid and real. He rolled his shoulders once, loosening up, neck cracking faintly as he settled into himself.
Tessa unfolded her polearm with a flick of her wrist, the segmented weapon locking into place with a sharp metallic snap. "You sure you don't want the ride?" she asked, jerking her chin toward the annex rising in the distance. "It's closer than it looks."
Mariah checked the cuffs at her wrists, subtle runes lighting briefly as she tightened them into place, then adjusted the gear at her waist. "It'd be faster."
Jeremiah shook his head. "No it's okay."
Tessa raised a brow. "No?"
He glanced toward the annex, eyes unfocusing slightly as he felt the pull of mana ahead. "I'd just be slowing you down."
That earned a snort. "Confident much?"
He smiled faintly. "Efficient."
Mariah studied him for a moment longer, then nodded. "Alright. We break the artifact. You save Nyx."
Jeremiah took a couple steps toward the annex and stepped back, planting his feet.
Mana wasn't a tool. It wasn't energy meant to burn.
It was force—raw potential shaped by intent.
Jeremiah drew it inward first, cycling it through his body the way he'd been trained to. Muscles tightened under reinforcement, bones densified, joints stabilized. strengthening. If he didn't do this first, his body would tear itself apart the moment he launched the spell.
Once the foundation held, he divided the flow.
Wind mana condensed around his feet and calves, not pushing outward but compressing inward, forming a dense cushion of resistance. Something solid to push against. Something that would recoil.
Then he layered fire mana beneath it.
Fire was volatile by nature, expansion seeking release. He kept it restrained, forcing it to build pressure instead of igniting, pinning it in place against the compressed wind. The two forces pressed against each other, tension mounting in a controlled equilibrium.
The wind lifted him cleanly off the ground.
That was the signal.
Jeremiah released the fire.
The fire expanded violently against the wind, and the wind rebounded—both forces collapsing into a single directional burst that hurled him forward like a launched projectile.the pavement cracking beneath the point he'd left behind.
The shockwave rolled back a heartbeat later.
Dust lifted off the street in a widening ring, loose debris skittering across fractured asphalt as the echo of Jeremiah's launch faded into the distance. Heat distortion lingered where he'd been, the air still vibrating from the release.
Tessa stared down the road.
"…What," she said slowly, "core level does that?"
Mariah didn't answer right away.
She was standing a few steps from the transport, eyes fixed on the shattered pavement. The Ardent Optics flickered uselessly as her glasses tried—and failed—to lock onto a disappearing mana wake. Whatever trail Jeremiah had left was already dispersing, smeared thin by the veil.
"No clean reading," she muttered. "It's this damned veil."
Tessa glanced at her. "That bad?"
Mariah didn't answer at first. Her lenses flickered as she replayed the data, but her attention drifted past the numbers, back to the image of him launching down the street—controlled, effortless, gone in a blink.
She frowned faintly.
She should have known his name. Someone like that didn't stay invisible in the Alliance. And yet… nothing. No academy record she could recall. No whispered reputation. Just Selene's quiet confidence.
*Tessa,* she thought absently, then spoke aloud, "what core level did you clock him at?"
Tessa blinked. "I didn't. I was too busy trying to figure out how he didn't break his legs."
Mariah hesitated, then lowered her glasses slightly. "Yellow."
Tessa froze. "—What?"
"Yellow core," Mariah said again, softer this time.
Tessa stared down the road where Jeremiah had vanished. "That's not funny."
"I'm not joking," Mariah replied.
Silence settled between them.
Yellow core practitioners shouldn't move like that.
Shouldn't feel that steadfast and confident. Shouldn't leave her with that strange pull in her chest—the mix of interest and something colder, something that made her instincts itch.
Mariah exhaled slowly.
*Who are you,* she wondered, *and why does my grandmother trust you so much?*
Tessa let out a breathy laugh. "Okay," she said. "I officially don't know whether to flirt with him or keep my distance."
Mariah didn't smile.
Her gaze lingered on the fractured road a moment longer, suspicion and something undeniably warmer coiling together in her chest.
"I don't know either," she said quietly.
Jeremiah tore across the campus in a continuous burst of motion. Wind snapped beneath his feet, fire flaring in tight ignitions that never fully bloomed. In under two minutes, he covered nearly two kilometers, leaving only fractured stone and heat distortion in his wake. Anyone watching from a distance would have seen nothing but a white-and-red blur ripping between buildings.
As he crossed the outer edge of the annex, mana spiked—far ahead.
Jeremiah's head snapped right, too fast to be natural, eyes flaring red as his senses punched through the veil's dampening. The source wasn't nearby. It came from deep within the campus—somewhere near the center.
Wind and earth mana—aggressive, overlapping.
The feel of it, the strain in the mana once a spell is cast and the way the mana scraped against the world—it all came through sharp and clear, like a pulse under skin.
Jeremiah adjusted his trajectory without slowing.
A few seconds later he hit the outer approach to the annex core just as the signatures clustered—five figures stationed along a raised service corridor overlooking the central structures. He hadn't sensed them at first; they'd been sitting still, mana suppressed.
*Damn lookouts.*
Of course there were lookouts.
Jeremiah's teeth grated together as irritation bled into something colder.
Demon tribal masks etched with crude channels caught the light as they shifted.Cult-affiliated, then. Or bounty hunters wearing the skin of one.
Jeremiah didn't bother narrowing it down. Not yet.
His expression darkened.
Mana surged outward with killing intent threaded through it—dense, oppressive, heavy with the weight of someone who had killed before and would do so again without hesitation. It wasn't flared or announced. It simply arrived, crushing the space it touched.
All of them felt it.
The guard's heads snapped up as the pressure slammed into their awareness, instinct screaming danger as all their own mana spiked in panic. To them, it felt like a tidal wave bearing down all at once—vast, suffocating, inevitable.
The lookout closest to the corridor edge turned, eyes wide behind the mask, breath hitching as he tried to draw mana—
Still propelled forward Jeremiah crossed the distance in an instant, driving his sword through the lookout's chest as his foot slammed into him, redirecting the momentum and carrying them straight through the wall behind.
Concrete detonated outward. Fire mana ignited a heartbeat later, the body burning from the inside out before Jeremiah wrenched the blade free and stepped back into the corridor without slowing.
Dust filled the corridor in a choking cloud, concrete powder and shattered stone still raining down as the wall finished collapsing. Visibility dropped to nothing but shifting gray, the aftermath of the impact hanging in the air like smoke.
The remaining four lookouts hadn't moved.
They stood frozen where they were, shock lagging behind instinct, minds still trying to catch up to how one of them had vanished in less than a second. Mana flickered erratically as panic bled into their control.
Jeremiah didn't wait for the dust to settle.
Channeling an earth spell He stepped down hard driving mana into the ground. Earth answered in a low pulse that rolled out beneath the debris. The vibrations fed back into him—movement, weight, position—enough to know exactly where they were.
Four signatures.
One closest. Slightly to the left.
Jeremiah raised his hand.
He drew in a breath and narrowed his focus.
Ice mana gathered at his fingertips, slower than fire, heavier than wind—demanding precision instead of force. He shaped it, compressing the forming mass until it thinned into a narrow point, dense and balanced enough to fly true through turbulence and dust.
Jeremiah adjusted half a step, aligning by feel rather than sight, trusting the echo from the ground beneath his feet.
Then he released.
The spear cut through the dust without deviation, a clean line of frost and pressure. It punched straight through the nearest lookout's chest and slammed him into a support column behind, ice detonating outward in a sharp bloom. Frost raced across stone and armor alike, locking the body in place before it even finished twitching.
The others finally reacted.
A Wind spell snapped first.
The dust was torn away in a violent surge as the wind mage finally broke through the shock, air exploding outward to clear the corridor in a single sweeping push.
Jeremiah was already moving.
He crossed the space in a blink, sword angling toward the wind mage's centerline—too fast.
The wind mage's eyes widened.
Jeremiah felt a mana signature flare beside him Fire mana cut in sideways.
The second figure slammed into the exchange, a broad brute in a black coat and demon mask, his cleaver wreathed in fire as he knocked Jeremiah's blade off line. Jeremiah's strike carved past instead, the air screaming as the slash tore through stone and steel behind them, leaving a molten gash burning across the corridor wall. Heat washed through the space as the impact barely saved the wind mage from being split in two.
Jeremiah twisted, blade skidding off burning steel as he ducked under the follow-through and hopped back, boots scraping across cracked stone.
He reset in one smooth motion.
The dust settled enough for him to see them clearly now.
Three left.
Wind. Earth. Fire—but the last wasn't casting. The flames clung tight to his body and weapon, augmenting muscle and momentum rather than shaping spells.
Jeremiah's eyes glowed red.
The Mana around him told him everything.
He saw it in the way the motes drifted around them—how the wind mage's aura pulled and scattered, how the earth mages sank heavy and dense into the ground, how the fire clung close to the augmenter's skin like a second pulse. Yellow cores, all three of them.
His gaze flicked once to the fallen bodies behind him. The first had felt different—stronger. A green core. The leader, most likely. Glad I took you out first, Jeremiah thought calmly.
The wind mage hesitated, eyes darting between the bodies and the man standing in front of them.
Blood-red eyes stared back at him. A faint, malicious grin tugged at the man's lips, and a chill ran down the cultist's spine.
"There's three of us," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
His gaze flicked to the frozen corpse pinned to the column. Then to the scorched gash carved through the wall. Then back to Jeremiah.
"He didn't even break a sweat," the earth mage said quietly. "He just—walked through us."
The fire wielder tightened his grip on the cleaver, flames crawling higher along the blade. "Look at his eyes," he growled. "He's not human."
The wind mage swallowed. "He looks like he already decided we're dead."
Silence stretched.
Then the closest mage spoke, voice tight. "Are you here for the Lady of Light? You're with the Alliance." He said this not to reason with the man just to buy time to think.
He gestured shakily at Jeremiah's Alliance combat uniform.
Jeremiah paused.
He considered it for half a second.
"…Seems so," he said. "I suspected it before. But now…now I'm sure."
He extended his sword and settled into a low, forward stance—weight on the balls of his feet, blade angled just off-center, tip steady and unforgiving. It was a stance meant to end things quickly.
"You all must die."
The earth mage set his feet, mana sinking heavy into the ground. "Doesn't matter," he said. "Together."
Wind coiled tighter around the wind mage. Fire mana flared brighter, heat rippling through the air as stone cracked beneath their boots.
The wind mage released everything at once, compressed air screaming forward in overlapping blades meant to shred space rather than cut flesh. Jeremiah didn't block. He shifted half a step, already reading the spell's structure as it formed.
Jeremiah slid inside the attack.
Wind snapped sideways as he redirected his own mana, riding the turbulence rather than fighting it. The blades tore past where he'd been, carving furrows into stone and sending debris skyward. Jeremiah was already moving again, feet barely touching the ground as he closed on the earth mage.
Earth mana surged.
The ground buckled as thick stone pillars erupted upward, trying to cage him in. Jeremiah felt the intent before the spell finished—pressure sinking, mana anchoring deep.
He stomped.
A sharp counterpulse of earth mana ripped outward from his foot, racing through the ground and shattering the forming constructs before they could stabilize. Stones cracked mid-rise, collapsing into jagged rubble.
The earth mage froze.
"What—?" The word barely left his mouth, disbelief flashing behind the demon mask as his spell unraveled beneath him.
Fire flared along Jeremiah's blade.
He burst through the collapsing stone, heat trailing the sword as it carved a glowing arc through the dust. The strike took the earth mage through the shoulder and deep into his chest, fire surging a heartbeat later as the blade passed clean through.
The masked augmenter barreled in, fire-attuned mana clamped tight around his body and cleaver, heat compressed instead of spilling wide. The mana hardened muscle and amplified movement. The swing came heavy and fast, meant to break guard.
Jeremiah read it a heartbeat early.
He pivoted off his lead foot and slid back half a step, bringing his blade up at an angle just in time. Steel rang as the cleaver crashed down, the force shoving him off line despite the block. Heat washed over him as the edge scraped past, the cleaver biting into stone where he'd been standing a moment earlier, the floor blistering and cracking under the strike.
The wind spell followed immediately.
The wind mage stepped into the opening the instant it appeared, compressed air snapping forward in a narrow burst aimed at Jeremiah's flank—meant to lock him in place for the follow-up.
Jeremiah reacted without thinking.
He twisted his wrist and pulled wind mana inward, shaping it into a tight, angled barrier just as the blast hit. The spells collided, pressure screaming as the opposing forces tore at each other.
The impact still drove him back.
Wind snapped around his boots as he released the barrier and let the remaining force take him, riding the edge of the blast instead of fighting it. He slid backward in a controlled skid, boots carving shallow grooves into stone before he landed hard at the mouth of the corridor.
The ground cracked beneath his feet as he absorbed the recoil.
Broken glass crunched beneath his boots as he cleared the threshold, the space opening wide around him. Sunlight cut through drifting dust, revealing a broad courtyard scarred by earlier impacts.
Stone walkways radiated outward between shattered planters and twisted light posts. Benches lay overturned or split clean in half, scorch marks crawling across their surfaces. To one side rose the cafeteria complex—multi-tiered glass and reinforced stone, its lower levels blown out and its upper floors looming overhead like a watchtower. Beyond it, auxiliary buildings framed the space, windows shattered, emergency wards flickering weakly as debris settled.
Fire-attuned mana surged brighter as the augmenter stepped into the courtyard, cleaver dragging behind him and carving a glowing line of molten stone across the ground. Beside him, wind coiled tight around the other, air shrieking as he shaped the next spell.
Jeremiah stopped.
Mana poured off him—dense, crushing, suffocating. Killing intent rolled outward in a single wave, heavy with certainty, heavy with experience. The space between them felt smaller, tighter, like the air was being crushed out of their lungs.
A grin split his face—wide and unrestrained.
"Now this," he said, voice bright with anticipation, "is a fight."
His sword lifted.
"Good," he said quietly. "I was getting bored."
Jeremiah's eyes burned red.
With that glow the world shifted and clarity came. He could see it now—not just their spells, but the ambient mana threading the courtyard, Ambient mana revealed itself as drifting motes, faint but constant—threads of color suspended in the air. Pale green motes swirled lazily where the wind gathered. Deep crimson motes clung close to the fire wielder, dense and aggressive, hugging muscle and weapon alike. Even the stone beneath their feet glimmered faintly, earth-aligned motes pressed heavy and still.
And around the two masked men—
Fear.
It bled from them in sharp, erratic pulses. Their hearts hammered out of rhythm, breath hitching behind the masks as instinct screamed at them to run.
Jeremiah focused.
The noise fell away. Everything narrowed to a single point.
End it. Now.
Mana surged from his core in a single, controlled wave, flooding his body and reinforcing it from the inside out. Muscle tightened, joints locked, and power compressed into his legs—thighs, calves, spine—coiled past their natural limits.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Then he stepped.
The world lurched.
The distance collapsed so violently it might as well not have existed. Stone shattered beneath the force of his launch, the sound lagging behind him as he crossed the space in an instant.
The wind mage didn't even scream.
One moment he was drawing breath, mana rising for a final spell—the next his head separated cleanly from his body, spinning away as the corpse crumpled mid-cast.
Jeremiah didn't slow.
Before the body hit the ground, Jeremiah twisted through the follow-through of his strike. His grip shifted smoothly—left hand steady on the sword, right hand releasing as the blade tip pointed-down beside him.
He extended his free hand toward the masked augmenter.
Mana surged.
Fire and wind mana collapsed together in his palm, compressed tight and screaming as he released it in a single, controlled motion. Blue flame condensed into a narrow lance and tore across the courtyard as a streak of light.
It struck the augmenter center mass.
There was no explosion. No struggle.
The upper half of the man disintegrated instantly, reduced to drifting ash that scattered on the wind as his legs folded and fell where he stood.
Jeremiah staggered a half step as the momentum finally caught up to him.
He planted the tip of his sword against the stone and leaned into it, chest rising and falling harder than he expected. Mana still burned through his limbs, but the sharp edge was gone—legs heavy, joints screaming under the strain of that last burst.
Too much. He thought shakily.
He dragged in one more breath—
**BOOM.**
The cafeteria rooftop detonated behind him, fire and debris punching into the sky. The shockwave rolled through the courtyard, rattling glass and sending dust cascading from shattered windows.
Jeremiah's head snapped around, eyes widening.
*Damn it.*
He pushed off the sword and broke into motion again.
No more playing around.