The sound of high heels against marble was more rhythmic than dramatic. A steady click-click-click that echoed down the corridor with authority. Morgana wasn’t rushing. She never rushed.
If people saw her coming, they were supposed to move.
The double doors to her office opened the moment she raised a single finger. A faint shimmer of magic pulsed as the locking seal disengaged.
"Leave it on the desk," she said to the aide trailing behind her.
He set the scroll on top of a stack of half-read reports and almost ran out of the room. Morgana didn’t glance back.
The door shut with a soft thud.
She pulled the ribbon from her hair and let it fall over one shoulder as she approached the desk. A flick of her fingers lit the lamps around the room, no fire, just a soft ambient glow that adjusted itself to her mood. The window behind her showed the early haze of dawn melting off the mountain range.
She touched the scroll with two fingers.
A military seal bloomed across the surface. Red. Not yellow. That meant urgency, not emergency.
’If they’re not calling it an emergency, then they probably want me to clean it up before it becomes one.’
Her eyes flicked left to right once. Then again. She didn’t sit. Didn’t blink.
Her jaw tightened slightly. That was all.
"Of course it’s that quadrant."
A series of diagrams were sketched hastily between the paragraphs, mana flow estimates, terrain outlines, leyline distortions. At the bottom: a rough estimate of the gate’s current expansion rate.
She rolled the scroll shut.
’Four days, max, before it stabilizes. If that’s what you can even call it.’
The report was careful with its wording. "Unstable spatial distortion." "Preliminary anomaly." "Possible gate-like formation."
All of it carefully tiptoeing around the obvious.
And something on the other side wanted through.
She set the scroll down, pulled out a notepad, and scribbled two lines. One name. One directive. Folded it. Burned it. The flame didn’t rise. It curled inward on itself and vanished.
"Summon a shadow team. Quiet."
She didn’t need a full squad. Not yet. Not for recon.
But if this thing started leaking the way the last one had?
Then she’d send more than a squad.
She sat down finally. Crossed one leg over the other. Reached for her cup of cold tea.
The window clicked softly as wind pressure shifted.
Without turning around, she spoke to the empty room.
"Tell the others I want all instructors briefed within the hour. No mention to students. Not yet."
Then a ripple of air.
A door that didn’t exist opened and shut without a sound.
Morgana exhaled. Sipped her tea. Made a face. It was cold. Of course it was.
’Should’ve known things were too quiet.’
She turned her chair toward the window. Watched a small group of students pass through the courtyard below. One of them had white hair. Not his white, but close enough to catch her eye.
She leaned forward, chin in hand.
’You’re not involved, are you?’ she thought, not entirely sure who she meant.
Because if Merlin was tangled in this, and she had no doubt he was, somehow, then she needed to know how deep it went.
And how long she had before everything around him started to fall apart again.
The buzz of the TV filled the background like an insect that wouldn’t stop moving. Merlin stood in front of the open window, half-dressed, cup of burnt coffee in one hand. His hair was still wet from a rushed shower, shirt wrinkled from pulling it on too fast.
Nathan sat on the couch behind him, flipping through channels like he was trying to skip the day itself.
The channel froze on a news anchor, pale-faced, blinking fast like he was reading from a teleprompter that didn’t match the speed of his thoughts.
"—expanding at a rate experts are calling ’highly anomalous.’ While initial reports speculated the distortion may be a leyline reaction or ritual feedback gone wrong, the latest footage captured by a recon drone shows signs of what may be a Tier-Gate structure. The footage, though grainy, indicates vertical dimensional rifting and what appears to be condensed mana forming around a perimeter."
A shaky cam feed flickered on-screen, dust, lightning-like fractures in the air, debris floating in spirals. The image quality was garbage, but Merlin didn’t need the resolution to recognize what he was seeing.
His grip tightened around the cup. The ceramic cracked.
Nathan leaned forward slowly. "That... look familiar?"
Merlin didn’t answer. He was watching the corner of the screen. A tiny countdown ticker.
Estimated time until stabilization: 23 hours, 46 minutes.
The memory slapped him harder than expected. A gate appears near the southern ranges. Half the investigation team dies in the first hour. Three more days before containment fails.
’That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.’
He exhaled sharply through his nose. The system didn’t ping. No messages. Just that numb static crawling at the edge of his thoughts.
Nathan scratched his neck. "Think we’re getting sent to help?"
"No," Merlin said too fast. "It’s recon. Not our jurisdiction yet."
"Still," Nathan said, "it’s getting close. South quadrant’s what, one city over?"
"About a hundred and sixty klicks," Merlin muttered.
’Give or take, depending on how fast it spreads.’
Nathan tossed the remote on the couch. "You look like you saw a ghost."
"I didn’t," Merlin said, sipping what was left of the bitter sludge in his mug. "Just bad timing."
’Bad timing and worse foreshadowing.’
He stepped back from the window and let the curtain fall shut.
Nathan yawned behind him. "If we’re not getting called, I’m going back to sleep. You?"
"I’ve got something to look into," Merlin said.
Nathan didn’t ask what.
Because Merlin had no clue how to explain that he’d read this part before. And none of it ended well.
The sky was the color of old bruises.
Not full morning. Not really. Just that time between when the city started waking up and the sun actually showed up to do its job.
Not running. That would be suspicious. Just the kind of walk that said, I know where I’m going, and I don’t want to talk to anyone about it.
His coat wasn’t buttoned. His shirt was still damp near the collar. The coffee had done nothing except give his stomach something to regret.
The system didn’t speak.
Which was worse than when it did.
’I remember this gate. I remember what comes through it.’
That wasn’t the scary part. Monsters were manageable. Strategies existed. Merlin had read them, studied them, laughed at how dumb some of the characters were.
What scared him now was that the timeline was off.
’Someone—or something—is pushing the pace.’
And if he didn’t figure out why, they were all going to start dying out of order.
The academy’s gates came into view. Early risers were starting their laps through the courtyard. He passed a group of first-years being herded by a grumpy assistant instructor yelling about footwork.
He kept his head down.
Didn’t stop until he was in the west wing.
Back hallway. Restricted access. He didn’t belong here, technically. But the system didn’t stop him.
[Access Granted – Instructor Wing]
The panel blinked once. Then faded.
He turned left. Third door on the right.
She was there already. Leaning against her desk. Arms crossed. Hair up in a loose coil, a few strands falling perfectly over one cheek like they’d been placed there by a professional stylist and not by accident.
Her eyes flicked up without moving her head.
Merlin blinked. "I didn’t schedule anything."
He stepped in and shut the door.
It clicked softly behind him.
"I saw the news," he said. "It’s real, isn’t it?"
"You saw the news," she echoed, straightening. "Which news?"
He frowned. "The gate."
She gave him a long look. Not surprised. Not annoyed. Just that unreadable, razor-thin calm she wore like perfume.
"I see," she said. "So you do know something."
Merlin didn’t answer right away.
Her office smelled like ink and citrus oil. The chair across from her was the same one he sat in last semester during disciplinary review.
This time not as a student.
Just someone trying not to start panicking too early in the morning.
"I don’t know much," he lied. "Just... enough."
"Enough to be here before the memo goes out?" she asked. "Before the squads get called? Before the Head Enchanter is even briefed?"
And saw it. The smallest flicker at the edge of her lashes. The way her fingertips tapped once against the wood of the desk before curling back under her arm.
’Good. I’m not crazy.’
"I need to know what you’re sending in," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you get a say?"
"I don’t," he said. "But I’m asking anyway."
Then she uncrossed her arms and walked around the desk, high heels ticking on the tile. She didn’t sit.
Just leaned both hands on the desk and looked down at him.
"You’re a student who disappeared off the grid for weeks, came back unconscious, and hasn’t submitted a single mission report since the Labyrinth."
Merlin didn’t flinch.
"I’ve been patient," she said. "I’ve kept your record clear. I haven’t questioned the fact that half your squad is missing. That two of your classmates are untraceable."
Merlin’s stomach tightened. ’So she did notice.’
"And now," Morgana continued, "you show up in my office before dawn, asking for access to a recon assignment that has killed more trained agents than I can count on one hand."