Vivienne finally exhaled. "You don't even know where he went."
"We know enough to try."
Nathan smiled faintly. "That'd be really inconvenient."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm serious. I know this is reckless. I know it's dangerous. But I also know one thing."
"He would've done the same for any of us."
Vivienne looked away. Her arms dropped to her sides. The hum of the leyline crystal filled the room again.
"…There's a rift echo," she said finally. "Buried in the leyline signature. Faint. But someone used it to jump through a tether without the system stabilizing first."
"Can we trace it?" Elara asked.
"Yes," Vivienne said. "But if you open that echo again… it won't be like before. The gate won't protect you. It'll spit you out wherever the tether stretched last. And you'll be alone."
Nathan's heart stilled.
"Good," he said. "I'm used to starting at a disadvantage."
Vivienne stared at him.
"…You're just like him."
"No," Nathan said. "He's cold steel. I'm the idiot who keeps smiling through it."
Then he turned to the crystal.
The leyline screamed when it opened.
Not audibly—no crackling lightning or thunderous magic bursts. Just pressure. A weight behind the ribs that grew until it felt like the tower itself was going to split down the middle.
Nathan stood in the glow of the arcane circle, shoulder-to-shoulder with Elara.
Her fingers wrapped tighter around her spear as the spell formation lit the floor beneath them, runes spinning faster, overlapping like gears in a machine no one had touched in centuries.
Vivienne stood at the edge of the circle, arms folded. Her face was set, but her eyes weren't cold. They were… worried.
Not even for the spell.
"You have ten seconds once it stabilizes," she said.
"That's all I can give you. You miss the window, and the rift will collapse again. If it does—you'll be stranded in dead mana space."
"Sounds romantic," Nathan muttered.
Nathan's eyes lingered on Vivienne. "You knew we'd come here from the beginning didn't you?."
"I trained him. Of course I did," Vivienne replied. "And I knew you'd follow."
"…Aren't you going to try to stop us again?"
Vivienne hesitated—then stepped back.
"I already did," she said. "You're just too stubborn to listen."
Elara didn't smile, but her posture eased by a fraction.
The circle flared white.
Wind, or something like it, tore through the chamber, pulling at their coats and hair. Mana rippled around them like a rising tide, the air thick with ozone and static. Nathan felt his teeth buzz.
'So this is what a leyline echo feels like…'
There was no anchor. No destination.
And they were going to follow it.
Vivienne's voice came again, just above the hum of the spell. "You find him… you don't die trying to save him. You bring him back."
Nathan's grin flickered—then steadied. "Yeah. That's the plan."
The circle flashed—bright, blinding.
Elara didn't hesitate.
And Nathan went with her.
He wasn't flying either.
He was just—drifting.
Like time forgot how to hold him in place. The world was smeared around the edges, bleeding color and memory like water on ink.
Just Elara beside him, her silhouette barely visible through the blur, her eyes sharp even in the chaos.
Like getting punched through his spine.
He gasped—and the world snapped back into shape.
Shoulder-first into something jagged. His breath left him in a painful wheeze, lungs clawing for air like he'd been underwater for too long.
Her voice was distant, but steady.
He blinked the light from his eyes.
Not the gentle kind. Not even violent.
Like someone had peeled a wound open in the clouds and left it to bleed.
The ground beneath him was dry. Dead. Dust that didn't cling. Air that didn't move.
He rolled onto his back.
Elara stood not far, spear drawn, her body already half-crouched as her gaze swept the alien landscape.
"Is this it?" he asked, voice hoarse.
Because they both knew.
Where Merlin had gone.
Where the portal had led.
And he wasn't waiting on the edge to welcome them.
"Now what?" he muttered, forcing himself upright.
Elara stepped forward, crouched down, and dragged her fingers across the cracked ground. Then she released a wisp of mana into the air.
It spun—drifted east.
"He left a trail," she said. "Faint. But it's recent."
Nathan stood beside her.
He flexed his hands—summoning mana to his fingertips. Lightning flickered against his skin like a nervous heartbeat.
"I hope he's not too mad," he said.
Elara raised an eyebrow.
"That we came after him."
"You know he'll be mad."
Nathan sighed. "Yeah. But he'll be alive."
And that's all that mattered.
The sky above Morgana didn't move.
Like a rotting lung trying to breathe through thick blood, the clouds clung to the broken sky in ribbons of dark red.
The ground beneath Morgana's heels shifted with each step—but never enough to betray her. Not to the ones ahead. Not to the things below.
Her coat brushed no dust. Her boots left no mark. Her presence didn't belong in this plane, and the plane knew better than to challenge her.
Nathaniel and Elara stood before the shattered crest of a plateau, near the edge of a ruin older than most planes of existence.
Their mana signatures wavered with each breath—unaware of what they'd stepped into. Elara's spear was drawn, knuckles white.
Nathan's shoulders were tense, his usual sarcasm crushed under the weight of proximity to something ancient.
They didn't know where they were.
They saw twisted pillars. Broken spires. The faint echo of Merlin's mana trail.
But Morgana saw it for what it was.
Not a structure. Not a ruin. A sealed fracture in the world. Like bone that hadn't healed right, buried in spires to keep it from remembering what it used to be.
Someone had opened it.
Of course it was him.
'He seems to find the places that should never be found.'
She kept her distance. Not because she had to. But because watching was easier than explaining. She'd sealed this place once.
Centuries ago. Before this iteration of the Academy even existed. When the world was still in negotiation with its own darkness.
She thought it had forgotten itself.
Nathan knelt beside a patch of scorched soil. "Still warm. There's a mana trace here."
Elara didn't reply. Her gaze was locked on the circle of shattered spires. She stepped past them without hesitation, eyes flicking down.
"A hatch," she murmured.
Nathan leaned in. "Okay. Creepy underground entrance in a dead zone. We're really just following all the horror novel rules now, huh?"
Nathan exhaled slowly. "He went in."
Elara didn't look at him. "So will we."
Morgana watched the hatch as they pried it open.
They weren't ready. Not for what lay beneath. Not for what had woken.
But then she felt it—faint, echoing.
A pulse of mana from deep inside the sealed corridor.
Not because he was lucky.
Because the world didn't kill him the way it killed others.
It made him prove himself instead.
She stepped closer now, boots brushing the edge of the ritual circle—an old boundary that hadn't been walked in generations.
The spires hissed as she crossed them, reacting to her presence like they remembered her.
She was the one who closed this place last time.
Now, she would see what had been released.
Elara and Nathan had already disappeared below.
Brave, stupid, loyal fools.
The stairs twisted down into breathless dark.
The air was corrupted in layers, folded over itself in negative space.
Every inch of the descent pressed inward like descending through the throat of a god that had long since choked to death.
Morgana didn't flinch. Her presence was completely masked.
She stepped into the metal corridor below, the warped remnants of technology buzzing faintly against the soles of her boots. Lights sparked weakly in the distance.
She could already hear Nathan's voice.
"Are we sure this place was ever actually… I don't know, livable?"
"Stop talking," Elara hissed. "Something's close."
Morgana's gaze slid to the side.
A bloodless handprint on the wall. Smudged. Fresh.
'Is that yours, Merlin?'
She passed the hallway where Subject 07 had once been contained. The tank was cracked. Console sparking. Logs corrupted.
But that wasn't the danger anymore.
Ahead, the melted door to the East Wing had been breached.
The same thing she had sealed here long ago.
The one they had labeled "Subject 00."
'Of course it is. You never stay quiet forever.'
Something brushed against the back of her mind.
A whisper that did not belong to her.
A name that didn't exist in any recorded plane.
Her fingers flexed slightly.
And without drawing attention to herself, Morgana stepped through the breach.
Deeper into the East Wing.
The shadows did not touch her.
Because even they knew.
She was not here to study.
She was here to destroy.