The halls of the Imperial Academy were unnaturally silent.
Not the usual academic quiet, but something else—dense, suffocating. Kaelian paused, his hand resting lightly on the aged grimoire he'd just hidden inside the false compartment behind the bookshelf. The ancient tome spoke of mental distortion magic—unstable, forbidden, and fascinating.
But tonight, curiosity had to yield to caution.
He felt it. A shift in the air. A presence. He wasn't alone.
Kaelian pressed himself against the cold stone wall, dousing the faint magical orb of light that illuminated his secret reading. Even basic detection spells might betray him now. He couldn't afford that. Not here. Not now.
There—footsteps. Slow. Measured. Lethal.
A professional.
This wasn't another curious student or one of the Academy's prowling staff. No, this was someone trained—precise in movement, deliberate in silence. He'd seen such patterns before… in another life, on other battlefields.
A silent killer.
So, it had begun.
He'd anticipated political sabotage, even social ruin. But assassination? That was an escalation. He wasn't just an inconvenience anymore. He was a threat. A threat worth silencing.
Had the Queen ordered this? Or Prince Theor, acting on his own?
Kaelian's mind raced as he slipped into one of the maintenance corridors—a forgotten passage used only by cleaners and repair mages. He'd memorized these narrow backways during his first weeks at the Academy. Knowing the architecture gave him an edge.
He activated a rudimentary concealment technique—his own fusion of minor stealth and blood-magic. Not perfect invisibility, but enough to confuse mundane senses.
Too late.
A blade whistled through the air, missing his cheek by inches.
Kaelian dropped low and rolled, mentally unleashing a disruptive pulse of psychic noise. The magic wasn't lethal, but it should've disoriented his attacker.
But the steps didn't slow.
His breath caught. The assassin had resisted it. Either he had magical resistance… or he was trained in counter-magic.
Kaelian's heart beat harder—not in fear, but in calculation. He wasn't ready for this level of confrontation.
Yet he had to adapt. Now.
He bolted through the corridor toward the greenhouse training halls—an area rich in ambient moisture and plant mana, ideal for spellcasting. If he could bait the attacker into one of his prepared trap zones…
Sliding into the overgrown archway, he didn't stop. He knelt and drew quickly with a chalk stick pulled from his robe—sigils, glyphs, a reflection array.
One of his own inventions. Crude, imperfect—but potentially deadly.
The air shimmered as the array activated.
A moment later, the assassin appeared.
A shadow among shadows. Cloaked. Masked. Agile.
Kaelian stood still, calculating. The assassin raised a hand, casting a spell—an orb of destructive dark mana.
The trap flared.
The spell bounced—reversing its arc—and struck the caster mid-air, slamming him against a stone pillar. The mask cracked. The hood fell.
Kaelian's eyes narrowed.
Not a nameless killer.
An upper-year noble student. One of the sons of House Velin, a minor branch loyal to Queen Virella.
Not a sanctioned hit. A test. Or worse—a message.
"You're not supposed to survive this," Kaelian muttered.
He walked to the stunned body. Killing him now would send a message. But the wrong kind.
Too obvious, too soon.
Letting him live, though... meant risk. The boy had seen him cast forbidden magic.
Kaelian hesitated.
Then chose the middle path.
He murmured a low, guttural incantation—one he'd only dared practice in theory. A selective memory purge drawn from a forbidden text. The spell latched onto the short-term consciousness, burning the last few hours like a flame to parchment.
The student collapsed, unconscious.
But empty.
Kaelian slumped against the wall, the spell draining more than he'd anticipated. It leeched a sliver of his life force. His fingers trembled. His vision pulsed with flickers of black.
It was done. For now.
But the cost had begun.
**
The next day, whispers flooded the Academy.
A noble found unconscious. No clear memory. No signs of struggle—just magical dissonance and minor brain trauma.
Officially, it was ruled a failed solo experiment.
Unofficially? The halls buzzed with rumors.
Kaelian, of course, said nothing. But he watched—expressions, reactions, glances. Several students began avoiding him. A few whispered behind fans or books.
And at the center of it all, Master Elgorn watched him more closely than ever.
The Archmage called him forward after their spellcraft lesson.
"You're progressing too quickly," Elgorn said, voice low, even.
Kaelian met his eyes. "Is that a problem, Master?"
"No." The old man tapped his fingers on the desk. "It's not a problem. It's a pattern. Rapid advancement, strategic thinking, subtle influence—these things draw attention. Attention invites danger."
Kaelian didn't blink. "Then it's good I've been preparing for danger all my life."
The Archmage leaned back, intrigued.
After a long silence, he reached into a drawer and handed Kaelian a scroll. A tightly sealed one, marked with a sigil Kaelian didn't recognize.
"A private study group. Invitation-only. Unofficial. Unrecorded."
Kaelian unrolled it and scanned its contents. Cryptic language, coordinates instead of room numbers.
A puzzle.
A test.
"This is...?"
"A gateway," Elgorn said. "Use it—or don't. But know this: the Academy is not just a place of learning. It's a battlefield. And you're no longer in the lower ranks."
**
That evening, Kaelian met Lyssa in the eastern garden terrace.
She looked pale. Shaken. She handed him a note—one she'd found slipped into her locker.
"Don't dig too deep. Some truths consume the soul."
Kaelian scanned the handwriting. Noble script. Too clean for a commoner. The message was a threat—and a warning.
"You're attracting trouble," she whispered. "Real trouble. The kind that kills quietly."
"I know."
She stared at him. "I want to help you. But I don't know if I should run instead. You're... you're turning into something dangerous, Kaelian."
He didn't flinch. "Then run. I won't stop you."
But she didn't move.
Instead, she sat beside him.
"I've been alone too long to abandon the one person who speaks truth in this place," she whispered. "Just don't lie to me. If you become the kind of monster they fear... I want to know it."
Kaelian didn't answer.
He rarely made promises.
**
At midnight, he followed the scroll's instructions.
Beneath the old observatory, hidden beneath layers of illusion magic and traps, he found a sealed chamber. Inside, six students already waited—most older, all powerful.
Each had a different symbol etched into their robes.
This wasn't just a study group.
It was a shadow court.
An inner circle of knowledge-seekers. The most ambitious of the ambitious. Future dukes. Hidden mages. Secret heirs.
One of them stepped forward—Seren Thalor, the rumored black sheep of a disgraced noble house.
Her eyes gleamed with curiosity and challenge.
"Welcome to the Circle of Dissident Knowledge," she said.
"Here, we do not obey the fear of the crown. Here, we learn what they forbid. Here, we prepare—not for exams—but for what comes after."
Kaelian said nothing.
He scanned the others. Measured them. Calculated.
Some looked at him with contempt. Others with wary respect.
He recognized the type. Predators.
Predators pretending to be scholars.
"I accept," Kaelian said finally.
Seren smiled. "Then let the first test begin."
A sigil lit up beneath them. Ancient. Violent. Sentient.
Kaelian's heartbeat didn't quicken.
He'd expected nothing less.
A new layer of the game had just been revealed. And with it, a new kind of danger—not from knives or poisons, but from knowledge too dark to forget.
**
End of Chapter 36
Next: Chapter 37 – Student Betrayals
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