Chapter : 1937

  The atmosphere inside the Crystal Greenhouse changed in a single heartbeat. Just moments ago, it had been a sanctuary of warmth, smelling of sweet nectar and damp, rich soil. It was a place where students came to nap or hide from the pressures of the Academy. But now, that peace was shattered. The air temperature dropped so fast that frost began to form on the edges of the tropical leaves. The smell of flowers was replaced by the sharp, metallic scent of ozone and the rotting stench of old blood.

  Airin backed away until her spine hit the hard wood of a sturdy potting table. Her chest heaved as she took short, panicked breaths. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was slamming against her ribs like a bird desperate to escape a cage.

  In front of her, the floor seemed to be boiling. The shadows, which should have been just harmless shapes cast by the tables and plants, were peeling themselves off the tiles. They twisted and stretched, defying gravity, until they formed the shapes of wolves. But these creatures were wrong. They had no fur, no warmth, and no eyes. They were composed of thick, inky smoke that swirled around them like oil in water.

  There were three of them. The Collector called them "Shadow-Stalkers."

  The man in the dark robes stood behind his creations. He looked bored, his expression flat and unfeeling. He looked at Airin not as a person, but as an ingredient—like a chef looking at a potato he was about to peel and boil.

  "Don't make this difficult, girl," the Collector said. His voice was dry and scratchy, like sandpaper rubbing against stone. "The Shadow-Stalkers don't have physical bodies. You can't hit them with a stick. You can't kick them. If you try to run, they will snap your legs like twigs. Just surrender. Be a good little battery for the Cause."

  The first wolf lunged.

  It didn't run like a normal animal. It flickered. One second it was ten feet away, and the next, it was right in front of her face. Its jaws opened wide, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth made of cold mist.

  Airin screamed. It was a raw, instinctual sound. She scrambled backward, her hand closing around the cold clay of a heavy pot on the table. With all her strength, she threw it.

  The pot flew through the air, spinning end over end. It was a good throw. It hit the wolf right in the face.

  But there was no impact. No thud.

  The heavy clay pot passed straight through the wolf’s head as if the monster wasn't even there. It smashed against the stone floor behind the beast, shattering into a cloud of red dust. The wolf didn't even blink. It didn't slow down. It was like throwing a rock at a cloud.

  "I told you," the Collector laughed softly, a cruel sound. "Physical objects mean nothing to them. They exist halfway between this world and the Abyss. You cannot hurt what you cannot touch."

  Airin stumbled back until she hit a glass display case. She was trapped. There was nowhere to go. The three wolves spread out, moving with a silent, predatory intelligence. They circled her, cutting off every escape route to the door. They were toying with her. They knew she was helpless.

  Or was she?

  Inside Airin’s mind, something snapped. It wasn't the snap of fear breaking her spirit; it was the snap of a lock opening.

  For weeks, she had been dreaming of another life. She had dreamed of a woman named Anastasia. Anastasia wasn't a magician. She wasn't a noble who relied on bloodlines. She was an engineer. She lived in a world of machines, math, and hard science. She didn't believe in ghosts or monsters that couldn't be killed. In Anastasia's world, everything had a weakness. Everything followed the rules of physics.

  If light hits an object, it bounces. If energy hits a surface, it transfers. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed.

  Airin closed her eyes for a split second. She forced herself to stop shaking. She forced her lungs to take a deep, slow breath. She pushed "Airin the scared student" to the back of her mind and let "Anastasia the Engineer" step forward to take the controls.

  When she opened her eyes again, the world looked different.

  Chapter : 1938

  She didn't see a scary greenhouse full of monsters anymore. She saw a room made of angles and surfaces. She saw the glass ceiling panels overhead, designed to let in maximum solar radiation. She saw the silver mirrors placed in the corners to direct sunlight to the rare tropical plants. She saw the shattered remains of the glass beaker she had dropped earlier, scattered across the stone floor near her feet like diamonds.

  She looked at the shadow wolves. They were made of darkness. Pure, concentrated darkness.

  What is the opposite of darkness?

  Light.

  But not just any light. A simple "Lumos" spell—the kind first-year students used to read books under their covers at night—wouldn't be enough. That was just a soft glow, like a candle. To hurt these things, she needed intensity. She needed focus. She didn't need a lamp; she needed a laser.

  "You want my light?" Airin whispered. Her voice was trembling, but her hands were steady.

  She crouched down.

  The Collector smirked, crossing his arms. "Begging won't help you now. It’s too late for that."

  Airin wasn't begging. Her hand shot out and grabbed a handful of the broken glass shards from the floor.

  The glass was razor sharp. The edges bit into her skin. Warm blood trickled down her palm, mixing with the dust, but Airin didn't flinch. She barely felt it. She remembered the stories Lloyd had told her about his handmaiden, Jasmin. Jasmin had trained for years to make her skin as hard as diamond to protect him. Airin didn't have diamond skin, but she had something else. She had diamond-hard resolve.

  She stood up, clutching the jagged glass in her fist. The blood dripped onto the floor, counting down the seconds.

  The lead wolf growled, a sound like grinding stones, and leaped at her throat.

  "Now!" the voice in her head screamed.

  Airin didn't try to dodge. She didn't try to run. Instead, she did something that made no sense to the Collector. She threw the handful of glass shards into the air.

  She didn't throw them at the wolf. She threw them straight up, spinning her wrist so they scattered like glittering raindrops above her head.

  At the same moment, she reached deep inside her chest. The Collector had said she had a "Solar Core." He said she was a mutation, a generator of energy. She had always been afraid of that heat inside her. She had always tried to dim it, to be normal, to fit in with the other students.

  Today, she stopped holding back.

  She grabbed that ball of heat in her chest and pulled the trigger.

  She thrust her open palms upward, aiming right at the falling glass shards. She shouted the only spell she could think of, but she pushed every ounce of her will, every memory of her past life, into it.

  "MAXIMUM LUMOS!"

  It wasn't a gentle glow. It was a volcanic eruption of white light.

  A beam of pure, concentrated solar energy exploded from her hands. It was blindingly bright, hotter than a furnace. It shot upward like a pillar of fire, straight toward the cloud of spinning glass shards she had just thrown.

  The Collector’s eyes went wide. He realized, too late, what she was doing.

  It wasn't magic. It was math.

  The beam of light hit the first shard of glass suspended in the air.

  In a normal situation, with normal light, the beam would just pass through or reflect slightly. But Airin had thrown the glass with a specific spin. She had calculated the angles in her head instantly—a skill borrowed from a lifetime of fixing complex engines and aligning gears in a world of steel.

  The light hit the jagged edge of the glass. It didn't pass through; it fractured.

  Physics took over. The principle of refraction.

  The single, thick beam of light hit the shard and split. It turned into two thinner, faster, more intense beams. These two beams shot out at perfect angles and hit the other shards falling around them. Those shards split the beams again. And again. And again.

  In the blink of an eye, the space above Airin’s head transformed. It wasn't just a flash of light anymore. It was a web.

  The greenhouse was instantly filled with a grid of hundreds of needle-thin lasers. They crisscrossed the air in every direction, bouncing off the falling glass, reflecting off the greenhouse walls, and refracting through the floating dust motes. It looked like a geometric drawing made of pure, burning starlight. It was beautiful, and it was deadly.

  Chapter : 1939

  "What is this?!" the Collector screamed, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare.

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  The Shadow-Stalkers didn't have eyelids to shield. They didn't have physical bodies to protect them from rocks or swords, but they were made of shadow. And light is the natural predator of shadow.

  The grid of lasers descended.

  The first laser sliced through the lead wolf mid-leap. It didn't cut like a knife; it burned like acid. The beam passed straight through the smoky body of the beast. Where the light touched, the shadow didn't just separate; it boiled away instantly.

  The wolf let out a sound that wasn't of this world—a high-pitched shriek like tearing metal. It tried to dodge, twisting its smoky body, but there was nowhere to go. The lasers were everywhere. They were a cage of light.

  Another beam hit its leg, severing the smoky limb. Another hit its spine. Within a second, the terrifying monster was reduced to nothing but wisps of grey vapor, dissolving into the air.

  The second and third wolves tried to retreat. They scrambled backward, their claws skidding on the stone floor, trying to find a dark corner to hide in.

  But Airin wasn't done.

  Her hands were still raised, pouring more and more power into the floating glass. The shards were beginning to melt from the heat, turning into droplets of molten silica, but they held their shape just long enough.

  She twisted her wrists, changing the angle of the main beam.

  The web of lasers shifted. It swept across the room like a broom made of fire.

  The beams caught the retreating wolves. There was no fight. There was no struggle. It was simply erasure. One moment, there were two monsters made of nightmare and abyss, snarling and ready to kill. The next moment, there was just bright, clean air and the sharp smell of ozone.

  The Shadow-Stalkers were gone.

  The intense light faded as the glass shards finally turned to dust and fell to the floor like snow.

  Silence returned to the Crystal Greenhouse. But it wasn't the heavy, scary silence from before. It was the stunned silence of a battlefield after the cannon stops firing.

  Airin stood in the center of the path. Her chest was heaving. Her hands were smoking slightly, the skin red and tender from the heat she had channeled. Blood from the glass cuts dripped onto the stone, bright red against the grey dust.

  She felt exhausted. Her legs felt like jelly. Using that much power, that quickly, felt like she had run a marathon in ten seconds. But she didn't fall. She refused to fall.

  She looked up.

  Across the room, the Collector was standing perfectly still. His hood had fallen back completely. His pale, veiny face was twisted in an expression of pure shock. He looked at the empty spots where his monsters had been, then he looked at the small, trembling girl standing in the middle of the room.

  He looked terrified.

  "You..." the Collector stammered. He took a step back, his arrogant confidence completely shattered. "That wasn't magic. That wasn't a spell I know. What... what school of magic teaches that?"

  Airin straightened her back. She wiped the blood from her hand onto her skirt. She looked him right in the eye.

  In that moment, she didn't feel like a commoner. She didn't feel like a student who was afraid of failing her exams. She felt like the woman from her dreams. She felt like the wife of a Major General who had stood her ground against impossible odds.

  "It’s not magic," Airin said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried across the room like a bell. "It’s geometry."

  She took a step toward him.

  The Collector flinched. This girl, who had been cowering against a table a minute ago, was now walking toward him like a hunter.

  "You said I was a battery," Airin said, her voice getting stronger with every word. "You said I was just a vessel for power."

  She raised her hand again. Even without the glass, her palm began to glow with a soft, dangerous golden light. The heat coming off her was palpable. The air around her shimmered.

  "You forgot one thing," she said. "Batteries discharge. And if you overcharge them... they explode."

  The Collector snarled, trying to regain his composure. He was a member of the Seventh Circle. He was a master of dark arts. He shouldn't be afraid of a schoolgirl.

  Chapter : 1940

  "You got lucky!" he spat, raising his hands. "You destroyed my pets. Congratulations. But do you think a little light show scares me? I wield the power of the Void! I can swallow your little sun whole!"

  He thrust his hands forward. Dark, purple energy began to gather in his palms. He was preparing a Void Shield, a barrier that ate magic. He was getting ready to crush her himself.

  Airin watched him. She analyzed his stance. She analyzed the time it was taking him to gather his mana.

  She knew she couldn't beat him in a straight fight. She was tired. Her hands hurt. She didn't have any more glass to create the laser grid.

  But she didn't need to beat him. She just needed to hold him.

  She remembered the red light blinking in her mind—no, not her mind. That was Lloyd’s mind. But she felt connected to him. She knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that he was coming.

  Evan always came back.

  "Try it," Airin challenged him. She spread her arms wide, making herself a target. "Come and take the light."

  The Collector roared and unleashed a wave of darkness.

  But just as the shadow surged forward, the sound of glass breaking echoed from above. It wasn't the small tinkle of a beaker. It was the massive, thunderous crash of the roof caving in.

  Airin looked up and smiled.

  The sky was falling. And he was bringing the storm with him.

  ________________________________________

  CRASH!

  The sound was deafening. It was louder than thunder. It sounded like the sky itself was breaking apart.

  Above them, the entire glass roof of the Crystal Greenhouse exploded.

  Thousands of shards of heavy, reinforced glass rained down like a waterfall of diamonds. The metal support beams groaned and twisted, tearing apart as something heavy smashed through them from the sky.

  The Collector flinched, looking up in alarm. He raised his Void Shield above his head to protect himself from the falling debris.

  Dust and dirt billowed out, filling the room with a thick grey cloud. For a moment, nobody could see anything.

  Then, something landed.

  It hit the stone floor between Airin and the Collector with an impact that shook the entire building. The floor tiles cracked and buckled, creating a crater. A shockwave of wind blew the dust away instantly.

  In the center of the crater, a man was crouching. One hand was touching the ground to steady himself. He was wearing a fine nobleman’s suit, but it was torn and dusty. His dark hair was messy, whipped by the wind.

  He stood up slowly.

  It was Lloyd.

  But he didn't look like the calm, boring professor Airin saw in class. He looked terrifying. His eyes were glowing with a cold, blue light—his special [Blue Ring Eyes]. His face was twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated rage. He looked like a demon who had climbed out of hell to find the person who hurt his family.

  He turned his head and looked at Airin. His eyes scanned her in a split second, checking for blood, checking for broken bones. When he saw she was standing, a tiny bit of the tension left his shoulders.

  "Are you hurt?" he asked. His voice was low and rough.

  "I... no," Airin stammered, staring at him. "I'm okay."

  "Good," Lloyd said.

  He turned back to face the Collector. The relief in his face vanished, replaced by a cold, hard look that promised violence.

  "You," Lloyd said. It wasn't a question. It was a sentence.

  The Collector stepped back, his shadow spike dissolving as he lost his concentration. "You... you are the Ferrum Lord. How did you get past the barrier? That was a Grade-A isolation field!"

  "I broke it," Lloyd said simply. "With my fist."

  He took a step forward. He didn't look like he was going to cast a spell. He looked like he was going to tear the man apart with his bare hands.

  "You touched her," Lloyd said. His voice was getting quieter, which somehow made it scarier. "You hunted her in my school. You tried to hurt my..."

  He stopped himself before he said wife.

  "My student," he finished.

  The Collector regained some of his confidence. He sneered. "So? You are just one man. I have the power of the Abyss. My Void Shield can stop anything you throw at it. Fire, lightning, steel... it eats everything."

  Lloyd tilted his head. He looked at the black wall of energy protecting the cultist.

  "It eats energy?" Lloyd asked. "Okay. Let's see if it can eat a star."