[POV Liselotte]
The roar of silence in the academy corridors struck before any scream did. I was in the library of the north tower, imrsed in a map of the city’s ley lines, when the air simply stopped. It wasn’t a mana fluctuation like Varek’s inhibitor—it was an atmospheric suppression, as if soone had sucked the soul out of the stone walls.
My instincts, forged in the void and sharpened by months of paranoia, scread before my ears caught the first inhuman roar coming from the courtyard. I didn’t hesitate. I dropped the map and leapt through the tower window, conjuring a path of frost beneath my feet to slide through the air in a descending arc toward the epicenter of the chaos.
What I saw from above turned my stomach.
The training courtyard—usually a place of discipline and heroic sweat—had beco a nightmare anthill. Hundreds of students, from first-year novices to veterans who had been joking in the dining hall just yesterday, advanced in a dense, staggering mass. They didn’t shout slogans or wield weapons with skill; they simply walked—a tide of flesh without will, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed. At the center, Leah and the heroes were being swallowed by the tightening circle.
“LEAH! GET DOWN!” I roared, my voice amplified by ice mana, cutting through the air like a blade.
I landed between the princess and the mob with an impact that cracked the stone tiles. I didn’t draw my dark crystal sword to kill. Instead, I extended both hands toward the ground and released a controlled expansion of freezing energy.
“Seventh-Grade Frost Wall! Rise!”
A translucent wall of ice, five ters tall and two thick, erupted from the earth in a perfect circle around us. The students who were about to reach Leah slamd into the cold surface, striking the crystal with their bare hands until their knuckles began to bleed. They felt no pain. Their faces pressed against the ice were masks of emptiness that chilled more than my own magic.
“Lotte! You made it!” Leah rushed to , gasping, her father’s letter still crumpled in her hand. “I don’t know what’s happening! They just stopped and started hunting us! They’re our classmates, Lotte! We can’t use lethal force!”
“I know, Leah. Stay calm,” I said, watching as the students began climbing over one another to scale the wall like insects driven by a hive instinct. “They’re under massive mind control. The magic circle Varek ntioned… it wasn’t just to suppress magic. It was to turn the academy into an army of sacrifices.”
Arthur, his wooden sword trembling in his hand, stared in horror at a classmate trying to bite through the ice.
“What do we do? If we break the wall, they’ll tear us apart just by sheer numbers.”
“We’re not staying here waiting for the ice to give out,” I declared, glancing toward the clock tower that connected to the elevated bridge leading to the castle. “Elliot needs to know. If the academy has fallen, the palace is next. Heroes, diamond formation! Julian, front with the shield! Mizuki, Arthur, cover the flanks! Leah, stay behind !”
“Understood!” they answered in unison, regaining so composure under my firm command.
With a gesture, I dissolved a section of the northern wall. The opening was instantly flooded by a dozen students lunging at us with guttural growls.
“Push, don’t cut!” I ordered.
Julian stepped forward, slamming his shield into the first attackers. The impact was sharp, sending three students to the ground, but two more crawled underneath, trying to grab his ankles. Mizuki used the shaft of her spear to sweep the legs of those approaching, moving with flawless defensive grace.
I carved the path forward—not with killing blows. My hands moved in swift gestures, releasing bursts of freezing wind that temporarily iced the ground beneath the students’ feet, making them slip and crash into each other, forming living barricades that were dangerous—but not lethal.
“This way! To the lower cloisters!” I guided the group as we pushed through the vaulted corridor.
The air was suffocating. The sll of stale sweat mixed with that sa sweet, rotten magic Chloé had described in the forest. Every few ters, we had to stop to repel another wave. It was exhausting—far harder to fight to save your enemy than to kill them.
“Lotte, right side!” Leah shouted.
A group of fire-magic students, their hands wrapped in ghostly flas that burned their own flesh without reaction, launched erratic projectiles. I ford an instant frost shield that absorbed the heat, turning the fire into steam. Using the mist as cover, I cast chains of ice that bound their legs, immobilizing them in the corridor as we sprinted toward the staircase leading to the castle bridge.
We reached the base of the great spiral staircase. Above, the stone bridge stood as the only safe route across the moat to the royal palace. But the way was blocked.
A group of professors—n and won we knew, who had taught us history and theory—stood there, their robes torn, their eyes hollow.
“Even the teachers…” Leah whispered, heartbroken.
“They’re not themselves, Leah. Just vessels now,” I said through clenched teeth. “Listen to ! I’m going to unleash a blinding snowburst. The mont the path is covered, run without looking back. I’ll hold the rear.”
“We won’t leave you!” Arthur protested.
“That’s an order! Get the princess to Elliot!” I roared, releasing a storm of granular snow that filled the corridor in blinding white within seconds.
Under the cover of the blizzard, the group rushed up the stairs. The professors tried to intercept them on instinct, but I stepped in, using gusts of air to push them aside—gently, yet with enough force to stop their advance. I felt hands clutching at my cloak, desperate pulls trying to drag down, but my ice mana coated my clothing in a slick layer that prevented them from holding on.
I climbed the stairs three at a ti, catching up with the group just as they reached the start of the bridge. The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in a blood-red hue that foretold disaster.
From the bridge, we could see the entire academy. It wasn’t just the courtyard—thousands of people, not only students but servants and nearby citizens, were walking toward the academy as if drawn by a massive magnet. The entire city was beginning to march in unison.
“Look at the castle!” Mizuki pointed.
The palace gates were shut tight, and the guards on the walls aid their crossbows downward—but they weren’t firing. Elliot must have ordered them not to attack civilians, but the pressure of the crowd was so imnse that the reinforced wooden gates were beginning to bend.
“Quick! The bridge!” we shouted, sprinting across the stone span that separated education from power.
Halfway across, the bridge began to tremble—not from our footsteps, but from a presence that materialized at the far end, blocking the entrance to the castle.
It was a tall figure clad in golden armor that did not belong to Whirikal’s guard. Its face was hidden behind a sealed helt, but the aura it radiated was that of a warrior who had slain gods.
“That’s not a student…” Julian murmured, raising his shield.
“It’s an executor,” I said, feeling my dark crystal sword vibrate in my hand. It carried the sa energy signature as the “Shadow.”
Behind us, the students began to flood onto the bridge. We were trapped between a tide of mindless friends and an elite killer.
Leah looked at , and in her eyes there was no fear—only the cold understanding that the ti for words had ended.
“Lotte… open the way,” she said, her voice regal. “I’ll protect the heroes from those coming behind us. I trust you to reach my brother.”
“Consider it done, Princess,” I replied, letting absolute cold envelop my body.
The Bridge of Whirikal beca the stage for a desperate battle. On one side, a mass of corrupted innocents. On the other, the vanguard of the end of the world.
And in between—a guardian who was no longer afraid to reveal her true nature to save what little light remained in that dood kingdom.
The ice began to crack… and the true battle for the survival of the crown had just begun.
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