The rain began before the procession.
Not a storm. Just a slow, steady drizzle that soaked robes and armor alike. It muted sound, blurred vision, made the world feel farther away. As if the heavens themselves had chosen mourning as their language.
No horns blew. No hymns played.
Only the quiet shuffle of feet across the marble as the line wound its way through the courtyard.
They came in rows. Students, teachers, Moon Legion and the remaining Special Team members. Each wore a dark sash over the heart. Each face bore the same expression: a silence carved too deep, too young.
The bodies, or what was left of them were sealed in crystal caskets. Four in total.
Only three had remains.
One casket lay empty.
Its placard read simply:
'Jalen Virell of the Eclipse Legion,
A gift to this world lost too soon.'
The Eclipse Legion walked behind that casket.
Their commander, Alric Nemein, wore no helmet. His hair clung to his skull from the rain, and his face looked older than it had the day before.
Beside him walked the other three surviving members of the special team, each bearing a mark of mourning across their cheeks in ash. They didn't speak. Not even to each other.
Behind them, the surviving students of the massacre in the central tower followed. Heads bowed. Some wept silently. Others simply walked, hollow-eyed and trembling.
The battle was over. But the grief had only begun.
The procession ended at the memorial field. It had once been a garden. Now, it was a field of scorched grass and shattered tiles, with dozens of new obelisks being raised.
A single platform stood at the center, high enough to see the whole crowd. The rain had stained it dark, and the wind pulled at the crimson banners above it.
Headmistress Araleia stood atop it, hands clasped before her. She was not armored now. She wore the ceremonial robes of mourning: black and silver, trimmed with thorns.
A hush fell across the crowd as she stepped forward.
"I stand here today as a teacher," she said, voice low but unwavering. "Not as Headmistress. Not as a leader. Not even as a mage."
She looked across the sea of faces, students, professors, battle-scarred veterans and weeping healers.
"I stand here as someone who asked too much of children."
No one interrupted. No one could.
"We train you for war," Araleia said. "We teach you to control mana, to fight monsters, to bind spirits and shape spells. We tell you it's to protect the world. To stand strong. To be heroes."
She paused. The rain whispered across the silence.
"But the truth is this: nothing we taught could prepare you for that."
She didn't say the name. The Mediator. The rift monsters. Soren.
"But you fought anyway," she said. "You stood your ground. You sacrificed. You bled."
Her voice cracked.
"And you died."
She turned toward the caskets now, her hand resting gently on the side of one.
"Rina Telvek. Sun tower. First-class mana compatibility. She dreamed of flying cities."
Her fingers moved to the second.
"Kai Envor. Void tower. A strategist. Always calculating, always calm. He wanted to join the Grand Council one day."
Then to the third. The empty one.
"Jalen Virell," she said. Her hand hovered but didn't touch. "One of the strongest shields we had. He blocked the unthinkable. He stood between death and his team. He didn't blink."
The stone beneath her feet trembled slightly as magic surged from beneath the earth, runic pillars rising from the ground to mark the new graves.
Araleia turned back to the crowd.
"These students were not soldiers. They should not have needed to die to prove their worth. But they did. And we remember them not just for how they fell, but for how they lived."
She stepped back. Her hands trembled slightly as she folded them.
The ceremony was not over. Now came the rites of Legion mourning.
Eclipse Legion stepped forward, Alric leading.
He held something wrapped in cloth.
It was Jalen's crest-eclipse. It had survived the impact but it had cracked.
Alric knelt in front of the empty casket and laid it there.
"He was slow to speak," Alric said, voice gravel and steel. "But when he did, we listened. Because Jalen didn't waste words. He didn't waste anything."
He stood, squaring his shoulders.
"He once told me," Alric continued, "that the weight of a shield isn't the metal. It's the promise behind it."
A beat.
"He kept that promise."
He turned, facing his legion.
"In his name, we swear again. We do not yield. We do not run. We do not forget."
The others slammed their fists to their chests in unison. The sound echoed like thunder.
Then came silence again.
The caskets began to lower slowly, reverently into the earth. Light spells shimmered around them, forming crystalline shells to preserve what remained.
And still, the rain fell.
Security across the Academy doubled within days.
Every student's background was reviewed. Every staff member re-evaluated. Every supply chain, every enchantment ward, every teleport node .They were inspected and re-inspected, sometimes with paranoia more than procedure.
It didn't matter.
Something had gotten in.
Worse, it had left when it chose. Like it could always do it again.
Now, every student walked a little stiffer. Conversations happened in whispers. Mages cast scan spells on their dorms. And in every classroom, every corridor, one phrase lingered unspoken:
"What if he comes back?"
That night, Caelis stood alone at the edge of the crater.
The leyline still trembled faintly here. Broken. Raw.
He didn't speak. Just stared at the sky.
Eventually, Araleia joined him. She said nothing at first.
Then, softly: "Three dead. One erased. Dozens wounded. And a fragment of the man's power, just a fragment did this."
Caelis nodded.
"He didn't come to fight," he said. "That was him just having fun. The inverted tower has gotten too powerful. Much too powerful."
Araleia looked away.
"What do we do now?"
Caelis didn't answer right away. His eyes lingered on the cracked earth, on the glow that still pulsed faintly where runes had died.
"We bury our dead."
A pause.
"And we prepare for war. It is inevitably close at our doorsteps."