The Hollowbone Academy thrived.
It was no longer a whisper in the shadows—it was a revolution. Villagers became fighters. Children became spell-crafters. Former slaves now crafted layered enchantments with confidence. Nyx had introduced curriculum trees, skill tracking, even feedback-based spell editors. Arkanis had never seen anything like it.
So, of course, the Iron Citadel responded.
It began with a sound—deep, mechanical, and wrong. A distant chime that rippled through the leyline grid like a corrupted heartbeat. The sky above the academy darkened as magnetic mana fields twisted into spirals.
Then it arrived.
A monolith, half machine, half fortress, descended from the clouds like divine punishment. It didn't fly—it compiled. Bit by bit, metal and mana solidifying mid-air, creating a floating behemoth: Ping-Class Construct: VECTOR-03.
A hatch opened.
A figure dropped.
Tall. Armored in liquid chrome. Limbs segmented with exposed logic cores. Its face was blank, only a strip of crimson light cutting across where eyes should be.
"Code Architect Nyx," it said, voice echoing in both sound and script across the landscape. "The Citadel requests your surrender. Your presence is destabilizing mana law. Compliance will be rewarded. Resistance will be debugged."
Nyx stepped forward alone.
Behind him, Echo and Lyra prepared defensive protocols. Students scrambled into cover.
"Vector," Nyx said, folding his arms. "You're three software generations out of date."
Vector's arms retracted into spear-like mana lances.
"Noncompliance confirmed."
The attack was immediate.
Mana lances shot forward—one aimed at Nyx's head, the other at his shadow.
Runtime Adjustment: Shadow Mass = Phase MaterialOverride: Reflective State = True
The first lance passed through Nyx's skull—and burst out of Vector's own shoulder.
The second embedded into the ground, only for the soil to fold upward like a hard drive defragmenting, tossing Vector back.
Vector recalculated instantly.
Loading Countermeasure: Adaptive Combat Protocol v3.2Executing: Memory Erasure Pulse
A blast of violet light pulsed outward—scrambling memory, severing connection to mana.
The students collapsed. Echo fell to one knee. Even Lyra staggered, her threads flickering.
Nyx was unaffected.
"Nice trick," he said. "But I don't run on memory. I run on logic."
He raised his hand.
Spawning Construct: Recursive Weapon ScriptFormat: Fractal Blade [Infinite Edge Enabled]
The blade shimmered into existence—endlessly folding, always sharp, rewriting its own edge.
Nyx charged.
The fight turned into pure chaos.
Vector countered with shifting limbs—axes, drills, glyph grenades. Every time Nyx was hit, he rewrote damage into kinetic energy. Every time Vector adapted, Nyx fed false variables into his prediction matrix.
Lyra recovered enough to cast a sphere of stabilized mana, locking the fight into a time-dilated field so the collateral damage wouldn't touch the academy.
Echo recompiled herself into an overhead support drone, feeding Nyx updated countermeasures mid-combat.
Vector Status: Integrity 34%Behavioral Threads: FragmentingProcessing Core: Glitching…
Vector tried to escape.
Nyx snapped his fingers.
Rewrite Environment: Sky = Data Cage, Altitude = Inverted Gravity
Vector shot upward, expecting flight—and slammed downward, caught in a loop of reversed terrain.
"You call yourself a system enforcer," Nyx said, approaching the smoking wreck of a machine. "But you're just a patch from a broken build."
He placed his hand on Vector's core.
Final Command: Uninstall
Vector exploded—silently, cleanly—converted into raw mana that dispersed into the leyline.
Silence fell.
Echo reappeared, her hologram flickering. "Citadel signal has ceased. No further pings."
Lyra approached. "They'll send more."
"I hope so," Nyx said, turning back to the horizon. "Because now, they know what kind of code they're dealing with."
And far above, deep within the Iron Citadel's true command node, red lights flared.
ALERT: CODE ARCHITECT CLASS - PRIORITY ALPHA THREAT
The war had truly begun.