The Academy slept beneath a silvered moon. Inside Dorm 42, Jayden lay on his bunk with an arm draped over his eyes. Across from him, Kael was losing his battle with boredom.
Mist rolled over the training fields, brushing marble statues and torchlit courtyards. The night was quiet — no duels, no shouting, only the low hum of distant wards. Jayden lay on his side, eyes half-open, watching moonlight ripple across the surface of a half-empty jug beside his bed.
Kael's snores filled the room, soft at first, then louder, like distant thunder.
"Snore like that in battle," muttered one of the boys, throwing a pillow.
Kael rolled over, catching it midair. "That's my war cry."
Laughter followed. Reno snorted from his bunk. "If you trained half as much as you talked, you'd be an instructor by now."
"Or dead," Theo added from across the room.
The laughter lingered, soft and real. For a moment, the world felt human — warm and alive. The Academy was merciless in its standards, but somehow camaraderie still found a way between exhaustion and bruises.
Then the air changed.
Jayden noticed it first — a faint ripple in his cup of water, a whisper under the floorboards, too deep to be wind. The same heaviness that came before a storm. The same pull that had dragged him under the canal during his Trial.
He sat up. "Do you feel that?"
Kael stopped flipping his coin. "Feel what?"
The light dimmed.
Outside, the stars flickered — one by one, their glow swallowed by a creeping red haze. The horizon rippled like heat over metal.
Reno leaned out the window. "What the hell…"
A low hum rolled through the air — deep, guttural, alive. The torches bent sideways, flames stretching toward the east.
Then came the crack.
A sound like the sky splitting open. The walls pulsed red, and from beyond the dorms came the roar of something wrong.
A column of fire tore across the night sky, swallowing the stars. At its heart, a perfect circle burned — runes shifting within like molten glass. The air warped around it, and reality bent until it screamed.
Kael's coin slipped from his fingers. "That's— That's an Elemental Gate."
Jayden's blood ran cold. "And it's open."
They bolted for the courtyard.
The night had turned to fire.
Above the Academy grounds, a ring of molten light hung suspended — a hole carved out of the dark, spilling embers like glowing rain. Students poured from every building, half-dressed and half-awake. Instructors shouted orders, their voices drowned in the roar.
Then the Gate pulsed — once, twice — and split open.
Red mist poured from its core. Then came the first aberrant — a creature shaped like both wolf and man, skin cracked with veins of lava, eyes burning like molten brands. It hit the ground hard, claws digging into stone, and howled.
More followed.
They fell like comets — beings of half-forged matter and flame, their forms flickering between shapes. The sound they made wasn't animal. It was hunger.
The first landed near the central courtyard, the second by the eastern hall. By the time the third hit, the sky was raining fire.
Kael's face lit orange. "Oh, we are so screwed."
"Move!" Jayden shouted, pulling him toward the stairs.
Screams tore through the air.
"Defensive circle! Now!" roared an instructor — a woman in emerald armor. She slammed her fists into the ground, and earth rose in jagged waves. "Pairs! Contain them!"
Jayden's instincts took over. The Moonshine Blades flashed to life in his hands — arcs of silver-blue light forged from condensed water. Kael's arms sparked with lightning, wild and unstable. Two upperclassmen nearby flared their flame wards, drawing heat away from the crowd.
Then chaos hit.
The aberrants flooded the courtyard. Heat rolled in waves, turning air to steam. Jayden ducked behind a fountain with Kael as a fireball exploded nearby, sending shards of marble across the ground.
"They're breaching the west wall!" Theo yelled.
Jayden's gaze snapped toward the library — a cluster of aberrants clawing through the barrier sigil, movements jerky, unnatural.
"They'll reach the dorms!" Kael shouted.
"Then we stop them."
"Wait—what?"
But Jayden was already moving. The Moonshine Blades glowed faintly, mist curling around the edges like breath. He moved like water — smooth, reactive, never still. A smaller aberrant lunged; he twisted aside, letting its claws scrape past before slicing clean through its arm. Steam burst as molten fire met cold steel.
Kael followed, lightning snapping through the air. His movement was chaos — untamed, wild — but every strike found its mark. Together they fought in rhythm: water flowing, lightning striking.
Another figure joined them — Kira. Her fire curved in tight spirals, cutting clean through the smoke, her face calm even as the ground burned.
The courtyard became a battlefield. Steam, flame, and lightning clashed until the night was nothing but color and noise.
Jayden fought with focus, not fury. Every strike calculated, every dodge measured. The Moonshine Blades were an extension of him — and the water around him answered.
Then the ground roared.
The Gate pulsed again, and light bled into crimson. The air thickened until every breath hurt.
Jayden looked up. Something vast was moving beyond the veil — a shadow forming inside the Gate.
The first defensive wall shattered.
A clawed hand — blackened and enormous — slammed into the courtyard, scattering debris like dust. Then came the rest of it.
The Gate Guardian.
It stepped through, body of fire and bone, towering over the academy's spires. The air bent around its heat. Floating around its head, faint runes glowed — a mark of classification. Higher than any student could read.
"Pull back!" the instructor shouted. "That's not your fight!"
Some didn't make it. One swing of the Guardian's arm sent molten debris raining across the field.
Kael's lightning flared. "We can't just stand here—"
Jayden grabbed him by the wrist. "You'll die."
Kael's jaw clenched. "Then I'll die trying."
The ground split beneath them. Lava surged—
—until an obsidian wall erupted upward, blocking the heat.
Aiden stood behind it, arms trembling, veins glowing earthen gold.
"Move!" he shouted. "Get the injured out!"
Jayden stared, momentarily stunned. The earth itself was answering Aiden's will — thick, brutal, unyielding. Kael's smirk flickered.
"Guess we're not the only show-offs tonight."
"You're welcome," Aiden grunted.
The instructors regrouped, relics flashing like constellations — whips, blades, and gauntlets inscribed with living runes. The courtyard became a storm of elements: earth, fire, water, lightning, wind — colliding, screaming, alive.
Every strike lit the sky. Every scream was swallowed by the roar.
And then—
A single voice. Calm.
"Enough."
The air folded inward, flames bending toward a single point.
From the smoke stepped Headmaster Varrick.
No relics glowed around him. No aura flared. Yet every element stilled — the fire dimmed, the wind ceased, even the molten Guardian hesitated, as if the world itself remembered who stood before it.