Lyra's POV
"We're breaking into the Crystal Spire. Tonight."
Kael looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "That's suicide."
"That's where my grandmother is." I paced across the hidden chamber beneath the Academy where we'd been planning for the past three hours. Dawn was only two hours away. "Graves thinks I'm cornered. He thinks I'll just give up and help him break the seals because he has her. But I'm done letting other people control my choices."
"Lyra, the Spire is the most heavily guarded building in the Academy," Zephyr said, though he didn't sound like he was arguing—more like he was calculating odds. "There are at least twenty Covenant members inside, plus whatever magical traps Graves has set up. It's literally designed to be impossible to break into."
"Good thing impossible is kind of my specialty now." I turned to Nova. "Can you disrupt their security systems?"
Nova's eyes lit up. She loved a challenge. "If I can get close enough to tap into their main power source, I can create a feedback loop that'll shut down their wards for maybe five minutes. But that's it. Five minutes."
"Five minutes is enough." I looked at Kael. "I need you to be honest. Can your void magic get us in and out without being detected?"
Kael studied my face for a long moment. I could see him wanting to refuse, to keep me safe, to find some other way. But he also saw the determination in my eyes.
Finally, he nodded. "Yes. But if something goes wrong—"
"Then we fight our way out together," I finished. "Like a team."
Lyra, the Codex spoke urgently in my mind. I'm detecting strange activity near the fourth seal location. The one beneath the Training Arena. Something's happening there right now.
I froze. "The Codex says there's movement at the fourth seal. I thought it was already broken?"
"It is broken," Kael said grimly. "Which means they're doing something worse than breaking it."
We all looked at each other. My grandmother was trapped in the Spire. But if the Covenant was doing something to the broken seal right now, we might lose our only chance to stop them.
"We split up," I decided. "Kael and I investigate the seal. Nova and Zephyr, you two create a distraction near the Spire's south entrance. Make it look like we're trying to break in there. Draw the guards away."
"And then what?" Nova asked.
"Then you run like crazy and meet us back here." I managed a small smile. "Try not to get caught."
Zephyr grinned. "Where's the fun in that?"
Twenty minutes later, Kael and I crept through the Academy's underground corridors. Most students were locked in their dorms under emergency curfew. Professors patrolled the main buildings. But down here, in the maintenance tunnels that connected everything, it was eerily quiet.
Too quiet.
"Something's wrong," Kael whispered. His void magic swirled around us like protective shadows, hiding us from sight. "There should be guards down here."
They're all at the seal location, the Codex informed me. I count fifteen magical signatures ahead. They're performing some kind of ritual.
"Fifteen?" I breathed. That was almost as many as attacked us in the courtyard.
We moved slowly, carefully. The tunnel opened into a larger chamber—the sub-basement beneath the Training Arena. And there they were.
Fifteen figures in black robes stood in a circle around a massive crack in the floor. Dark energy poured from the crack like smoke, twisting into shapes that almost looked alive. In the center of the circle, bound in glowing chains, was the Primordial Guardian from earlier.
They'd captured it.
"What are they doing?" I whispered.
Kael's face was grim. "Using it as a battery. They're feeding its energy into the broken seal to widen the crack. If they succeed, the entire fourth dimension will collapse into ours."
"What does that mean?"
"It means thousands of trapped souls get destroyed forever. And everything in that dimension—creatures, magic, pure chaos—floods into our world." He gripped my arm. "We have to stop them. Now."
But before we could move, one of the robed figures turned.
Professor Thea Wintermere.
No. Not her too.
She pulled back her hood, and I saw her face clearly. She looked tired. Sad. But determined.
"The Guardian's energy is at eighty percent," she called to the others. "Increase the extraction rate."
The Guardian screamed in agony. I felt its pain through my Cipher connection—like someone was ripping out its soul piece by piece.
My magic flared automatically, responding to the creature's suffering. Silver light sparked around my hands.
Professor Wintermere's head snapped toward our hiding spot. Her eyes widened. "Someone's here! Find them!"
"Run!" Kael grabbed my hand and we bolted back down the tunnel.
Wind magic blasted past us—one of the robed figures was a wind mage. Stone erupted from the walls, trying to block our path. Fire exploded behind us.
Kael's void magic caught most of the attacks, but there were too many. A lightning bolt got through his defenses and hit the tunnel ceiling. Rocks rained down.
"Left!" I shouted, pulling him into a side passage.
We ran blindly through twisting corridors. Footsteps pounded behind us. Voices shouted orders. They were coordinating, cutting off escape routes.
"This way!" I dragged Kael through a narrow opening that led to a maintenance shaft. We climbed desperately, my hands scraping on rough metal.
We emerged in a storage room I didn't recognize. Kael slammed the shaft door closed and melted the lock with his magic.
For a moment, we just stood there, breathing hard.
"Wintermere," I finally said. "She was supposed to be helping us. She left those clues, those texts—"
"It was all fake," Kael said bitterly. "Everything. She was leading you exactly where they wanted you to go."
My chest tightened. Another betrayal. Another person I'd started to trust, revealed as an enemy.
How many more were there?
Lyra, you need to see this, the Codex said urgently.
"Not now—"
NOW. Look at what I'm showing you.
An image appeared in my mind. The ritual chamber we'd just escaped from. But the Codex was showing me something I hadn't noticed in the panic—a symbol carved into the floor beneath the Guardian.
I knew that symbol. I'd seen it before.
In my parents' research notes. The ones my grandmother kept hidden in her house.
"Kael," I said slowly. "That ritual they're performing. It's not just about breaking the seal."
"Then what—"
"It's a summoning circle." My voice shook. "They're using the Guardian's energy to open a pathway. To bring something through from the fourth dimension."
"Bring what through?"
Before I could answer, Nova's voice crackled through the communication device she'd built for us. "Guys? We've got a problem. A really, really big problem."
"What kind of problem?" Kael demanded.
"The kind where the entire Academy just went into lockdown, and Headmaster Graves is announcing over the speaker system that Lyra Ashford is a dangerous criminal who released the Guardian and must be captured immediately." Nova's voice rose in panic. "He's offering a reward. Students are hunting for you."
My heart sank. Graves wasn't waiting for dawn. He was turning the entire Academy against me right now.
"There's more," Zephyr's voice cut in. "We couldn't get near the Spire. But Lyra, we saw something. Your grandmother—"
Static burst through the device.
"Nova? Zephyr?" I shook the communicator. "What about my grandmother?"
More static. Then Zephyr's voice, broken and distant: "—not in the Spire. She's never been—"
The device died completely.
"No, no, no!" I tried to restart it, but it was fried. "They were about to tell us something important!"
Kael was at the storage room door, listening. "Someone's coming. A lot of someones."
Voices echoed down the hallway. Student voices. They were searching for us.
"In here! I thought I heard something!"
We were trapped. The Academy had turned against us. My grandmother wasn't where Graves said she was. Professor Wintermere was one of them. And somewhere beneath our feet, they were performing a ritual that would unleash something terrible.
I looked at Kael desperately. "What do we do?"
He opened his mouth to answer—
And the wall exploded inward.
Stone and magic blasted into the room. Through the dust and debris, a figure stepped through. Tall. Powerful. Radiating magic so strong the air shimmered around her.
She had my same eyes. My same birthmark on her wrist. Her presence made the Codex sing with recognition.
My mother.
Alive.
She looked at me with an expression that mixed relief, pain, and something that looked like pride.
"Hello, Lyra," she said softly. "I'm sorry I took seventeen years to come home."
Then she raised her hands, and silver light—Cipher magic, MY magic—blazed around her like the birth of stars.
"Now," she said, her voice hard as steel. "Let's go save your grandmother and stop these fools from destroying everything."
Behind her, through the hole in the wall, I saw at least thirty students and professors converging on our location.
My mother smiled grimly. "And try to keep up, sweetheart. We're going to have to fight our way through."