The workshop chamber beneath the Aurora Tower was heating up with effort and burning sigils.
Soren Vale's sleeves were rolled to his elbows, his fingers stained with soot and mana-burn. His hair clung to his forehead, damp from the heat of the fire glyphs simmering in the air.
The girl worked across from him. She was silent, focused, her brow furrowed as she etched stabilizing runes into the clay sphere rotating midair.
Another orb.
Their twenty-seventh.
He wasn't even counting anymore.
Each orb took hours. Each one had to be perfect. No fractures. No leaks. No resonance spikes. The Mediator's instructions were precise, and disobedience wasn't an option.
Not if they wanted to live.
Not if she wanted to save her father.
The chamber pulsed with a low, mana flux, precisely calibrated by the Mediator himself. The energy was dense but contained, impossible to detect outside the reinforced ward-line. He had designed it to be invisible to school security.
Invisible to everyone but them.
"Make them. Keep them with you at all times," the Mediator had ordered, voice like the scrape of stone. "They must learn to trust what walks beside them."
Soren hated it.
He didn't show it. Couldn't. But the idea of carrying one of these things against his skin, of sleeping beside it, made his blood run colder than the Mediator ever could.
He hadn't been given a reason.
Only a command.
And he obeyed.
Days passed. Then a week.
No new incidents. No triggered gates. No riftspawn.
The academy was tense, bracing, locked in a state of coiled silence. The incident at the Comet Tower had been the last straw.
Security didn't relax. It doubled.
Wards were redrawn and doubled. Entry checkpoints monitored all mana signatures. Hallway patrols became round-the-clock.
And then they arrived.
The Special Investigation Team.
Four of them. From different Legions.
Towering, cold-eyed soldiers wrapped in mantle-glyphs and truth-binding seals.
The team was led by a woman from the Sun Legion, her armor etched with sigils older than the school itself. Each one radiated power, but they moved like predators, quiet, alert and never blinking.
The message was clear:
They weren't here to ask questions.
They were here to find something.
And that something was very close.
It was late evening when Soren found her on the balcony behind the tower's lecture halls, standing with her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes fixed on the fading sky.
He approached quietly, but not quietly enough.
She didn't turn.
"You know it's not working," she said.
Her voice was raw. Not angry. Just tired. Like a thread worn to snapping.
"We're doing what he asked," Soren replied.
She let out a bitter breath. "And for what? No openings. No shifts. No changes. Just silence. Like he's waiting for us to screw up."
"We haven't."
"Yet."
Soren leaned against the railing next to her. He didn't speak. Just listened to her breathe for a moment.
Then she said, quieter, "I don't think we ever should've come here."
She looked at him then, her eyes shining, jaw clenched.
"I joined because I thought I could fix it. I thought if I did what he said, if I helped him… he'd keep his word. He'd let my father go."
"He will," Soren said.
"You don't know that."
"I believe it."
She shook her head, teeth gritted. "You shouldn't. Not anymore."
He turned to her fully now. "Why are you saying this?"
"Because it's not worth it," she said. Her voice cracked. "None of this is. I made the deal. I walked into it. Not you."
"I made the choice too."
"You shouldn't have!" she shouted, suddenly, her voice echoing off the stone.
She stepped back from him, hands trembling. "You were free. You didn't owe him anything. You didn't have to be part of this."
"I owed him everything!" Soren snapped, louder than he meant to.
The silence that followed hit like a slap.
The wind picked up.
She stared at him, stunned. Her mouth opened, but he kept going.
"I was nothing," Soren said, breathing hard. "Before him. You know that. My family didn't want me. The Towers didn't choose me. I was just some street-rat with too much mana and no control. I would've burned out by fifteen."
He swallowed hard. His voice softened. "Your father saw me. He gave me books. Shelter. Taught me how to channel, how to think, how to stand up straight. He gave me a reason to live."
Tears gathered in the girl's eyes, but she didn't speak.
"I joined this because he asked me to," Soren said. "And I stayed because you asked me to. Because I thought, if anyone could survive this, it was you."
She looked down. Her hands clenched at her sides.
"But I won't leave you," Soren said. "Not now. Not when it's this deep. I don't care what you say."
"Why?" she asked, barely a whisper. "Why does it have to be you?"
"Because it's my fault too."
The words hung between them.
"I said yes when I should've said no," Soren said. "I wanted to repay him. But I didn't think it would mean… this. All of this. I should've seen what we were becoming part of."
He shook his head.
"But now it's too late. And I don't care how bad it gets, I won't let you go through it alone."
Her shoulders shook.
Then she collapsed against him, fists pressed to his chest, face buried in his shirt.
"I hate this," she said. "I hate all of this."
"I know."
"I'm scared."
"I know."
He wrapped his arms around her and held tight.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Just stood there on the balcony, as the night bled across the sky and the stars began to shimmer one by one.
They didn't know if they were being watched.
They didn't care.
Not in that moment.
Because the world was collapsing under the weight of someone else's plan, and they were just two broken pieces trying to hold each other together.