The ground shifted beneath him.
Eryndor's eyes snapped open just as the first deep pulse shook the ruins of The Lost Ones' stronghold. Dust cascaded from the fractured ceiling. Chains rattled like whispers of the dead.
[System emergency.]
[Core breach detected.]
[Unknown anomaly influence… escalating.]
[Lockdown protocols failing.]
Eryndor pushed himself upright, muscles burning with protest. His vision blurred briefly before snapping into sharp focus. The Academy outside had changed again.
The sky was a twisted, shifting canvas of ink-black clouds spiraling violently around a single point: the ancient, sealed core of Vaelith Academy.
From somewhere deep beneath the ground, another pulse struck. Harder. A low sound followed—a distant, monstrous heartbeat.
Boom.
The ground cracked violently.
The Lost Ones scrambled awake. The Mana-Cursed Girl clutched her head, unstable energy flaring uncontrollably around her. The Flickering Aura Boy stumbled, bleeding from reopened wounds. The Unborn knelt, fists clenched as tremors shook the ground beneath him.
Eryndor fought to stay standing as the very air distorted. His legs buckled once. He caught himself against the broken wall, breathing hard. Cold sweat slid down his spine.
Not like before. This was not System manipulation. This was something older.
The Oracle appeared without sound. Her form flickered like shattered glass held barely together by unseen threads. The veil of black fragments trailed in the cursed wind.
"You forced the System to break its loop," she said quietly. "Now the thing they buried remembers."
Another pulse. Closer. Stronger. The earth itself seemed to recoil.
Eryndor stared coldly toward the heart of the Academy, toward the sealed Core Vault forbidden to all students.
A single, incomprehensibly vast silhouette pressed against the boundaries of reality. It shifted without form, casting no clear shape—only the suggestion of something wrong.
Eryndor felt it. The pressure. The hunger. The vast, alien intellect that did not see or care for life as anything more than irritation.
The Oracle whispered, almost in awe. "The Sleeper Below."
Eryndor clenched his fists tightly, forcing his breathing calm even as every instinct screamed to run.
Not yet.
The ground fractured. Eryndor braced himself against the pulsing shockwave that cracked stone and snapped ancient pillars like brittle bones. From the core of Vaelith Academy, the impossible shape shifted again. Larger. Closer.
Another heartbeat. Boom.
The System voice glitched violently.
[Emergency protocol failure.]
[Unknown anomaly… breach threshold approaching.]
[Containment at 4% integrity.]
The Sleeper was not bound by system logic. It pressed outward, warping space in jagged folds, peeling at the edges of reality itself.
The Lost Ones could not see it. They stumbled and shielded their eyes from the searing crimson glare. Only Eryndor stood motionless, eyes narrowed, watching through the distortion.
He saw what others could not. The System had lied. The Academy was not the prize. The Academy was the prison.
The Oracle drifted closer, her voice barely a whisper under the roar. "You were never meant to exist in this iteration. Your survival has broken the cycle."
Eryndor's fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade. His mind raced cold and fast.
The System wouldn't risk another correction attempt. Not now. Not with the cage this fragile.
As the void split open wider, a single tendril of the Sleeper's essence tore free—searing black energy coiling out, reaching blindly toward the sky.
Eryndor stepped backward. Even he knew the limits. Even he wouldn't face this.
Then came the final command.
[Containment Override.]
[Stasis Protocol active.]
[Anomaly observation prioritized. Correction events suspended.]
[All factions return to normal academic cycle.]
The searing rift slammed shut. The tendril recoiled violently, twisting back into the wound in space. The corrupted heartbeat slowed. One pulse. Two. Silence.
The Oracle turned to Eryndor as the dust settled.
"The Sleeper dreams again, but it will not forget."
Eryndor's gaze never left the horizon.
"They can't kill me now," he whispered. "Not without breaking the cage."
The sun crept over the ruins of Vaelith. For the first time in days, light reached the shattered stones. The bells of the Academy tolled once.
Normal. Routine. Deceptive.
Eryndor stood in the silence, watching the faint cracks still spiraling across the distant spires.
His voice was barely audible. "I have time."