Chaos shattered the evening.

  Students started screaming, shoving towards exit in a panicked tangle, slamming together at the double doorway, knocking over chairs and spilling food across the floor.

  At the eye of the maelstrom, the thick purple mist was swelling, lunging straight toward two boys lying unconscious on the wood.

  The temperature dropped.

  Theo thrust out his hand and summoned a wall of ice that shielded the fallen boys. The mist recoiled, then slid across the floor and circled Theo, closing every escape.

  Voices, born from the vapour itself, creeping closer to Theo. A grandmother’s gravelly chuckle, a man’s broken howl, a child’s lilting giggle. They overlapped, tangled together, getting louder and messier until you couldn’t tell one from the others.

  They taunted. They dug into Theo’s mind.

  Grinding his teeth, he forced the noise into the background and raised a glacial dome around himself just as the mist solidified into a storm of shadowy spears. He conjured a blue-white blade and slashed through the vapour.

  But beyond his frozen shield, the two boys still lay unprotected.

  “Billie! Get them out, now!” Theo barked.

  “Move! Go!” Billie scooped the boys over his broad shoulders and sprinted toward the doors where Ms. May stood.

  She flung out her arms, forging an earthy barrier that shielded the doors as the students rushed past. The instant Billie crossed the threshold, she sealed the doorway.

  Except, not everyone had made it out.

  Theo was still inside.

  And so was Eydis.

  "Eydis, back up!” Ms. May called. Her warning drowned beneath another boom. A tendril of mist lashed a chandelier from its chain. Glass exploded before plunging the hall into darkness.

  A dead silence followed. The air hung still, the stillness unnatural. It was as if the very darkness itself was thinking, calculating. It had already learned Theo's weakness. His magic made him visible in the dark, while the creature vanished from sight.

  A chill ran down his spine. Spinning around him just in time, he caught a sneaky strike only his shield. The icy surface cracked instantly, spiderwebbing out from impact point.

  The entire hall shook as ice and mist collided. Windows rattled from their timber frames, plates exploded. Theo’s barrier finally shattered, shards erupting outward and slicing into his arms and face.

  Ignoring the blood trickling down his sleeve, he conjured another shield. Right in the middle of all the ringing clashes, he heard Ms. May’s worried voice break through.

  Theo tightened his grip. “Just a little more.”

  Abandoning defence, he sent mana along his ice-blue blade until its edges burned sapphire. He carved through the mist again and again. One. Two. Three. Each blow drained his magic but the mist just kept coming.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Why won’t they stop?!”

  Was he losing?

  Suddenly, a wave of immense energy grazed his senses, like frostbite, but it wasn’t Whitlock’s signature.

  Astra.

  She walked through the gap as Ms. May lowered the barricade for her.

  “What’s the situation?” she asked. Then, almost too softly to catch, “Why are you still here, Eydis?”

  Eydis?

  Theo finally spotted her at the doorway.

  “Theo’s got it,” Eydis said to Astra.

  “Leave.” Astra threw her hand forward hard. A pinprick of white light sparked at her slender fingers, blossoming into a diamond blade. Its spectral brilliance lightened the room and exposed the violet mist coiling ominously around Theo.

  It struck him relentlessly, and he parried, his movements growing slower.

  Astra’s gaze sharpened. “This is pointless!”

  Another tendril whipped in. Theo battered it aside, gasping. “Why?”

  "You’re not hitting it. It liquefies before your blade can land. You’re only bleeding yourself dry.”

  Not... hitting it? Had every swing been empty, exactly what the creature wanted? But what if some of the tendrils were real? What if it was deliberate?

  Theo glanced at Astra, who had stationed herself squarely between Eydis and the roiling vapour, as much shield as sword.

  "Then what do we do?"

  Astra frowned at the creature. “Mist is water…”

  “And it keeps switching state,” Theo added.

  “Then we stop it.” Her face lit with certainty. “Freeze it.”

  Astra’s blade sliced through a shadowy vine with a sizzle. The strike was so swift and precise that the creature didn’t even react in time. It shrieked and recoiled instantly.

  “Back up, Astra!” Theo called. Cold gathered around him.

  Astra hacked through another strand, but it flowed together again. The mist was learning.

  Theo locked his jaw tight and unleashed his power. The Whitlock’s signature suppression of entropy. Blue light burst out. The floor filmed with ice and his breath crystallised.

  At last the fog thickened, its edges sluggish. Crystals raced through its body. Theo pushed further, further, until the mist froze solid.

  Before them hung a spray of violet shards, tiny amethysts glimmering like a pocketful of stars, chiming faintly.

  “Astra, now!” Theo barked through his pale, cracked lips.

  Astra shoved Theo aside and leapt. Celestial fire poured down her blade. Every strike detonated with blinding white light and fragmented the frozen mist. Shards burst and hovered for a few seconds before fading away.

  Once it was all over, the room was bathed in a strangely humid haze, while Theo’s fragmented ice shards dripping slowly down the polished wood.

  The mist was gone, completely vanquished.

  He huffed out a shaky breath of relief before noticing Eydis step from the shadows, her amber eyes unreadable—anger, regret; he couldn’t tell. But she seemed unafraid.

  It didn’t matter.

  For now, victory was enough.

  Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of a fine-dining restaurant, Alchymia City shimmered in deep reds and golds below. A live jazz performance played softly in the background, yet its pleasant melody doing little to ease the tight line of Adrian’s brow.

  “Lost in thought again?” Athena dabbed her lips with a napkin.

  Adrian stopped carving into his ribeye. “Can you see what’s bothering me?”

  “Not this again, brother.” She took a sip of wine. “Keep the conversation PG-13, will you?”

  Adrian grinned. “Your imagination runs wild.”

  Athena's eyes glinted with amusement. “I’ve seen things, Adrian. Once was enough to scar me for life.”

  He looked contemplative, before turning serious. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Thomas Blackwood.”

  “What about him?”

  “Doesn’t it seem strange, Thena? He comes out of nowhere and suddenly he’s a major player in the senate race?”

  “You’re right. Campaigns like his don’t materialise overnight,” she said.

  "And the timing. Tiffany’s predicament makes the perfect campaign speech. And with her ties to the purple smoke… what if Thomas is part of it?”

  “His upcoming Fundraising Gala might be our chance to dig deeper and see what he’s hiding.”

  Adrian gave her a long, unreadable look. “And you’d attend… as Athena Van Nassau?”

  “Van Nassau is my birthright,” Athena said nonchalantly.

  "A name you haven't used in public for years. Just Athena. Why now?"

  "Silence in the face of cruelty is the same as becoming its accomplice," Athena said. "Don't you feel that weight, Brother? Dean Saito apparently did. He even wrote it down."

  “Dean Saito said that?”

  "Eydis."

  “First Astra, now you? I really need to meet her.” He frowned. “But using your power on Thomas without permission? That’s—”

  “—Your Council will look the other way. It is for the investigation, after all."

  “Thena, rebellion? Who are you, and what have you done with my little sister?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but the buzz of her phone cut her off. Her expression turned serious as she glanced at the screen.

  “Excuse me." She stood take the call. “Food poisoning? No, magical contamination? Understood.”

  The crackling voice on the other end carried a faint hint of panic.

  “Yes, I agree. We must lock down the Dining Hall immediately,” Athena whispered. “Inspect for contamination. We need to figure out how the purple smoke got into St. Kevin’s.”

  After the call ended, she turned back to Adrian. “So... Staying a few extra weeks?”

  Adrian set his knife down. “Looks like things just got a whole lot more complicated… back at St. Kevin’s.”