A wave of sour rot hit Astra, sharp enough to stall her blade in the air. Instincts spiking, she pivoted towards the red brick complex where the dining hall was. There was something vibrating out there. She could not see it or even feel it, but somehow, she knew.

  A heart trying to wake.

  Behind her, Theo swung his ice blade and sheared the tendrils of purple mist. The creature slipped around his strikes as if delighted by the near-misses, as if it were teaching him the shape of failure.

  Astra watched the fight—if one could call it that—but her mind drifted back to weeks ago. The first attack of this creature had come through Tiffany as a vessel. There was a mindless hunger there.

  The second attack felt altogether… weirder. It lacked the blunt aggression of the first. Instead the mist drifted with sly intent, capricious and teasing, like a trickster.

  And now, barely a day later, after she had assumed it destroyed, it was back. Weaker, yes. She could sense that much.

  Why return at all?

  Theo couldn’t freeze it this time, his mana reserves nearly drained. The open ground and the ceaseless wind conspired against him, and seeing his frustrated grunt, Astra knew his patience was running out.

  But what was the point? A pressure test, a measuring of their limits. Or—

  “We’re being played,” she concluded. “It’s a distraction.”

  Theo froze. “A distraction? This? How do you know that?”

  “Can you stall it?”

  He nodded slowly, then tightened his grip and delivered a powerful swing.

  Astra sprinted for the dining hall. With every stride, the stink thickened and made her throat threaten a gag.

  The recent bout of food poisoning had been malicious, no question, yet the playful way the vapour fenced with Theo did not feel like that same hand at work. Perhaps there was more than one mind involved.

  She burst through the double doors. The dining hall had already been cleaned that morning; everything was back in order. Even the broken chairs had been efficiently replaced. The only things left to repair were the broken windows and chandeliers.

  Expecting the sterile scent of bleach, she was instead met with a trail of sour air leaking from the industrial freezer.

  Whatever this was, it was not ordinary rot.

  She moved towards the freezer, noticing it had been shut off; its compressor’s usual groan was absent. Had someone turned it off during the decontamination?

  Astra tapped the flashlight button on her phone and shone it around the freezer’s interior. Stainless steel racks stood bare as the food had been removed and destroyed. Only the slow tick of water as frost melted.

  Seeing a marking on the floor just inside the threshold, she leaned closer to inspect. Footsteps scraping against porcelain from behind interrupted her. She spun and pointed her flashlight toward the door.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  A dog stood in the doorway. Sleek black coat, tall and lean, ears erect, tail wagging nonchalantly. A Doberman. The school did not allow pets and she had never seen anything like it on campus. Too well-kept to be stray, too at ease to be lost.

  It regarded her as if she were the intruder. When she stepped forward to stand near the dog, it stepped too, unfazed, inclining its head with a regal air as if granting her permission to share the same air.

  Then it licked the back of her hand.

  Astra stared, perplexed.

  “Find anything?” Theo’s voice called from outside.

  The dog took advantage of her distraction and disappeared into a bush.

  “Just residue,” Astra called back, eyes fixed on the place the creature had been. “From the freezer. It wasn’t there last night.”

  “The mist vanished on my end,” Theo said. “Destroyed, maybe?”

  “Or it retreated.”

  When they returned to the freezer, the strange pattern she had seen earlier was gone. In its place, faint gouges scored the melting ice. She shone the flashlight across the marks, noticing that the lines followed the pattern of a circle.

  She ran her fingers along the ridges. Something slick caught her skin.

  Warm blood.

  Theo appeared behind her. Their eyes met, a shared certainty passing through them:

  Something terrible had happened here. And whatever that purple mist creature was had not finished.

  Earlier

  Astra and Theo carved circles in the grass outside, blades of ice and purple haze flashing fiercely. Inside the dining hall, a war had begun.

  Eydis walked past the broken doors in silence. She went straight to the control panel and flipped every switch.

  The freezer’s hum slowed, coughed, died.

  The room rumbled. Frost on the empty steel shelves melted in a rush, unnaturally fast. Water slid down and hissed on contact with the floor. Violet steam curled up in tendrils. They were thin at first, then thick as rope.

  From the swirling haze rose a chorus of voices, maybe hundreds, melding into one anguished whine.

  "Hungry. So hungry."

  Eydis’s lips curved to a sly grin. The dark freezer pulsed with flickering purple light as if Gluttony was chewing on empty air. How pathetic.

  "Dramatic, as always,” she said.

  The smoke writhed. "Who dares mock the Devourer?”

  "Devourer? Nice upgrade. New vocabulary suits you.”

  “Enough. Feed me or suffer.”

  "Are you angry because the hall’s a little empty?” she said. “I must admit, the subzero treatment for your putrid essence was remarkably inventive."

  Gluttony’s tendril lashed at her, but struck harmlessly against her violet shield. "It was YOU? You who interrupted my feast?”

  "Guilty," Eydis purred. "Gluttony behaving gluttonously? Shocking. If you’d exercised even a hint of restraint and hadn’t harmed my… associates, I might’ve allowed you another night’s freedom.”

  "Freedom? Don't—"

  Eydis ignored Gluttony and began whispering the arcane language. She traced precise lines across the floor with two fingers.

  Glyphs wove into numbers, circles into runes. A trap made just for this.

  "What is this?" Gluttony shrieked. "A binding sigil?"

  The circle lit crimson and drank the Sin’s essence like a whirlpool. A deep, grinding groan echoed through the metal walls, the sound of unseen gears straining to capture the Sin.

  Gluttony was a bottomless pit, swollen from a week of feeding. It fought the sigil’s pull with mindless, monstrous strength.

  Malevolent heat rolled off of the Sin, sulfur and rot choking the space. There it was. A familiar scent that reeked like a pack of drowned rats.

  Eydis gritted her teeth, certain this would alert Astra, no matter how far they were. Not only did she have to contain Gluttony, but Astra's unexpected perceptiveness was a great inconvenience.

  The mist knitted itself into a translucent membrane lined with black and red veins. It swelled, bulged forward to wrap around her, drawing power straight through the shield like a leech.

  Eydis's eyes blazed gold. Her own arcane energy crackled around her, needles of violet light pricked the membrane. Sweat stung her eyes, but she kept chanting, feet planted in the glowing circle.

  A violet dagger winked into being and she drove it into the living wall. The membrane burst, oozing green acid.

  Gluttony growled, membrane flexing to heal. Acid rained on her barrier, sizzling holes. Magic bled from her rapidly.

  “Foolish mortal!” the Sin roared. “You think that blade can stop me? Let’s end this!”

  The membrane throbbed once, twice, then bloated outward into a crimson-veined sac of muscle. The grotesque prison closed in on Eydis, dimming the world to a sickly purple twilight.

  “You Sins and your smothering affection.” She chuckled, even as acid rain hissed against her thinning shield.

  “You talk too much.”

  Gluttony struck her abruptly. Its swollen gut split her barrier, and swallowed her whole.

  “Mmm… Delicious…”