The ground vanished.
The wind became a torrent.
His soaked hair lashed his face as the world blurred into motion. Trees turned into streaks of green and black, shadows darting past at blinding speed. The already violent rain became a barrage of needles, lashing his exposed skin and drawing grimaces of pain.
"By all the stars… What the hell am I doing?!"
His arms tightened around Nyx's neck, fingers clenched deep into the creature's silky fur. The wind threatened to tear him off the mount, but he held on with all his strength. Muscles burning, legs slipping, he gritted his teeth. Hold on… damn it, just hold on!
Behind them, Astraéa's voice cut through the storm:
"Stop! Not that way!"
Gaël turned his head just in time to see the young girl riding Eos, the white ermine now grown into a massive steed. The creature moved with uncanny grace, skimming through the downpour, her paws barely sinking into the mud. Shafts of light filtering through the trees cast silver glints along her fur.
The irony struck him. She was chasing him now.
"Where is he taking me?" Gaël wondered, breathless.
The ride was... Exhilarating? Terrifying? He couldn't tell. Maybe both. A wild mixture of pure adrenaline and visceral fear.
He forgot the assault on the academy.
Never had he felt anything like this: the ground rushing beneath him like a furious river, wind screaming in his ears, branches suddenly lunging out from nowhere, sharp shadows threatening to gouge his eyes.
He ducked just in time to avoid a low-hanging branch.
"By the stars… this is madness… but… by Lumen… it's incredible."
Despite the danger, despite the screaming protests of his muscles, a laugh burst from his lips. A short, incredulous laugh.
"Am I actually enjoying this?!"
The speed, the power... he felt swept up in a feral whirlwind, every muscle vibrating with tension, every heartbeat echoing Nyx's. As if… he was flying.
Nyx, sensing his thrill, gave a playful snort.
The rain intensified, and the fading twilight swallowed them whole.
_ _ _
Sélène of Valmire stepped out of the dome's darkness, leaving behind the muffled whispers of huddled students. Her steps, steady yet resolute, carried her away from the safety of the lights and up toward a promontory, a rooftop that overlooked the valley. A time-worn staircase guided her ascent, and soon she stood alone beneath a raging sky.
She had left shortly after Gaël's reckless departure.
She had stopped Hector with a simple, gentle gesture before he could give chase, leaving him to fume in the shadows, already muttering a litany of punishments he'd rain down on Gaël, if the boy returned alive, that is.
Fierce gusts tugged at her cloak, and rain hammered the tiles with a cold, insistent rhythm. Lightning split the heavens, briefly illuminating her pale, solemn face. No one dared question her departure. Within the Academy, her reputation among the second-years carried a quiet authority, an unspoken respect that not even the boldest among them would dare challenge.
Leaning against the stone parapet, she let her gaze drift across the storm-drenched valley. But she didn't see the world the way others did.
"See… not with your eyes, but with the light within you."
The voice of the Seraphide who had once saved her echoed in her mind, like a whisper from a forgotten age. Her blindness should've meant death, had it not been for that divine intervention.
Drawing in a slow, deep breath, she closed her eyelids and opened her soul to the pulse of the Lumen. Her breathing grew slower, deeper. The dormant energy within her stirred, rising in gentle resonance.
A song escaped her lips, quiet at first, like a forgotten prayer. A childhood melody, blurry and fragmented, yet etched in memory as if whispered from a past too distant to touch. She didn't know who had taught it to her. Perhaps a mother's voice, long erased by the years.
Around her, the world began to shift.
When she opened her eyes again, it wasn't the dull grey of a rainy night that greeted her, but a living tapestry of colors invisible to ordinary sight.
The Lumen, that radiant breath pulsing through all things, traced arabesques in the air. The contours of the world redefined themselves. Golden filaments shimmered and wove through reality, linking beings and elements in delicate threads. Where the Lumen was pure, the light glowed in warm hues, shifting between radiant ivory and sun-kissed crimson. But where the Umbra had tainted the world, everything bled into deep purples, sickly grays, and oozing black.
Down in the valley, the full nightmare unfolded.
The clouds above weren't just water and wind, they teemed with shifting shadows, tendrils of darkness writhing like a living tide. And lower still, within the forest's gloom, something moved. A formless mass of blue and violet, crawling beneath the trees, scaling the mountain's winding trails. The Umbra advanced with its horde.
Higher on the slopes, lights flickered.
The Academy's defenders.
Flashes of green, yellow, and red flowed like a river of fire threading down the jagged paths. Living beings, carriers of Lumen, moved toward the confrontation.
But what drew Sélène's gaze, what had drawn her since the day he arrived at the Academy, lay between the two forces.
A breach. A void. A tear in the very fabric of the world, straddling a stain of violet so deep it seemed to swallow all light around it. And it was moving, heading toward a far greater rupture, a void of absolute nothingness.
Her song faltered in her throat.
Another one like him.
A shiver ran down her spine. Not fear, not yet. But alarm. A primal instinct screaming that what she saw was an anomaly, in the world, in her world of color. That this thing, this lightless, formless chasm, was a disruption capable of such destruction that she couldn't even grasp its true scale.
Because now she saw it.
It could grow.
Rain streaked icy trails across her skin, her soaked red hair clinging to her brow. Her shoulders trembled, not from the cold, but from the weight of revelation.
She was the only one who could see it.
The only one who knew that something like this… existed.
_ _ _
The wild ride felt like it lasted an eternity, yet ended far too soon, and brutally so.
Nyx came to an abrupt halt.
Gaël, carried by his own momentum, nearly flew forward. He clung desperately to the creature's neck, his fingers digging into the soaked fur as his legs slipped dangerously along its flanks. It took all his strength to steady himself, gasping for air.
"Next time… warn me," he growled between ragged breaths.
But Nyx didn't answer. His crimson eyes were fixed dead ahead.
Gaël followed his gaze... And the breath caught in his throat.
The forest opened onto a ravaged clearing, torn apart as if a cataclysm had struck. Whole trees lay shattered, uprooted with terrifying ease. The mud, dark and thick, was smeared with sticky blood, from which emerged grotesque and mangled limbs, severed claws, lifeless bodies.
Dozens of them.
Maybe thirty. Maybe more. And despite the rain, despite the distance… the stench was unbearable. Acrid. Metallic. Foul. The reek of scorched flesh and corruption made Gaël's skin crawl. He fought back a wave of nausea, swallowing down the bile burning his throat.
But it wasn't over.
It was only the beginning.
At the heart of the slaughter stood a man.
Or rather, a silhouette that barely resembled one anymore.
Cloaked in darkness, his very body seemed to drink in the dim light, turning him into a living, shifting shadow. Standing tall and unmoving under the downpour, he was a mountain of stillness amidst the brutal chaos. In his hands, he held a colossal sword, terrifying in its sheer size, as long as a man, dark as a shard of night.
Every motion he made was precise, efficient, merciless. No wasted gestures. No excess effort. Each strike was a death sentence delivered with perfect calm.
Before him stood the Altered, hellish creatures born of the darkest nightmares. Towering three times a man's height, these spider-like abominations, with gleaming mandibles and countless eyes brimming with hunger, lunged at him again and again. But before him, they were nothing.
A sudden pivot, a flawless arc. One monster, beheaded.
A swift, unwavering slash. A severed limb. Another corpse.
No screams. No words.
Only the cold, steady song of an unrelenting blade.
Cut. Fall. Die.
Rain mingled with blood. The mud turned into a swamp of viscera. And the man pressed on. Unstoppable.
Gaël couldn't look away. His heart pounded so violently it threatened to tear itself from his chest. His legs trembled beneath him, not from exhaustion, but from a strange, electric mix of raw terror and uncontrollable awe.
"How can anyone be so… powerful? So terrifying?" he wondered, unable to tear his eyes from the scene.
His breath was ragged, uneven. His hands gripped Nyx's wet fur as if it were the only thing anchoring him to the world. Even if he wanted to look away, he couldn't.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Nyx's voice broke the frozen silence.
Gaël jumped, snapped out of his trance. Slowly, he looked down at the black ermine, locking eyes with that crimson gaze, where a disturbing glint of satisfaction shimmered.
"What does it feel like..." Nyx continued, his voice curling into a twisted smile, "to meet a fallen Brother?"
The word pierced Gaël's mind like a blade of ice.
A fallen Brother… Is that even possible? Aren't the Brothers of the Blade supposed to be beyond corruption, beyond the darkness of the Umbra?
His heartbeat grew louder.
The rain kept falling.
The slaughter continued.
And Gaël… didn't know if he should be terrified, or in awe.