The Royal Academy of Magic was not a school. It was a monument to insecurity.
Elias stood at the base of the main gate, craning his neck to look up at the hundred-foot walls of white marble. Banners of blue silk snapped in a wind that smelled of noble brats and their useless egos.
Atop the battlements, gargoyles leered down at the students lining up for entry.
"Tacky," Elias muttered.
He hated gargoyles. They served no structural purpose, they clogged the gutters, and they attracted pigeons. And he had a complicated relationship with pigeons.
"It is the fortress of knowledge," Rylus whispered, looking at the walls with awe. "The most secure facility in the Kingdom."
"It is a neo-classical disaster," Elias corrected. "Who puts a flying buttress on a free-standing wall? It supports nothing. It is purely decorative anxiety."
They joined the queue. Ahead of them, students in identical blue robes were pressing crystal badges against a glowing panel on the gate. The panel chimed——and the heavy iron bars retracted for a second to let them through.
It was a Mana Cipher. A magical barcode scanner.
"We do not have badges," Rylus noted, his hand drifting to his sword. "Do we fight?"
"We do not fight children," Elias said. "We are visitors. I have... admin privileges."
He stepped up to the panel. A student behind him—a girl with pink hair and a wand that sparked nervously—gaped at his grey robes.
"Excuse me," Elias said to the gate.
He placed his hand on the scanner.
He didn't have a badge. But he had the original source code of the Academy's wards etched into his memory. He remembered when Master Arion had installed the first wardstone in 960. He remembered the password.
'That old man Arion had a big ego.'
Elias pushed his mana into the stone. He intended to just open the door. A simple command.
But he forgot that he wasn't just a User anymore. He was the Root Directory.
"[System Override]," Elias whispered.
He didn't just unlock the gate. He reset the security protocol.
To the year 998.
KLANG.
The gentle blue light of the barrier turned a violent, angry red. The iron bars didn't retract; they slammed down with enough force to crack the pavement.
Sirens began to wail. Not mechanical sirens, but magical ones—screaming phantom voices that echoed from the gargoyles.
And then, a voice boomed across the entire campus.
It wasn't a mechanical voice. It was Elias’s voice. Recorded three hundred years ago.
"ACADEMY LOCKDOWN INITIATED."
The voice was younger. Arrogant. Loud.
"THREAT LEVEL: MIDNIGHT. VOID INCURSION DETECTED. ALL STUDENTS RETURN TO DORMS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
Panic erupted.
Students screamed. The pink-haired girl dropped her wand and ran. The guards on the walls drew their weapons, looking frantically at the sky for void monsters.
The gate slammed shut, sealing the Academy.
Except for a small, man-sized door in the center, which clicked open with a polite .
Elias stood in the chaos, blinking.
"Did you..." Rylus shouted over the sirens. "Did you just lock the school?"
"I instituted a curfew," Elias said, adjusting his hood to hide his face. "It is for their safety. The Third Era was very dangerous."
He stepped through the small door. Rylus scrambled after him, and the door locked instantly behind them.
The courtyard was empty. Tumbleweeds of discarded homework blew across the cobblestones. The "Lockdown" had worked perfectly; the students were hiding under their beds.
"Where are we going?" Rylus asked, his voice echoing in the silence.
"The Vault," Elias said. "But first... the Hall."
He led them toward the main building. He knew the layout. Or he thought he did. They had added a fountain in the middle of the path that depicted a wizard wrestling a fish. Elias decided not to inspect it.
They entered the Hall of History
It was a long, vaulted corridor lined with statues. The floor was polished marble. The air smelled of lemon wax and lies.
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Elias walked past the statues of the Headmasters. He saw (a fool), (a bureaucrat), and then...
He stopped.
In the center of the hall, bathed in a spotlight of permanent magical luminance, stood a statue of white marble.
It depicted a man in flowing robes. He was tall, handsome, with a jawline that could cut glass. He held a sword aloft in one hand and a book in the other. He looked heroic. He looked like a god.
The plaque read: SAINT ARIONTHE SHIELD OF THE WORLDSAVIOR OF THE DAWN
Elias stared at it.
"He hated swords," Elias whispered. "He said they were heavy and unbalanced. He used a walking stick."
"It is a metaphor," Rylus suggested gently. "The Sword of Knowledge?"
"It is a lie," Elias said. "And they got his nose wrong. It was crooked. He broke it walking into a door."
He looked at the face of his mentor. The stone eyes stared blindly at the horizon. They looked nothing like Arion. Arion had tired eyes. Laughing eyes. Eyes that had looked at Elias, terrified, as he closed the Athenaeum doors.
Elias felt a lump in his throat. It tasted like ash.
He walked past Arion.
In the back corner of the hall, in the shadows, there was another statue.
It was made of black stone. Rough. Jagged.
It depicted a hunched, gnarled figure. The robes were tattered. The face was twisted in a rictus of greed and madness. The figure was clutching a human skull to its chest, screaming at the sky.
The plaque read: THE HOARDERTHE BETRAYER OF KNOWLEDGEMAY HE ROT IN SILENCE
Elias stood before his own effigy.
He looked at the skull. He looked at the hunch.
"I never held a skull," Elias noted. "That is unsanitary."
"It makes you look... formidable," Rylus offered. "Scary. Like a raid boss."
"It makes me look like I have poor posture," Elias snapped. "And I am not screaming. I am clearly asking for quiet. Look at the mouth shape. That is a 'Shhh', not a 'Reeee'."
He reached out. He touched the stone foot of the monster they had made him.
The stone was cold.
They didn't just forget him. They hated him. He had saved the books. He had saved the knowledge. And they made him a villain because he didn't die fast enough.
"Let's go," Elias said, pulling his hand back.
They walked deeper into the hall. At the far end, guarding the entrance to the Administration Wing, hung a massive oil painting.
It was a moving portrait. Enchanted paint. A loop of the past.
It showed an office. A desk covered in scrolls. And sitting behind it, writing with a quill, was Headmaster Arion
In the loop, Arion would look up, smile, wave to the students, and then go back to writing. It was a recording. A greeting.
Elias stopped.
The portrait Arion looked up. He smiled. He waved.
Then, he stopped.
The loop broke.
The painted Arion narrowed his eyes. He leaned forward, peering out of the frame. The enchantment scanned the mana signature in the room.
It recognized the Admin.
The painted Arion didn't wave. He sighed. He put down his quill.
"You're late, Elias," the painting said.
The voice was tinny, distorted by three centuries of magic degradation. But it was him.
Elias froze. His hand trembled on his staff.
"I..." Elias choked. "I was... sleeping."
"Typical," the painting said. It shook its head fondly. "I assume the tea is cold?"
"It turned into a tree," Elias whispered.
"Hah," the painting chuckled. "Well. You're here now. The key is in the box. Don't break anything."
The painting winked. Then it froze. The loop reset.
Arion looked up. Smiled. Waved.
Elias stood there. The silence of the hall pressed against his ears.
It was just an echo. A pre-programmed response Arion had left, buried in the code, waiting for a mana signature that shouldn't exist anymore. It wasn't him. It was just a ghost in the machine.
But it sounded like home.
Rylus stepped closer. He didn't ask. He didn't say anything. He just stood between Elias and the rest of the world, his hand on his sword, guarding the Librarian while he stared at a picture of a dead man.
"Sir," Rylus said softly, after a long minute. "We should move. The guards will be coming."
Elias took a breath. He nodded.
"Yes," Elias said. "We have a box to find."
The Vault Door was a circular slab of steel ten feet thick. It was guarded by a man in red robes.
He was tall, bearded, and held a staff that glowed with angry orange light.
Entity:Class:Level:Threat:
It was the man from the crystal ball. The one who wanted to hunt the Heretic.
Kaelen saw them. His eyes widened. He saw the pale skin. The void-black staff. The drone hovering at Elias’s shoulder.
"The Heretic!" Kaelen roared. "You dare defile the Hall of Heroes? You dare stand before the Saint?"
He raised his staff.
"[Mana Chains]!"
Ropes of glowing orange light erupted from the floor. They whipped toward Elias, seeking to bind him, to burn him, to drag him down.
It was a Tier-4 spell. Advanced. Dangerous.
Elias didn't raise a shield. He was tired. He was sad. He didn't want to fight.
He pointed his finger at Kaelen.
"[Suspend]," Elias said.
He intended to pause the spell. To freeze the chains in mid-air.
But he was looking at Kaelen. And he was thinking about how small the man looked next to Arion’s portrait.
The spell missed the chains. It hit the Inquisitor.
It didn't freeze him in time. It froze him in Gravity
Kaelen’s personal gravity field turned off.
The Inquisitor shrieked as his feet left the floor. He floated upward, drifting gently toward the vaulted ceiling like a red balloon. He flailed, trying to grab the air, but there was nothing to hold.
"Put me down!" Kaelen screamed, spinning slowly in the air twenty feet up. "This is dark magic! This is heresy!"
"It is physics," Elias muttered.
He walked past the floating, screaming man. He walked to the vault door.
He placed his hand on the metal.
"Password," a mechanical voice requested.
"ArionIsTheBestWizard," Elias said, his voice cracking slightly.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The vault groaned. Gears turned. The massive door swung open.
The vault was filled with gold. Piles of it. Jewels, artifacts, enchanted swords. The wealth of a kingdom.
Elias walked past it all. He didn't care about the gold.
He went to the back shelf. To the "Overflow" section.
There, sitting under a layer of dust, was a simple wooden crate.
PROPERTY OF E. VANE. DO NOT TOUCH.
Elias opened it.
Inside, nestled in straw, was a porcelain tea set. Hand-painted. Blue floral pattern.
Next to it was a vacuum-sealed glass jar containing dried leaves. . Real tea. Petrified, perhaps, but salvageable.
And on top of the jar was a letter.
It was sealed with red wax. The sigil of the Grand Archmage.
Elias picked up the letter. His fingers brushed the wax.
"He knew," Elias whispered. "He knew I would come back."
He put the letter in his inventory. He picked up the tea jar.
"Rylus," Elias said. "We are leaving."
"The gold, Sir?" Rylus asked, eyeing a pile of ruby necklaces.
"Leave it, even if we take it. They are worthless in this ERA anyway." Elias said. "We have what we came for."
They walked out of the vault, past the floating Inquisitor who was still screaming threats from the ceiling.
Elias didn't look back at the portrait. He couldn't.
He walked out into the night, clutching a jar of dead leaves like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
He had come to break a bank. Instead, he found a ghost in a box.
And for the first time in three hundred years, Elias Vane felt something other than annoyance.
He felt lonely.
Status UpdateMana Consumed:Current Mood:Rylus Loyalty:
+12 (Witnessed the statue insult) Reputation:Inventory:
