The wind had picked up over the eastern centres as three of the strongest n currently on the continent dug quietly through moonlit soil.
Razel Acheon, sharp-eyed and steady-handed, unearthed another orb with practiced care.
Dean Godsthorn, robes rustling softly with every movent, handled the retrieved orbs with his bare hands, setting each one in a conjured containnt field.
And Lord Terrace, scanning with a heightened gaze, pointed toward yet another faint pulse in the ground, about fifteen ters away.
That made eleven so far.
Two more than the dozen Razel had originally marked.
And sothing told all three of them — this wasn’t over.
Godsthorn crouched again, fingertips gently brushing the edge of the newest unearthed orb. The expression on his face shifted from asured caution to sothing colder. "I don’t think we’re done. Not even close."
Sothing bordering alarm.
Lord Terrace noticed imdiately.
"More than we expected?" he asked.
"Far more," Godsthorn said. "They’re nested deeper than I thought."
Razel turned, arms crossed. "You said spatial essence before. What are they actually built for?"
Godsthorn stood, his left hand still glowing faintly with glyph-light. "They’re not bombs. At least not in the destructive sense."
Razel and Lord Terrace exchanged glances.
"Then what?" Razel asked.
Godsthorn looked toward the stars.
"Lockdown."
The word echoed.
"Lockdown?" Lord Terrace repeated.
Godsthorn nodded grimly. "Spatial seal runes. Patterned precisely. If activated, these orbs form a containnt grid. Any person or object within the locked area becos trapped — like insects in amber."
Razel frowned. "Trapped how?"
"No teleportation. No flight. No gate magic. No phasing."
"Not even you?"
"Not even , if I’m inside when it triggers."
Lord Terrace stiffened. "How many more?"
Godsthorn muttered a tracing incantation, a spiral of blue lines expanding around them — then flickered as they crossed into a secondary resonance ring.
He looked up, jaw clenched.
"Around another dozen or les."
They found nine more.
That brought the total to twenty-one.
And every one of them emitted the sa slow, pulsing hum. Quiet. Dormant. But not inactive.
"Soone planned this with terrifying precision," Razel muttered, cradling the last orb in his hand. "The whole layout is a net."
"And we’ve been walking straight into it," Lord Terrace said.
He suddenly stiffened.
Godsthorn noticed imdiately. "What is it?"
The Lord of the Terrace Family didn’t answer at first. His eyes narrowed, his hand slowly drawing from his coat a circular sigil charm used for aura clarity.
He activated it with a whisper.
And his face hardened.
"I can sense alien presence," he said. "Multiple ones."
Razel shifted. "Students?"
"No. Unregistered."
"Disguised?"
"Worse. I think they’re Unmarked."
Godsthorn’s face darkened as he extended both hands, a ripple of mana bursting from his palms. It swept outward like a slow pulse — and then snagged.
There.
And there.
Six unknown essence signatures, hovering at key points near the Academy periter.
But the mont his pulse reached them—
They vanished.
"Shit," Godsthorn muttered. "They weren’t setting the orbs anymore. They were monitoring."
And then ca the voice.
Loud.
Desperate.
From the courtyard above.
"IT’S A TRAP! All of you, stop whatever it is that you’re doing right now."
They all turned just as Elias ca sprinting over the slope, hair wind-blown, eyes wide with urgency.
"Don’t bring them together—!" he shouted. "They want us to gather them! That’s what activates the seal!"
Godsthorn’s eyes widened.
He looked at the orbs in the containnt field he had conjured.
All of them now in one place.
The hum changed pitch.
Too late.
"Back!" the Dean roared.
He grabbed three of the orbs with both hands and flung himself upward with a flash of spatial magic. In a blink, he was gone—teleported straight into the sky.
For a mont, nothing happened.
Then—
BOOM.
A soft, low-frequency shockwave spread out from the courtyard, invisible but heavy.
The air bent.
And then, in a visible ring of distorted space, everything within a one-kiloter radius of the courtyard shimred and froze.
Not literally.
But taphysically.
The boundary sealed shut. And according to what Dean Godsthorn had earlier stated, there would be no leaving until the orbs are destroyed.
Lights inside the academy tower flickered and dimd.
Magic circles failed.
Summon panels shorted.
Teleportation arrays shut down for a mont
The protective do over the main courtyard blinked out of existence, replaced by a soft but nacing pulse of spatial pressure.
Inside the courtyard — Razel, Lord Terrace, Elias, and a dozen others — found themselves in a cage they couldn’t even see.
"...We’re inside it," Razel said, voice level.
Elias stood a few paces away, his chest heaving. "I tried to find you sooner. But they moved ahead of schedule."
"Who are they?" Lord Terrace demanded.
"I don’t know," Elias admitted. "But this whole thing was ant to look like scattered tampering. They knew soone would gather the orbs and study them. That was the trigger condition."
Razel cursed under his breath. "They’re not trying to destroy the academy."
"No," Elias said. "They’re trying to isolate it."
Elias stared at Razel and then at Lord Terrace. "And for whatever their reason is, I don’t think it’s a good one. A lot of people will definitely suffer. Especially if they’re here for blood."
At that mont, Dean Godsthorn reappeared with a thundercrack, dropping from a tear in space like a falling star. He was panting, robes smoking from overexerted glyphs.
He landed in the center of the field, surrounded by the humming orbs — now slightly cracked along their surface.
He looked around slowly.
Then growled, "We’re sealed."
Elias stepped forward. "Can you break it?"
"Honestly? It depends but one thing is certain. I can do it but not quickly."
"Why not?"
Godsthorn held up the cracked orb.
"This isn’t ordinary spatial magic. This is multi-anchor magic. The orbs are linked across space in all directions. So might even be off-site — anchored to places I don’t have access to."
"So what do we do?" Razel asked.
"We find the rest of the orbs and destroy half of them. That’s the failsafe built into the array."
Elias nodded.
"Then I guess we start hunting for orbs."
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