She quickly slipped the lenses on with skill, and with two light taps on the right fra, tiny translucent screens imdiately unfolded before her eyes, suspended in the air, like sheets of floating light. Traces of mana, terrain maps, energy pulses: all the information flowed before her in real ti.
All the contacts she’d ever saved were connected to her network; from a distance, faint flickers and traces could be seen.
Alia frowned, searching through the floating data. She manipulated the screens with elegant finger movents, as if accustod to this kind of intelligence.
"It shouldn’t be difficult... Cyan uses an ancient communication model," she murmured as she filtered the signals.
Older cell phones, although they also had a battery made of magic crystals, had poor security. They didn’t have mana receptors installed in their devices, so anyone with a little knowledge of magical engineering could detect them.
In less than a minute, an alert vibrated in front of Alia: a small icon flashed in a corner of the map. Although its frequency was unstable, it was at least active, flickering like a dying star.
"I’ve got it," she announced, her voice now tinged with urgency.
Alia zood in. A three-dinsional model of the academy erged, showing the signal lost in a forgotten wing, right in one of the oldest pavilions: the Arkan Building. It had once been a prison for supernatural entities but was now sealed.
"It’s there," she pointed, turning the map so we could all see it. Cyan’s cell phone is still active... but it’s emitting intermittent bursts of mana, as if sothing were interfering with it.
"What kind of interference?" Aziel asked, his expression hardening.
"Could it be a barrier, or..." Alia hesitated, her brow furrowing. "Or soone is trying to block the communication..."
The air seed to suddenly turn colder.
***
There was no need to say another word; just the exchange of our urgent glances made us run, without missing a beat, in the direction of the Arkan Building. Sothing, or soone, had taken Cyan from us, and we couldn’t allow it.
The Arkan Building is located in one of the most forgotten areas of the academy, so isolated that, as we advanced, the vegetation beca increasingly thick and wild. The path was a scar between the twisted trees that seed to swallow our steps. It felt like we’d left modern civilization and entered the jungle. Rumors said the academy had abandoned this section more than a century ago, and that since then, the carcass of so animal had been found nearby. Therefore, access had been blocked off to students, and only occasionally did a teacher patrol the area, reporting... more out of routine than real surveillance. Also occasionally, preventing any mischief from the students.
The wind whispered through the dry branches and the dampness that perated the air, carrying the withered scent of rotting leaves and the earth. A low, dense, snaking fog began to rise from the ground, enveloping us in its cold embrace. We walked in silence, aware of our surroundings, our senses heightened, as darkness began to fall.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we didn’t encounter any teachers patrolling our path.
"Wait..." Erwing raised a hand, abruptly stopping us.
"What’s wrong?" I asked, my voice barely an agitated whisper.
Erwing sucked in a breath, his expression grave.
"I sll blood," he murmured.
My heart leapt, and I felt a chill run down my spine. Aziel instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword, his eyes turning gold, glowing with fierce alertness. Erwing’s senses, always sharper than ours, were not mistaken in matters like this, as we had seen abundantly from the incidents we had experienced in last year’s experiential class.
We advanced with extre caution, making our way through gnarled roots and bushes that blocked our view. Every crunch beneath our feet sounded like thunder in the unnatural silence. The darkness began to thicken between the trees, making us feel as if we were walking inside the gaping mouth of a beast.
After a few endless minutes that felt like hours, a flash of unusual color among the foliage caught our attention. There, in a small hollow hidden among bushes and fallen leaves, we spotted a human figure, half-hidden.
Carefully, we approached slowly, holding our breath. The tension was so thick it was almost palpable in the air. Erwing, always the boldest, extended his sword and, with the tip, gently prodded the body.
The figure rolled slowly to our feet, and the pale moonlight, filtering through the branches, revealed his face.
A cold knot ford in my stomach.
It was Naythan, the history teacher’s assistant. His skin had lost its color, and his eyes, wide open, reflected the disbelief that had been frozen in his last mont of life. Terrible, deep wounds were visible on his body, and the still-fresh blood dripped slowly between the leaves, forming small, dark pools that seed to want to swallow him up.
"He’s dead..." Aziel murmured softly, with a gravity that penetrated my bones.
The wind blew again, louder this ti, like a distant wail tangling through the trees. Although it wasn’t the first ti soone had died in front of , it was never pleasant. I felt as if the entire forest was silently watching us, as if we had desecrated a place that should remain hidden.
Suddenly, a creaking sound brought us all back from our thoughts, breaking the preditated silence that had ford. As if driven by the sa instinct, we turned in unison, our nerves still frayed by the corpse we had found.
Erwing gripped the handle of his sword tightly, his knuckles pale in the spectral moonlight. Aziel, always swift, drew his weapon with a precise, silent movent. anwhile, I raised both hands, beginning to channel mana for a spell.
For a few seconds that seed eternal the tension we felt grew to such a point that it was consuming us, but we didn’t give up and we didn’t give up, whatever we were about to face would appear, along with the wind through the leaves the rustling increased.
Then, from among the bushes, a figure erged...
From the bushes, a small figure slithered out, instantly catching our attention. We braced ourselves. We prepared for the worst-case scenario of having to fight before finding Cyan, but as we focused more closely, it thankfully wasn’t a threat.
It was a horned rat, a fairly common monster born near the dungeons. Because it was friendly enough to humans, it wasn’t considered threatening; so even dosticated them as pets. This particular thing was especially plump, its rounded body covered in soft brown fur that made you want to squeeze it. A delicate grayish line ran down its back, fading toward its tail, like a fleeting brushstroke.
His big, bright eyes looked like two drops of crystal water reflecting our silhouettes, looking at us with an innocence mixed between surprise and fear. On the top of its small head protruded two horns curved backwards, barely the size of a finger, of opaque gray tones. And though its na may sound simple or intimidating, the little thing was a little bigger than the palm of my hand.
It stood there, motionless for a few seconds, its cheeks puffed out as if it had been storing fruit or seeds for the winter. Its tiny, nervous paws trembled slightly on the carpet of dry leaves.
For a mont, neither we nor the creature dared to move, caught in a strange spell of mutual surprise.
Finally, it let out a tiny, high-pitched squeal, almost adorable, and hopped clumsily into the bushes, disappearing into the undergrowth with a barely audible sound.
A trembling laugh escaped my lips, barely a whisper in the mist, and I felt the tension in my shoulders ease a little, though the weight of the forest still pressed down on us like a cold slab.
Erwing snorted softly.
"That could have been dangerous," he said.
Aziel nodded silently. His muscles were tense, like cords ready to snap. I slowly lowered my hands, but kept my energy ready, throbbing beneath my skin like a second heart.
The forest seed to have swallowed us whole. With each step, the shadows closed in around us, as if the place itself wanted to distance us from the civilized world. The trees, with their wide, twisted trunks, lood like sleeping giants, their bony branches tangling above our heads, blocking out much of the moonlight. The fog thickened between our legs, becoming an icy blanket that made it difficult to see the ground.
We advanced deeper into that forgotten forest, stepping on a bed of damp leaves that muffled our steps. Every distant rustle, every whisper of the wind, made our hearts beat with renewed strength.
We knew the real danger still lurked sowhere among those trees.
We moved more and more cautiously since we found the assistant professor’s corpse, looking around every couple of seconds, but it was not long before we finally arrived at a huge complex, weathered by the weather and the weeds that grew around it.
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