The Academy at night wasn't silent.
People liked to pretend it was. They liked to say the wards hummed softly and the lamps burned steady and the marble halls of the Royal Academy slept like a cathedral.
Liars.
At night, the Academy breathed like something alive. The stone clicked. The air tasted faintly like scorched mana where old spells had been patched over newer ones. You could hear, if you listened, the soft, almost insect pulse of layered protective arrays under the floor.
Rem heard all of it as he stood just inside the study door, back to the Prince.
He had the black dagger angled over his shoulder, both hands on the grip to keep the weight steady. Knee bandaged tight. Ribs taped. Heart fast, but not wild yet.
The Prince stood behind him, posture loose, expression calm. Like this was an exam and someone else was sweating.
Kade had one palm pressed against the doorframe. He wasn't looking with his eyes. He was listening with his body. Rem had seen hunters do that in dungeons: feel the tension of air shifting before a strike.
The last guard — the one with the short spear, armor matte, stance textbook — stood at the Prince's other side.
No alarm was ringing.
No teachers were sprinting through the halls.
Which meant either nothing was wrong.
Or something was wrong enough that no one wanted anyone to know.
Kade opened his eyes. "Movement," he said quietly. "East stair landing. Three, maybe four. Patterned steps. Not students."
"How close," the Prince asked.
"Too close."
Rem tightened his grip.
He leaned forward a sliver so he could see through the crack Kade had left in the door. The study opened into a short corridor, then into a longer hall lined with tall windows covered by thick blue drapes. Past that hall was the east stair, which dropped down into the inner ring.
He saw shadows slip across stone.
Too smooth.
Too controlled.
Not kids.
Kade glanced at the Prince. "Two-second delay. We shift on my mark. Your Highness stays center."
"I'm not running yet," the Prince said.
Rem glanced back at him, eyebrows up. "Yeah, great. Love that plan."
The Prince's mouth half-twitched like he found that funny.
Past the door, the air pressure changed. Rem couldn't explain it any better than that. The hallway felt heavier, like someone had shut a thick door somewhere far off. The wardlights along the ceiling dimmed, then steadied, but with a faint strobe pulse now, like a heartbeat.
"They're choking the Academy's alarm net locally," Kade muttered. "Smart."
Rem didn't bother asking how he knew. Kade just knew things.
The first intruder slid into view.
Black fabric, matte. No House colors. Face masked in a dull grey plate that hugged the jaw and nose but left the eyes clear. The eyes were flat. Professional. He held his blade reversed and low, not like a duelist, not like a noble show-off. Like someone trained to cut tendons from below, not to fence.
Two more followed him, fanning wide, not talking.
Pros.
Rem felt something slow and cold move down his spine like a hand.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He'd seen posture like that in South Wharf, once, when a private escort detail pulled a minor lord out of a bar brawl. He'd seen posture like that around dungeon VIP clearances. He'd never seen it inside a school.
Kade didn't step back. He slipped forward.
"Now," he said.
The hallway detonated.
The first two assassins lunged. The third hung back and lifted his off-hand, and a pale choke of mana gathered there, crackling like air about to break.
Kade met the first one mid-stride.
He didn't shout. He didn't posture. He slid under the man's blade, turned his wrist like he'd done it a thousand times, and opened the man's throat in a line so clean Rem barely saw it. No spray. Just a soft wet sound and then the assassin's body tried to keep moving without input.
The second one stepped over his falling partner, already adjusting angle.
Kade took his wrist on the way in, snapped it forward, and the hand just stopped working. The blade clattered to the floor.
The guard with the spear moved to intercept the caster in the back, but that caster was fast. He flicked his palm and the air between them shimmered pale-blue, like heat off stone. The spear point hit it and skidded sideways with a scream of metal.
Rem moved.
He didn't wait for orders. He didn't need them.
He pushed into the hall, dragging the dagger with him, boots thudding hard.
The third assassin's head snapped toward him — mask, pale-blue mana crawling up his arm like veins of ice. He leveled his off-hand at Rem's chest.
Rem didn't give him the chance.
He threw.
Not the dagger. The dagger wouldn't throw. It was too heavy. He threw himself.
The world snapped into close-range.
Rem's shoulder hit the caster full-body. The impact punched fire through his taped ribs. He didn't care. He drove forward anyway, took the caster into the wall, and heard something give that wasn't stone.
The caster tried to jam a knife into the inside of Rem's knee.
And there it was. Precision. Not random. The blade went straight for the bandaged joint, right where the wrap was thickest.
Someone had told them exactly where to cut him.
Rem snarled low in his throat and dropped the dagger.
He didn't let go.
He dropped it like you drop an anchor.
He let the full weight of the blade fall straight down. The tip hit the marble floor hard enough to crack it. The sound went through his bones.
The stone under his boots buckled.
The assassin lost his stance. The shift in the floor knocked his balance just enough to ruin the angle of the knee strike. The knife scraped off Rem's thigh instead of severing anything important.
Rem grabbed the man's collar in one fist, lifted, and slammed.
Skull to wall. Loud.
The masked head hit plaster and sunk into it. The body went soft.
Rem let him slide down.
The hallway went quiet for half a breath.
The remaining masked man — the one whose wrist Kade had already snapped — stared at Rem.
Not like he was scared of dying.
Like he'd just seen something that wasn't supposed to be real.
Rem could feel it too, now. In the air.
The pressure.
It sat around him like heat mirage. The way mana-users warped a room when they got serious, except he wasn't channeling anything. He couldn't channel anything. He'd never been able to flare aura or pull mana. Livesey had told him flat to stop trying because it pissed his head and did nothing.
But right now, close like this, Rem felt something bending the air around him.
Like the world was holding its breath.
Like the stone under his boots wanted to move out of his way.
The Prince felt it. Rem saw his eyes flick up, sharp.
Kade felt it too. Kade's gaze slid to Rem for half a second, and something in that look changed from "asset" to "containment problem."
"Move," Kade snapped. "Now. Hallway won't stay quiet."
Rem yanked his dagger back up. The blade ripped a gouge out of the cracked floor as it came free. He hauled it to his shoulder, muscles burning.
The Prince slipped back toward the study, then past, deeper into the east wing's inner corridor. The guard took point with the spear now braced two-handed. Kade fell in at the Prince's flank.
Rem fell into the back position without even thinking about it, turning at every few steps, watching their rear.
He knew that job. He'd done that job in dungeons.
Back guard bleeds first.
Fine.
They moved.
The east wing at night looked different. Less ceremonial, more bone. Bare stone under the fancy facade, narrow support halls that weren't meant for guests. Wards along the walls glowed faintly under the plaster like veins in skin. The whole wing hummed like a throat swallowing.
They turned a corner.
Three more figures waited in the intersect.
They weren't in black like the first set. These wore darker navy, high collars, fitted sleeves, no insignia visible in the weak wardlight — but when they shifted, Rem saw a thread of pale threadwork along each collar. A stylized flare. Like a starburst, simplified.
Not mercenaries.
Not freelancers.
Not some noble's angry cousins.
These moved like doctrine.
The one in the middle lifted a hand.
Kade hissed between his teeth. "Down."
Evelyn was faster.
The air in front of them warped.
It didn't flash. It didn't spark. It didn't roar. It just... bent.
An invisible wall of pressure snapped into existence between the Prince and the incoming trio. The ward-lights along the ceiling guttered like candle flames in wind.
For a heartbeat Rem couldn't breathe.
Then he saw her.
Evelyn rounded the corner from the opposite direction at full stride, uniform jacket unbuttoned, Academy crest glinting at her throat, hair braided high and tight, eyes burning in a way Rem had never seen in class.
Not polite.
Not composed.
Focused like a blade point.
Her hands were bare. She didn't carry a weapon. No staff. No physical focus. Nothing.
Her voice was low, almost calm. "Kneel."
Two of the men in navy armor dropped.
Not because their legs were cut.
Because their minds believed they'd already hit the ground.
They didn't stumble. They just went down hard, like marionette strings cut clean.
The third one — center, higher control, steadier will — snarled and shoved against the pressure Evelyn had cast. His aura flared pale and rigid, like glass under tension. He lunged, aiming past her, not at her. Straight at the Prince.
Rem moved.
But he was a fraction slow. His knee screamed when he pushed. His ribs burned.
Evelyn didn't wait for him.
She stepped in.
Fast. Closer than etiquette. Closer than an heir of a ducal House is ever supposed to get to blood.
She lifted her left palm and drew a circle in the air. No chalk. No glyph. Just will. Spirit-work. The circle formed in front of her hand like thin silver light. She snapped it forward. It wasn't a projectile.
It was a collar.
It slammed around the attacker's throat and locked.
The man's eyes went wide. He clawed at his own neck. His feet left the ground. The circle yanked him back and pinned him to the stone wall like he'd been nailed there.
He didn't choke like someone strangled. He twitched like someone whose own sense of his body was suddenly lying to him, screaming that breathing wasn't a thing anymore.
Rem had seen Evelyn drop minor dungeon beasts clean and fast. He had not seen this.
He stared.
"Nerd," he said without thinking.
"I am aware," Evelyn shot back without looking at him, voice clipped. "Status."
He barked a laugh, breathless. "Knee's pissed. Ribs pissed. Still moving."
Her eyes flicked to him for half a heartbeat.
It wasn't clinical.
It was checking.
You're still you.
Then her gaze snapped to the Prince. "Your Highness."
"I'm uncut," the Prince said. He actually sounded almost bored. "Thanks for joining us, Lady Verran. I wasn't aware you'd been reassigned to my immediate defense detail."
"You weren't." Evelyn's tone was ice-smooth. "I reassigned myself."
The Prince's mouth curved. "Charming."
"Less talking," Kade said sharply. "They're not done."
He was right.
From the far end of the corridor — the deeper end, the direction they'd been moving toward for safety — more shapes appeared. Five. Six. Seven. No scrambling now. No probe. A team.
These were kitted heavier. Short half-masks instead of full plates. Shoulder guards under dark fabric. Gauntlets. Coordinated.
And every single one of them wore that stitched starburst at the throat.
They fanned fast. Controlled. A practiced wedge designed to split a formation and peel the target out.
The Prince went still in a way Rem recognized. Not fear. Calculation.
One of the newcomers, a taller figure with a reinforced collar and a slightly different mask — commander, Rem guessed — lifted two fingers.
"Careful with that one," the commander said. The voice came out filtered and low, metal-soft. Not loud. Calm. Speaking to the rest. Not to Rem. "Do not let the vessel manifest. If he resonates, pull back."
Time hiccupped.
Rem blinked. "What."
Evelyn froze.
Color drained from her face.
The Prince's eyes flicked to Rem fast, sharp.
Kade, for the first time since this started, swore under his breath.
"What's a vessel," Rem asked.
No one answered him.
The commander gave no more warning.
The wedge hit.
It was fast and ugly.
They didn't try to talk. They didn't posture. One went low for the Prince's legs with a binding rope-glow of mana that would have contracted like a trap net. Kade intercepted, blade flashing. Another feinted for Kade's ribs to make the guard turn — coordinated, clean — and a third cut up and high at the Prince's throat.
Rem was already moving.
He didn't think.
He shoved off his aching knee and let his body do what it always did when things went from bad to kill-now.
He planted his dagger.
Not into a body. Into the floor.
The blade hit stone with a boom that Rem felt in his teeth.
The impact blew cracks through the tiles in a long, jagged line.
The wedge lost footing. Three attackers stumbled at the same time, their perfect angles thrown off by shifting ground.
Rem was already inside the first man's space.
He grabbed armor and fabric and whatever his hands could find, hauled, and slammed.
He didn't throw the attacker like in sparring. He didn't aim for a clean joint break like Kade. He used the man like a weapon.
He used a full-grown trained killer like a club and smashed him into his partner. The sound it made was wet and heavy. The second man's breath left his body in a grunt that sounded like something tearing.
Rem let both of them fall and turned because something bright was moving toward his face.
The bright thing was a blade made of condensed mana, narrow and clear like frozen glass.
He ducked on instinct. It sheared off a lock of his hair instead of his eye.
He drove his forehead into the attacker's nose.
Crunch.
Blood sprayed inside the half-mask. The attacker staggered. Rem caught his arm, twisted, and heard the shoulder pop.
Someone screamed a spell word on the right. Evelyn's head snapped toward it. She threw a palm without even forming a full circle this time. The caster stumbled mid-chant and clawed at his own chest like his heart had just skipped wrong.
This wasn't flashy magic.
This was violation.
Rem saw it and felt something crawl down his spine. He had never been scared of Evelyn before. He wasn't scared of her now. But some old part of him — the part that had grown up on docks and in side alleys and knew the sound of bad news — whispered: Don't be on the wrong side of that.
The hallway blew open into chaos.
The Prince didn't cower. He stayed low, behind Kade's hip, moving when Kade moved, not freezing, not panicking, just staying exactly where Kade needed him to be so Kade could kill efficiently without worrying where the heir's throat was.
Kade fought like a surgeon who hated mess. Cut, step, pivot, cut again. Calm. Minimal effort. He opened a thigh artery with two fingers like he was peeling fruit. He palmed someone's jaw and drove a thumb under the hinge point to shut them down with sickening efficiency.
And through it all, Rem was a different kind of violence.
He didn't have aura. He didn't have technique. He didn't have reach training. He had weight and refusal.
He moved like gravity listened to him first.
He planted, ripped, slammed, broke.
Every time one of them tried to get past him toward the Prince, Rem was just there. It shouldn't have been possible. His knee should've slowed him. His ribs should've made him curl. He should've missed steps. He didn't.
He didn't think about pain.
He didn't think about anything.
He just made sure none of them passed him.
One attacker managed it anyway.
Slipped past Kade's blade. Slipped past Rem's arm with a low roll. Came up right in front of the Prince with a short, ugly knife meant for work up close inside ribs.
Too fast.
Too smooth.
Rem turned, heart hammering, and something inside him opened.
For a moment — a single, stuttering heartbeat — the air around him went thick.
Not with light.
With absence.
Like sound itself had been swallowed.
Rem didn't hear Kade shout. He didn't hear the attacker's breath. He didn't hear Evelyn's boots hitting stone.
He moved.
He was not fast.
He was instant.
One step and he was there, hand already around the attacker's forearm, fingers digging in so hard the man's wrist just stopped working. Bone crunched under Rem's grip like cheap wood.
The attacker screamed.
Rem didn't register it as a scream.
He yanked the man back, away from the Prince, and hammered him sideways into the wall. Stone cracked. The man went limp, sliding down in a heap.
Rem stayed there with his palm still clamped around that forearm.
He didn't let go.
The hallway had gone weirdly quiet.
Then he realized why.
People had stopped moving.
Not because the fight was over.
Because of him.
The commander with the filtered voice stared at Rem. For the first time, the calm wasn't fully there. You could hear a thread of real urgency when the figure hissed, "Now. Now. Disengage. Back. Do not trigger resonance. Fall back."
Resonance.
Vessel.
They were talking about him like he was cargo.
Rem's breathing had gone heavy without him noticing. His chest rose and fell. Faster. Harder.
His pulse was wrong.
Too loud in his head.
Too slow in his hands.
Something hot and huge was uncoiling somewhere under his ribs, and it didn't feel like anything he'd ever felt. Not adrenaline. Not fear. Not anger. This was deeper. Blacker. Hollow.
Like a door was cracking open in his bones.
His vision edged dark, not like fainting, but like the world around him was being burned out and the only things left were shapes that needed to be solved.
The man under his hand was still breathing, shallow and panicked.
Rem stared down at him.
He didn't see a person.
He saw a problem.
Remove.
That was the word that bubbled up from somewhere too deep to be his.
Remove.
His fingers tightened.
The attacker made a wet choking sound.
"Rem."
Someone said his name.
Far away. Underwater.
He didn't blink.
He could feel the pressure in the hall spiking, pushing at the walls, crawling up under the ward sigils and making them flicker like candlelight in wind. He felt the floor under his boots start to quiver, like stone trying to remember how to stop being stone.
"Rem."
Again. Sharper. Closer. Cutting.
He didn't look away from the man under his hand. The man's eyes had rolled up white.
His grip kept tightening.
He didn't remember telling it to.
Something cold and shaking grabbed the back of his neck.
It wasn't a strike. It wasn't a choke.
It was a hand.
Small compared to his.
Steady in a way that was barely holding.
His body reacted before his head did. His spine locked.
"Rem. Look at me."
The voice wasn't underwater now.
It was inside his skull.
It wasn't a sound. It was an order that went straight through whatever was waking up and jammed in like a wedge.
"Rem. Stay here. With me. Right here. Not there."
He blinked.
Just once.
Vision snapped.
Color came back like a slap.
Evelyn was in front of him.
Close. Closer than she should've been to someone mid-break. Her palm was on the back of his neck. Her forehead almost touched his. Her eyes were wide open and bright and furious and terrified and locked on his like she'd stitch herself into his pupils if that's what it took.
There was blood running from her nose. She was shaking from the effort of holding that contact. He could feel her spiritual power pressed into him, flooding against something inside him that did not want to be held.
"Stay with me," she whispered, voice raw and shaking. "Stay here. Don't go down. Don't open. Don't you dare open."
Rem sucked in a breath like he'd forgotten how.
Sound crashed back in.
The hallway roared into his ears — boots scraping, someone groaning, Kade cursing low, the Prince saying something quick and clipped into Kade's shoulder, wardlights buzzing like hornets.
Rem looked down.
He had an assassin pinned to the wall by one arm. The man's face was purple around the mask. Rem's own knuckles were white. He was one heartbeat from crushing the joint into paste.
He let go.
The man crumpled to the floor in a heap of breath and spit.
Rem staggered back a half-step, blinking hard, ribs heaving.
Evelyn didn't move her hand from his neck.
Her breathing was shallow. Too fast. She was pale to the lips.
He realized, dimly, that she'd forced her own spiritual pressure straight into him. Again. Like in the dungeon. Like when she'd kicked his dormant core awake and almost killed them both.
He caught her wrist before she could sway. "Nerd," he rasped.
Her eyes flickered. "Shut up."
Somewhere behind her, Kade's voice cut through like a knife. "We're not done. Move."
The Prince's tone followed, cool and precise. "Lady Verran. Avern. With me. We fall back and seal."
Rem tore his eyes from Evelyn's. His heart was still beating too hard. His skin buzzed. His thoughts felt like they'd been chewed.
He could still hear the commander's voice ringing in his head.
Do not let the vessel manifest.
Vessel.
Resonance.
He had no idea what those words meant.
But Evelyn did.
He saw it in her face when she'd gone white.
And Kade did.
He heard it in the way Kade had sworn.
And the Prince did.
He saw it in that quick flash in the Prince's eyes — not fear of Rem. Fear for what Rem meant.
Rem swallowed, mouth dry and metal-tasting. He shifted his grip on the dagger, forcing his hands steady.
The surviving attackers were already pulling back, dragging their wounded with brutal efficiency. Not running in panic. Retreating on command. They vanished down the dark corridor like ink poured into a crack.
Cowards didn't retreat like that.
Soldiers did.
"Phase is broken," Kade muttered. His eyes were still scanning the hall, every angle. "They're regrouping. They'll change pattern. Next hit won't be extraction."
"Meaning," the Prince said quietly, "the next hit is cleanup."
Rem frowned. "Cleanup."
"They failed to take me alive," the Prince said. "Now they make sure I don't talk about it."
Rem bared his teeth.
"Let them come," he said.
Evelyn's hand was still on his neck.
Her voice was quieter now. Hoarse. "Rem, listen to me. You need to hold. You cannot, cannot, lose it in front of them. Do you understand me."
He met her eyes.
For a second — fast, and private, and brutal — he let the fear through. Just enough that she could see it.
"I almost did," he said under his breath.
"I know," she whispered. Her jaw clenched. "I pulled you back. Stay back. Stay mine."
His pulse spiked at that word.
Not the way words usually did.
Not ego.
Anchor.
Stay mine.
Like a tether thrown in the dark.
He nodded once.
Her shoulders dropped half an inch like she'd been holding the entire building up on her spine.
Kade jerked his chin. "We move. Safe room. Now. Before they decide to burn the corridor."
The Prince adjusted his cuffs like he was preparing to walk into dinner instead of whatever was about to happen. "Avern," he said.
"Yeah," Rem said.
"If they try again," the Prince said, "do not be gentle."
Rem lifted the dagger, felt its weight, felt his own heart pounding too loud, too slow.
A line of wardlights down the hall flickered red.
Somewhere deep in the Academy, something started to hiss.
Rem rolled his neck, tasting iron.
"Whoever they are," he muttered, "they picked the wrong night."
They pushed deeper into the wing, toward the sealed chamber.
Behind them, in the cracked hallway that stank of blood and ozone and hot stone, the last conscious attacker pressed a hand to his throat and whispered, voice shaking, into a charm pinned under his collar:
"Target contained. Vessel confirmed. Resonance spike at contact. Prince still alive. Phase A failed. Requesting clearance for Phase B."
No answer came.
The charm stayed dead.
Every wardlight on that level flickered again, dimmed.
Then, all together, they went out.