The wards were bleeding.
Not shattering, not flaring. Bleeding. Thin pulses of dying red ran along the cracks in the stone like veins under sick skin. The Royal Academy at night wasn't full of candles and quiet pride anymore. It felt like a throat half-cut, trying very hard not to make noise.
Rem walked in it with his jaw clenched and his left hand locked around the grip of the dagger on his back. The blade dragged at his shoulder like a piece of fallen architecture. His breathing was still too loud in his own head. Too slow in his hands.
Evelyn stayed on his right.
It wasn't obvious how she was touching him. Sometimes her palm brushed his wrist. Sometimes her fingertips slid against his sleeve at the inside of his elbow. Once, briefly, she had her fingers at the base of his neck like you'd hold a feral dog to remind it that the leash still existed.
No one said anything about it.
Kade took point, a half-step in front of the Imperial Prince. The last surviving palace guard watched their rear, spear low.
They turned down the inner hall toward the safe room.
The safe room door sat in a deep arch of reinforced stone, sealed in steel runes. It looked like nothing. It wasn't. Behind that door was supposed to be their absolute fallback: impact-proof, warded against both physical and mental intrusion, independent venting. If you locked yourself in and stayed two hours, the Imperial Guard would shatter the wall from the other side and collect you breathing.
Kade pressed his palm to the control sigil.
Nothing moved.
He tried again, this time with his own identification crest, thumb to metal.
The sigil flashed white, then dead.
The door stayed closed.
Kade went completely still.
The Prince's voice was quiet. "Talk."
Kade didn't sugarcoat it. "It's not just locked. The seal's been taken from the inside."
Evelyn's eyes snapped to him. "Impossible."
"It shouldn't be possible," Kade said softly. A vein ticked in his jaw. "Which means someone with authority keyed into the ward system before this started and handed access to whoever just tried to kill you. Someone inside the Academy. Or worse."
Rem frowned. "Worse than that."
Kade didn't answer.
Rem checked his grip on the dagger instead, because that he understood.
His heart was still hammering wrong, hard and deep, like he'd just run for too long under cold rain. His knee throbbed where the bandage cut circulation. His ribs burned where the tape dug every time he breathed.
And under all that, under muscle and bruise and blood, something else had started humming in his bones back in the hall. He could still feel it. A pressure that wasn't pressure, a weight that wasn't a weight. The world around him had felt thin for a moment, like skin over hollow.
It hadn't gone away.
Evelyn's fingers tightened once at his wrist, like she could feel that tension gathering again.
Kade turned away from the sealed safe room with a controlled exhale. "Change of plan. We're not holding. We move and we bleed anything in the way."
The Prince nodded once. "Accepted."
"We're going for live extraction," Kade said. "Your Highness stays center. We put you in the open ground near the east parapet where I can call a flare to the palace wardline. The rest is my problem."
The palace guard's grip tightened on his spear. "Understood."
Rem shifted his shoulders so the dagger settled better. "And me."
Kade didn't bother looking back. "You keep walking. You keep breathing. You don't do anything that makes me have to put you on the floor."
Rem blinked. He almost laughed. "That a threat?"
"It's a warning," Kade said. "If you turn again, Avern, I drop you before anyone else can. I don't want to watch Inquisition boys panic-shoot you next to the heir and write it up as justified self-defense."
Evelyn's head snapped toward him. "He won't turn."
Kade didn't even blink. "That wasn't a request for your opinion, Lady Verran."
Rem didn't flare at that. He didn't have space in his chest to be angry. He just filed it. Kade wasn't playing dramatic. Kade wasn't talking about gods or monsters. Kade was saying out loud, like inventory, that if Rem "looked wrong" in the wrong moment, Rem would die on the spot and the report would already be written.
Evelyn's hand slid higher up his arm.
"Keep walking," she said.
He did.
They cut left through a servants' passage, a narrow artery between lecture halls and faculty quarters. The lamps along the ceiling were out. The only light left came from the dying red that traced broken sigils in the stone, flicker-pulsing like a heartbeat that wanted to stop.
They dropped into an interior stairwell.
The stairwell wasn't pretty. It wasn't meant for students. Bare stone spine, iron rails, no windows. The kind of place you only use if you're moving people who matter and you don't want that seen.
Kade checked the landing below them.
"It's clear," he said. "We take this down and cut out through—"
The wall blew.
Not fire. Not a thunderball. Something tight and ugly locked under the first landing went off with a hard, guttural crack, like the building itself coughing. The floor bucked under Rem's boots.
He didn't fall.
The stone underneath him did.
The steps under Rem and Evelyn dropped out like teeth kicked in. For one stunned heartbeat he was weightless, knee screaming, ribs jolting, world spinning in a roar of powder and dust.
He hit hard.
The shock ripped a grunt out of him. The back of his skull bounced off rock so hard his vision starred black at the edges.
Evelyn slammed down half a second later and skidded into him. She would've hit the floor full-force if he hadn't grabbed her waist on instinct and rolled so her back bounced off his chest instead of the stone.
Dust filled the air. Red-lit. Acrid in the throat.
Above them, Kade swore. "Avern! Verran!"
Rem coughed hard enough to taste iron. "Here."
Evelyn made a low sound in her throat, half-growl, half-pain. She pushed off his chest and staggered to her knees, hair thrown loose from the braid, jacket torn open down one sleeve.
Up the stairs, shadows moved. Fast. Controlled.
"Contact," the palace guard barked, and choked on it. Rem heard the wet sound of breath exiting in a way it shouldn't. Crossbow. Heavy.
The Prince's voice came sharp and cold through the dust. "Stay behind Kade."
Rem heard blades hit. Impacts, clean and meaty. Kade working.
Then he saw his own problem.
Three silhouettes were already in the lower landing with him and Evelyn. They weren't panicking. They weren't yelling. They were already moving in.
They weren't wearing Academy colors. Not guild leathers. Dark navy wraps, high collars, fitted plates under fabric. Short masks over nose and mouth. Pale threadwork at the throat, stylized starburst in silver thread, not gold.
Not thieves.
Doctrine.
They didn't come in shouting orders or chanting prayer.
They came in silent and went straight to killing range.
One went for Evelyn.
Two went for Rem.
Evelyn lifted her hand and snapped it down.
The first man stopped like someone had cut his strings.
He didn't stumble. He just dropped. His legs didn't fire. His arms twitched wrong. His brain had just forgotten, for a moment, how to tell his own body where the floor was.
That was how she fought. Not with fire. With theft.
The other two never broke stride.
The first of them slammed into Rem low and hard, knife driving for his ribs under the tape. No feint, no warning. The blade wasn't meant to win pretty. It was meant to go in, twist up, open.
It went in.
White pain flared through Rem's side. He grunted, teeth baring. The second attacker came in a half-breath behind, blade angled for the inside of Rem's thigh, the tendon above the knee.
Direct. Clinical. Finish the leg. Drop the body. Leave it.
They thought they knew him.
They thought he was just muscle.
Something inside Rem tore.
Sound went away.
Not quiet. Gone. Like someone had closed a door underwater.
The ache in his ribs disappeared. The screaming band of pain across his knee just turned off. The dust in his throat stopped scratching. Even the smell, copper and burned spell residue and stone, thinned to nothing.
The world didn't slow down; it flattened.
The men in front of him weren't men. They were angles. They were directions. They were wrong vectors to be corrected.
His body moved.
Rem didn't have aura. Rem didn't shape force. He just moved like all the weight in his body had suddenly decided it remembered what to do without him.
His left hand closed on the wrist of the knife already in his side.
He squeezed.
Bone cracked under his fingers with a wet snap.
The attacker didn't scream right. His mouth opened and nothing came out, because sound didn't exist here.
Rem twisted the ruined wrist and used the man's entire body like a lever. He pivoted, threw, and brought that body down into the second attacker hard enough to bounce both of them off the stone.
The stairwell shook.
Spider-web cracks raced through the wall.
Evelyn staggered, thrown back a step by the shockwave.
The second attacker tried to push up with his off hand. Rem stepped in and drove his forehead into the man's skull. There was no elegance in it. It was just impact. Sharp and final. The man went slack.
The first attacker, the one whose wrist Rem had folded, was still in reach. He was trying to curl away, breathing in fast, panicked gasps. Rem caught him by the collar, hauled him half off the floor with one hand, and slammed him back down.
Hard.
The stone under the man's head cracked.
Rem did it again.
And again.
Not because the body was moving.
Because the impulse wasn't stop.
It was erase.
The air around Rem tightened. It didn't glow. It constricted. The little red pulses in the broken wardlines nearby flickered and bent like something cold and huge was leaning into the world through a gap the size of his ribs.
Evelyn watched his shoulders. His arms. His face.
He wasn't snarling.
He wasn't laughing.
He wasn't even present in any way she recognized as Rem.
His eyes were wrong. They weren't blazing with rage. Rage is human. This wasn't. They were empty. Clean. Like he was doing math.
Her stomach dropped.
No.
Not again.
She didn't shout his name.
That hadn't worked in the dungeon. That had barely worked tonight.
She went straight at him.
Evelyn hit Rem like a blade, not like a shield. She slammed him back into the staircase wall, forearm braced across his chest, other hand snapping up, fingers hooking hard into the back of his neck.
His body reacted instantly. He turned on her with all that force still loaded. His free hand came up, palm open, ready to crush a throat.
She shoved her forehead against his before he could swing.
"Look at me," she hissed.
It wasn't a request.
Her voice shook from the strain, low and edged. She wasn't yelling. She was cutting her way into him.
"You're here. You're here with me. You are not gone. You hear me? You are not gone."
No response.
Rem's pupils were still flat. Still empty. He didn't blink. His breathing was wrong, too deep, too steady. Not panic. Dissociation.
She forced her own mana outward.
Not as a blast. As a hook.
Evelyn was a spiritualist. Her power wasn't about throwing fire. It was about grip. She latched that grip into him again, like she had in that core chamber with the Effigy, but deeper, harsher, fingers jammed into a door that didn't want to open for anyone.
She pushed.
Her own vision swam. Pain spiked hot behind her eyes. Her nose started bleeding again, fast and thin. She felt the pressure under his skin. It wasn't heat. It was absence, concentrated. Like there was a hole in him that wanted the whole world to fall into it.
Her jaw locked. Her fingers dug into the back of his neck hard enough to bruise.
"You don't belong to that," she snarled under her breath. "You hear me? You don't. You belong here. With me. Right here. In your body. On the floor. Bleeding like an idiot. Stay with me."
Something flickered.
The pressure bucked under her hand like a wild animal twisting in a snare.
Her ears popped. Hot liquid spilled warm down the side of her face, not from her nose this time. From her left ear.
Good. Take it, she thought savagely. Take me. Not him.
"Rem," she said, voice shaking. "Stay mine."
His breath hitched.
Not big. Not dramatic. But real. Human. It stuttered.
Sound slammed back into his head.
The world crashed into his ears: the wet choking gasps of the man on the ground, the hiss of settling stone, Kade shouting from above, metal ringing, the Prince's voice, controlled and cold.
Rem blinked.
His free hand, the one that had almost gone for Evelyn's throat, froze in the air between them.
For a heartbeat they just stared at each other.
Evelyn's face was pale to the lips. Blood ran from her ear and smeared her jaw. Her eyes were wide and furious and scared in a way she let no one else on this campus ever see.
Rem's own vision cleared. The emptiness in his gaze cracked. He could see her again.
"...Nerd?" His voice came out raw. Small. Like his throat had been sanded.
Her shoulders dropped half an inch. Her hand cramped tighter on his neck like she might collapse if she let go. "Yes. Good. Stay like that. Stay with me. Don't make me do that twice, you infuriating idiot."
His pulse was still punching too hard in his veins. His ribs hurt like someone had hammered them from the inside. He swallowed.
"Yeah," he managed.
"Good," she said again, through her teeth. Then quieter, a ragged whisper only he could hear: "Don't you ever do that to me again."
He had no idea what to say to that.
Up the stairs, Kade's voice cut through, sharp. "Avern! Verran! Move!"
Rem pulled in air that tasted like stone dust and old blood. He stepped back from the body under his hand, realizing late that the man wasn't fighting anymore, wasn't even really conscious. Just breathing wet and shallow, eyes rolled white under the half-mask.
He could feel Evelyn shaking.
Not fear for herself. Burnout.
She was still holding onto the back of his neck like he was going to vanish if she let go for a second.
He pried her hand down gently with his own. "I'm here."
"Hnh," she said, which might have meant "Good" or "Shut up" or "I'm going to kill you later."
They climbed.
The stairwell above was wreckage. A section of steps spider-cracked, railing twisted. Blood on the stone, more than one kind. The palace guard lay in a heap near the top landing, a crossbow quarrel buried to the fletching in his chest. He wasn't moving.
The Prince stood just past him, one shoulder against the wall. His lower lip was split. Blood streaked one temple where the skin had opened along his hairline. His eyes were clear.
Kade had one knee on the back of a masked attacker, arm locked, wrist hyperextended at an angle that said don't move unless you want your elbow separated from your life.
For the first time since Rem had met him, Kade looked less like a polite bodyguard and more like what he actually was. There was blood on his hands that wasn't his. His face was calm, but not flat. Cold.
"We're moving now," Kade said. "Fast."
Rem opened his mouth to ask "Where," but Kade was already talking again, this time lower, faster.
"We are out of time," Kade said. "Phase B failed. That means escalation protocol triggers."
Evelyn wiped a streak of blood from under her nose with the back of her wrist. "Escalation protocol?"
Kade's jaw flexed. "They're calling external jurisdiction."
Rem frowned. "What does that even mean?"
The Prince answered instead, voice steady. "It means the Academy is no longer considered capable of handling the incident. It becomes a matter of succession security."
Rem stared at him. "That sounds fancy and not like real words."
"It means," Kade said flat, "they're sending the Inquisition."
Evelyn went still.
Not afraid in the obvious way, but coiled. That tiny, aristocratic stillness she only got when something actually mattered.
Rem scanned her face. "The Church?"
The Prince shook his head once. "Not the robes from parade day."
Kade's mouth went thin. "Not the priests with incense. The other branch."
Rem didn't answer. He didn't know there was an other branch.
Kade looked straight at him. It wasn't hostility. It wasn't contempt. It was the first time he'd bothered to aim full honesty at Rem like he'd aim a blade.
"They're not Academy," Kade said. "They're not Guild. They're not mine. They're Church. They come in when an heir to the Imperial line is attacked or exposed to something unnatural. Their job is to remove the threat so no one has to explain anything to the court."
Evelyn swallowed. "Remove, not arrest."
"Correct," Kade said. "Remove."
Rem let that land.
Kade didn't stop.
"If they walk in and you look like you did a minute ago," Kade said softly, "they'll assume you were with the attackers. They'll put you down before I can say your name. Before His Highness can speak. You won't get a trial. You won't get a question. You will just stop being a problem."
Something ugly and tight twisted under Rem's ribs.
Not fear of dying.
Dying he understood. Dying was normal. Hunters died. Porters died. You bled out. People cried for a day. Maybe two. Then they went back to work.
This wasn't that.
This was erase.
This was "no one even gets to know you existed."
He hated that.
He hated how fast and how hard he hated that.
The Prince straightened away from the wall. Blood trickled down his temple, curved along his jaw. His expression was calm enough to make Rem's skin prickle.
"Then listen," the Prince said quietly. "From this moment on, if anyone asks what happened tonight, this is what happened."
Rem blinked. Evelyn lifted her head.
Kade waited.
The Prince spoke like he was already giving sworn testimony to a panel of men who held knives under their robes.
"Rogue elements infiltrated the Academy with the intent to harm me," he said. "House d'Arclight, in their arrogance, mismanaged the mercenary assets they paid for. Lady Evelyn Verran and I neutralized the threat. Avern was present, frightened, and defended himself when cornered. That is the account. That is the only account. You do not deviate from that account."
Rem stared. "…Frightened?"
The Prince met his eyes. "Yes. That is how you will describe yourself if anyone of rank speaks to you tonight. You were frightened. Understood?"
Rem opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Understood."
"Good," the Prince said softly. He turned his head. "Lady Verran?"
Evelyn's chin lifted despite the blood drying along her jaw. "Understood."
"Kade?"
Kade looked like he'd bitten a live wire. He let out a long, unhappy breath through his nose. "Understood."
"Then we survive the next ten minutes," the Prince said, like it was obvious. "And after that, it's my father's problem."
Rem almost choked. "Your father."
"Yes," the Prince said. "The Emperor."
Kade's mouth twitched like he wanted to correct His Highness on tone and knew better.
Evelyn wiped her mouth with the cuff of her ruined sleeve and drew in a slow, shaky breath. She was pale. She was shaking. She was still standing.
Rem looked at her fingers.
They were still trembling from holding him.
He didn't know what to do with the way that felt.
He didn't get time to think about it.
The air changed.
All at once, the dying red glow in the wardlines along the walls snapped out.
The flicker-pulse guttered.
For one long, cold heartbeat, the hall went black.
Then the wardlines lit again.
Not red, not soft gold like Academy lamps. White. A clean, surgical white that washed the stone and skin and blood in a colorless sheen. Cold. Sanitized. Unforgiving.
Every hair on Rem's arms lifted.
He felt it behind his sternum, a slow, precise chill. Not fear. Recognition. Like the world had just been handed to someone else and that someone else did not intend to share.
Kade exhaled through his teeth. "They're here."
Footsteps echoed down the corridor.
They weren't rushed.
They weren't loud.
They weren't theatrical.
They were measured, heel to stone, like a verdict.
Figures emerged from the far end of the hall through settled dust and cracked plaster. Cloaks in pale grey. High collars. Half-masks over the lower face, worked in matte steel. Symbols stitched at the throat, not bright gold like temple priests wore in festivals, but a cold, restrained silver: an eight-pointed sunburst, stylized, edges knife-sharp.
Inquisitors.
Not faculty. Not guild. Not city watch.
Church.
Four of them fanned ahead, silent, eyes scanning. Their presence pressed on the air more than it pressed on the floor. Rem had seen A-rank hunters before. He'd stood next to Evelyn while she worked. This felt different. This felt authorized.
The lead of that first line, broad shoulders, controlled stance, raised a gauntleted hand.
He took in the scene. The shattered stone. The bodies. The blood. The Prince, upright and breathing. Kade, braced at his side.
Then the Inquisitor's gaze slid to Rem.
It stopped there.
His posture changed in a heartbeat. His free hand shifted toward the weapon at his hip, all smooth instinct like draw-cut-kill. He didn't shout identification. He didn't ask "Name." His whole body said: threat.
Kade moved without thinking.
He stepped between Rem and that line of Inquisitors in a half-guard stance, off-hand open, blade still in his right. It wasn't loud. It was just final. The kind of movement that said, If you reach for him, you reach through me first.
The Inquisitor's eyes flicked to Kade.
He paused.
That pause was the only reason blades didn't immediately come out.
Then a fifth figure walked forward behind the first line.
Slower.
Older.
Not old in the way of weakness. Old in the way of stone: lines carved in the face by work and choice, not by time. His cloak was lined darker at the hem. The silver sun stitched at his throat wasn't flat thread. It shimmered faintly, like something had been braided into it that wasn't just metal.
Authority.
He didn't rush. He didn't posture. He just stepped into the white-lit hall and let the entire space rearrange around his presence.
For one long, cold second no one breathed.
His gaze swept once across the corridor. Over the Prince first, a practiced professional evaluation: alive, bleeding, standing. Over Evelyn next, pausing the barest instant on the streaks of blood at her ear. Interest. Calculation. Over Kade, where his eyes narrowed in a flicker of recognition.
Then his gaze fell on Rem.
It stayed there.
Rem felt it.
He didn't feel watched the way he was used to being watched, like a piece of equipment, like a porter, like muscle. He felt inspected. Measured from inside out.
A cold pressure slid along his chest, right under his collarbones. It wasn't hands. It just felt like a note played against bone. Like someone tapping on something buried inside him and listening for the echo.
Rem hated it instantly.
The Inquisitor's expression didn't change.
But something in his eyes did.
Not fear.
Not disgust.
Something uglier: recognition, followed by disbelief.
When he finally spoke, the voice was low and even and very controlled.
"…Divine resonance," he murmured.
Evelyn went rigid.
Kade's jaw clenched.
The Prince didn't blink.
Rem frowned. "What?"
The senior Inquisitor did not answer him.
He just kept looking.
Like he'd just felt something that he had been trained his entire life to believe no longer existed, and he was deciding, right here in this cracked hallway full of blood and dust, whether that meant the world was lying to him
or he was about to kill the wrong thing.