Selene's POV
The eastern bluffs were a chaos of wind-scoured rock and whispering grass, far from the roar of the coliseum. Selene moved through it like a shadow, Kaelen a solid, watchful presence at her back. Dorian's infiltration route had been tense but successful—a timed gap in a sewer outflow, a climb up a maintenance ladder, emerging into the wild periphery of the academy grounds.
"He said the ruins," Kaelen murmured, his eyes scanning the jagged silhouette of the broken observatory ahead. "But it's silent."
"He's here," Selene said, not with hope, but with certainty. She could feel it. A resonance in the air, a quiet that was too attentive. The wild magic in her blood tingled. "Be ready."
They approached the main structure cautiously. The grand entrance was a yawning hole of darkness. Selene ignited a witch-light in her palm, a soft purple flame that cast long, dancing shadows.
They had taken three steps inside when the temperature dropped sharply. The air in front of them shimmered, and a wall of jagged, beautiful ice erupted from the floor to the ceiling, blocking the path.
From behind a pillar, Mira stepped into the light, her hands up, ice crystals forming intricate patterns around her fingers. Her expression was cold, alert, and then it shattered into stunned disbelief.
"Selene?!"
"Mira!" Selene extinguished her light, rushing forward as the ice wall dissolved with a wave of Mira's hand. They met in a fierce, brief embrace. "You're free! How?"
"He found us," Fen said, emerging from the deeper shadows, his silver eyes knowing. "Arlan. He's alive."
The words were a physical relief, a loosening of a chain around Selene's heart she hadn't fully acknowledged. "Where is he?"
"Gone to the coliseum. To cause a distraction and fulfill a promise to someone who helped him." Mira quickly explained their rescue and Arlan's orders. "He told us to hold here, to find you if you came."
Kaelen grunted in approval. "Then we hold. This is defensible. But what is his plan?"
"To break the Accord's operation during their moment of triumph," Fen said softly, his gaze turning inward, towards the psychic roar of the Melee. "The void beneath the coliseum… it's stirring. The fighting, the released energies… they are feeding it. Weakening the seals."
"Then we shouldn't be here," Selene said, a new fear gripping her. "We should be there, with him!"
"His orders were clear—" Mira began.
"I don't care about his orders!" Selene's eyes flashed violet. "He doesn't get to charge off to die a hero after making us think he was dead for months! We are a lance!"
"He's different, Selene," Fen said, his voice carrying a psychic weight that stilled her anger. "The pit… it changed him. His mind… it's a lattice of cold fire and sharp edges. He's not the same boy we knew. He's a strategist now. A hunter. And he's laid a trail. We must trust it, or we break his design."
Selene stared at him, the truth in his words settling like stones in her gut. Arlan had always been driven, but now he was operating on another level entirely. A level that involved leaving them behind.
The roar from the coliseum suddenly changed. It wasn't just cheers. It was shouts of confusion, then surges of alarm. A deep, resonant gong sounded, once, twice—the signal for a major event interruption.
"His distraction," Kaelen said, looking towards the distant, towering structure.
Arlan's POV - The Coliseum
He stood on the highest public observation platform, overlooking the Aetherial Gauntlet below. The first event was in its final, chaotic stages. Teams battled over glowing "aether-keystones" while navigating the magical hazards.
His timing had to be perfect. He had to trust Enya would be in position.
He saw the southern barrier generator, a massive crystal pylon humming with energy. Near its base, a service panel.
Now.
A small, concentrated kinetic blast—invisible from this distance—struck the panel. Not enough to destroy it. Enough to overload a regulator.
The southern barrier, a shimmering wall of light containing a zone of lightning-element hazards, flickered violently. Then, with a sound like tearing silk, it collapsed. The contained storm of lightning lanced out, not at the students—safeguards prevented that—but into the other barrier projectors.
A cascade failure, just as planned.
Lights died. Hazards fizzled out. The entire Gauntlet ground to a halt. Alarms blared. The crowd's confused roar turned to concerned shouts.
On the central VIP podium, Arlan saw Head Proctor Iliana Vance stand up, her face a mask of controlled annoyance. She began issuing orders to flustered proctors. Security teams scrambled, heading not towards the arena, but towards the failed machinery, exactly as Enya's intel said they would.
It created a brief, critical gap in the security around the podium itself, and more importantly, around the ancient, ornate seal in the floor directly beneath it—the primary access point to the vaults below.
That was his opening.
As everyone looked at the failed barrier, Arlan stepped off the observation platform.
He didn't fall. He Voidstepped.
A seamless, untraceable transition from the platform to the shadow of a massive statue twenty meters below. Another step took him to the edge of the service trench now swarming with technicians. He moved through them, unseen, a ghost in plain sight.
A third Voidstep brought him to the support struts directly beneath the VIP podium. He could hear the voices above.
"…a minor malfunction. Resume the event in Zone B!" Vance was commanding.
"Proctor, the resonance from the unstable energy…" another voice, worried.
"Is within expected parameters. Proceed."
Expected parameters. She was welcoming the instability. It was helping their unsealing process.
Arlan looked up. Above him was the seal—a ten-meter wide circle of inscribed Adamantine steel, covered by a temporary flooring for the Melee. The inscriptions glowed with a faint, ominous grey light, pulsing in time with the cheering crowd and the sputtering magic of the disrupted event.
This was it. The heart of the Accord's plan.
He didn't need to go down there yet. Not until they had done the hard work of unsealing. But he needed to be ready.
He pressed a hand against the cold metal. He closed his eyes and reached out with his unique senses, the senses of a core anchored by a fragment of the very thing sealed below.
He could feel it. The Sundered Shield Heart-Shard. A massive, slumbering knot of Absolute Negation. And around it, like chains of light, the ancient, failing seals. The chaotic energy from the Melee, now spiked with the backlash from the "malfunction," was washing over those seals, eroding them faster.
And deeper still, he felt other presences. Null-Suits. Technicians with strange, resonator devices. And a familiar, hated signature: Kieran Vance.
They were all below, preparing for the final act.
A thin, cruel smile touched Arlan's lips in the darkness. They were so focused on their prize, on the energy above, they weren't looking for a threat already inside the walls.
He found a service hatch, hidden and forgotten. He pried it open with a whisper of spatial force and slipped inside, into the interstitial darkness between the seal and the structure above.
He would wait here, in the belly of the beast, as the final events of the Grand Melee played out above.
And when the seal broke, and the Accord reached for their god-forged power…
He would be there to break their hands.