Kael slid into the solid stone an instant before the lightning strike detonated above him.
The blast tore across the courtyard with a violent, splitting crack. The shockwave tried to cleave the earth, but the massive resistance of the element absorbed the worst of the force, rolling over the ground and dissipating harmlessly before it reached Kael's position.
And then Kael saw where his instincts had drawn him.
Blind darkness pressed in from every direction. He could see nothing. He was sealed in a tomb of his own panicked making. Stone parted like chilled toffee, then snapped shut behind him with a soft, wet clop—the sound of a mouth closing. The suffocating terror that seized him was not merely a lack of air; it was as if the entire world was closing around him. Crushing, absolute suffocation.
A human body is not meant to be inside solid stone. The very moment Kael sank beneath the surface, a primal instinct screamed. His lungs seized. His heart hammered, a frantic, trapped thing. He reflexively tried to push against the cold, unyielding pressure, only to find his arms pinned.
The cold, dense panic became absolute.
His ribs could not expand. There was no air. No light. No sense of up or down. Only the horrific pressure of a grave that had swallowed him alive. The darkness tasted of rusted coffin nails and the sour breath of the earth serpent's corpse he'd hidden thirty feet below.
He was buried.
For a moment, Kael felt the certainty of death. This was it. This was how his short life was supposed to end. For just a moment, he felt himself unravel. His breath stuttered, a desperate, useless gasp that found no air to pull. Panic clawed at him, sharp and feral, a far more crippling sensation than facing any monstrous beast.
Why had he chosen this? A deep, buried trauma—the inability to move, to fight, to free himself—surfaced. The predator inside him thrashed, then felt hollow, shamed by this weakness.
The Compendium took over the instant Kael considered giving up. It stripped away the fear and panic, replacing it with cold, analytical clarity.
[Compendium Alert: Host panic response detected. Physical suffocation is impossible under the current phasing state.]
Impossible?
Kael tried to swallow, but his throat was locked.
[Explanation: Phasing rune has created a microlayer of spatial dilation. Host is not inside solid stone. Host is suspended between layers of it. Air requirement is nullified if host infuses the lungs with Mana.]
The Compendium's calm, analytical tone cut through the residual terror like a razor.
His lungs. In his panic, he had completely forgotten that he had opened his mana gate. His need for atmospheric air was technically non-existent. He focused, drawing raw Arcane Mana and infusing his lungs, intending to breathe as if in an open, grassy field.
He did not stop there. He channelled Phasing Earth Mana into his eyes. The suffocating blackness fractured. He could see different textures around him. It was by no metric a normal vision, but it was better than the cloying darkness he had been seeing. He perceived the world as shifting gradients of packed stone, hollow air pockets, and the shimmering, echo layers of subterranean mana veins. It was a crude, newborn version of the earth serpent's tremor sense.
Kael was just mastering the edge of his panic when he remembered Lyon was waiting for him on the surface. He wanted to fight the man, desperately, but he knew he was too weak to even put up a struggle. One day, he promised himself, I will do to Lyon what I did to that serpent. Lyon would be bound, powerless, and dependent entirely on Kael's mercy.
The temporal rune inscribed in his mindscape was fraying fast. He only had moments. He emerged from the earth.
_____________________________________________________________________________
"The creature is finally out of its hole."
Lyon's voice was smooth, carrying no hint of rush. He looked at Kael with a strange glimmer in his eyes, an interesting curiosity he had never witnessed before.
"Tell me, creature, how did you do what no magus before you have been able to do?"
What did he witness? Kael panicked internally. So far, Lyon had only shown him contempt. This new expression—amusement, worth discovering—scared Kael more than simple malice.
Kael pushed his heartbeat down. Lyon moved towards him, his tone leaving no room for refusal.
"How can you phase between earth? Rank Four mages cannot do something so marvellous. I have seen flight, and minor teleportation if their Aspect allows it, but never in my life have I witnessed this method of traversing. If the military could learn this, we could easily spy without anyone being the wiser."
He looked pleased. That was far worse than his anger.
"Tell me, student, how did you do that, and don't skip any details, or you will regret it. You do not want me to be angry, do you?"
Kael kept his back slightly hunched, shoulders turned inward, the perfect image of the frightened student Lyon preferred. "No, Master Lyon. I would not dare." He hated this meekness, but for survival, he would do anything.
Lyon stepped closer, boots grinding against the courtyard tiles. His gaze swept over Kael with a mix of malice and predatory shine. "Describe how you discovered the method for traversing earth, and do not skimp on any details."
Kael nodded. "I was in the library, where I discovered a rune—"
A hard smack across his cheek sent Kael sprawling onto the earth. His face was red with pain and shame, and he was heaving lightly.
"I told you not to lie to me," Lyon's voice cut through the air. "It seems my previous lesson was not enough."
Lightning travelled from Lyon's hand and slammed into Kael's body. Kael shivered violently, his muscles seizing. The Devourer inside him coiled so tightly that a single visible mana vein in his wrist pulsed a moment of cold black. He throttled the impulse back with a flood of Arcane Mana.
The shock continued for several minutes. Lyon never cast the lightning intensely enough to cause permanent injury, but the pain was severe and debilitating.
"I hope the lesson is absorbed. Please, start again." Lyon spoke in a pleasant tone, as if conducting a normal class.
Kael dragged himself up, his mind racing, the residual electricity still coursing through his limbs. He infused Arcane Mana internally, commanding it to begin the slow process of cellular healing.
"My Aspect let me see magical runes," Kael began again. "Magus Valia showed me an artifact that had the function of phasing, so I copied the rune from there with my Aspect's help."
Lyon nodded. This was a much more feasible explanation for him.
Kael continued, "As I have Earth Mana available, I infused the mana into the rune, and it allowed me to phase."
Lyon nodded again, a visible glee in his voice as he commanded Kael to teach him.
"I can draw the rune for you," Kael said in a subservient tone.
Lyon once again grabbed Kael and hit him hard on the opposite cheek. This time, a sliver of Wind Mana accompanied the blow, not to inflict more pain, but to shred the concentration Kael had established for his internal healing.
"See how you fail the moment you forget your place, orphan?" Lyon asked, a sneer of classist contempt replacing his amusement. "When you address me, you must use my moniker of Master."
Tears streamed down Kael's face from the new, blossoming pain. He struggled to control his emotions but failed to fully mask them. "I am sorry, Master Lyon. It will not happen again."
"Your kind always do this," Lyon said in a tone that was borderline sarcastic. "Why must you make mistakes, as if you enjoy getting hurt? Now, where were we? You need to teach me how to phase properly. Use your Aspect and teach me."
"Master, you need access to Earth Mana," Kael replied hesitantly, fearing another slap for perceived insolence.
Lyon replied in an even tone, "Do you think I do not have access to Earth Mana? I am a magus, and we have our ways." He took a wand out of his spatial tool and waved for Kael to start.
Compendium, can the rune be used with normal Earth Mana?
[Query Received: Normal Earth Mana can be used, but the ratio of Mana required will be very high, making the rune highly inefficient.]
Can you calibrate the rune for normal Earth Mana and make it efficient?
[Response: Any rune can be calibrated for any mana type. Required CP for normal Earth Mana attunement – 50 CP. Balance insufficient.]
Kael had no intention of making the rune highly optimized for Lyon, so he would have to teach him the inefficient version. Kael extracted a stone slab by using Earth Mana and began inscribing the rune on it, preparing to instruct Lyon.
He heard Lyon murmur, "Curiouser and curiouser."
Kael understood his mistake immediately: he was showing Lyon tricks the man had never seen before.
Lyon snatched the stone slab the moment Kael was finished. He watched as Lyon started channelling mana through the wand he held. He was not infusing the slab like the rudimentary methods taught in the library. Kael watched the process with fascination as Lyon started the infusion from the centre, concentrating his mana and slowly letting the energy travel naturally throughout the stone. Lyon was ignorant that Kael could see the whole process; he was using a secret family infusion method to create magical objects.
Kael pretended to be ignorant. They teach us dregs while keeping innovative methods to themselves.
The mana continued to infuse the entire slab. When it reached the inscribed rune, the stone turned the same color as the earth serpent's hide. Then, Lyon moved the slab into the courtyard stone, and it vanished. Before it could merge fully, he pulled it back. His eyes shone brightly.
Lyon then ignored Kael, drawing the rune in the air with the Earth Mana supplied by the wand. He let the rune merge with his body. He moved his hand toward the earth, and it sank smoothly, but before he could continue, the wand broke from overchanneling mana through it.
For the first time, Kael saw a flicker of panic on Lyon's face. He hesitated, a flash of ancestral memory crossing his features—his own master's knuckles perhaps—before Wind Mana erupted around his hand, and the earth fractured, leaving his hand intact.
Lyon glared at Kael with savage, accusatory fury. "Why does it require so much mana? You can easily move your whole body through the earth, and I can hardly move one hand. Why is that?"
"I truly do not know, Master," Kael said, maintaining his frightened persona. "It was the first time I dove into the earth, and it was by pure instinct, but my mana depleted so fast, I emerged immediately."
Lyon huffed, his rage deflating slightly as he looked at Kael's trembling body. He seemed to remember his original purpose.
"You better be telling me the truth, student, or otherwise, you will not like the consequences."
Lyon exhaled, slow and controlled, but Kael still saw it: that glimmer of discovery in his eyes. The sharp, greedy light of someone who had found something extraordinary.
Lyon turned fully toward him, his tone snapping back into strict authority.
"Why were you out here, Kael?"
Kael answered too quickly on purpose.
"Master, I… I was crafting stone beetles. The ones from Minor Runology. There's plenty of stone here, so I thought I could work in peace."
Lyon clicked his tongue, shaking his head with theatrical disappointment.
"Tch, tch. We are mages, not wild barbarians crafting trinkets in abandoned courtyards." His gaze sharpened. "You have access to fully equipped workshops. Enchanted tools. Supervised stations. And you chose this?"
Kael kept his head down, expression small. "I did not want to disturb anyone, Master."
"Disturb?" Lyon barked a humourless laugh. "You moved beyond the radius of Kellen's Divination Aspect. He lost track of you. Do you understand what that means?"
Kael swallowed. "Master… I—"
"Kellen thought you might be in danger," Lyon cut in. "Or worse, running."
His lips curled. "But he does not know what I know. He does not know you are mine."
A cold ripple slid down Kael's spine.
Lyon stepped closer, voice dropping.
"You would not run from your master, would you, creature?"
Kael lowered himself instinctively, voice barely above a whisper.
"No, Master Lyon. I would not dare."
Lyon scoffed, amused by Kael's submission, his favourite kind of entertainment.
"You look good when you remember your place," he said, satisfaction dripping from every word. "This is your last warning, Kael. You do not leave the Academy's radius without escort. Ever."
Kael nodded, keeping the tremble in his hands visible.
Lyon waved for him to follow.
"Now come. We will meet Kellen and ease his worries. He's far too soft on you."
Kael fell in step behind him, head bowed.
Outwardly obedient.
Inwardly calculating.
The earth behind them held a buried serpent body, a hoard of harvested stone cores, and the first real secret power Kael had claimed for himself.
And Lyon had no idea.
The walk back to the Academy was not long.
But under Lyon's presence, it felt endless.
He did not rush. He stalked forward with the casual stride of someone who believed the ground itself deferred to him. Every few steps he glanced back, just enough to confirm Kael was following a half pace behind, never beside him.
Always beneath him.
Kael kept his posture small, controlled. Shoulders rounded. Hands clasped. The perfect image of a student who knew exactly where power stood and where he did not.
Lyon enjoyed it.
Kael could feel it radiating off him like a smug aura.
"You know," Lyon said lightly, as if discussing the weather, "Kellen for all his boasts that he does not want to show you favours so no one suspects what your aspect is, panicked so easily to send me search for you just because he lost your view." He scoffed. "Imagine that. He contradicts himself like a hypocrite."
Kael offered a meek sound of apology. "I did not know that Kellen had a limit for his aspect otherwise I would have never crossed the limit of his aspect."
"Mm." Lyon flicked a crumb of dust from his robe, not bothering to look back. "Intentions mean little when results embarrass your betters."
Kael lowered his gaze further; Lyon did not see the cold light gathering behind his eyes.
Inside Kael's mind, the Devourer stirred, slow, deliberate, hateful.
Let me rip his spine from his back. Let me peel the lightning from his veins. Let me show him what prey tastes like—
Kael drew a small breath and smothered the voice.
Not now. Not here. Not yet.
Lyon's voice cut through the moment.
"You really should be more careful, Kael. You are gathering secrets like a widow gathers sorrow."
Kael stiffened slightly. "I do not understand, Master?"
"Of course." Lyon's tone was almost cheerful. "You think that you are just experimenting being hidden and no one is noticing you but people see more than you know. You are being watched, boy, and Kellen is not the only one doing that."
They were reaching the room Kael agreed to meet Lilian every week. Lyon stopped and whispered while leaning in, his gaze fixed on Kael's eyes with predatory focus. He was still flexing the damaged muscles in his hand from where the wand had broken.
"You belong to me, and I belong to the military, and that is the master we will serve in the end," Lyon commanded, the edge of his voice activating the soul binding. "We must protect our kingdom better. Learn the method of Biomancy to improve the bodies of the soldiers and break the monopoly that bitch has created."
Kael twisted his face as if in pain as the tracker in him pulsed, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. "Yes, Master."
"We asked her very politely to help us, but she does not want to help the military. She was the lesson that we learned and applied on you. To bind the talent before it spreads its wings and forgets the needs of the country."
So, they wanted to bind Lilian to the service of military too but failed somehow.
"Yes, Master, I will relay whatever I learn."
And use it to make your suffering last as long as possible and when I am done you will be calling me master.