The ground splits first.
A thin line of light snakes across the courtyard tiles, hissing like a fuse. Then the air itself rips open a giant, glowing crack stretching from the fountain to the clocktower.
Screams echo. Books fly. The sky darkens like someone just dimmed the world.
"Everyone, fall back!" Professor Silver-Hair shouts, her voice slicing through the noise. "Contain the breach!"
Rika grabs my arm. "Lenny, MOVE!"
I'm too busy staring at the air tearing apart. The glow deepens, swirling into a jagged hole and from it crawls something.
At first, it looks like smoke. Then the smoke grows claws.
A creature hauls itself out long limbs, black as ink, body covered in shifting cracks of red light. It's like a broken mirror learned how to hate.
Students launch spells fire, lightning, pure energy but the thing absorbs them. The attacks vanish into its cracks like water into sand.
Rika curses. "It's feeding off their magic!"
Then it turns its head.
Right. At. Me.
"You… opened the way…"
Its voice isn't sound it's vibration, static in my skull.
I stumble backward, instinctively focusing and then I see it.
The creature's entire body is webbed with fractures glowing weak points, pulsing faster when it moves.
The cracks.
My vision sharpens.
Time slows.
Every fracture is alive, like the world's whispering where to strike.
"Hey, Rika!" I shout. "The chest biggest crack's right there!"
She glances, eyes widening. "How can you-"
"Later! Just hit it!"
She hurls a firebolt straight into the spot I pointed at. For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the creature screams light bursting from the wound.
It staggers. Weakens. The glowing fissures start spreading across its body like shattered glass.
I don't think. I just run.
I grab a fallen staff (probably someone's midterm project), channel every ounce of adrenaline I have, and slam it right into the largest crack on its chest.
CRUNCH.
Light explodes. The monster collapses, disintegrating into dust and fading sparks.
The courtyard falls silent. Smoke rises. My arms ache, my heart's doing backflips, and half the students are staring at me like I just punched a god.
Rika whistles.
"Okay, Crackseer. That was… actually kind of awesome."
"Yeah," I pant. "Let's never do that again."
Professor Silver-Hair storms over, eyes blazing.
"You could have been killed!"
"Technically," I wheeze, "so could everyone else."
For a second, I think she's about to yell again. But instead, she sighs long and sharp and looks at the spot where the creature vanished.
"The Veil is fracturing faster than we thought," she mutters. Then, to me: "Report to the Headmaster. Immediately."
Rika pats my shoulder as the professor flies off.
"Guess you're the star student now."
"Cool," I say. "Do stars usually explode under pressure, or…?"