The Grave-Titan moved with a sluggish, tectonic weight that caused the rusted iron bars of the maintenance cells to rattle in their sockets. The creature was one of immense, crude power, a biological waste disposal unit that depended on its victims being too paralyzed with supernatural fear to offer any kind of resistance.
Aleric stood in the center of the obsidian hallway, his chin tucked deeply into the high, stiff collar of his coat. A new constraint had been added to his ledger. Visual Obfuscation. If he were to reveal the crimson glow of his eyes, he would be violating his long-term audit. He could not afford to be marked as "other" by the faculty of the Academy watching from their scrying mirrors, nor by the witnesses at his back.
Constraint: Stealth required, Aleric calculated. Peripheral awareness reduced by 40%. Compensation: Acoustic tracking and shadow link telemetry.
Because he was fighting with his head lowered, his movements took on a slow, ghostly quality. He did not dance; he drifted. Each step was a measured displacement based on the whistle of the Titan's massive, stitched limbs cutting through the stagnant air. To the students, he appeared to be moving in a trance, a shadow gliding through the path of destruction with a terrifying, muted rhythm.
The Titan raised a massive fist, the mana-veins in its arm pulsating with a hungry, cerulean light.
Impact in 1.4 seconds. Force: Sufficient to pulverize granite. Trajectory: Vertical downward strike.
Aleric did not dodge until the last possible millisecond. He stepped two inches to the left—the absolute minimum distance required for the strike to miss. The Titan's fist slammed into the obsidian floor, sending a spray of stone shards into the air. Aleric didn't even flinch as a sharp fragment grazed his coat.
Behind him, the three students remained huddled on the floor, their minds shattering under the Titan's Aura of Terror. They were crying, their bodies locked in the fetal position as the supernatural frequency of the beast tore at their sanity.
"Help us... please..." one of the girls choked out, her fingers clawing at the stone until her nails cracked.
Aleric did not turn. He did not offer a hand, a word of comfort, or a glimmer of hope. His voice, when it finally cut through the creature's low growl, was as cold and clinical as a scalpel.
"If thou stayest on thy knees, thou art not 'survivors.' Thou art simply organic waste," Aleric said. His tone was not one of anger, but of a merchant explaining a bad debt. "The Titan does not kill quickly. It will peel the mana from thy marrow while thou art still awake to feel the friction. If thou wishest to avoid a death that lasts hours, stand. I require thy signatures to breach the gate. If thou failest to provide them, I shall leave thee here as a distraction while I seek another exit."
It was not a hero's speech. It was a cold, mathematical threat. The students looked at Aleric's back—the silhouette of a man who spoke of their deaths as a mere "variable" in his departure. A new, sharper fear took hold of them—a primal fear of Aleric's indifference that was more immediate than the Titan's aura.
Shaking, their survival instincts finally overcoming the psychic pressure, the three students stood up.
"Prepare thy cores," Aleric commanded, his head still lowered. "Summoning."
Two shadows came out from under his feet—the first two of his six total units. Since these humanoid entities could not change their forms, Aleric used them as twin battering rams. They did not strike the torso; instead, they hammered into the "Stress Fracture" Aleric had identified in the Titan's left knee. The cracking, mana-saturated bone resounded throughout the hall like a falling tree.
The creature let out a vibrating roar, its center of gravity shifting. Aleric flicked two Mana-Balls from his sleeves. Without looking up, he listened for the sound of the Titan's wheezing breath and directed the balls into their mark—the deep chest cavity and right shoulder joint.
"Detonate."
The pulse did not kill the beast, but it "scrambled" its motor functions. The Titan fell to its knees, its Aura of Terror flickering and dying as its concentration shattered.
"Now," Aleric hissed, pointing toward the massive iron door. "The gate. Pour thy mana into the seal. Do it now."
The students scrambled to the iron door, their shaking hands reaching out to place them upon the mana-reactive plate. Aleric stood behind them, his shadow falling across their smaller forms, his own hand reaching out to provide the final pulse of energy to the lock. The iron door groaned, the ancient runes flashing from a warning red to a sanctioned gold.
The gate opened, revealing not another dark tunnel, but a vertical shaft of blinding light. They had found the bypass—the central artery that led directly to the Academy's peak.
Aleric stepped through the threshold first, his eyes still hidden in the darkness of his collar. He did not look back to see if they followed; he simply began the final ascent. They had survived the "Dead Floor," but the Audit was reaching its conclusion at the highest point of the world.