The next day came. After the first set of classes had finished, Zeke decided to spend his free period alone, reading in his homeroom. He took the seat by the window overlooking the courtyard—a broad, round ring of dug-up dirt like a giant donut, the makeshift track circling a sparse exercise yard. At the center of the track stood a cluster of bars for pull-ups and dips, staggered at different heights like a steel thicket.

A handful of students lingered near him—some girls, some boys—speaking in low voices, their laughter trimmed short by the quiet. In the corner, Fredric lay sprawled across the teacher's desk, staring up at the ceiling as if counting the panels. Pages turned under Zeke's fingers, but after a while his focus frayed and the window tugged his gaze outward. Harsh gray clouds were gathering, brewing above the academy's rooftops in slow, bruised swells.

"It'll rain," he remarked, peering at the sky.

Ian walked the halls toward them. His complexion had gone pale and lifeless, eyes bloodshot with heavy violet bags beneath. Students who passed him felt something wrong in their bones—an animal instinct—and kept moving. No one dared to approach.

"I have to do this," Ian murmured, pacing toward his homeroom door. "I need to do this," he clenched. "This is how everything's meant to be." He stopped at the open threshold, breath shallow, fingers trembling.

He brought his hands together, palms pressed with careful grace. Eyes closed, he pictured the life he believed was owed to him: success, a proud family, a future that fit. Then he pictured Zeke standing where that future should be. His expression twisted—enraged, volatile, a fault line opening beneath restraint.

A small spark bloomed between his palms. He spread his hands and fed it air. It grew into a round, churning bead of flame. The air around his wrists revolved in a tight spiral, a three-dimensional whirlpool that compacted fire to a quarter-inch disc of seething light. Students nearby paused mid-sentence, mid-step, watching without comprehension as the heat wavered against Ian's cheeks.

The sphere swelled and shivered in his grip. Tendons stood out; veins corded across his forearms; sweat slicked his brow.

"This is for everything!" Ian shouted.

"Unauthorized, demonic energy detected, the use of magic is prohibited, cease the illegal activity or you will be prosecuted," Ordinus said through the classroom speakers.

Panic detonated. Chairs scraped. Backpacks swung. The watchers scattered for the hall, voices tangling into a sharp, frightened braid.

"It's all your own fault!" Ian screamed. "Fireball," he whispered.

The compressed sphere spun like a bullet and launched. It hit Zeke—

—light, heat, and pressure bloomed in a single savage instant. The window exploded; a section of wall disintegrated; shards rained out over the courtyard in a glittering cataract. The room inhaled dust and exhaled screams. Students stampeded through the door, shoving past Ian as he walked in, unblinking, letting them brush his shoulders like ghosts.

Fredric stepped into the hall, then back to the threshold, and looked down at the floor where Zeke lay—badly injured, smoke curling from torn cloth, glass sparkling like salt around him.

"This was your idea," he sighed, pressing a recessed button on the jamb.

Metal roared. Curtains slammed down from the ceiling, sealing the classroom from the corridor in a grid of armored shutters. The final panel locked with a hydraulic clack. The hall went quiet.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Inside, the dust hung and turned in the dim, and two silhouettes remained—one rising, one waiting—while the storm outside finally broke against the glass like a slow, deliberate drum.

Zeke pushed himself upright, palm clamped over his bleeding shoulder. His uniform hung in ribbons, dress shirt scorched to rags; only his pants, stubbornly intact, clung to their dignity. He straightened, tore the charred fabric free, and the ruined cotton peeled away to reveal an armored tank top hidden beneath—black, scuffed, spiderwebbed with heat-warped seams. Smoke drifted through the blasted window frame; glass crackled underfoot like thin ice.

"That hurt," Zeke remarked.

Ian moved instantly, hurling three tight fireballs in succession. They hammered Zeke's chest and shoulder in red blooms—impact thuds, wash of heat, hiss of scorched dust.

"I would have died back there, had I not used magic," Zeke smiled.

"Bullshit! You can't use magic," Ian scoffed. "You're just a worthless Dullahan. "He retorted."

"That may be so," Zeke smirked. "But who said Dullahan contractors are unable to use magic? We are in essence alchemists," he explained.

Zeke surged forward. On the way he snagged a toppled desk, slung it sidearm, and sent the metal-and-wood slab spinning at Ian to blind his line. It clanged, skittered, rebounded. In the same breath, black smoke poured from Zeke's sleeves and collar—thick, oily, swallowing the room in a churning veil. Far off, sirens started their thin metallic wail; close by, cinders wandered the air like slow, dying fireflies.

"What's going on?" Ian thought unable to see anything.

"You know, in enclosed spaces like this, I'm pretty much unbeatable," Zeke remarked from the darkness.

Ian dropped low, weight centered. Heat haloed his hands; fingers glowed from red to orange as the air buckled above his knuckles. Sweat ticked down his temple.

"Claw," Ian whispered calling forth a close-range spell expecting a close ranged attack to come form any direction. However, no attack came.

A smell cut through the scorched dust—a sharp, metallic tang, faintly sweet and wrong.

"What is that," He thought to himself.

"It's methane," Zeke replied.

The world turned white.

The classroom erupted in a bass-note blast that punched windows outward and folded the ceiling inward. Ian became a silhouette riding a pressure wave, launched through shattered glass into the rain-streaked sky; he struck the courtyard sod and went limp, breath knocked out, consciousness fleeing into the wet.

The boom rolled down the academy wing; students screamed and fled as lockers rattled and light fixtures chimed like brittle bells. The roof groaned and slumped; walls blew outward in jagged mouths. When the black smoke thinned, a figure stepped through it: long-sleeved gloves, black cargo pants, combat boots, and the battered shroud he'd worn in the Undercity. Zeke lifted the mask to his face—the filters clicked, his breathing came back doubled and distorted, the empty room answering him with a hush that felt like a held breath.

"I need to make myself scarce," Zeke retorted, jumping up on top of the roof.

Not ten minutes later, knights flooded the halls in precise, practiced lines. Rain pattered through the torn ceiling; thunder muttered somewhere beyond the glass. Dalas stepped through the blown doorway into the wrecked classroom, boots crunching plaster and glass.

"I'm here, do you copy?" Dalas said over the intercoms looking around the ruined classroom.

"I copy," Victor replied. "What does it look like out there?" Thunder could be heard rolling in the distance.

"They're lucky we were nearby," Dalas remarked. "This place is a mess, and all over a kids dispute," he sighed.

"Professor Orkal told me that the student of the school were being subjected to discrimination, you think this has anything to do with that?" Victor asked.

"Probably," Dalas remarked, as the rest of the knights swarmed into the classroom.

"What about the two perpetrators? You see them anywhere nearby?" Victor asked.

"I see one of them," Dalas remarked, looking outside.

"What? Where?" Victor wondered.

"Outside, it seems like he failed to control his magic and blew himself up," Dalas stated, gesturing for the other knights to secure Ian outside. "What of the signature you mentioned before? Think it's our other kid?" he asked.

"It might be," Victor stated. "I'm still on it's tail, but my scanner seems to be messing up."

"God damn piece of junk," Dalas sighed. "I thought you'd be curious. I asked around and no knows the identity of the kid who was attacked," he stated.

"Fuck!" Victor said in a panicked tone. "Dalas, you need to get over here right now!"

"What? Why? What happened?" Dalas asked in a worried tone, running out into the hall.

"I just saw the prowler running across the rooftop not far from me," Victor said, looking up as Zeke carelessly leapt across the rooftops against the backdrop of the gray sky.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.