The hooded figures tightened their circle around Asher's limp body, their low chanting thrumming through the red‑stone cavern.
Violet didn't hesitate.
"Get away from him!" she shouted, barging past the robed silhouettes. Her fingers had barely brushed Asher's cold skin when a voice boomed through the cavern.
"Enough! Touch him again, and the boy you knew will be gone forever."
The robed shapes froze. So did Jake.
"Who's there?" he demanded, pulling Violet back, heart hammering. "Show yourself!"
Violet shoved him off. "Coward!"
A scoff drifted from somewhere in the forest of stone pillars.
"Coward? Me? If not for my intervention, you'd all be dead."
Forked lightning erupted around Asher in a perfect ring, forming a cage of sizzling white bars. Violet stumbled back, eyes wide.
"Listen," the voice said, softer now. "Your realm is in danger."
The shift in tone made Jake's skin prickle. Whoever this was, they weren't furious anymore — they were frightened. Footsteps approached, light and deliberate, weaving between the stalagmites.
A small figure stepped into the glow of the sarsen stone.
Pointed ears. Wide, earnest eyes. A familiar silhouette.
Jake's stomach dropped.
"It… it's you," he stammered. "The examiner. We saw you on the rooftops."
The creature blinked, offended. "Examiner? No, no, no. I merely arrived in time to witness dozens of horses stampeding through the village. Majestic creatures, horses. Terrible sense of direction, though." He paused, frowning. "Where was I?"
Jake exhaled sharply. Violet didn't bother hiding her eye roll.
"Listen to me," Jake snapped, pointing at the robed group. "Why were these people attacking Violet?"
"Attacking?" The creature gasped. "They were saving her from the horses! These are Protectors, boy. They don't harm anyone."
"Really."
"Yes! Now, if you'd stop interrupting — another student has tampered with the bonds between realms. They're tearing reality apart. If we don't stop them soon—"
"Who'd be stupid enough to try that?" Jake muttered.
"Examiner—"
The creature bristled. "Have you heard a single word I've said?" He rounded on Violet. "For the love of all shapers, call me Professor!"
Violet coughed to hide a laugh.
He straightened his tiny coat. "Professor Magnus Melia."
He waddled past them to kneel beside Asher.
"What happened to him?" Jake asked.
"My Protectors found him on the mountain trail. Delirious. Babbling about a dragon. Your dragon, in fact."
Of course, Avrae would be involved.
Professor Melia pressed a hand to Asher's neck. "He'll live. He needs rest."
Relief washed through Jake — followed quickly by suspicion.
"What are these Protectors? Where are they from?"
"I don't have time—"
Violet loomed over him. "Please."
He flinched. "Fine! They're a remnant species from another realm. Jasper Farhorne's realm, to be precise. I borrowed them. All fifty realms are colliding as we speak, students. I must go before it's too late."
Before Jake could speak, the Professor and the Protectors vanished — leaving only Asher's blood‑smeared body behind.
For a long moment, neither Jake nor Violet moved. The cavern felt suddenly colder, as if the Professor had taken the warmth with him. Only the dying echo of chanting and the faint crackle of fading lightning remained.
Violet knelt beside Asher. "Do you know Jasper Farhorne?"
"Not really," Jake said. "Isn't he the weird one who collects insects?"
"That's him. And no, he wouldn't know where to start with ruling over fifty realms. He's obsessed with routine. Colliding realms aren't exactly routine."
"Only forty‑six suspects left, then," Jake muttered. "Care to guess again?"
Violet flushed. "My only friends are you and Asher, remember? Ever since that damn incident."
Jake didn't need reminding. Violet had once been the most popular student in their year — until a mishap with acne‑healing potions left half the class covered in bulging warts. Children being children, they blamed her. Cruelly.
She brushed a strand of hair from Asher's forehead, her expression softening. "He looks awful."
"He'll live," Jake said, echoing the Professor's words, though doubt gnawed at him. "We just need to get out of here."
Violet looked around. "Did you see where our guards went?"
"Sneaky little devils. They must've slipped away before the Professor showed up."
"Or they're working together."
Jake shrugged, taking in the cavern. Towering red formations curved upward like frozen waves. If they weren't desperate for a way out, he would have stayed to admire it. The place felt ancient — older than anything he'd shaped, older than anything he'd imagined. A relic of a realm colliding with theirs.
But they couldn't carry Asher and search for an exit at the same time.
They had no choice but to leave him behind — for now.
Jake rose slowly, brushing dust from his palms. The air felt heavier now, thick with the residue of magic and something else — something older. A low tremor hummed beneath his boots, as though the stone itself was restless.
Violet noticed it too. "Do you feel that?"
Jake nodded. "Like the ground's… breathing."
A pulse rippled through the cavern, subtle but unmistakable. The motes beneath Jake's skin stirred in response — not just swirling, but aligning, as if sensing a pattern he couldn't yet see. The cavern wasn't merely reacting to him.
It was recognising him.
Or what he was becoming.
Violet stood, wiping her hands on her trousers. "We need to move. If the Professor was telling the truth, the realms are colliding. This place might not stay stable for long."
Jake glanced at Asher's unconscious form. "I hate leaving him."
"I know," Violet replied. "But we'll be faster apart. And if something happens to this place, at least one of us will be able to come back for him."
Jake swallowed hard. She was right. She usually was.
They split up, each taking a different arc of the cavern. Jake moved cautiously, scanning the walls for cracks, tunnels, anything resembling a way out. The cavern stretched farther than he'd realised — a vast, echoing hollow of red stone and shadow.
The deeper he went, the stranger it felt.
Whispers drifted through the air, faint and indistinct, like voices carried from another room. Jake paused, listening. The sound faded instantly. When he stepped forward again, it returned — a soft chorus threading through the stone.
"Violet?" he called.
His voice bounced back at him, warped.
No answer.
The motes pulsed sharply, tugging at him with a sense of direction he'd never felt before. He followed the pull, weaving between two towering stone spires. The air grew cooler, tinged with the scent of damp earth and metal.
A pale shimmer flickered ahead.
Jake quickened his pace, heart thudding. The shimmer sharpened into a thin beam of silvery‑blue light, slicing through the darkness like a blade. It spilled through a jagged opening in the cavern wall — a shaft leading upward.
Relief washed through him.
"Violet," he whispered, turning back the way he'd come. "There."
She appeared moments later, breathless but steady. When she saw the light, her shoulders sagged with relief.
"I'll stay with Asher," she said immediately.
Jake managed a small smile. "I knew you'd say that."
She hated small spaces. It was a miracle she hadn't fainted already.
Jake squeezed into the gap, wriggling upward like an earthworm. The silvery light revealed every jutting stone and protruding ledge. His trousers tore somewhere along the way, but that was a problem for future him.
The sound of splashing water grew louder. Encouraging.
He clawed upward faster.
His hands broke through first. Then his head. Then the rest of him tumbled out into a shallow pool of murky water.
He barely noticed he was soaked again.
Because the sight before him stole his breath.
Moonlight.
Cold, brilliant, impossibly bright.
Jake stood at the mouth of a cliffside cavern, staring up at the largest moon he had ever seen. Clouds drifted past, brushing his skin with cool mist.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then cannon fire shattered the silence.
The cliff trembled. A roar — deep, furious, unmistakable — tore across the sky.
Avrae.
Jake staggered to the cliff edge, heart pounding. Far below, his castle home lay dark and silent. But above…
Above was chaos.
Avrae tore through the sky, wings beating with thunderous force as he raked his claws across the hull of a massive airship. Flames licked its sides. Smoke billowed behind it. The vessel groaned under the assault, metal plates buckling.
Jake knew that ship.
He'd seen it before — drifting through the strange depths of the castle pool, half‑formed, half‑real.
A vision.
A warning.
And now it was here.
The airship tilted, engines sputtering. Avrae roared again, a sound that shook the clouds themselves.
Jake couldn't move.
Couldn't breathe.
Because whatever was happening to the realms… whatever Professor Melia had warned them about… whatever force was tearing their worlds apart…
It was already here.
And Avrae was fighting it alone.