The corridor was dark, the fluorescent lights extinguished for the night, leaving only the dim emergency strips that ran along the baseboards like veins of cold fire.
Sarah walked barefoot, her feet silent on the polished floor, her brunette hair loose around her shoulders, her amber eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Dominic followed three paces behind, his footsteps equally soundless, his hands loose at his sides. His eyes, usually Dominic's warm crimson, had gone the color of a winter sky, pale and distant, the blue of a frozen lake.
They passed Neila's door. Sarah's fingers brushed the chrome handle, just grazing the surface, and she felt the faint thrum of the barrier within. She smiled.
"Are you close with the midget girl?" she murmured. "She's rather interesting, she really doesn't trust anyone."
"Dominic grew up with her, but they were never close, like she was purposely putting distance between them," Dominic replied. His voice was Dominic's voice, but the cadence was wrong, the rhythm shifted. "She doesn't trust anyone, not even herself."
They moved deeper into the dormitory wing, past Seraphina's room, past Edward's, past the common room where the lights had been off for hours. The silence was absolute, broken only by the soft whisper of their breathing and the distant hum of the building's systems working to repair what the invasion had broken.
Sophia's room was on the second floor, a door larger than the others, its surface a deep, gleaming black that absorbed light instead of reflecting it. A single strip of gold ran along its edge.
"The boy with the Zenith is waiting outside the dorms."
Sarah stopped before it, her head tilted, her eyes fixed on the door's surface. She raised her hand, palm flat, and pressed it against the cold metal.
"For now, we'll only be able to seal her for a while, eliminating her is still impossible for now."
She exhaled.
"Dissaeptum Chasma."
The barrier that snapped into place was immediate, violent, a wall of condensed mana that should have thrown her across the corridor.
"Sophia's the strongest human I've ever seen, but that also makes her weak, she's never faced any real danger, no real threat, she'll be easier to contain that violet eyed boy."
"Since she has already experienced the Zenith, I doubt that it will contain her for more than a couple seconds."
Sarah didn't move. The white orb that had manifested between her palm and the door absorbed the force, redirected it, dispersed it into the walls until the barrier flickered, strained, and went still.
"And within that time frame, I want you to trap her using that little magical tool I gave you."
"Jack, conceal your mana."
The door clicked open.
The room beyond was dark, the curtains drawn against the moonlight, the air still and warm. Sophia lay in the center of the bed, her coffee-brown hair spread across the pillow, her face slack with sleep, her hands open at her sides.
She looked younger like this, smaller, the power that usually radiated from her like heat from a furnace drawn back into some hidden reserve.
She raised her hand. The white orb that materialized above her palm was small, no larger than a marble, but the light it cast was blinding, pure, the color of burning magnesium. It pulsed once, twice, and the air in the room grew heavy, thick with a pressure that made Jack's ears pop and his vision swim.
"The Zenith caster is still alive," Sarah said, her voice distant, almost dreamy. "I made sure of it. He's been waiting in the basement of the main hall for six days, kept alive by the mana I've been feeding him, kept asleep by the same spell that trapped all of you during the invasion, now he's outside, waiting for you."
"There really is no point in casting a barrier here, it'll be much more efficient if we seal her immediately."
She knelt beside the bed, her face level with Sophia's, her amber eyes drinking in the girl's sleeping features like a connoisseur examining a painting.
Sarah stood at the foot of the bed, watching her. "Until then and until now, you have been a rock in my road, over a millennium and you have grown stronger."
"Forgive this servant, but I am rather curious on why Lady Rouge won't just kill Sophia right here?"
"There's no way she doesn't have a countermeasure to this. She definitely has an enchantment on her that alerts her of any hostile intent." Sarah turned her head towards him. "Why did you think I asked you to hide your mana? It could force her awake."
"Even then she'll wake soon," Dominic said from the doorway. "The barrier breaking will have alerted the others. They'll send someone to check."
"Then we don't have much time." Sarah raised her hand. The white orb that materialized above her palm was larger now, the size of a fist. "The Zenith caster. I'll signal him now."
A single white orb manifested within the palm of her hand, she blew on it, sending it outside the window.
Dominic's hand moved to his chest, his fingers pressing against the fabric of his shirt. Beneath the cloth, a small crystal pulsed with a faint, irregular light, a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
He closed his eyes.
Now.
Outside the dorms was a man.
His body was wasted, the flesh drawn tight over bones that had once held muscle, the skin gray and papery. Tubes ran from his arms, his chest, his throat, carrying mana that had been siphoned from the Academy's wards for nearly a week, keeping him alive.
His lips parted. His eyes, filmed over with disuse, focused on the ceiling above him.
"Zenith of Wrath," he breathed. "Secret Door."
Sarah stood above her.
Dominic reached into her pocket and withdrew a small object. A sphere of polished obsidian, no larger than an egg, its surface crawling with veins of silver light.
Sarah's eyes stared at him.
He held the sphere up between them.
"Don't mess it up." Sarah's smile widened. "I had to use quite a bit to attain such an item, and in addition I had to infuse it with the special properties of my mana over a long period of time. Ever since we came back from the Mirlo estate."
He pressed the sphere against Sophia's chest.
The silver veins flared. The light that erupted from them was not white, not gold, but something older, something that predated color itself, a radiance that seemed to exist in the spaces between perception.
The sphere pulsed.
Once.
The floorboards groaned. The glass in the windows spider-webbed, barely holding together against the sudden vacuum of energy. Sophia's latent mana instinctively rose to defend her, creating a shimmering aura of gold that clashed brutally against the obsidian's pull.
Twice.
The temperature plummeted. Frost crawled up the walls. The sphere was acting like a black hole, greedily devouring the golden aura. Dominic gritted his teeth, the muscles in his arm straining as the sheer repulsive force threatened to snap his wrist.
He pressed the orb harder, forcing it to Sophia's forehead.
Sarah's mana, woven into the sphere, clamped down like a vice. The silver veins wrapped around Sophia's form, constricting her aura, suffocating her spell before it could form.
"What the hell are y-"
Then, the light died.
With a hollow, sucking pop that made the room vibrate, she vanished.
Sarah tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her amber eyes fixed on the sphere with an expression that might have been satisfaction or might have been hunger.
"I had to change its properties," she said. "Squeeze her down to a smaller size. The original artifact was designed to contain demons, not witches. It took months of modification, months of feeding it my own mana, my own essence, to make it compatible with human flesh."
She reached out, her fingers brushing against the sphere's surface. The silver veins flickered at her touch, responding to her presence like living things recognizing their master.
"We should go now," she said.
Dominic nodded, tucking the sphere into his pocket. The weight of it against his hip was strange, not heavy, not light, but present in a way that had nothing to do with mass.
"Of course," he said. "Your wish is my command."
Sarah smiled. "I need to get rid of the Zenith Caster, or else Sophia could escape."
The door creaked open.
Black hair and deep purple eyes that glowed in the darkness of the hallway.
"Wow."
Hoshimi's voice was flat, emotionless.
"What a surprise seeing you two here."
He stood at the end of the corridor, his violet eyes fixed on Sarah and Dominic, his hands empty at his sides.
[This is going to be trouble isn't it?]