Chapter 15: The Pillar of Light [2]
Atop a rocky cliff in the Ravenveil hunting grounds, Alden stood with Insight still running.
His vision stretched past the mountain range without effort, pushing through the dark until the academy came into focus.
Pillars of mana lit up the night sky above it. Smoke rose from multiple buildings simultaneously. And between the smoke and the light.
His brows pulled together.
’What is that.’
Hooves on the road below.
A black carriage pulled to a stop beside the cliff. The window slid open and Seris looked up at him with an expression that was the most serious he’d seen on her face since they met.
"Pause the hunting." She held up a small crystal engraved with the Student Council emblem, then stored it.
"I received an evacuation order through the council’s communication stone. No other information. Just the signal." Her crimson eyes held his. "I spotted you on the way back."
Alden was already climbing down from the cliff.
He got into the carriage before she finished speaking.
"What do you know?"
"Nothing yet." She settled back as the carriage lurched forward. "That’s the problem."
He looked out the window at the dark road ahead.
’I don’t remember this.’ He turned it over carefully in his head. ’I wrote this arc. I know every event in the first half of this story. A full-scale beast attack on the academy, that’s not something I’d forget.’
His jaw tightened.
’Which means one of two things. Either I forgot. Or this never happened in the original.’
______
The academy had become something else entirely.
Stone paths cracked and split. Smoke rose from three separate buildings. Beasts moved between collapsed walls and through the spaces where doors used to be, destroying anything in their path with the specific purposeless violence.
Students ran in every direction, some bleeding, some dragging others, all of them moving away from whatever was behind them.
Amid all of it, near the east courtyard, a group of first-years had backed against a broken wall with nowhere left to go.
Unlike the upperclassmen, most first-years were still in the early stages of combat, foundational magic. Only a few prodigies broke that mold. The burden of real battles fell on the senior years, whose experience protected the weak.
Leon Evercrest put himself in front them.
A second-year student and Roselle’s cousin. His longsword ran with golden mana that he kept compressed and controlled despite every instinct probably telling him to let it go wide.
"Stay behind me." He didn’t look back at his sister when he said it. "Emilia. Don’t move."
"But Brother—"
"I said stay back."
The boar-type beast in front of him was the size of a small carriage, its tusks polished to silver brightness from whatever it had been hitting on the way here. It put its head down and charged.
Leon braced his feet and brought the blade up.
BOOM.
The impact drove him back three full steps before he stopped it. His teeth locked together. The beast pushed. He pushed back.
"You’re not getting through."
From the sides of his vision, there were more beasts coming in from the collapsed building entrance to the left, from the archway behind him to the right.
He couldn’t hold all of them.
The sound of the first-years realizing it hit the air before they said anything.
Then from behind the incoming beasts, a flash of silver crossed the courtyard.
So fast there was no sound first. Just the motion. Just the light catching the blade once and then it was already gone and the beasts were still moving for one more second before the thin crimson thread lines appeared across their bodies at precise angles.
Then they all stopped at once.
Then they fell.
Nicholas stood in the middle of the courtyard in a white uniform that had somehow come through the last several minutes without a tear in it. He turned his sword sideways, flicked it once, and sheathed it in a single motion.
"Sorry for the delay."
Leon let his breath out in one long controlled release. He was smiling despite himself.
"A few seconds later and we’d have had casualties."
The first-years were staring with the wide open attention of people watching something they’ll describe to other people for years.
"Senior Nicholas saved us..."
"I knew he’d come!"
Nicholas looked around the courtyard. The broken walls, the smoke, the sounds still coming from deeper in the grounds.
"What happened? When did this start?"
"I don’t know." Leon scanned the surrounding damage. "I was in the library. Then beasts were everywhere." He paused. "...By the way, where’s Roselle?"
Nicholas’s sword hand tightened slightly at his side.
"I don’t know."
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
"She’ll be fine," Nicholas said. "She can handle herself."
A voice came from above.
"Conversation later. Move these students now."
Headmaster Darius landed on a collapsed stone pillar with a sound like authority itself touching down, robes settling around him. His eyes swept across the first-years.
Leon looked up. "Where do we take them? The academy’s not safe anywhere—"
"The ramparts." Darius pointed toward the massive stone walls encircling the academy grounds. "The beasts haven’t reached them. Upper-year students escort anyone injured or below second year there immediately." His eyes moved to Nicholas and Leon. "Student Council assembles in the central training ground. You two lead until I return."
"Understood." Both answered at the same moment.
Darius vanished.
Leon turned back to his sister.
"Be careful." He put one hand briefly on her head.
She grabbed his sleeve for just a second. "You too."
Sierra stepped forward and placed her hand on Emilia "Don’t worry Leon, I’ll look after her and the other first years. You can count on me."
He gave her a nod and looked at Nicholas.
"Let’s move."
______
At the main entrance, the black carriage stopped.
Seris stepped out first.
She looked at the burning academy with her arms loose at her sides and her expression the same composed one she wore everywhere.
"...How troublesome."
Alden stepped out beside her.
He took in the smoke, the broken stone, the sounds of beasts somewhere past the tree line at the academy’s edge.
"What the hell happened here."
Seris straightened one glove.
"Information first. Questions afterwards." She walked through the gate without looking back.
Alden watched her move through the chaos, the same precise steps she used everywhere, like the burning academy was just a room she’d decided to walk across.
Everyone who saw her saw the vice president, the silver-haired noblewoman, Seris Silverhart.
But Alden saw a vampire. Walking beside him was Seris Ravenveil.
’Even scarier in person than in written words,’ he thought, and followed her in.
Darius appeared in front of them both before they’d crossed ten meters.
"I finally found you two,"
He looked at Seris. "Vice President, I need the Student Council assembled now. They’re at the central grounds. Go take command."
"Understood." She was already moving before the words finished.
Then to Alden. "You Alden, I want you to evacuate the Injured students and first-years to the ramparts."
Alden nodded. "Leave it to me."
Darius disappeared again.
Alden stood alone in the middle of the chaos and started moving.
"Help—!"
A wolf-type beast lunged from his left toward a student on the ground, one leg clearly not working right.
Thread shot from Alden’s hand before he’d fully turned, wrapping tight around the beast’s muzzle and wrenching its head sideways. He slashed his other hand through the air.
SKRRRK.
Three invisible marks tore across its neck simultaneously. It dropped.
He reached the student and offered a hand.
"Can you stand?"
The boy grabbed it and pulled himself up. Unsteady but upright.
"Get to the ramparts," Alden said. "Stay with the group. Don’t stop."
The student moved.
Alden turned towards an explosion from deeper in the grounds, something structural giving way.
He moved toward it.
’I never wrote this.’
The thought arrived clean and separate from everything else.
’I know every event in the academy arc. Every attack, every confrontation, every consequence. A full-scale beast invasion wasn’t one of them.’
His feet kept moving. Thread ready. Hand raised.
’This wasn’t in the story.’ His expression hardened.
’The story actually changed.’