The same day after the incident.
A knock echoed softly against the thick, mana-sealed door, its sound barely audible beneath the humming enchantments that lined the chamber walls.
"Sir, the report from the lab has arrived," came a calm, youthful voice.
"Come in," Vasra answered without looking up.
The door responded immediately, peeling open with a low hiss as mana locks disengaged in sequence. A young man, barely past twenty, stepped inside with reverence in every motion. He bowed, then approached the polished obsidian desk and extended a sealed crystal scroll with both hands.
Vasra accepted the report with a nod. "You may leave."
The man did not question him. He offered another respectful bow, his eyes lingering on Vasra's figure with open admiration, the gaze of someone looking at a legend rather than a man.
He exited in silence, and the mana-sealed door shut behind him with a resonant 'thump'.
Vasra unrolled the scroll. Numbers, graphs, and residual mana patterns flickered to life in the air around him. He didn't speak. But his gaze narrowed.
A memory resurfaced. One burned into his mind from just hours ago.
FLASH BACK TO THE SCENE FROM MOMENT AGO
Kaelen lay motionless on the torn forest ground, his body bloodied, bones cracked, life hanging by a thread. Nearby, Jered was struggling to rise, but his legs would not obey.
The air trembled. A massive bird-like monster, with razor-sharp feathers and cruel, calculating eyes, took aim.
With Kaelen defenseless, death was only a heartbeat away.
And then.
INSTANT.
The world shattered.
Everything. Air, monsters, sound, even light froze.
Time had stopped.
In that frozen eternity, a thin, sharp 'ziiip' tore through the stillness. Above the bird monster, space fractured with a high-pitched wail, and from the rift stepped a man clad in black and white robes embroidered with golden threads.
Vasra.
Dean of the Academy.
He descended slowly, his gaze calm, unhurried. With a wave of his hand, he pointed to Kaelen first, then Jered.
"Chrono Lock."
Golden glyphs spun from his fingers and sunk into their bodies.
Chrono Lock was not a time-stop. It was a life-freeze. For a brief window, it suspended the flow of death itself, halting the final collapse of their bodies, preserving them in that razor-thin sliver of existence between life and the afterlife.
Then he stepped forward. His eyes focused on the monster mid-air, its feathers frozen mid-strike.
Time resumed.
The entire region, nearly 500 miles, had been locked for exactly one second.
It was all Vasra needed.
THUD.
The bird-like monster fell to the ground, lifeless. No wound was visible. Its core hadn't been shattered. But its soul had been severed, untraceable.
It died not from power, but from a concept beyond its comprehension.
Vasra's expression tightened. "This is no random encounter," he muttered to himself.
Then, with a practiced flick, he tore open another fissure in space, thinner and more stable,and he reached his hand inside the space rift.
A moment later, he pulled out a disheveled old man by the collar.
"By the Abyss, Vasra!" the old man yelped, his spectacles askew. "Would it kill you to give me some warning?! I thought I was about to pass into the afterlife again!"
"Save them, Tashi." Vasra ignored the complaint and pointed to the boys.
Tashi was a world-renowned healer and currently the head of the Academy's Medical Division, he grumbled but still stepped forward. One glance at Kaelen's injuries made him pause.
"What in the name of Eldraus, did you do this to them?!"
Vasra didn't answer.
Tashi squatted and summoned holy green light from both hands. "Restoration!"
A gentle warmth pulsed outward, sealing torn skin, mending surface tissues, stabilizing internal trauma. Blood stopped flowing. Breath returned.
But deeper injuries remained untouched.
"Fractured spines. Pulverized joints. One, missing limbs, nearly turned to mush…" Tashi clicked his tongue. "Even with restoration, their nervous systems are at the brink of collapse. I can't regrow a fully lost arm without a divine regrowth elixir. And that leg…"
He shook his head. "If we were even a second late, they'd be lost."
He turned to Vasra, irritation burning in his aged eyes. "You and your brutal tests! This is the limit. You're playing with their lives. We're not gods. One slip-up and even you can't bring them back."
Vasra said nothing. His face, as ever, was unreadable.
Tashi stood up. "This place reeks of corrupted mana. Bring them to my ward. I'll stabilize them there."
Without replying, Vasra opened a portal, his time larger, stabilized for travel.
He stepped through, levitating Kaelen and Jered alongside him. Their bodies floated gently, like they were underwater, suspended in temporal stasis.
Behind them, Tashi followed grimly, muttering curses about mad deans and ungrateful timelines.
Back on the battlefield, specialized medics from the Academy arrived. Their mission: collect what was left of the limbs.
It would be a long, gruesome process. Some parts were intact. Others had been smashed into paste.
---
Elsewhere, Beneath the Crust.
Far beyond the lands of men, deep within a lava-veined cavern, an enormous creature knelt. Its skin was dark and obsidian-like, and the pressure it emitted warped the molten air around it.
"My Lord…" the creature whispered, head bowed. "We have found the location of the academy… but the mission has failed. Vasra has int—"
SWISH.
A clean arc of pure mana sliced through the monster's neck.
The head tumbled to the floor, but the body did not move. Instead, the severed head bowed again, eyes wide with reverence.
"Thank you, my lord… for such kindness."
He picked up his own head, holding it in place as if it were no more than a helmet, and turned to leave.
This was no punishment. It was a blessing, a sign of mercy.
---
Present at Academy Command Chamber
Back in the present, Vasra set down the crystal report, lips pressed into a thin line.
The door shimmered again. This time, he didn't speak.
"You called, o mighty dean?"
The room twisted, and before him appeared Baalk, though not in her usual form.
She took the appearance of a breathtaking woman with violet hair cascading like silk, eyes glowing with amethyst allure. Her figure radiated sensuality with every movement.
But Vasra barely blinked.
"It seems our location has been exposed. We need a stronger barrier."
Baalk leaned against the wall, crossing her arms lazily. "Stronger how? I've got eyes over the entire campus, and you know I've already layered three epic rank arrays. You want more?"
"Yes. I want this place completely hidden,for at least a thousand-mile radius. Let no spell, no eye, no intent pierce our veil."
Baalk blinked. "That's not a barrier. That's practically declaring war on the laws of space."
"Can you do it?"
"Of course. But the resources…" She dragged a finger through the air, leaving glowing trails of violet light.
"How much?"
Baalk flashed a wicked grin. "Roughly the equivalent of what it costs to operate a gold-rank city. Full supply chains. Logistics. Defense. A fortune, really."
Vasra didn't hesitate. "Do it. And finish it by tomorrow."
Baalk tilted her head. "So serious... Very well. But in return"
Vasra's eye twitched.
"Give me that Tempovir Fruit."
His heart sank.
Outwardly, he only nodded. "Done."
Inwardly, he screamed.
Baalk giggled, vanishing in a swirl of violet petals. "I knew you'd be generous."
Vasra stared at the empty air where she had stood.
He sighed.
"This damn demon is going to ruin my breakthrough plan…"
The Tempovir Fruit was one of the rarest time-type materials in his possession. It grew on a crystalline vine that aged backward, the older at its root, the younger at its tip. It only bore two fruits in its seventy-year lifespan.
And Vasra had just harvested one from his private internal world, a temporal sanctuary that flowed ten times faster than the outside. It was meant for his own future breakthrough.
—
Outside the infirmary, students laughed and classes resumed.
Inside, two boys slept, unaware that their survival had stirred the dark forces to be more cautious… and that the academy, once a sanctuary, had now become a battleground between unseen titans.