The shockwave hit Kellen like a freight train made of fire.

  

  [HP: Wounded (65%)]

  Gravity lurched sideways. Kellen's stomach went with it.

  He slammed his palm against what had been the floor, now the wall, polished stone... Cold and slick under his fingers. His inner ear screamed contradictions. Up was left. Down tasted like copper. The entire library groaned, the massive structure twisting as the Anchor's corruption bled into the foundations.

  Torian roared, charging toward the secret alcove through air that had gone thick and wrong. His warhammer rose, trailing distorted light, smashing through a floating cloud of burning scrolls.

  He was five feet from Malik when the hybrid flicked his wrist.

  "Stay."

  Torian froze. Mid-stride. Mid-roar. The Paladin skidded to a halt, his armor locking up as if the metal itself had fused to his bones.

  Malik had saved just enough mana to deal with the leonine.

  "No," Torian grunted, veins bulging in his neck. "No..."

  "I didn't want this." Malik's voice was clinical. Disappointed. He stood amidst the falling ash of centuries of knowledge, the recovered scroll tucked calmly under his arm.

  "I did enjoy our brief time together," Malik glanced at Torian, then back to Kellen. "But I will not forfeit my destiny for you."

  Malik twisted his hand.

  Torian screamed. His body jerked, turning mechanically to face Kellen. His eyes were wide. Terrified. Pleading. But his arm raised the warhammer anyway.

  "Run," Torian choked out. Tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "Kellen... run..."

  "Kill him," Malik commanded.

  Torian charged.

  The Paladin moved like a broken marionette. All jerky angles and wrong momentum. Tears streamed down his face, but the warhammer didn't care about tears. It swung in a brutal downward arc.

  CRACK.

  Kellen rolled, or tried to. His shoulder caught wrong. Old bruises screaming as he tumbled across stone tiles slick with ash. The hammer hit where he'd been a heartbeat before.

  It pulverized the floor. Stone ripples shot outward like a pond accepting a thrown corpse.

  "I... can't..." Torian's voice was sandpaper on broken glass. His arm wrenched the hammer free, muscles bulging against invisible strings. "Stop me... Kellen... stop me!"

  "Keep him busy," Malik's voice drifted from the alcove. "I just need a moment to find a stable exit vector."

  "You broke the Anchor!" Kellen yelled, scrambling backward on hands that didn't want to cooperate. "You're going to kill us all!"

  "There are fates worse then death, boy," Malik said. "I've lived it."

  He gestures, snapping the threads of influence holding Torian in place, "You and your kind... You have no idea what it's like to be a half-breed. To live in world that despises you... but the Leonine does... I do."

  Kellen listened, feeling the emotion behind Malik's words.

  "Do you know what an Umbral-kin is?" Malik asked. "Your kind calls us half-breeds, hybrids... and that's when you're being kind. More often it's beast, abomination, impure. You try to fix this world, but you're just maintaining the status quo. Keeping us caged."

  "It's not like that in Sol-Arcadia," Kellen said. "We treat Umbral-kin as equals."

  "And what of Zalingrad? Or any of the other countries?" Malik asked.

  "Progress takes time," Kellen said.

  "I'm tired of waiting..." Malik shifts his hand and shifts the threads of influence, sending Torian into a frenzy of attacks.

  Kellen tried to stand. Torian's shield slammed into his chest before he made it halfway up, lifting him off his feet and throwing him five yards back into a pile of smoldering books.

  He hit hard enough to rattle his spine. His vision swam. The taste of copper flooded his mouth, mixing with the ash of burning history.

  

  [HP: Wounded (52%)]

  His health was dropping. He could feel it in the way his ribs screamed. His mana was full—supercharged by the explosion—but his body was falling apart.

  Think, damn it. Kellen's brain spun through options like a panicked card dealer. High armor. High magic resistance.

  Torian raised the hammer again. Tears streaked his face, but the weapon was already descending.

  Can't hurt him. The thought arrived with the clarity of desperation. Just need him not here.

  Kellen scrambled backward, boots slipping on ash-slick stone. He wasn't running away. He was leading. Toward the edge of the platform. Toward the drop into the lower stacks.

  Come on. Follow me. Just a little further.

  Torian charged. Each step shaking the floor. The hammer rose high.

  Kellen kept backing up. Five feet from the edge. Four. Three.

  The hammer swung.

  Kellen dove sideways, rolling across the stone as the warhammer obliterated the space where his head had been a heartbeat before.

  Torian stood at the precipice, overextended from the swing. Boots inches from the drop.

  Now.

  Kellen slapped the Codex.

  "[SUMMON: STONE TOAD]!"

  The massive amphibian materialized ten feet above Torian. Not directly overhead, but at an angle. Gravity grabbed it immediately.

  The three-hundred-pound toad plummeted like a boulder.

  SLAM.

  It hit Torian's shoulder with the force of a cannonball. The Paladin's balance shattered. His boots skidded on the ash. Arms windmilled.

  He teetered.

  "Sorry!" Kellen yelled.

  "Good!" Torian screamed back, relief breaking through the mind-control for just an instant.

  He fell backward into the darkness. It wasn't a lethal drop, Kellen could see a lower terrace about twenty feet down, glowing faintly, but it took the tank out of the fight.

  Kellen didn't wait to see Torian land. The crash echoed up from below, armor on stone followed by a groan that meant the Paladin was alive but stunned. That bought him time.

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  He turned to Malik.

  The hybrid stood thirty feet away across the chamber. His hands pressed against the wall where glowing runes traced the outline of a hidden door. The stone was already sliding shut. A vertical seam closing like a mouth.

  "No you don't."

  Kellen sprinted, pushing his agility stat to the breaking point and hoping his knees didn't explode. He vaulted over a burning desk and hit the stairs running.

  Malik turned. Eyes narrowing. "Persistent."

  He raised a hand. Kellen felt the strings hit him. Invisible icy hooks digging into his muscles, trying to seize control of his motor functions.

  Stop.

  His right leg locked up.

  No.

  Kellen didn't fight the pull. He just... stopped focusing.

  He let his mind off the leash. Attention fractured and scattered like birds in a storm. Panic, random memories, the roar of the crumbling chamber, the dull ache in his ribs... everything colliding at once. The invisible strings tried to latch on, but there was nothing solid to grip. His attention jumped like a live wire, refusing to be grounded.

  The connection slipped.

  Malik hissed and jerked his hand back, fingers twitching as if he'd tried to grab a handful of static.

  Good. Kellen hoped it hurt.

  "What are you?" the hybrid snarled. "Your mind... it's a mess."

  "I'm annoying," Kellen grunted, stumbling but somehow keeping his feet under him. "It's what I do."

  He was ten feet away.

  Malik raised both hands this time. The pressure redoubled. It felt like walking through invisible concrete that was slowly hardening around his bones.

  "Stop!" Malik commanded.

  Kellen fell to one knee. He grit his teeth.

  He pushed again. Not with strength, but with chaos. He threw erratic pulses of mana out. Changing the frequency. Disrupting the binding like static on a radio.

  Malik took a step back, frustration cracking his calm mask. "Stand still!"

  "Make me!"

  Kellen lunged. He was close enough now.

  "[SUMMON: MIRE HOUND]!"

  The beast materialized from his shadow, jaws already open. It clamped onto Malik's forearm. Teeth sinking into the gap between gauntlet and pauldron.

  Malik roared, pain and genuine anger mixing in a sound Kellen had never heard from the calm analytical hybrid.

  "Enough!"

  Malik didn't try to pry the hound off. He didn't panic. He just... shifted. His free hand grabbed the hound's neck with the precision of someone who'd done this before.

  SNAP.

  

  [SUMMON DESTROYED]

  There was no hesitation. No mercy. The hound dissolved into silver mist before it even hit the ground.

  Shit.

  Malik backhanded with a gauntlet of steel. It caught Kellen's jaw with the force of a battering ram. His teeth clacked together hard enough that he tasted blood immediately. The world spun. The ceiling and floor swapped places twice before he hit the stone hard enough to make his ancestors wince.

  

  [CRITICAL HIT RECEIVED]

  HP: Injured (32%)

  Status Effect: Stunned (3 seconds)

  He tried to push himself up. His arms shook. The Codex pulsed against his ribs. Warm and insistent. But he had nothing left. No clever trick. Just pain.

  A shadow fell over him.

  Kellen looked up. Torian was already there. Towering over him. Armor scorched black from the Anchor's energy and covered in library dust. The Paladin's face was locked in that terrible trapped expression. Eyes desperate. Body moving against his will. The warhammer raised and ready to kill.

  "Finish it," Malik ordered, rubbing his injured arm. "I'm done playing with insects."

  Torian stepped forward, the heavy steel of his boots ringing on the platform. His eyes met Kellen's. Wide. Desperate. Trapped behind the puppet strings Malik had wrapped around his brain.

  "I can't stop it," Torian whispered. Kellen heard the genuine terror in the big man's voice.

  Kellen stared up at the raised warhammer. His mind running through options with the manic speed of someone about to die.

  So this is it. Killed by my own tank because I trusted the wrong horse.

  He almost laughed. Almost.

  The hammer fell.

  THWIP.

  An arrow struck the stone between Kellen and Torian.

  A micro second later, it detonated.

  A sphere of blinding white energy expanded outward, hitting Torian like a physical wall. It didn't hurt him... it cleansed him. The invisible strings connecting him to Malik snapped with audible twangs.

  Torian stumbled back, gasping, shaking his head as the control shattered.

  "What..."

  Malik spun, searching the upper ledges.

  THWIP. THWIP.

  Two more arrows. One struck Malik's shoulder, sizzling against his pauldron. The other hit the stone by his feet, erupting into a barrier of shimmering force that cut off his path to Kellen.

  High above, perched on a stalactite that shouldn't have been able to hold a person, was a figure.

  Nora? Kellen watched with a mix of relief and confusion.

  She didn't look like a student. She looked like a Valkyrie. Her bow was drawn, glowing with the same white light as the barrier.

  Malik snarled and raised his hand, thrusting his fingers toward her. [Sovereign Binding].

  Nora didn't dodge. She just flexed. A ripple of golden light flared around her, deflecting the invisible attack like rain on glass.

  "No thanks," her voice rang out, clear and sharp.

  She fired again. A volley this time, three arrows moving in convoy.

  Malik deflected the first with a wave of his hand. The second shattered against his armor. The third grazed his cheek, drawing a line of blood.

  He looked at the scroll in his hand. He looked at the three of them, Torian recovering, Kellen standing up, and the sniper locking onto his head.

  "I got what I came for..." Malik muttered. "Til we meet again."

  He turned and sprinted for the secret door.

  "Stop him!" Torian yelled, charging.

  But Malik was fast. Faster than a man in plate should be. He slid through the closing gap of the stone door just as Nora's next arrow slammed into the rock where his head had been.

  Silence crashed back into the room. The red light of the Anchor still pulsed, angry and sick, but the immediate threat was gone.

  Kellen slumped against the wall, his jaw throbbing.

  "What are you doing here?" Kellen asked, the adrenaline crash making his voice sound thin. "I thought you were at the Academy."

  "I was," she said, her eyes not leaving the swirling red vortex of the Anchor. "Then Oryn gave me a job... to watch over you."

  Kellen blinked. "He sent you?"

  "To monitor," she corrected. "To evaluate. and to retrieve the Codex when you inevitably got yourself killed." She glanced at him, her expression unreadable. "You almost proved him right."

  "I aim to please," Kellen muttered.

  "Focus," Nora snapped, pointing at the Anchor.

  The room was shaking. Small rocks were starting to float, drifting toward the core of the rift.

  "He contaminated it," Kellen said, pushing himself off the wall. "He turned the stabilization Rite into a corruption loop. It's destabilizing it... rapidly."

  "Then fix it," Nora snapped. "What does the Codex say?"

  "It says 'Run'," Kellen muttered.

  "Helpful."

  "The Codex chose you, Kellen," Nora said suddenly, grabbing his shoulder. Her voice was fierce enough to cut through the roar of the Anchor. "Not me, not anyone else. It chose you."

  She tightened her grip. "Now prove it didn't make a mistake."

  Kellen stared at her. Then he took a breath. A real one.

  "Right," he exhaled. "Okay."

  The world slowed. He looked at the Anchor. Not at the red light, but into it. He saw the swirling currents of inverted mana, the chaotic frequencies tearing reality... and there, in the center, pulsing like a heart.

  The Relic.

  "The artifact," Kellen said, snapping his eyes open. "The thing he threw. It's lodged in the core."

  "So we remove it," Nora said. She drew her bow. "Simple."

  Kellen didn't argue. He slapped the Codex. "[SUMMON: STONE TOAD]!"

  The amphibian appeared above the pit and fell toward the center.

  CRUNCH.

  Before it even reached the core, the gravity shear ripped it apart. The toad dissolved into grey mist in a split second.

  "Not simple," Kellen corrected, gesturing at the mist. "The energy density in there is off the charts. Anything physical gets crushed."

  "I wonder..." Nora produced her bow and conjured an arrow of pure light.

  She fired. The arrow was a streak of white light. It hit the red vortex... and passed straight through. It didn't burn up, but it didn't hit the relic either. The chaotic winds batted it aside like a leaf.

  "Too light," Kellen noted. "It needs mass."

  He looked at Nora. He remembered the shimmering barrier she had summoned earlier to block Malik.

  "I have an idea," Kellen said. "But it's stupid."

  "I assume that's your specialty," Nora said, nocking another arrow. "Speak."

  "I'm going to drop another Toad. But I need you to shield it."

  Nora lowered her bow. She gave him a look of genuine confusion. "You want me to... wrap an energy barrier around a three-hundred-pound magical amphibian in freefall?"

  "Basically, yes."

  "That requires precise timing, spell manipulation, and... it's very stupid."

  "Can you do it?"

  She hesitated. "I... I don't know."

  "Try."

  Kellen didn't wait. "[SUMMON: STONE TOAD]!"

  The toad appeared. Gravity grabbed it.

  "Now!"

  Nora thrust her hand out. A bubble of white light shot toward the falling toad.

  It was too slow. The gravity shear hit the toad first. CRUNCH.

  "Again!" Kellen yelled.

  "[SUMMON: STONE TOAD]!"

  This time Nora was faster. The shield wrapped the toad—but the red lightning lashed out, shattering the barrier instantly. The toad followed a second later.

  "It's not working!" Nora shouted, frustration cracking her voice. "The chaotic interference is too high. I can't hold it!"

  "One more time."

  Nora took a breath. She looked at her hand. She looked at the angry red star in the center of the room. The fear in her eyes hardened into something sharp. Cold.

  "Lead the target," she whispered.

  Kellen grinned.

  "[SUMMON: STONE TOAD]!"

  The toad dropped.

  Nora didn't shove the energy this time. She fired it. The shield flew like an arrow, catching the toad in mid-air, wrapping it in a perfect sphere of white light just as it hit the gravity well.

  The red lightning struck. The shield held. The gravity tore at it. The shield groaned, fractured... but held.

  The Armored Toad fell true.

  SMASH.

  It hit the relic dead center.

  There was no explosion. Just a sound like breaking glass that echoed in their teeth. The relic shattered into a thousand black shards.

  The red light vanished.

  Instantly.

  The roar cut out. The floating rocks crashed to the floor. The violet rift settled into a low, steady hum.

  

  [ANCHOR STATUS: STABILIZING]

  Integrity: Critical (Recovering)

  Corruption Source: Destroyed

  Kellen slumped against the wall, sliding down until he hit the floor.

  "Not bad," he wheezed.

  Nora lowered her hand. She was breathing hard, a sheen of sweat on her face, but she was smiling. A small, real smile.

  "Why are you resting? You have an anchor to stabilize!" she said, pulling him to his feet.