Magister Orion

  The world beyond the barrier was fire and ruin.

  Orion stood motionless within the sealed professor’s box, his silver eyes reflecting the chaos he could not reach. Screams echoed in distant waves. Spells clashed like storms colliding. The sky had turned against them—stained black by corrupted stars, the mark of the rift gaping wider across the arena.

  And he was trapped.

  Sealed in place like some relic behind glass, watching a world he’d spent his life protecting tear itself apart.

  He pressed a hand once more to the barrier. The shimmer was almost beautiful—like moonlight dancing on water—but the magic beneath it was ancient and venomous. Abyssal. A design only one man could weave.

  Aldric.

  Orion’s jaw clenched. "Coward," he whispered, his voice low and cracked with fury. “You’ve always hidden behind your cleverness.”

  He had tried to break the seal with every counterspell he knew—and when that failed, brute force. Nothing had worked. Aldric’s construct wasn’t just a barrier—it was a statement. A mockery. One brilliant enough to repurpose Orion’s own arcane signature into the lock that kept him bound.

  A spell that could only be unraveled from the outside.

  His hands curled into fists, frustration coiling like a storm in his gut. He had taught so many of the young mages now dying outside these walls. Their cries haunted the edges of his perception. One voice had even called out to him moments ago—Lady Sera, maybe. Or another too far to reach.

  And now, even the King was faltering.

  His vision had caught a glimpse of it through the distortions in the barrier: Alduin’s blade slowing, Malcom surging with wild, defiant strength, the battlefield tipping by degrees toward collapse. He saw Thaddeus standing against three monsters, holding the line with light alone. He saw the glint of Sera’s shadow—moving fast, closer.

  Hope flickered.

  She was coming.

  He closed his eyes for a breath, steadying the rage, the helplessness.

  Then opened them again, sharp and clear.

  The time for theory was over.

  If Sera reached him, there might be seconds—no more. He would have to be ready to act the moment the seal cracked. The moment the rift became vulnerable.

  Because if the King fell before then—if the rift grew even one inch wider—this wasn’t just a kingdom falling.

  It was the end of everything.

  Cyrthal was the first to break the silence.

  “Tell me, Aeloria,” he said, circling with a predator’s grin, “did your little girl scream when we took her? Or did she just go quiet—like a flame snuffed in the dark?”

  Thaddeus didn’t respond.

  His light pulsed—sharper now. Tighter.

  Cyrthal’s eyes glittered, delighted.

  “Oh, she tried. She clawed and cried and kicked like something that still thought it mattered. But even stars flicker out when no one's watching.”

  Izhaldrath shifted beside him, silent but watching Thaddeus carefully.

  Then Cyrthal tilted his head, voice dropping to a near-whisper.

  “And the boy... what a twist.”

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  That grin stretched wider—too wide. “Didn’t think he'd join us so quickly. All that noble blood, and he still reached for the dark like it was his birthright. Must sting, doesn’t it? Knowing the legacy you built will end in Abyssal flame.”

  Something flickered in Thaddeus’s expression.

  A breath caught. A twitch in the jaw. Not enough for doubt—but enough to confirm he heard.

  Cyrthal laughed. Loud and broken. “Oh, the look on your face—gods, that’s rich—”

  He didn’t finish.

  Thaddeus struck.

  A beam of searing light lanced from his blade, catching Cyrthal full in the chest before he could blink. The demon was launched backward in a shriek of surprise and scorched smoke, crashing through a broken column and rolling through a crater of his own making.

  The earth trembled with the force.

  Izhaldrath didn’t flinch. His glaive remained poised, unmoved, as if Cyrthal’s chaos barely registered.

  From the rubble, a groan.

  Cyrthal peeled himself from the cracked stone, shoulders heaving. Smoke curled from the wound in his chest, and his grin—when it returned—was a touch more crooked.

  “Maybe it’s not that funny,” he wheezed.

  Izhaldrath didn’t look at him.

  “You antagonize him, you get burned,” he said flatly. “Focus.”

  Cyrthal coughed, dusted off a cracked horn, and chuckled again. “You worry too much, Izhal. He’ll fall soon enough.”

  Then, with eerie brightness: “They always do.”

  Thaddeus’s light began to surge again.

  He raised his blade in silence, eyes no longer clouded with restraint—but fury sharpened into purpose.

  He would not listen to their lies.

  He would not let them claim his children.

  Not without burning for it.

  And above them, the rift pulsed again—brighter now. Closer. Hunger bleeding through the seams of the world.

  Izhaldrath lowered his glaive.

  “Enough words,” he said.

  Cyrthal bared his teeth.

  “Agreed.”

  And the battle resumed—forces crashing in a storm that split the battlefield anew.

  The battlefield was chaos incarnate—blood and ash, noble screams mingled with demonic laughter.

  But to Aldric, it was beautiful.

  He walked with careful steps through the carnage, his black robes whispering across scorched stone as he neared the pulsing center of the arena. Around him, the sounds of battle roared—Thaddeus clashing with Cyrthal and Izhaldrath in an explosion of opposing forces, the earth cracking beneath each wave of their fury. The ground itself trembled beneath the weight of their power.

  But Aldric paid them no mind.

  The rift was all he saw.

  A yawning maw carved into the world, pulsing with an unnatural rhythm like a second heartbeat in the chest of reality. Magic bled from its edges, warping the very air around it, and at its base lay a ritual circle now fully awakened—its glyphs burning crimson as the runes aligned one by one.

  And in his hand…

  The Heart of the Abyss.

  A sphere of obsidian so dark it seemed to drink the light around it. Cracked down its center, it pulsed faintly with something that was not quite magic, not quite life. It was older than the kingdom. Older than the rift itself. A fragment of the plane beyond the void—smuggled into the mortal world by fools who thought they could master it.

  They couldn’t.

  But he could.

  And he had.

  Aldric stepped into the center of the ritual circle drawn beneath the rift—now glowing red-hot, the final glyphs aligning like teeth locking into place.

  He held the Heart aloft.

  The air screamed.

  “The seal is breaking,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “Just a little longer…”

  Above and behind him, Malcom was shouting again—his voice strained, commanding.

  “Stop her! Stop Sera before she frees the Magister!”

  Aldric didn’t even glance in his direction.

  Let Malcom chase ghosts.

  Let him rage against the fading strength of a dying king.

  The King was still alive. That was a complication. Malcom’s progress had been faster than expected, but not final. The boy had heart, yes—but the old man had fury. And worse, purpose.

  No matter.

  Aldric didn’t need Malcom to win.

  He just needed time.

  A surge of corrupted magic poured from the Heart, feeding the runes etched into the arena floor. They flared brighter, twisting unnaturally with every breath the artifact took. Above, the rift pulsed wider—its edges tearing, thinning.

  The twisted creatures that had been crawling through before—the malformed demons—were nothing. Mere fragments of what lay beyond.

  With the Heart activated, the last layer of the rift would collapse. The half-formed demons struggling through now—abominations of thought and hunger—were only the beginning. Once the ritual completed, the gateway would be made whole.

  Permanent.

  The capital would fall.

  And with it, the mortal world would finally gain a new master.

  Aldric exhaled, voice slipping into a tongue long forgotten to mortals. The language curled through the air like smoke, wrong to the ears, heavy to the soul. The glyphs responded instantly.

  The Heart trembled.

  The rift yawned wider.

  He heard the distant clash of magic behind him—Sera darting through the field like a phantom, Thaddeus holding off Cyrthal and Izhaldrath with light so intense it scorched the battlefield. They were close. Desperate.

  But it didn’t matter.

  Malcom could scream. The demons could fight. The King could bleed.

  None of it would stop what had already begun.

  Aldric’s expression twitched into the faintest of smiles. Not satisfaction—anticipation.

  Centuries of hiding. Of waiting. Of watching kings and councils scoff at his warnings, dismiss his research, brand his work as forbidden and mad.

  And now?

  Now they would see what madness truly was.