The corridor was empty at midnight.
Its fluorescent lights humming over polished floors and classroom doors that wouldn't open again until morning. Somewhere else in the school, students were scattered between the auditorium, the wreck rooms, and their beds, spending Saturday night in whatever way made sense to them.
Adam had somewhere to be, too. He walked with his shoulders loose, his hands tucked into his pockets, and a smile that kept returning to his face for absolutely no useful reason.
He glanced up at the ceiling halfway down the hall. Nothing had changed about it. Same white panels, same lights, same faint discoloration above the corner where the ventilation system met the wall. Still, it looked agreeable tonight.
He continued walking, a little spring in his step, feeling as if somebody had taken a weight off his chest and forgotten to tell him what it was called. His body felt good. His head felt clear.
Even the prospect of training at midnight sounded less like a chore and more like a personal invitation.
He arrived at the library, glanced down the corridor in both directions, and quietly slipped inside. Wandering over to the left-hand shelf, he instinctively pulled the three books in their familiar sequence, triggering a soft click as the shelf swung open to reveal the hidden trap door.
I wonder if the girls are even going to be there given tonight's whole vibe.
He wondered as he closed the hatch behind him and started down the staircase, skipping the steps with a sort of rhythm to it.
Damn I feel pumped. I could fight a bear.
Adam thought,
Medium sized one. Actually — brown bear or black bear? Brown bears are bigger but black bears are meaner. Probably black bear.
The underground hall was empty. Adam stopped at the bottom of the stairs and drew in a breath. Aiva's scent lingered in the stone passage, mixed with Chloe's, both trails leading away from the training area and toward the exit where he came in.
He looked toward the far end of the hall.
So they're outside then...
If they were, that meant either a good light lesson or a serious one, and there wasn't really a casual version of training with Aiva. Under other circumstances, he might have sighed. Tonight though, he took the stairs back up at a pace that wasn't quite running but wasn't not running, either.
Can't wait to see the look on Chloe's face when i tell her about my little "full moon excursion" last night.
Adam thought, a cheeky grin spreading across his face as he vaulted the school wall as effortlessly as stepping over a line on the pavement.
The night was cloudy. The full moon had passed its peak the previous evening, but its light still spread across the snow, turning the forest pale beneath the dark branches. Adam ran between the trees, following the trail until he reached the familiar edge of Aiva's barrier, right where he expected it to be.
The air shimmered faintly where the field met the world outside.
He stepped through.
The distortion passed over him like a ripple across glass. The trees bent at their edges, the moonlight stretched, and the landscape resolved on the other side.
Adam stopped suddenly.
The space inside the barrier had been torn apart.
For a moment, his eyes couldn't make sense of what they were seeing. Light flashed across the clearing in violent pulses, illuminating a field of broken earth and bent trees, then vanished so abruptly that the darkness seemed to slam shut behind it.
Something moved across the space at a speed that left his gaze chasing empty air. Another discharge lit the clearing from below, and the ground threw jagged shadows across the trees.
The sound arrived in layers: a deep concussion, a sharp crack, the hiss of displaced snow, then a rushing noise that made the air against his face feel like a physical thing.
Adam took a step backward. The barrier behind him.
"Nope!" He concluded as he turned and struck the barrier with his shoulder trying to push through.
The field pushed back against his shoulders, firm and unyielding. He shoved at it once with his palm, then again, harder. Nothing gave. He could cross inward, but the repulsion field refused to let him leave.
He was stuck inside, and his earlier excitement was now starting to waver.
The terrain began to resolve into details. Three craters cut through the clearing, one near the northern tree line, another several meters east of the center, and a third closer to the southern edge.
Fissures radiated from each impact point, splitting into smaller branches across the earth in patterns like shattered glass.
Several trees around the perimeter leaned at angles that made no sense. They hadn't fallen. Their trunks remained rooted in the ground, but their upper halves slanted away from the center as if something had shoved the entire forest sideways and then let go.
The snow had disappeared across broad, irregular patches. Bare earth showed through where heat had burned it away, while other sections had been scraped clean by force.
The air tasted metallic. Cold pressed against Adam's cheeks near the barrier, but warmth rolled across the clearing in waves, and a patch of ground ten meters ahead still steamed faintly beneath the moonlight.
Every breath carried the prickling sensation of Lumen discharged at a level that even a normal human would pick up on it. His body recognized the lingering energy before his mind could explain it.
And at the center of the devastation, stood Aiva Brown.