The air still tasted of iron.
Kael sat at the edge of the academy's outer courtyard, the morning sun bleeding through the glass towers. Below, workers rebuilt the shattered section of stone where the portal had torn through reality only hours ago.
To them, it was just an anomaly—a magical fluctuation, an accident caused by unstable mana conduits.
To Kael, it was proof.
Someone in Ætheris had learned how to force the veil.
He leaned back against the cold wall, eyes half-closed. The hum of mana lines vibrated under the city streets, resonating faintly with the pulse in his own veins. Each beat whispered of Tianluo—the scent of rain on stone, the howl of spirit beasts, the taste of blood on his tongue.
I shouldn't have crossed back so soon.
But the beast had left him no choice. If the Dreadmaw's corpse was discovered in Tianluo, others would follow its scent. And the girl—
His thoughts stilled.
The image of her returned: silver hair like moonlight, a staff shaped like a coiled dragon, and eyes sharp enough to pierce through lies.
He hadn't wanted to kill her.
But he would have, if she hadn't stopped.
For a moment, the cruel voice within him stirred.
"You should've finished it. Loose ends are weakness."
Kael didn't answer. He simply watched the sun rise higher, golden light scattering across the towers.
"She'll come for you eventually," the other whispered again, faint and amused. "And when she does, one of us will enjoy it."
Tianluo — The Valley of Mist
The wind carried the faint echo of that laughter across the worlds.
Lian stood alone at the site of the slaughter. The ground was dark where the Qi-beast's blood had burned it, and a faint trace of alien mana still shimmered above the soil—wrong, unstable, a poison in the flow of spiritual energy.
Her hand brushed the air, feeling the residue cling to her fingers like ash.
It was not Qi. It was something colder.
Something alive.
The elders' scouts had already come and gone, but she had stayed.
Something about that night haunted her: the way the stranger had moved—fluid, silent, his eyes neither human nor demonic. His energy had felt… divided.
"Between light and shadow," she murmured, recalling the strange whisper she had heard when the rift closed.
She gazed toward the distant peaks. The boundary shimmered faintly there, invisible to most, but not to her. She could feel the thrum of power that separated their worlds. And now, it pulsed with a new rhythm, one that didn't belong to Tianluo.
Lian's grip tightened around her staff.
If the veil was weakening, then so was their safety.
And that boy—whoever he was—had been the key.
Ætheris — Beneath the Glass Towers
By dusk, the academy was nearly empty.
Kael walked the corridors in silence, the lights flickering faintly above him. He could feel the aftershock of the day's events crawling through the city's mana grid—disruptions spreading like ripples. The Council would soon know the truth: someone had tampered with the gate network.
He stopped beside a sealed lab door. The rune-lock shimmered as he brushed his fingers across it.
It opened obediently, revealing the faint hum of machinery inside.
Suspended in the air before him was a small orb of condensed energy—the same one he had taken from the Dreadmaw's corpse. It glowed dimly now, half its power bled away in transit. But within that faint pulse, two energies coexisted perfectly.
Mana and Qi.
Ætheris and Tianluo.
Two forces that rejected each other—except in his hands.
Kael stepped closer, eyes reflecting the swirling core.
He could feel it tug at him, like a heartbeat out of sync with his own. Each time it pulsed, faint echoes resonated through his body—fragments of a mountain wind, a girl's voice carried in the mist, the faint scent of blood and stone.
He should have felt nothing. But instead, he felt seen.
And then, for the briefest instant, the orb flickered—projecting a shadow on the wall.
A girl's outline. Holding a staff.
Kael's calm mask slipped for half a second before his darker self surfaced in the reflection behind him, smiling faintly.
"She's reaching through," it whispered.
"She's closer than you think."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Then I'll be ready."
The orb pulsed once more, violently this time, and then shattered—light scattering into mist that vanished before touching the floor.
Somewhere beyond the veil, in Tianluo, Lian stumbled forward as a sudden tremor rippled through the ground. The mountains groaned. The sky pulsed.
For an instant, both worlds breathed as one.
Kael exhaled slowly, lowering his hand. The shards of light were gone, but the connection lingered in his mind like a brand.
"Between light and shadow…" he murmured. "The gate still remembers."
He looked toward the window—toward the horizon where Ætheris's neon skyline blurred into night.
On the other side of that darkness, a girl stood beneath thunder, staring back.
Neither could see the other.
But both could feel the pull.
The thread had been drawn.
And once woven between worlds… it could never be cut.