The Academy slept beneath a silvered moon. Inside Dorm Seven, Jayden lay on his bunk with an arm draped over his eyes. Across from him, Kael was losing his battle with boredom.
Mist rolled across the training fields, whispering over marble statues and torchlit courtyards. the night was quiet—no duels, no shouts, only the slow hum of distant wards. Jayden lay on his side, eyes half-open, watching the faint shimmer of moonlight ripple across the water jug beside his bed. Kael's snores filled the room, soft at first, then louder, like rumbling thunder.
"Snore like that in battle," muttered one of the other boys, throwing a pillow.
Kael just rolled over and snorted, "That's my war cry."
"Do you think they feed the instructors diamonds or something?" Kael muttered, flipping a coin made of crackling lightning between his fingers. "They walk around like gods while we're stuck doing meditation drills and elemental balance for hours."
"Maybe they earned it," Jayden said, voice low.
Kael groaned. "You sound like an old man."
Ren snorted from the top bunk. "If you trained half as much as you talked, you'd be an instructor by now."
"Or dead," Theo added.
Laughter drifted through the room. For a moment, the world felt human — warm, alive. The academy was cruel in its standards, but camaraderie still found its way between exhaustion and bruises.
Then the air changed.
Jayden noticed it first. The faint ripple in his cup of water. The whisper under the floorboards, too deep to be wind. It was the same heaviness that came before a storm — the same pull that had once dragged him into the canal and toward something greater.
He sat up. "Do you feel that?"
Kael stopped flipping his coin. "Feel what?"
The light dimmed.
Outside the window, the stars shivered — one by one, their glow drowned beneath a red haze creeping across the sky. The horizon rippled like a mirage, heat distorting the moon.
Ren leaned out the window. "What the hell…"
A low hum rolled through the air—deep, guttural, like the growl of a waking beast. The torches flickered sideways. The air grew hot enough to sting.
Jayden sat up, instantly alert. Across the room, Kael blinked blearily. "You feel that?"
The next sound wasn't one they could mistake. A crack split the air, echoing like thunder tearing open the sky. The walls pulsed with red light, and from beyond the dorm windows came a sound like rushing flame.
A column of flame erupted over the training fields, swallowing the stars. At its heart, a circle of light burned, spinning slow and vast — runes shifting within like a living script of molten glass. The air warped around it, and reality bent until it screamed.
Kael's lightning coin fell from his fingers. "That's— that's an Elemental Gate."
Jayden's stomach turned to stone. "And it's open."
They bolted for the courtyard.
The night had become fire.
Above the academy grounds, a ring of molten light burned in the sky—a perfect circle carved out of the dark, spilling embers that drifted down like glowing rain. The Fire Gate.
Students poured from every building, half-dressed, half-awake. The instructors shouted for order, their voices lost in the roar.
Then the Gate opened.
From its heart poured a surge of red mist, followed by the first abberant—a creature shaped like a wolf and a man both, its body cracked with veins of lava. Its eyes burned like twin brands as it landed amid the students, molten claws carving through stone.
They were made of living fire and half-forged matter — abberants, unstable echoes of the Fire Realm that had slipped through the Gate's breach. They shrieked as they hit the ground, bodies cracking and reforming, eyes molten with hunger.
The first landed near the central courtyard. Its impact cracked stone. Another followed — then ten more.
Kael's face lit in reflected fire. "Oh, we are so screwed."
"Move!" Jayden shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the exit.
Screams tore through the air.
"Defensive circle! NOW!" roared an instructor—a woman in emerald armor. Earth rose around her fists as she slammed them into the ground, forming a barricade of jagged stone. Her voice cut like a whip. "Form pairs! Contain them!"
Jayden's instincts took over. He reached for his blades—the Moonshine Twins flashed into being with a surge of blue light, water condensing around the metal. Kael's arms crackled with lightning, while two upperclassmen ignited flame wards around the perimeter.
Then chaos descended.
The aberrants came in a flood—creatures of molten skin, all teeth and flame. The night turned orange.
Jayden and Kael ducked behind a fountain as a wall of heat rolled past, melting the water to steam. Students screamed, some fleeing, others rallying under senior command.
Ren pointed. "There — behind the library!"
A cluster of abberants had breached the western wall, burning through a barrier sigil. They moved wrong — like fire trying to remember how to walk.
Kael's eyes sparked with yellow light. "They'll reach the dorms!"
Jayden didn't hesitate. "Then we stop them."
Kael blinked. "Wait— what?"
But Jayden was already moving. The Moonshine Blades shimmered into his hands — twin arcs of pale steel singing quietly against the roar of chaos.
A smaller abberant lunged at him, limbs dripping fire like molten wax. He sidestepped, letting instinct and rhythm guide him. The water from the shattered fountain rose in his wake, coiling around his blades. The first strike cut clean through the creature's arm; the second extinguished it in a burst of steam.
Kael leapt into the fray, lightning exploding around him in arcs. His movement was wild, erratic, deadly—every strike a blur that left afterimages in the smoke. Beside him, They moved in sync — Jayden flowing, Kael striking.
Kira's fire curved in perfect spirals, burning clean through the air, her form graceful even amid panic.
Jayden moved like water. His blades met flame, hissing into steam; every dodge flowed into a counter, every slash rippled like a wave's recoil. His eyes narrowed—every movement of the aberrants mirrored a rhythm, predictable if you watched long enough.
He fought for control in a world devoured by heat.
The ground trembled underfoot as a larger abberant slammed down nearby, its molten body twisting like a dying sun. Kael cursed, leaping back.
"Instructor inbound!" Ren shouted.
A woman in black armor appeared beside them, her steps silent despite the chaos. With a gesture, a ring of ice spread from her feet, freezing the abberant mid-scream. She didn't spare them a glance as she raised a sigil-spear and shattered the creature to glittering frost.
The air cracked. Another abberant died. Then another.
Jayden could only stare — the precision, the speed. This was power.
Kael whistled, breathless. "Remind me never to skip her class again."
But there was no time for awe. The ground beneath them split, heat bursting through as if the academy itself was being devoured. More aberrants poured through, crawling on limbs of liquid fire.
Jayden fought like a man possessed. Not reckless — focused. Every movement was measured, every step placed with the rhythm of flowing water. His blades hissed steam as they struck, the air alive with noise and heat
Then the ground rumbled.
From above the Gate, the light deepened — turning from orange to crimson, from flame to blood. Every shadow twisted. The air grew heavy, thick, and alive.
Jayden looked up. Through the burning haze, something vast was taking shape.
The first wall of defense shattered. A massive hand—charred black and crowned with claws—punched through the courtyard gate. It wasn't another aberrant. It was something worse.
The Gate Guardian.
It stepped through the smoke—a towering humanoid of flame and molten bone, eyes burning with ancient hatred. Its breath alone melted the air. Around its head floated glowing runes—the Codex's mark of classification, though faint and unreadable to mortals.
"Pull back!" the instructor shouted. "That's not your fight!"
But some students didn't move fast enough. The Guardian swung its arm once, and half the front line vanished under a wave of molten debris.
Kael cursed, rushing forward on instinct. "We can't just—"
Jayden grabbed his wrist, yanking him back. "You'll die!"
"I'd rather try than fry watching!"
Before they could argue, the ground beneath them cracked. A wave of molten rock surged forward—until a massive wall of obsidian burst from the ground.
Aiden stood behind it, arms trembling, veins glowing earthen gold.
"Move!" he shouted, forcing another wall up as molten claws smashed into it. "Get the injured out!"
Jayden blinked, stunned at the sheer scale of the defense. Earth quaked beneath his command, forming ramparts and spears that stabbed upward at the Guardian's legs.
Kael's grin flickered. "Guess we're not the only show-offs tonight."
"You're welcome," Aiden snapped, sweat running down his jaw.
The instructors regrouped, relics flashing like stars—gauntlets, whips, swords, and staves that pulsed with living runes. The courtyard became a storm of power: fire met earth, lightning danced with water, wind howled through stone.
Each strike lit up the night, each scream echoed like thunder.
Then, amid the maelstrom—
A calm voice.
"Enough."
The flames bent inward, curling like petals toward a single point. From the smoke, Headmaster Varrick stepped through.
His presence alone silenced the air. No element surrounded him, yet every element responded—the flames dimmed, the wind stilled, even the molten Guardian faltered, a low growl rumbling from its throat.