The auditorium of the Exorcist Academy was nothing more than a carcass of concrete and frost. In the center of the debris stood Raphael—a monolithic silhouette whose mere breathing made the remaining glass panes rattle. His ochre eyes, like two pits of burning sulfur, were fixed on the four students. But Alistair, consumed by an arrogance that only the elite can foster, refused to see the danger.
"Ignore that thing!" Alistair roared, his voice shattering the supernatural silence. "It's bait! The Anomaly is out in the open on the square. This is our only chance to become legends. Thales, Yuna! Blast the west wall—we're taking the aerial exit!"
Raphael didn't make a single move to intercept them. He simply tilted his head, a sound like grinding gravel echoing from his glass vertebrae.
"You measure a building's value by its facade," Raphael's voice boomed, heavy as a landslide. "But the truth of the fall lies within the foundations."
Thales didn't listen. He projected a kinetic force disc that pulverized the exterior wall. The violet light from Solon's barrier flooded the room, revealing a Lyon they no longer recognized—transformed into a jungle of shifting prisms. The four students leaped into the void, plunging fifty feet. Alistair fired jets of blue flame beneath his feet to slow his descent, while Selena wove ephemeral Prana threads, creating a safety net for her companions.
They hit the ground in a roll and began to sprint. Around them, time itself seemed to have disintegrated. They ran past cars whose chassis were slowly twisting into steel spirals. They saw civilians, mouths locked in silent screams, their skin beginning to crystallize under the pressure of the Prana-saturated air.
"Don't look!" Selena cried, tears pricking her eyes. "Keep your eyes on Solon!"
The Architect was there, three hundred yards away. He stood in the center of the square, his back to them, hands nonchalantly tucked into the pockets of his long black coat. He seemed to be contemplating the monumental gates of the Agency like a landlord returning to a house for which he had lost the keys.
"Formation Delta!" Alistair bellowed, the adrenaline erasing every trace of reason. "Give him everything! Now!"
The four prodigies of the Academy synchronized their hearts. A storm of combined power erupted from them—a gale of light and fire.
Alistair threw a spear of blue flame so hot it boiled the suspended rain. Selena released a "Barrage of a Thousand Needles," piercing light-points capable of shredding tank armor. Thales launched his "Singularity Cube," a zone of gravity so dense it should have crushed Solon into the pavement. Finally, Yuna, like a black lightning bolt, slipped into the shadow of the attack to deliver the killing blow.
The assault was perfect. A symphony of destruction.
But ten feet away from Solon, the symphony turned into a deathly silence.
Alistair's fire spear didn't extinguish; it was refracted. It curved impossibly, tracing a perfect circle around Solon before evaporating into harmless orange sparks. Selena's needles hit an invisible wall and fell to the ground, turned into mere shards of useless glass. Thales's cube collapsed in on itself—its gravitational logic simply ignored by the surrounding space.
Solon didn't even bother to turn around.
"You spent six months studying my 'spells'," he whispered, his voice carried by a cold wind that didn't belong to this dimension. "But you never understood that I don't cast spells. I edit reality. And in my edition, you are nothing but syntax errors."
The ground didn't shake. It opened.
Raphael hadn't stayed behind. He had traveled through "below," moving through the molecular structure of the glass Solon had already spread beneath the asphalt. The Place Bellecour exploded beneath the students' feet. A colossal hand, made of obsidian blocks and quartz, surged from the earth and closed around Alistair.
"Demonium: Total Collapse."
A seismic shockwave tore through the bodies of the four students. It wasn't an explosion pushing them away, but a force compressing them. Bones snapped. Muscles went into tetany under the impact of a vibration frequency designed to shatter stone.
They were hurled into the center of the crater—broken, gasping, their elite uniforms in tatters. Alistair tried to push himself up, but his legs no longer responded. His pride had evaporated, replaced by a primal, raw terror.
Solon finally turned. His tinted lenses reflected the purple glow of the sky. He walked forward slowly, his boots crunching on the glass debris that now blanketed the square.
"You wanted the Architect," he said, stopping at the edge of the crater, looking down at their broken forms. Raphael loomed behind him, his massive fist still glowing with a wicked ochre light. "Congratulations. You found the foundations. It's time to see what lies beneath."
He pulled off a black glove, revealing his left hand. His thumb began to glow with a sickly, greenish light: The Parasite.
"Azrael, prepare the bindings," Solon ordered. "They have secrets the Agency hasn't had the time to erase yet."