"Get out of the way! He's in the breach!"
The shouting echoed through the skeletal remains of Carriage Four. A phalanx of men pushed through the smoke, led by four figures whose presence made the very air vibrate with unnatural pressure.
They were mages.
I stood alone amidst the ruins of the luxury cabin, the gale from the Arette Pass whipping my long, black hair into a frenzy. I had discarded the ruined mask of 'Aristhide.' My face was now sharp, youthful, and etched with a coldness that seemed to mirror the blizzard outside.
The leader of the terrorist squad—a man named Mayhem—skidded to a halt. He was a Fourth-Rank wizard, a veteran of the darker corners of the continent. He had come prepared to slaughter aristocrats and fragile scholars. He hadn't expected to find a predator waiting in the wreckage.
'Who is this guy?' Mayhem wondered, his eyes darting to the cooling corpses of the conductors he had planted as sleepers.
"Hmph. Five wizards," I said, my voice carrying over the roar of the wind. "Quite the investment for a simple train raid."
"It's an investment that's about to pay off," Mayhem growled, signaling his men to spread out. "Concede now, and I might make your death quick. You're talented, but you're one man against five Fourth-Ranks. The math doesn't favor you."
"The math," I repeated, a ghost of a smile touching my lips. "You're right. I should probably change the variables."
Without another word, I stepped backward and threw myself out of the gaping hole in the side of the train.
"What?! Did he just jump?"
"Coward! He chose the cliff over us!"
One of Mayhem's mages, a man named Hanson, rushed to the edge, sticking his head out to watch my body plummet into the white abyss.
Whoosh!
A lance of condensed kinetic energy—a "tangible flash"—erupted from directly above the window frame. It punched through Hanson's skull with the sound of a wet snap. His body tilted forward, caught by the slipstream of the moving train, and vanished into the fog below.
"Hanson! Hanson is down!"
"Where did that come from?!"
Mayhem looked up, his face contorting with fury. "The roof! He's on the roof!"
The Phantom on the Rails
I hadn't jumped. I had used a localized gravity tether to swing myself upward, catching the edge of the roof and pulling myself onto the vibrating iron plates of the carriage top.
'A shame,' I thought, crouched low against the biting wind. 'I wanted to take down two of them before they realized the trick.'
Below me, the terrorists were in a frenzy. I could hear them scrambling for the ladders between the carriages.
"Hurry up! Kill him!"
I didn't wait for them to climb. I ran. My boots thundered against the metal roof as I headed toward the rear of the train. Every few steps, I fired a pulse of mana downward through the vents, keeping them pinned and panicked.
For a mercenary, the first rule of survival is to control the enemy's emotions. Anger makes men predictable. Fear makes them slow. I needed them to be both.
"To the back! He's trying to decouple the rear cars!" Mayhem's voice screamed from below.
I smiled. Exactly what I want you to think.
I reached Carriage Eleven and dropped through a maintenance hatch. I worked quickly, my fingers moving with the muscle memory of a man who had spent three years sabotaging supply lines in Utah. I didn't decouple the car—not yet. Instead, I laid a "Feedback Trap" on the internal door handle of Carriage Ten.
Then, I retreated to the very end of the train, Carriage Twelve.
The Trap Springs
Mayhem and his remaining mages were no longer moving with scholarly caution. They were a pack of wolves chasing a wounded rabbit. They burst through the door of Carriage Nine, then Ten.
BOOM!
The spell-trap I'd placed on the door of Carriage Ten detonated. It wasn't meant to kill them—not mages of their rank. It was meant to obscure. A cloud of thick, magical fire engulfed the hallway, turning five of their foot soldiers into charred husks in an instant.
"You wretch!" Mayhem screamed, his mana-shield flickering as he stepped through the flames. "A professor? A scholar? No... no academic fights like this!"
He was starting to realize. The way I used the environment, the way I refused to engage in a "proper" wizard's duel of standing and casting—it was the hallmark of a hunter.
"Careful!" Mayhem ordered his surviving mages. "He's trying to lead us to the end of the line. He's trapped!"
They moved slowly now, checking every corner for runes. They reached the coupling between Carriage Eleven and Twelve. They saw me through the glass of the rear door, frantically working the manual release lever.
"He's decoupling! Don't let him escape!"
They abandoned their caution and lunged forward, bursting into the rear vestibule just as the metal pins groaned and snapped. With a screech of iron, Carriage Twelve separated from the rest of the train, fading back into the snowy darkness.
"We lost him," one mage panted, staring at the receding car. "He actually did it. He ran away."
Mayhem stood at the jagged edge of the open platform, his chest heaving. He opened his mouth to curse my name, but the words died in his throat.
A shadow moved behind them.
I hadn't stayed on Carriage Twelve. I had jumped back onto the rear bumper of Carriage Eleven the moment the pins cleared, hiding in the blind spot created by the rushing steam.
"Looking for someone?" I asked.
The three remaining mages spun around, but they were standing in a perfect, clustered line in the narrow vestibule. In the logic of the battlefield, they were a single target.
I didn't use a wand. I didn't chant. I slammed both palms into the floorboards and released every ounce of mana I had been hoarding.
"Absolute Zero: Glacial Storm."
This wasn't a standard elemental spell. It was a fragment of the "unrecognized magic" Julian Vane had been so curious about. It was a spell that didn't just burn; it erased heat.
A dazzling white flame—a fire so cold it shattered steel—swept through the vestibule. It swallowed the mages whole. Two of them were flash-frozen instantly, their bodies becoming brittle statues that shattered into diamond-dust as the train vibrated.
Only Mayhem, the Fourth-Rank, managed to survive. He had thrown up a desperate, frantic barrier, but it hadn't been enough.
The Arrival of the Frontier
The storm subsided. Carriage Eleven was a tomb of frost.
Mayhem lay amidst the ruins of the rear deck. He was a horrific sight—half his face had been seared white by the frost, and his left arm ended in a jagged, frozen stump. He was dying, his breath coming in ragged, crystalline gasps.
"Why..." he wheezed, glaring at me with his one remaining eye. "We were... working for the people. The aristocrats... the bloodsuckers on this train... they deserved to burn. How can you... a man of your skill... protect them?"
I walked toward him, my boots crunching on the ice. "I wasn't protecting them," I said quietly. "I was protecting my nap. You picked the wrong carriage, Mayhem."
"You're a monster," he spat, black bile freezing on his lips. "Who... who are you?"
"I'm a man who just wanted a fake job," I replied.
I looked past him. Shadows were descending from the grey sky—gryphon riders, their white capes billowing like the wings of angels. The Aethelgard Frontier Guard had finally arrived.
A woman in silver plate armor dropped from a gryphon's back, landing with a heavy clank between me and the dying terrorist. She drew a blade that glowed with a pure, holy light and, with a single fluid motion, ended Mayhem's suffering.
She turned to me, her eyes scanning my soot-stained coat and my calm demeanor. She saw the pattern of the eagle on her own shoulder and then looked at the frozen carnage I had left behind.
"Are you the civilian who sent the distress signal?" she asked, her voice rich with relief and suspicion.
I looked at her, then at the horizon where the towers of the capital were finally beginning to peek through the mountain mists. My mask was gone. My secret was teetering on the edge.
"I'm just a passenger," I said, tying my hair back once more. "But I believe I have a lecture to attend."
The knight commander stared at me for a long beat. "I am Commander Elara of the Frontier Guard. You've done the Empire a great service today, sir. We will need your name for the official report."
I looked at the charred remains of the train and the frozen ash of the mages. I could give my real name. I could be Kaelen again. Or Vesper.
But I looked at the letter in my pocket—the one I'd taken from the luggage of a dead man named Ludger.
"My name," I said, offering a tired, aristocratic bow, "is Ludger von Chelysie. Newly appointed Professor of Sorenth Academy."
And just like that, the lie became my reality.