Chapter : 1933

  "You want my light?" she said, her voice trembling but fierce. She raised her glowing hand, holding the glass shards tight. "Then come and take it."

  The Prismatic Scholar had awakened. And she was about to show the Abyss what happened when you tried to trap the sun in a glass house.

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  The afternoon sun usually brought a quiet time to the capital city of Bethelham. It was the time of day when shopkeepers pulled down their shades to block the heat, and street dogs curled up in shady corners to sleep. The city slowed down, taking a deep breath before the evening rush.

  But for Lloyd Ferrum, there was no such thing as a break. There was no slowing down.

  He was miles away from the Royal Academy, sitting in his private office at the large manufacturing plant on the edge of the city. The room was silent, except for the scratching sound of his pen moving across a large sheet of paper. The air smelled of drying ink and stale coffee that had gone cold hours ago.

  Lloyd was working on a new design. It was a machine meant to help the people of the Northern territories survive the harsh, freezing winters. It was a complex heating system, based on science and heat theories he remembered from his previous life on Earth. He was drawing pipes, valves, and pressure gauges, losing himself in the math.

  It was peaceful work. In fact, it was the kind of work Lloyd loved most. He loved it because it was simple. Metal didn't lie to you. Gears didn't have hidden agendas. Math always added up to the same number, no matter how you felt that day. Unlike the messy, complicated emotions of his three wives, or the dangerous political games of the Royal Court, engineering was safe. It made sense.

  He adjusted his glasses and dipped his pen into the inkwell. For a moment, he looked like any other scholar or merchant—calm, focused, and boring.

  But Lloyd never let his guard down completely. Not really. Even when he was buried in blueprints and calculations, a part of his mind was always awake. A part of him was always watching.

  Months ago, he had secretly planted special seeds all over the important places in his life. These weren't normal plants. They were extensions of his "Void Wood" power—grey, ghostly roots that burrowed deep into the earth. They acted like a silent alarm system. They were his eyes and ears when he couldn't be there. He also had his "Echoes"—those ghostly copies of himself made of spirit energy—hiding in the shadows, watching over the people he cared about.

  He treated his life like a fortress. He was the watchman who never slept. He had sensors on his estate to protect his family. He had sensors on the palace to watch over Princess Amina and Isabella. And, most importantly, he had sensors at the Academy.

  Suddenly, the pen in his hand snapped.

  It wasn't a clumsy mistake. His hand had jerked violently, crushing the wood.

  A sharp, violent pain hit the back of his mind. It wasn't a normal headache. It didn't throb or ache. It felt like a physical wire snapping inside his brain, followed by the screeching wail of a siren that only he could hear. It was a psychic scream.

  One of his roots had been destroyed.

  It hadn't withered away from natural causes. It had been crushed. Stomped on by a hostile, corrupt energy. One of his sensors had just screamed in pain and then gone silent.

  Lloyd stood up so fast his heavy wooden chair fell over backward. It hit the floor with a loud crash that echoed in the empty office.

  He didn't look at the ink spilling over his blueprints, ruining hours of work. He didn't pick up the chair. He closed his eyes and focused on the mental map in his head.

  A red light was blinking furiously in his mind. It was a warning signal he had hoped never to see. It pulsed with a frantic urgency, demanding his attention right now.

  He checked the locations in his mind.

  It wasn't the estate where Rosa or Mina were. They were safe.

  It wasn't the palace.

  It wasn't the main factory floor where his team worked.

  The signal was coming from the Royal Academy. Specifically, it was coming from the Crystal Greenhouse.

  Lloyd’s face went pale. The blood drained from his cheeks, leaving him looking like a ghost. His heart, usually slow and steady like a well-oiled engine, began to hammer against his ribs.

  Chapter : 1934

  He knew exactly who was at the Academy today. He knew who loved to sit in that specific greenhouse on Tuesday afternoons. She went there because it was quiet and warm. She went there because the humid air reminded her of a garden she once knew in a different life—a life they had shared eighty years ago on a different world.

  Airin.

  "No," Lloyd whispered. The word came out like a growl, low and dangerous.

  Fear, cold and sharp, flooded his chest. It wasn't the fear of a soldier facing an enemy army. He could handle that. It wasn't the fear of a politician losing his status. He could handle that, too.

  This was different. It was the terrified, irrational panic of a man who was about to lose the most important thing in the world for the second time.

  The memories hit him harder than any physical blow. He remembered the rain from his past life on Earth. He remembered the sound of the phone ringing in an empty hallway in the middle of the night. He remembered coming home to a house that was too quiet. He remembered holding a cold hand and realizing he was too late. He remembered the crushing weight of the medal they pinned on his chest—a piece of metal that was supposed to replace the love of his life.

  That memory was a ghost that haunted him every day. It was the reason he built armor. It was the reason he gathered power. It was the reason he was terrified to let anyone close to him again.

  And now, that ghost was trying to become real again. Someone was attacking her.

  "Not this time," he hissed, his voice shaking with rage. "Not again."

  He didn't run to the door. Running was too slow. Running was for people who obeyed the laws of physics. Running was for people who accepted distance as a barrier.

  He didn't call for a carriage. Horses were useless against this kind of distance. Even his fastest carriage would take twenty minutes to reach the Academy through the city traffic. He didn't have twenty minutes. He didn't even have twenty seconds.

  Lloyd closed his eyes and reached for the power inside him. He didn't reach for the fire of his demon spirit, Iffrit. He didn't reach for the lightning of his storm spirit, Fang Fairy. Fire and lightning were travel companions, but they couldn't cut through space.

  He reached for the cold, absolute authority of the [Spatial Power].

  He grabbed the fabric of the world and didn't just tear it; he stepped outside of it. He accessed the "Nexus Point," his private pocket dimension of pure white nothingness.

  Whoosh.

  The sound was like a vacuum sealing shut, silencing the world inside the small office.

  He vanished. The air rushed in to fill the space where he had been, sending the ruined blueprints fluttering to the floor. He left no footprint, no trace, only the lingering scent of ozone where a man had once stood.

  In the space between heartbeats, Lloyd existed nowhere. He was a consciousness floating in the infinite white void of his inventory dimension. Here, time held no meaning. Distance was a lie. He didn't need to cross the miles; he simply needed to reject his current coordinates and accept new ones.

  He formed the image in his mind with razor-sharp clarity: The Academy Gates. The stone archway. The smell of the campus grass.

  He imposed his will upon reality. He pushed the "exit" door open.

  Boom.

  He reappeared at the main entrance of the Royal Academy, three miles away from his office, in the blink of an eye.

  The sudden displacement of air caused a massive shockwave. Dust billowed out from his boots as they slammed onto the cobblestones, cracking the pavement. The world rushed back in—color, sound, gravity—hitting him with a dizzying force. Translocation was instant, but the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure felt like being punched in the chest.

  But he didn't stumble. He didn't slow down. He didn't even blink.

  He looked toward the Academy grounds. It was just ahead, the stone towers rising above the manicured lawns. To anyone else, it was a beautiful school, a place of learning and peace.

  To Lloyd, right now, it looked like a trap. It looked like a tomb.

  Chapter : 1935

  He felt the red light in his mind again. It wasn't just blinking now; it was burning. The connection he had placed on Airin—a subtle protective seal he had woven into her shadow without her knowing—was under attack. Something was trying to break it. Something dark and hungry was tearing at her defenses.

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  "Hold on," he hissed through gritted teeth, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears. "Just hold on, Anastasia. I’m here."

  He didn't care about the dizziness. He didn't care about the guards shouting in alarm at his sudden appearance. He gathered his momentum, the ground beneath him splintering as he launched himself forward.

  He wasn't running anymore. He was hunting.

  ________________________________________

  —-

  Lloyd appeared in a crowded market square, three miles closer to the Academy.

  The sudden displacement of air caused a shockwave. Fruit carts overturned, sending apples and melons rolling across the cobblestones. Horses reared and neighed in terror. People screamed as a nobleman materialized out of thin air, his boots cracking the pavement upon landing.

  "Watch it!" a merchant yelled, shaking his fist. "You crazy fool!"

  Lloyd ignored him. He ignored the chaos he had caused. He didn't even see the people. To him, they were just obstacles. Static in the signal. Blur shapes that were in his way.

  He looked up. The Academy was closer now. He could see the gleam of the sun reflecting off the Crystal Greenhouse. But now that he was closer, he could feel something else.

  His enhanced senses picked up a signature he recognized. It wasn't just a generic threat like a thief or a bully. It was a cold, oily feeling in the air. It tasted like rot and old blood on his tongue. It was a frequency of magical energy that shouldn't exist in the human world.

  It was the feeling of the Abyss.

  Cultists.

  The realization made his blood run cold. If it had been a random criminal, Airin might have been safe for a few minutes. She was smart; she could talk her way out of trouble. But the Cultists... he knew what they did. He knew about their experiments. He knew how they viewed people with special magical cores not as humans, but as batteries to be drained and discarded.

  They wouldn't just kill her. They would use her. They would break her down piece by piece until there was nothing left but a husk.

  "Move," he ordered himself, forcing his legs to work harder. "Move faster."

  He pushed his body to the limit. He didn't wait for his Void energy to recharge naturally. He forced it. He burned his own physical stamina to fuel the jumps.

  Crack.

  He appeared on top of a clock tower, startling a flock of pigeons.

  Crack.

  He appeared on the bridge leading to the university district, scaring a fisherman half to death.

  Every step drained him. His lungs burned as if he had inhaled fire. His muscles screamed in protest. The world around him started to tunnel, his vision narrowing until all he could see was the destination.

  But as he moved, his mind wasn't on the pain. It was on her.

  He remembered her face in the library when she told him about the dream. He remembered the way her voice trembled when she said the name of their son, "Yohan."

  She was the only person in this entire universe who knew the real him. To everyone else—to Rosa, to Amina, to the King—he was Lloyd Ferrum, the genius, the warrior, the strange nobleman. They respected him, maybe even loved him, but they didn't know him.

  But to Airin, he was Evan. He was the man who liked his coffee black and hated mornings. He was the man who worried about paying the rent. He was the man who had failed to protect his family once.

  I promised, he thought, the memory of the dream echoing in his mind. I promised I would always find her.

  If she died... if he let her die again... it would break him. It wouldn't just be grief. It would be the end of everything holding him together. He knew, with terrifying certainty, that if he lost her today, he would burn this entire kingdom to ash just to warm his hands on the fire.

  He stepped through the void one last time.

  Crack.

  He slammed into the ground on the main cobblestone path leading to the Academy gates. The impact created a crater, sending dust and stones flying.

  The two guards at the gate jumped, lowering their spears in panic.

  Chapter : 1936

  "Halt!" one of them shouted, his voice shaking. "Who goes there? This is restricted gro—"

  Lloyd didn't slow down. He didn't even look at them. He didn't have time for explanations or authority. He didn't have time to show a badge or speak a name.

  He simply waved his hand. A gust of invisible force—a kinetic pulse from his Void power—swept the guards aside like dry leaves in a storm. They flew into the bushes, unhurt but terrified.

  Lloyd sprinted through the open gates. He wasn't the polite Professor today. He wasn't the clever Lord who played political chess. He was the soldier who had burned down enemy bases to save his squad. He was the Commander who had walked through hell and come back.

  He ran across the perfectly manicured lawn. Students scattered, dropping their books, staring in shock at the blur of motion tearing through their campus.

  "Professor Ferrum?" someone called out confusedly.

  Lloyd didn't hear them. His eyes were locked on the Crystal Greenhouse.

  It looked peaceful from the outside. The glass glistened in the sun. The flowers inside looked vibrant. But Lloyd’s special vision, his [All-Seeing Eye], flared to life, and the pretty illusion fell away.

  He saw the truth.

  The greenhouse was covered in a shroud of dark mist that normal people couldn't see. A heavy, complex barrier had been erected around it—a containment field designed to keep sound in and help out. It was high-level magic, the kind used by the Seventh Circle's elite.

  Inside that barrier, he could feel a bright, desperate flare of energy. It was Airin. She was alive. But her light was flickering, spiking with fear and adrenaline.

  He reached the heavy glass doors of the greenhouse. He grabbed the handle and pulled.

  Locked. Not just locked, but sealed with magic.

  The handle was cold, biting into his hand with a magical frost. The barrier was solid, a wall of shadow that separated him from her.

  "Open," Lloyd roared.

  He pulled his arm back. His fist began to glow with a dark, metallic sheen as he activated his [Steel Blood]. He didn't bother with a spell to pick the lock. He didn't look for the counter-rune to dismantle the barrier. He decided to use brute force.

  He punched the air directly in front of the door.

  BOOM.

  The shockwave hit the invisible barrier. The air rippled like water. A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the dark mist, but it held. It was a strong shield, designed to withstand a siege.

  "Open!" he screamed again.

  He hit it a second time. His knuckles split. Blood ran down his hand, mixing with the glowing steel of his skin. He didn't feel it.

  He could feel Airin’s panic on the other side. He could sense the hostile presence of the intruder—something cold, slimy, and arrogant. The thought of that thing touching her, hurting her, drove him into a frenzy.

  He pulled back for a third strike. He channeled everything he had—his Void power, his physical strength, his desperation. The air around his fist distorted, heat waves shimmering as he compressed the space around his hand.

  He wasn't just going to break the door. He was going to shatter the building.

  "I said... OPEN!"

  He swung.

  Just as his fist connected with the barrier, he felt a spike of energy from inside. It was bright. It was blinding. It was the feeling of sunlight exploding in a confined space.

  Airin was fighting back.

  The realization gave Lloyd a split second of hope, followed by a new wave of urgency. If she was fighting, she was cornered. If she was using her power, she had no other choice.

  His fist smashed through the cracked barrier. The dark mist shattered like glass. The recoil shook his bones, but the path was clear.

  Lloyd didn't walk through the door. He didn't open it. He crouched low, his leg muscles coiling like springs, and launched himself upward.

  He wasn't going to use the door. He was going to rain down on them from above.

  He leaped toward the glass roof, his arm transforming, shifting, preparing to become a weapon of mass destruction. The Professor was gone. The husband had arrived. And he was going to make sure that whoever was inside that greenhouse regretted the day they were born.

  —

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