Lightning split the sky over Ashenwell as the forge team—students from the third year advanced crafting division—lowered the final rune into place.
Sparks lay in a containment sphere, her form flickering like a dying star. The new vessel—tall, sleek, elven in form—rested on a slab of obsidian. Smooth, beautiful, carved with glowing red ether veins, and a single crystal core in the chest, waiting for her soul to take hold.
“Five chapters,” the Headmaster said without turning, hands moving like clock gears over an ancient scroll of binding runes. “That’s all I need.”
Grim stood behind him, tension heavy in his jaw. “They’re already coming.”
“I know,” the Headmaster replied coolly. “I invited them.”
Grim stiffened.
The man finally turned. His eyes shimmered with a timewarped gold that bent the air around him.
“You’re not ready yet,” he said. “But you will be. And they”—his fingers danced through the air, pulling apart space like a curtain—“will make sure of it.”
In the air between them, a rift opened.
Five cloaked figures stepped through. Each one bore the Court’s sigil, etched in bloodlight.
Their presence cracked the world like the first note of a symphony before war.
Grim's aura reacted instantly—his stormsurge sparking, fire lacing the ground around his boots.
But the Headmaster didn’t flinch. He smiled.
And time broke.
The Court’s assassins froze midmotion—just for a moment—but it was enough for the Headmaster to trap the space around them in a sealed dome of chrono locked reality.
Time ran differently inside. Faster. Harsher. Wild.
The dome solidified in a blink, then pulsed—five layers of temporal rings spinning in alternating directions.
“You break it,” the Headmaster said, “you fight in my school. You stay inside, you fight where I don’t have to clean up the mess.”
He turned to Grim. “Do try to survive. I made it just uncomfortable enough to sharpen the dull edges.”
With that, he vanished in a shimmer of golden gears—off to oversee the forging of Sparks’ vessel.
The dome hummed.
And time began.
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The assassins moved like nothing had changed.
They struck fast, shadows curling into razor thin blades. One vanished into the air, another split into three mirrored versions, each wielding a crimson glaive.
Grim ducked the first swing and backflipped, landing on a shifting floor of compressed memories. He didn’t waste time asking questions.
A storm howled inside his veins.
He snapped his hand up—thunder surged, blasting the nearest assassin into a memory wall, shattering the illusion for a second. Fire followed, but his control still wavered. The flame lashed wide, catching the mirrored version of another assassin but not finishing the job.
He wasn’t fast enough.
Not yet.
A blade pierced his shoulder. He growled and twisted, blasting space around his body to hurl the attacker back, but the cut pulsed with shadow poison—disorienting his senses.
One of them laughed—a voice warped by static and glee.
“Still waking up, Prototype?”
Grim’s gold eye flared.
“I’m wide awake.”
The ground beneath him split as he surged forward, striking with a wall of condensed flame and stormthreaded wind. One assassin blocked, the other dodged—barely. Their formations were tight. Trained.
But Grim had learned something too.
He ducked under the second strike, caught the assassin's wrist midmotion, and twisted their body into the path of another’s blade. Two of them tumbled back, buying him space.
His storm core burned hot, his fire core flaring dangerously close to overloading. He was using both but barely keeping the chaos in line.
Sparks’ voice flickered weakly in his mind. “You’re being reckless… but it’s hot…”
“Stay with me,” he growled back, mentally.
Outside the dome, students stared in awe, unable to see the fight in real time. All they saw were brief flashes of motion—Grim and the assassins moving faster than thought, caught in a bubble of compressed eternity.
Inside… minutes passed like hours.
Blood slicked Grim’s side. His eyes were burning—one storm, one ember—and he could barely focus. His enemies weren’t just fighting with strength.
They were testing his history.
Every strike seemed aimed at his old scars.
Every voice, a whisper of the Court’s betrayal.
They were toying with him. Learning him.
And then… the sky cracked.
The dome stopped.
The assassins froze midstrike.
Grim blinked. His core pulsed in warning.
Something was changing the time field.
And then—
“Did I say five chapters?”
The voice came like silk over steel.
The air shattered.
The Headmaster reappeared, no longer wearing his regal coat. He wore a simple white tunic and gloves etched with spinning clockwork glyphs. His eyes were glowing fully now—burning with time.
In one gesture, he erased the dome.
The world adjusted. Students outside screamed as light exploded—and then dimmed again as everything settled into clarity.
Five assassins.
All frozen midmotion.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
And yet utterly, absolutely still.
The Headmaster turned to Grim, speaking softly as the assassins stood in slowmotion horror.
“You’ve done well. But these are not for you.”
And then time slammed.
He moved like an echo reversing through glass. The assassins tried to shift, to blink, to breathe—
—and then they weren’t.
One was aged into dust midstrike.
Another blinked back into infancy—vanishing.
The last three were warped through years in the blink of a second, trapped in endless temporal loops until they collapsed from the weight of infinite life lived all at once.
And the Headmaster?
He never stopped smiling.
“You don’t come for my students,” he said, smoothing his sleeves. “Not in my house.”
Grim stared, panting, adrenaline crashing like a wave. His cores flickered—but held steady.
“You used them to test me.”
The Headmaster shrugged. “Better they scar you than kill you. This was kindness.”
Behind him, the forge doors cracked open.
A radiant pulse filled the hallway.
The vessel… was ready.
And Sparks?
Sparks blinked awake in Grim’s mind, faint but smiling.
“Let’s go… home.”