Residents surged from the lane’s far end, a tide of bodies, glass bottles whooshing like hornets through cold air.

Bottles slammed into walls and stone with sharp clacks, the reek mixing with blood, a hot column spearing the sky.

“Any way to get us airborne?” the guard shouted, head cocked like a wary bird.

“If humans could fly by magic, why invent vehicles at all!”

The crack of shattering glass and the hiss that followed scraped Hedi’s nerves raw, like a steel brush raking crooked tooth cracks.

Residents threw as they advanced, a slow tide under storm-cloud eyes.

Pots, pans, bottles, cleavers—anything that could fly became a hawk.

Hedi snapped into focus and cast, her will a blade; a transparent barrier bloomed like ice.

Missiles hammered the shield like a dense rain, each one a hammerhead wave.

Pots and cleavers pinged off and spun away like tossed coins, but bottled liquids splashed and crawled, staining the barrier in cloudy pools.

The clear shield fogged into a smear of mixed pigments, an abstract canvas under a gray sky.

“Nice work, Professor!” The guard fired forward, the shots cracking like dry wood.

The bullets ricocheted off the barrier and tapped his armor, leaving a small dent like a thumbprint in clay.

“What junky magic! Without armor, I’d be a sieve!”

“What did you expect? Defense cuts both ways.”

“No offensive spells?”

“Then who’s blocking the junk overhead?”

Her arm jerked down under his gauntlet; the barrier wobbled like water on glass.

Confusion stabbed first, but there was no time to think.

Hedi dropped into a crouch the instant the shield vanished, making herself a rock in the reeds.

The guard turned his body toward her, his armor a wall in the wind.

Most missiles clanged off him like hail on a roof; only tiny bits slipped past like gnats.

Hedi bent her fingers. White smoke pooled in her palm, an egg of mist.

She squeezed the light. It burst like a soaked sponge, flinging fire-red liquid.

The splatter leaped and tumbled midair, then twined into two hot little snakes.

They coiled around her index and pinky, rings of living ember.

“I’m not gonna hold much longer!”

At his roar, Hedi snapped her fingers and lashed the fire snakes out.

They left her hand in a white flash that washed the lane in daylight.

A deafening thud followed—boom—like a festival firecracker under a thunderhead.

The residents’ voices cut off clean, no ifs, no buts; silence fell like a guillotine.

The guard stared, still rattled, at people turned to ash in a heartbeat.

A crater smoked where the snakes died, heat shimmering the air like summer road haze.

Tiny flames crawled inside the dark pit, a forest of hands grabbing for anything that could still burn.

“Burned… straight to ash!” Selina folded to the ground, eyes wide like moonlight on water, fixed on Hedi.

Hedi threw up her hands like shields. “For the record, he told me to use an attack spell!”

“Right, though… that was more than I expected,” the guard said, walking forward, voice dry as sand.

“You hate corpses, yet you wiped out so many.”

“There aren’t any corpses. Or are you blaming me?”

“Just surprised. Got real combat under your belt?”

“Only a touch. Nothing more.”

“Still damn sharp. Someone like you, Professor… might never walk beyond the Empire’s borders.”

A chill ran up Hedi’s spine like cold dew. “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me—it sounds like mockery.”

“The Empire likes its leash on high-tier Spellcasters.” He paused, a stone in the stream.

“At first sight, I figured you were a journal’s flower vase.”

“How does a vase become a Professor?”

“My wording’s sloppy—”

“Save it. You’re not the first to think so,” Hedi cut in. “Others said worse.”

“You look too young. How old?”

Hedi tipped her face up, sifting memory like sand through fingers.

She kept two birthdays: one from her old world, one from this one.

This world’s was the day a nun carried her into the convent, not a true birth.

So she kept the old world’s date like a hidden charm.

“Twenty-two.”

“Took you that long to think?”

“Who keeps track? I don’t celebrate.”

“Your parents—” He turned, saw Selina waving hard, and shut his mouth like a slammed lid.

Hedi slid Selina a sidelong, bottomless look, a silent: Why steal my chance to roast him?

“I can throw you a birthday!” Selina darted behind Hedi and pressed her shoulders like warm anchors.

“How long till the next one?”

“Next July.”

“Mine’s April. I’m your older sister!”

“Don’t pat my head.” Hedi shook it, a willow in wind. “Nineteen doesn’t make you big sis.”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s on your Dark Realm Investigator ID.”

The guard stopped dead, a nailed plank.

Hedi seized the opening. “What now, are we too leisurely for you?”

He angled his body so she could see the crossroads ahead.

At the farthest edge of sight, a black lump pooled like tar.

The irregular shapes resolved into residents only after a few heartbeats.

Their outlines writhed, left then right, like worms in mud.

Muffled words leaked out, but distance smeared them to gray.

Only the lane’s wind reached the ear, a sleeve brushing stone.

“They found the stairs.” The guard fed rounds into his rifle with steady clicks.

“Got anything that hits softer?”

“It won’t matter.”

“Can’t you do what you did?”

“The gate’s carved spellwork keeps Dark Realm waves from spreading outward—”

“Then the wall stays safe while the people don’t?”

“Every spell needs cohesion. Throw it, and it unravels mid-flight.”

He laughed, disbelieving, like gravel scattering. “The biggest obstacle is the pricey Black Wall gate.”

“I can try to deconstruct it.”

“How long?”

“Depends how tangled it is.”

“Forget it. I’ll draw them off.”

“They only want to escape. Why would they chase you?”

“You said it yourself. The Dark Realm swells the worst in us. I blocked them. That anger’s still smoking.”

Hedi kept silent, her thoughts a still pond.

He added to Selina, gentler, “I’ll hide. Then I’ll trouble you to haul me out.”

New tension tightened his voice like a bowstring.

His breath rasped up like air from a well—slow, heavy.

Then came a deep inhale, a gale tearing through pines—rough, feral.

The two sounds traded places, with long silences between like curtain breaks.

The rhythm, full of meanings, set Hedi’s heart on edge like a drum.

“I don’t know if they can climb,” he swallowed, the sound dry as paper, “but after you two go up—”

“They shouldn’t. I can’t see tendrils climbing stairs.”

“Can you be sure?”

“We’ll check when we’re up.”

“Fine. Remember to wreck the stairs.”

“Attack magic won’t hurt the wall, but I can foul the steps.”

“Thanks.”

Hedi watched him go, his back a lone mast in gray rain, and caught Selina before she stepped forward.

“He really won’t be hurt?”

Silence answered like snow.

Bang!

Bang bang bang!

The guard raised his rifle and shot into the crowd around the stairs, each report a white spark in the noise.

Once their eyes swung to him, he pivoted and ran the other way, a fox under moonlight.

“Move.”

Hedi laced fingers with Selina and sprinted out of the intersection, feet drumming like hooves.

Gunfire fuzzed into white noise at her ear, then wind took over, a river through reeds.

Soon even the wind fell away, and only her heart thundered in her chest like a war drum.

A cough grabbed her; saliva went down wrong.

She staggered, slowed, then Selina hauled her the last stretch to the stair.

“Ha… ha… ha…”

“Your stamina is tragic.”

“That’s what life without exercise buys you.”

Panting, Hedi pinched Selina’s waist for leverage, boosting her up the near-vertical steps like pushing a kite into wind.

Once Selina cleared the lip, Hedi cast a hindrance spell over the stairs, a net of thorns, then climbed.

“The guard really won’t be in trouble?”

“He knows Shattered City better than we do. He’ll be fine.” Hedi caught Selina’s hand and let the pull carry her up.

She stood on the wall passage, breath sawing like a saw through pine.

To be sure, Hedi swept the passage with a scouting spell, a ripple over stone.

No life stirred. She let a breath go, a leaf off a branch, and nudged Selina toward the far stairs.

“Told you the residents can’t climb.”

“You talking to me?”

“No. Just muttering.” Hedi rubbed her thigh and yawned, a cat in winter sun.

“Once we’re out, I’m sleeping for real.”

“You didn’t sleep well?”

“I dozed in a chair. Dawn’s chill kicked me out.

Then I chased you two through all this.

I haven’t even had breakfast.”

“I see…”

She walked with Selina, eyes drifting to the Dark Realm beside the wall like a black sea.

She looked away, walked on, then glanced again.

A trick of the eye, or had it crept closer like a tide?

“Doesn’t the Dark Realm look closer than before?” Hedi asked, and in her peripheral vision it slid forward another inch.

“Stop!” She clamped Selina’s shoulder.

A hard pull rushed out of the Dark Realm’s depth, a river mouth sucking.

Crying, breath, and roars crashed back into their ears, a storm in a cave.

Hedi flung a spell, but it guttered.

Her mana buzzed like trapped flies, unable to gather into a blade.

“Impossible. I threw lightning last time…”

Then it clicked. The expanding Dark Realm, like the wave a year ago, had tripped the gate’s etched script.

Damn anti-magic ward.

Her body lifted, weightless as a leaf in a whirl.

She clawed for anything, but the Dark Realm dragged her in without mercy.

“Professor!”

She heard the call, but darkness ate her sight whole, a hood over the moon.

Her eyes never adapted.

She could only make out Selina’s dim silhouette, a shadow on shadow.

Where Selina faced, what state she was in—gone to fog.

As they plummeted, the black space flickered into static, a broken TV’s snowfield.

Minutes, or ten, or none—time fell apart like wet paper.

Hedi lost the clock, her thoughts a drifting lantern.

No doubt, something was happening here—

something heavy as thunderheads, something that mattered.