The corrupted barrier chamber had become a charnel house.

Bodies both branded and unbranded littered the floor in configurations that spoke of desperate last stands and overwhelmed defenses. The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood mixed with something acrid and wrong, the residue of corrupted essence that had been expended in violence.

Leo stood over Professor Dirk's headless corpse, his blade still dripping black ichor onto stone that would never be clean again. The weight of what he'd done executing a colleague, a friend, someone who had taught barrier theory to three generations of students pressed against him like physical force.

But he couldn't afford grief. Not yet.

"Everyone who can still fight defensive formation around Harold and Sarah!" Leo's voice cut through the chaos with Master-ranked authority. "We're getting them out of here alive!"

The surviving Academy students rallied despite their exhaustion. Damien's air manipulation created a protective dome around Sarah's position, while Lyanna's ice constructs formed barricades that funneled the branded students' assault into kill zones. Thomas raised earth spikes with trembling hands, his face pale from blood loss but his jaw set with determination.

The branded students pressed forward with mechanical precision, but their coordination had been disrupted by Sarah's chaotic tactics. Where before they'd moved as a perfect unit, now they hesitated fractionally at decision points, their hive-mind struggling to adapt to truly random behavior.

Professor Harold knelt beside Sarah, his healing abilities working overtime to address the corrupted hand still attached to her wounded side. The severed limb had begun to grow into her flesh, Claire's corrupted tissue attempting to establish the same bond that had claimed its original host.

"The corruption is spreading through blood contact," Harold reported, his academic composure cracking under the horror of what he was witnessing. "It's not just controlling it's converting. Trying to rewrite her essence signature at the cellular level."

Sarah's face had gone sheet-white, her temporal abilities flickering erratically as she fought the alien energy crawling through her channels. Every few seconds her body would stutter between time streams aging years in an instant before reverting, creating a nauseating effect that made it impossible to tell if she was breathing normally or suffocating in slow motion.

"Cut it off," she gasped, each word costing more than the last. "Harold, just... cut the corrupted tissue away before it reaches my core."

"That's half your abdomen," Harold replied, horror evident in his voice. "Even with my healing abilities, that kind of trauma"

"Is better than becoming one of them," Sarah interrupted, her eyes fixing on Claire's branded forehead with desperate focus. "Do it. Now. Before I lose the ability to consent."

Leo moved to their position, his blade still wet with Dirk's blood. He'd killed one friend today. The thought of cutting into Sarah watching her scream while he carved corrupted flesh from her body made something in his chest constrict painfully.

But she was right. Better a chance at survival through amputation than guaranteed transformation into one of the branded.

"Damien, I need you to create an air barrier around the wound site," Leo ordered, his voice steady despite the horror of what he was about to do. "Harold, be ready to seal blood vessels the moment I finish cutting. Sarah " he met her eyes directly, letting her see the grief he couldn't afford to voice "this is going to be worse than anything you've experienced."

"I know," she whispered, and her temporal abilities flared one last time, accelerating her perception so that what came next would seem to last hours instead of seconds. "I'm ready."

Leo's blade moved with surgical precision, cutting through corrupted tissue that writhed and fought against separation. The severed hand's fingers clenched harder, trying to maintain their grip even as he carved around them. Black ichor mixed with Sarah's red blood, creating patterns on the stone floor that looked disturbingly like the geometric brands carved into corrupted foreheads.

Sarah's scream was a sound Leo would hear in nightmares for the rest of his life not just pain, but the agonized awareness of someone experiencing extended torture through their own temporal manipulation. What took three seconds in real time lasted subjective hours for her, every nerve ending reporting the systematic destruction of her flesh in excruciating detail.

Harold's healing abilities engaged the moment Leo's blade completed its work, essence flaring as the professor forced blood vessels to seal, forced tissue to knit together in configurations that would leave massive scarring but would keep her alive. The corrupted hand finally released its grip, falling to the floor where it continued to twitch with unnatural life.

Sarah collapsed, her temporal abilities cutting out entirely as unconsciousness claimed her. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and the corruption that had been spreading through her essence channels had been stopped traumatically, violently, but successfully.

"She's stable," Harold reported, though his hands shook as he maintained the healing technique. "But she's lost a significant amount of blood and tissue. She needs proper medical attention within hours, not days."

Leo nodded, his tactical mind already processing their impossible situation. They were trapped in a dimensional rift with no clear path to the Academy, surrounded by branded students who wouldn't stop until everyone was dead or corrupted, and their strongest temporal manipulator was now critically wounded and unconscious.

The branded students pressed their assault with renewed intensity, as if Claire's hive-mind had communicated Sarah's vulnerability to the collective. Three of them broke through Lyanna's ice barriers simultaneously, moving with coordinated precision that spoke of tactical calculation rather than mindless aggression.

Leo met them with the kind of violence that came from decades of Master-ranked combat experience. His blade moved in patterns too fast for unenhanced vision to track, each strike targeting the brands carved into corrupted foreheads. Not because he thought destroying the brands would free them Dirk's death had proven that false hope but because damaging the control mechanism seemed to cause genuine pain, disrupting their coordination.

The first branded student fell with its forehead split open, black ichor spraying across Leo's face. The second managed to score a hit on his ribs before he separated its head from its shoulders. The third—

The entire chamber shuddered.

Not from combat, but from something external. A tremor in the dimensional fabric that made the air taste like copper and ozone, made the corrupted barrier fragments scattered across the floor pulse with sudden light.

Every combatant branded and unbranded alike froze as the sensation washed over them. It was the same feeling they'd experienced when the Academy arena had torn itself apart three days ago, when reality had fractured and consumed two hundred students.

"No," Lyanna whispered, her face going pale. "Not again. It can't be happening again."

The oppressive weight of dimensional collapse pressed against them from all directions, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. Thomas dropped to his knees, hyperventilating as traumatic memory overwhelmed present reality. Damien's air manipulation destabilized completely, his defensive barrier collapsing as panic seized his concentration.

"It's opening again!" someone shouted Leo couldn't identify who through the rising chaos. "The rift is destabilizing!"

But Leo's Master-ranked instincts detected something the students couldn't. Three days ago, the white rift had been chaotic random, consuming, pulling them in every direction simultaneously with no pattern or purpose. This disturbance felt different. Controlled. Deliberate. Following geometric patterns that spoke of intentional manipulation.

And more importantly, it had a direction. The dimensional pressure was emanating from a specific location northeast of their current position, perhaps three kilometers distant through the corpse-strewn battlefield.

'This isn't another collapse,' he realized with dawning comprehension. But he had no context for what it actually was, no knowledge that dimensional portals could be forced open from the other side. The only explanation his tactical mind could construct was

"The Apex!" Harold breathed, his eyes wide with sudden hope. "Someone must have defeated the dimensional anchor! If the beast maintaining this realm's stability is dead, the rift might be collapsing back toward our original entry point!"

It was the only thing that made sense. Master Vex had theorized that powerful entities served as dimensional anchors, maintaining the stability of pocket realms through their essence signatures. If one of the surviving groups had somehow killed whatever apex predator governed this space...

"That's our way out!" Leo seized the hope like a lifeline, pointing toward where his instincts indicated the disturbance was strongest. "Northeast, approximately three kilometers! We move now, we don't stop for anything!"

But his students heard different words entirely. Run toward the thing that had consumed them three days ago? Travel three kilometers through hostile territory toward a dimensional tear? The suggestion violated every survival instinct trauma had burned into their consciousness.

"Professor, that's insane!" Damien's voice cracked with barely controlled panic. "We don't know what's happening we could be running straight into—"

"Or it could be our only chance to get home!" Leo countered, making a command decision based on instinct and three decades of combat experience. "Harold, carry Sarah. Everyone else, defensive formation. We're moving now!"

The branded students' coordination broke entirely as their hive-mind processed the dimensional instability. Some froze in place, their mechanical precision overwhelmed by variables they couldn't calculate. Others began retreating toward the deeper tunnels, as if distance from the disturbance would provide safety.

Leo didn't give his students time to argue. He grabbed Thomas still on his knees and hyperventilating and physically hauled him toward the chamber's exit. "Move or die! Those are your options!"

They ran.

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