Thorne woke up with a jolt, heart thudding against his ribs like he'd been yanked out of a nightmare. For a moment he just lay there, eyes squinting at the low light filtering through the windows of his room.

Something had pulled him from sleep, but what?

Then the message flared across his vision in soft, ethereal blue:

Character Level Up! You have reached Level 48!

Thorne blinked.

Sat up.

Stared at the notification for a few seconds like it had personally offended him.

"Level… forty-eight?" he muttered, rubbing at his face. "How?"

He glanced around the room instinctively. No blood. No bodies. No signs of a fight. He even checked the space under his bed.

"Okay… so I didn't murder anyone in my sleep." A small mercy, though at this point he wasn't entirely ruling it out as a possibility.

Still, nothing seemed off. Nothing except...

His eyes narrowed.

The tower. The two mages guarding the key.

The Entropy Breath.

He had released it in desperation, not even sure it would work, just hoping to cause enough of a distraction to slip away. The motes had been slow, subtle. He'd barely dared to breathe while they slithered toward their cores.

And then… he'd forgotten all about it.

Apparently, the aether hadn't.

Thorne let his head fall back onto the pillow with a quiet groan. "Of course it worked. Of course it killed them. Eventually."

He stared at the stone ceiling above him for a moment longer, letting the implications settle. That skill… it didn't care about level disparity. It just took its time.

His eyes drifted to the notification again. The faint glow lingered, expectant.

"Fine, fine," he muttered, swiping it away and pulling up his stats screen. The new points waited at the bottom, neatly arranged and taunting him like a pile of unspent homework.

He dumped all of them into Spirit.

Immediately, a wash of cool relief spread through his limbs. The ache behind his eyes, the drained sensation in his core from last night's brutal training with Marian, it dulled. Not gone, but muted, manageable.

Thorne let out a slow breath. "Okay. That helps."

He still felt like a half-squeezed fruit, but at least now his bones didn't throb every time he moved. The increased Spirit gave his body room to breathe, especially after the intense mental gymnastics of resonance manipulation.

He sat up fully, rubbing a hand over his face again.

Level 48. A stealth mission, a divine assassination attempt, and now daily death training under a secretly Elderborn professor.

He hadn't even had breakfast yet.

He could tell it was early. Too early. Judging by how his limbs ached and his mind still buzzed, he'd barely managed two hours of sleep.

And yet…

He was wired.

The kind of buzzing energy that thrummed beneath the skin, half exhaustion, half momentum.

With a sigh, Thorne rolled out of bed, padded across the cold floor, and dipped into the adjoining bath. The water stung against his skin, too cold, but it chased away the last dregs of sleep.

Afterward, he dried off quickly and sat cross-legged on the bed, hair still dripping, body still humming.

No use trying to sleep now.

Instead, he closed his eyes and began the breathing exercises Argessa had shown him, slow inhales, deliberate exhales, the flow of aether drawn inward, circulated, and released. Again. And again.

He'd preferred practicing actual spellwork, sure, but he wasn't eager to accidentally detonate his room before breakfast. Not again.

Hours passed without him noticing.

Each round of practice brought a subtle refinement. His awareness of the aether moving through his veins, how it curved, where it pooled, how much he unconsciously wasted, grew clearer.

His body tingled, not with power, but with the slow steadiness of refined control.

He felt… balanced.

Well, as balanced as someone could feel while seated naked on a damp towel, half-levitating his cauldron in the corner as a test of passive focus.

The knock pulled him from the trance. Sharp, mechanical.

He stood, padded barefoot to the door, and opened it a crack.

An aether construct stood there, thin and insectile, its glassy chest cavity glowing with soft blue. It held a small ornate chest in its hands.

Thorne sighed. "Let me guess."

He took the chest without ceremony. It pulsed faintly in his hand, humming with a locked enchantment he recognized.

Brennak.

Of course.

He was about to shut the door when a voice called out:

"Well, good morning to you, deathlord."

Thorne blinked and stepped back just in time as Isadora came to a full stop in the hallway, raising an unimpressed brow.

She took one look at his state, wet hair, towel around his waist, shadows under his eyes like bruises and smirked.

"Why are you naked?" she asked. "And more importantly, why do you look like someone dug you out of a grave, enchanted you halfway back to life, and then forgot to finish the job?"

Thorne glanced down. "Technically I'm not naked."

"Right, forgive me," she said, gesturing vaguely to the towel. "Your elegance stuns me."

She crossed her arms. "Where were you last night, anyway? I knocked. Was going to invite you for a late snack or something. Maybe a little company."

Thorne's mind flicked through about a dozen possible lies and explanations. He landed on the best option.

He activated Tactful Deflection.

His expression shifted to something softer, distracted. "I was deep in some material on ancient spell sequencing. You know how time slips away when you're elbows-deep in forgotten sigils."

He didn't even blink.

Isadora tilted her head, blinking slowly then nodded. "Yeah, I guess. That does sound like something you'd do."

Skill Leveled Up! Tactful Deflection 14 → 15

Thorne kept his face perfectly blank.

She turned away, her braid flicking over one shoulder. "Get dressed. I'll wait for you downstairs."

She took a few steps, then stopped.

Turned around slowly.

Her eyes narrowed, glinting with suspicion.

"Wait a second. Did you just..."

Thorne closed the door in her face.

A muffled sound of indignation followed.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He grinned, dropped the enchanted chest on the bed, and finally moved to get dressed.

He didn't open it right away.

First, he scanned the room for his dagger. It had ended up wedged behind his satchel, tucked under a book on alchemical conversions, something he'd been meaning to pretend to read.

He pulled it free and held it steady in his palm.

Then, slowly, he reached inward. Not to cast. Not to shape. But to bind.

Aether swirled around his fingers, faint silver streaks crawling into the blade as he imbued it with intent. Not too much. Just enough.

The dagger shimmered faintly, humming against his skin as the spell latched into the metal's structure.

With practiced ease, Thorne pressed the edge of the dagger against the glowing seam of the chest and dragged it through the locking enchantment.

It resisted. Buzzed faintly with layered sigils.

And then snapped apart with a dim flicker.

The enchantment died.

He set the dagger aside, flexed his fingers and hesitated.

Always check for traps.

He inspected the rim, the hinges, the inner lining. Nothing buzzed. No latent aether spike. No shimmer of sigils waiting to trigger.

Still, his muscles were tense as he lifted the lid.

The chest creaked open and Thorne's jaw clenched.

Inside, on a strip of faded velvet, sat a single coin.

Tarnished. Covered in blood.

It wasn't just a threat. It was a promise.

Brennak was coming for him.

Thorne exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the edge of the chest.

He'd known there were two ways the dwarf might respond.

Either he'd be cowardly after the market's destruction, shrinking back, licking his wounds, never daring to cross him again.

Or…

He would do something stupid.

And of course, Brennak chose stupid.

Thorne closed the chest quietly and stood.

He dressed methodically, mind spinning, not with panic, but with strategy.

He didn't want Brennak as an enemy. Not really.

What he wanted was an ally. A source. Steady coin. Rare goods. Information.

But first, he'd have to break the dwarf properly.

Several plans formed and dissolved in his head, some complex webs of deception and intimidation, others brutal and direct.

He settled on something in between.

Something… flexible.

He grabbed his bag, swung it over his shoulder, and headed downstairs.

Isadora was waiting by the common room hearth, chatting with Lucien and a tall, pale-skinned male elf Thorne vaguely recognized from Umbra house but had never spoken to. The elf's name was… what was it? Valian? Vessar?

Something with a v.

They greeted him with casual nods, and together they made their way to breakfast in the Astral Hall before the morning bell.

The day passed in a blur.

Lecture after lecture. Wandwork. Magical Law. A crash-course alchemy refresher that reminded him how deeply he hated cauldron math.

He saw Rowenna after lunch, and before he could slip away, she cornered him near the east garden stair.

"Do you want to book a simulation chamber later? I figured you'd want to test your new spell."

Thorne nodded. "Yeah. Good idea."

Elias, who had just caught up behind them, let out a theatrical gasp.

"Really, Thorne? You're abandoning me for spells? With her?" He gestured dramatically at Rowenna, who raised one unimpressed brow.

"I thought we had something real," Elias muttered. "Something sacred."

"I think your grasp on reality is slipping," Thorne said dryly, already walking toward the Arcanum Ring.

"Friendship," Elias called after him, "is dead!"

The practice session was… well, it was progress.

Two hours inside the padded illusion chamber. Argessa's voice echoing in his head, reminding him of the shaping cues and breath timing.

Flame Needle was supposed to be one of the simplest battle spells, a couple of words for incantation, a few sigils to compress aether into a point, charge it with fire-aspect motes, and fire.

Easy.

Except for the part where it kept fizzling.

He managed to get the shape stabilized a few times, brief glowing needles that hovered midair like molten pins, but most dissolved into steam or flickered out entirely.

Only once did he get it to fully activate.

Kind of.

It sputtered. Zigzagged. Hit the target dummy with all the strength of a sneeze.

Thorne just stared at the smoldering straw and muttered, "We'll call that a… creative success."

And if he squinted?

It did look vaguely needle-like.

Sort of.

Evening came far too quickly.

Thorne had barely finished dinner, his tray still littered with half-eaten food and untouched tea, when the sky above Aetherhold deepened to violet, the moon glowing pale in its mirrored ascent.

He didn't need a reminder. Marian's words echoed in his head with grim finality:

"Every. Night."

By the time he reached the base of the crystal tower, the courtyard had mostly emptied. The outer mirrors shimmered with slow pulses of light, reflecting different corners of the academy, some rippling with stored magic.

One of them flared as he approached.

A portal yawned open like a sheet of water turning inside out.

Thorne stepped through without hesitation.

The starlit island welcomed him once more. The air was sharp with salt. The moonlight etched silver lines across the sea, endless in every direction. Waves lapped gently at the edges of the smooth stone platform.

Marian stood in the center, her pale hair caught in the sea breeze, her long robes whispering softly against the stone.

She didn't greet him.

Just raised her hand and with a flick of her fingers, conjured half a dozen objects onto a polished table of glass and crystal: pendants, bracelets, rings, even a carved brooch.

"I hope you had a productive day," she said coolly.

Thorne shrugged. "Define productive."

Her eyes narrowed. "Did you shift the frequencies in the rings?"

He winced. "Five out of twelve."

Marian let out a long breath through her nose. "Progress. But barely."

She gestured to the table. "Tonight we escalate. These are enchantments of varying complexity. Some will resist. Some are dormant. Some… will be loud."

Thorne stepped closer, eyeing the objects. Each hummed faintly, their resonances coiled tight like sleeping snakes.

"And I'm guessing," he said, "this is the part where I start making mistakes that might fry my hands."

"If you're careless," Marian said without blinking, "yes."

"Lovely."

The session began with a simple brooch, a decorative piece woven with a basic glamor spell.

Thorne crouched beside it, extending his hand, reaching not with dominance, but with presence. The rhythm came slow. Wound. Fragile.

He matched the hum, slid into the frequencies layer by layer.

Then… he nudged.

Too hard.

The brooch flared, brilliant and sharp, and zapped his palm like a slap.

He jerked back. "Ow."

"Good," Marian said with zero sympathy. "That one only burned you."

The next piece resisted more subtly. A ring with a minor warmth enchantment. Thorne managed to match two of the three pulses… but couldn't pin down the third. When he tried to force it, the enchantment dissolved entirely.

Marian clicked her tongue.

"You didn't listen to the shape of the frequency. You just assumed you knew its purpose."

"Because it was warm?" Thorne said, flexing his fingers.

"Because it was familiar," she corrected. "Never mistake familiarity for understanding."

Hours passed.

More objects. More failures.

But a few successes too.

He managed to shift the hum of a pendant, barely, but enough to disrupt its enchantment without setting it off. The sigils etched into its surface dulled to grey. Dormant.

Marian nodded once. That was all the praise he got.

By the time the moons had drifted far overhead, Thorne's focus was frayed. His temples pulsed. The aether around him still clung like humidity, but his control was slipping.

Finally, Marian stepped back.

"Enough for tonight."

She pulled another velvet pouch from her sleeve. When she placed it in his palm, he felt a sickeningly familiar weight.

Rings.

More of them.

Thorne groaned aloud. "You can't be serious."

She raised a brow. "By tomorrow, I expect ten. Perfectly shifted. No burns. No collapsed frequencies."

He groaned again, this time skyward, as if the moon itself might grant him mercy.

It didn't.

As they walked back toward the mirror arch, Marian added coolly, "And tomorrow night we move on to live spells."

"Joy," Thorne muttered.

"Every. Night," she reminded him.

He muttered something that might have been an insult, but it got swallowed by the sea breeze.

And the training continued.

The rest of the week had passed in a blur. No, a grind.

Thorne barely had time to breathe, let alone think.

Between the endless barrage of classes, soul-sapping assignments, Argessa's relentless channeling drills, Marian's nightly torment, and his own private hell trying to stabilize Flame Needle, he felt like his life had collapsed into a cycle of lectures, burns, and bruised pride.

He hadn't even found a spare hour to begin weaving the plan he'd mentally drafted for Brennak.

Something about that pissed him off more than it should've.

At least one thing was finally going right.

Thorne grinned to himself, eyes locked on the ethereal sigils floating before him, each one drawn with crisp precision, glowing faintly as he funneled a steady stream of aether from his core.

No flare, no sputter, no wild lurch of unstable motes.

Just smooth, clean control.

He took a breath.

Spoke the final word.

The air shimmered then a brilliant, slender flaming needle lanced outward with pinpoint speed, slicing through the air in a perfect line.

It struck the practice dummy dead center, hissing as it burned into the padded surface and left a crisp, black scorch mark right where the heart would be.

Thorne whooped.

A real, honest whoop that echoed in the simulation chamber like a victory bell.

"Yes!"

Then the lights dimmed.

The simulation's enchantments flickered and abruptly shut down.

"What the hell?" he muttered, spinning around.

"I still have half an hour left!"

A knock on the heavy door cut off his complaints.

Thorne groaned. "If that's Elias pulling some stupid prank again, I swear..."

The door creaked open just enough for the attendant to peek in, wearing the standard academy robe and an apologetic expression.

"Excuse me for the interruption," he said. "But I'm afraid you are being… called."

Thorne frowned. That was ominous.

"Called by who?" he asked warily, already trying to figure out if this was Marian being extra dramatic again or Argessa, demanding another 'light breathing' exercise that ended with his lungs on fire.

The attendant hesitated, glanced down at the writ in his hand, then met Thorne's eyes.

"By the third Light of the Empire,

Varo."

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