The halls went completely black.

  Absolute darkness. The type that made me question whether my eyes were actually open. It reminded me of waking up in the Multiverse for the first time, except now I could sense the world around me. The silence pressed down heavy and oppressive, like the air itself was holding its breath.

  Then came the sound that sent goosebumps racing up my back: stone scraping against stone. A grinding, deliberate noise that echoed from multiple directions at once.

  "Oh, fuck me," I muttered, already reaching into my soul-space for the lantern orbs I'd stashed there. My fingers found them easily—the advantage of organizing your magical storage with neurotic precision. I grabbed a handful and cranked their internal runes up as high as they'd go without exploding. The last thing I needed was to blow myself up before the golems got a chance.

  I tossed them in a wide arc, and golden light erupted across the hallway. The sudden illumination revealed exactly what I'd been afraid of.

  Two golems stood at the edge of my aura's range, their white stone bodies gleaming in the bright light. Recognition hit me square in the gut. They were identical to the one I'd fought during the trial right after binding Valor. The same unnaturally smooth stone, the same too-fluid way of moving that made my brain hurt trying to track them.

  That single golem had kicked my ass. I'd only survived by cheating with divine mana, and even then it had been close. Now there were two.

  "Seriously, Dara?" I called out into the darkness. "Two of these fuckers? There has to be an easier way to kill me."

  The golems didn't care about my commentary. The first one shifted its weight in a way stone shouldn't move, then exploded forward in a full-body dropkick that would've made any WWE wrestler proud.

  I dodged sideways, Valor screaming warnings through our connection. Good thing too—the golem's leg somehow reversed direction mid-air, springing backward despite lacking actual joints. The stone foot caught me square in the back, and I went sprawling across the floor.

  Every nerve fired complaints as I forced myself back up. Without thinking, I shifted my clothes to the phantom brass scale mail stored in my soul-space. The familiar weight settled over me, and I felt my aura contract noticeably inward—maybe ten meters now instead of the wider range I'd grown accustomed to.

  When had my aura's default range gotten so large? The last time I'd worn this armor, I'd been running alongside the Trailbinder with Cass and Katie, too focused on not dying to pay attention to specifics.

  The second golem reached me while I was still processing the change, moving like a professional boxer—fists up, bouncing on the balls of its feet. Stone feet. Whatever. The point was, it threw jabs with speed and precision that suggested someone had taught it at the school of "float like a butterfly, sting like a pickup truck."

  I dodged the first three punches, but the cross-counter that followed caught me completely off guard. The fist slammed into my stomach hard enough to fold me in half. The armor absorbed most of the impact, but I still felt it in my bones.

  Anger flared hot in my chest. I pulled back with a fully mana-infused fist and slammed it into the golem's blocking arm with everything I had. The crack that followed was satisfying—chunks of stone flew off.

  My hand, however, hurt like absolute hell.

  That's what they don't tell you about mana reinforcement: sure, you can punch through stone, but your hand still has nerves in it, and physics are a bitch.

  The boxing golem barely seemed fazed by losing a chunk of its arm. Meanwhile, Valor's warning scream came a fraction too late as the first golem caught me in a bear hug from behind, its stone arms locking around me.

  The boxer golem saw its opening and started wailing on my armor. Each blow rang out, and I watched in growing horror as the hardened scales began to crack and fall to the floor with musical jingles. When enough of the chest piece had been compromised, the golem reared back with both fists above its head in a classic double axe handle.

  "Oh no you fucking don't," I snarled, and ignited a full-scale mana burn.

  Blue fire erupted outward from every pore, bathing the entire hallway in sapphire light. The force of it exceeded my expectations—the boxer golem flew backward, crashing into the wall hard enough to leave a golem-shaped indent.

  With my strength effectively tripled by the mana burn, breaking free from the bear hug became almost trivial. I twisted out of the hold and immediately dropped into a Tai Chi stance. The form felt natural now, muscle memory from countless hours of practice in my soul-space.

  The bear-hug golem tried to strike, but I flowed past its attacks. Each miss created an opening, and I exploited them all, my empowered fists crashing into the white stone with devastating force. Cracks spread across its surface, growing wider with each impact.

  When it overextended on a wild swing, I caught its arm and used its own momentum against it, executing a throw that would've made my Aapo weep precisely one tear. The golem's arm tore off at what passed for its shoulder as it slammed into the ground hard enough to crack the floor tiles.

  The boxer golem had recovered and was already sprinting back toward me, launching into a jumping aerial punch that would've been impressive if it wasn't about to cave in my skull.

  That's when Red hit it.

  No warning—he was just suddenly there, wreathed in flames as he slammed into the golem's side, sending it careening into the opposite wall. He landed in a crouch, his seven tails splayed out behind him, his red coat rippling with energy that made the air shimmer.

  “About time you helped!”

  , Red replied, and I could feel his amusement.

  "Other three?!" I said, then grabbed the severed golem arm and used it as an improvised club, smashing it against the boxer golem's head twice in rapid succession. The head cracked, then shattered, and the entire golem dissolved into dust that sparkled briefly before vanishing.

  "Perfect," I muttered. "Destroy the head. Would've been nice to know that a minute ago."

  The golem on the ground grabbed my ankle with its remaining hand, the grip iron-tight. It wasn't trying to hurt me, just slow me down, and when I tried to pry the fingers open, I realized I'd need something with more leverage than my bare hands.

  That's when five more golems entered my aura's range, all of them with their fists up in a boxer's stance.

  "Fucking come on, Dara!" I shouted to the ceiling. "Five more? What is this, a tutorial on how to traumatize people?"

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  Red growled low and dangerously, positioning himself between me and the approaching golems.

  He was right. I could feel my mana reserves plummeting. With one golem still attached to my ankle and five more approaching, this was about to get terrible quickly.

  The lead golem rushed forward, and I blocked its first strike with the severed arm I was still holding. The impact jarred my entire skeleton. Two more golems flanked me, moving with horrifying synchronization.

  Red intercepted one, his jaws clamping down on its arm as he used his momentum to flip it over his shoulder. The other one's fist connected with my ribs, and I heard something crack that definitely wasn't the golem.

  "Son of a bitch!" I gasped, using the last of my mana burn to smash the ground golem's head with what remained of my stone club. It dissolved, finally freeing my ankle, but I was running on fumes now.

  The remaining four golems circled us. My armor was more gap than protection at this point, brass scales littering the floor. Every breath sent spikes of pain through my chest—definitely at least one broken rib, possibly two.

  "Any time now, Dara!" I yelled. "I get it, you win! Message fucking received!"

  One golem feinted left while another came from the right. I dodged the first but walked right into the second's uppercut. The blow lifted me off my feet, and I had a moment of clarity as I flew through the air:

  Red caught me before I hit the ground, his body suddenly larger, more substantial. Had he always been able to do that? Questions for later, assuming there was a later.

  The golems pressed their advantage, and we fought back-to-back, Red's flames and my increasingly desperate punches barely keeping them at bay.

  A golem's fist caught me in the shoulder, spinning me around just in time to see another one coming for my head. The number of times I'd had my bell rung couldn't be healthy.

  The feeling of being moved through the tower overwhelmed me, and I landed hard on solid marble, with the sound of brass scales raining around me. Everything hurt. My ribs were definitely broken—I could feel at least one of them grinding in a way that bones absolutely should not grind. My collarbone felt wrong, like someone had reassembled it using instructions from IKEA.

  "Fuck," I groaned, rolling over with all the grace of a beached whale. "Ow. Fuck. Ow."

  I immediately started channeling life-aspected mana, that warm green energy flowing through me. It helped, but nowhere near fast enough. I reached into my soul-space for a healing pill, popping it into my mouth before I could think too hard about how much this was going to hurt.

  Here's what I'd learned about healing pills: they work progressively, starting with the worst injuries and working their way down. Usually fine unless your bones need to be set properly first. The pill started working on my ribs and collarbone simultaneously, and I had about half a second to realize what was about to happen.

  "Shit…" I started, then bit down on a scream as my bones forcibly realigned themselves. It felt like someone was playing Jenga with my skeleton, except all the pieces were on fire and covered in angry bees.

  In desperation, I flooded the pill’s effect with life-aspected mana, supercharging it. My mana pathways locked down completely, but the pill's effects sped up dramatically. What should have taken a minute or two of gradual healing happened in seconds—bones snapping back into place, cuts sealing, bruises fading from purple to yellow to nothing.

  When it was over, I lay there panting, my mana reserves so empty I could practically hear an echo. The healing had worked, but at what cost? Actually, I knew the cost—all of my fucking mana.

  "Interesting trick," a familiar voice observed.

  I looked up to see Diana standing in front of her massive desk, sipping tea from a delicate porcelain mug. She wore simple linen clothes instead of her usual elaborate dresses, which was more unsettling.

  Above us, the Mana Lens hung suspended over the Academy's skylight, its massive gyroscope form rotating slowly as it focused ambient mana from across the entire building. The thing was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

  "You shouldn't try that until you're an Adept," Diana continued, raising an eyebrow. "Takes too much mana to be practical for anyone below that level. Though apparently, the rules don't apply to Terrans hopped up on Titan's Root."

  I slowly sat up, still collecting the scattered brass scales from the floor. Each piece went back into my soul-space with a slight effort of will that made my depleted mana reserves ache.

  "Tried it a few days ago," I admitted. "Works wonders when your spine is fucked up from being hunched over ginseng plants all day."

  Diana nodded approvingly and took another sip of her tea. "Can I get you some tea?"

  "Please," I said, then triggered the shortest mana burn I could manage—just a split-second pulse of blue fire. The Emberseed responded immediately, flooding me with enough mana to stop feeling like I was running on empty. It was a shot of pure adrenaline straight to the soul.

  I really needed to learn more about how it worked, but it only seemed to trigger when I had absolutely nothing left.

  Diana's eyes went wide, her teacup stopping halfway to her lips. "Well, I was going to lecture you about messing with Dara—I hear you destroyed half a dozen of her golems—but now I'm curious about what that necklace is."

  "Arryava gave it to me after she met Ted. Said it would mark me as a revered one among any Sentarians I met. Called it the Emberseed."

  "Ben." Diana set her mug down carefully. "I have seen nothing produce mana like that. Or sense when you've run out. Is it alive?"

  I shrugged, already second-guessing my decision to store it. "This isn't the first time it's popped off. Remember at Richard's when I first made the refined mana? It triggered there too."

  "Store that properly in your mana sanctum or whatever you call it," Diana said firmly. "That has to be worth a fortune if it can produce mana. And if Arryava gave it to you, it has to be rare. Things don't just produce mana, Ben."

  She had a point. The necklace had saved my ass multiple times now, but if it could trigger from inside my soul-space, maybe it was safer there. The name certainly gave me pause—ember could mean anything. Fire, flame... Hollowflame? The necklace definitely didn't feel like Hollowflame, though. That stuff stank at a spiritual level.

  Diana gestured toward the second level of her office, where comfortable-looking couches and chairs were arranged around a low table. "Come, sit. We need to discuss your first day at the Academy."

  I claimed a couch, and Red appeared from nowhere—I hadn't sensed Dara bringing him here—and claimed a large chair, sprawling across it with pure contentment. His size was back to normal, and all but one of his tails were gone.

  "Pretty sure Dara set me up," I said, exhaustion creeping into my voice despite the mana boost.

  Diana smiled over her tea. "You should have used your light rune to illuminate the hallway instead of wasting lantern orbs. Much more efficient."

  "Ah. So you were watching. Fantastic, my mentor and her ancient spirit want me dead."

  "Oh no, we both thought it would be worth seeing how far you've come given how fast your team killed the Goreback Hydra. Though I don’t agree with Dara’s methods."

  I chuckled, but my eyes were already growing heavy. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the combination of lack of sleep, the fight, the healing, and the mana depletion was catching up to me. Diana's voice continued, something about tactical applications of runic knowledge, but it was getting harder to focus.

  My eyes closed for just a second, and suddenly I was in my soul-space courtyard. Ted stood there with his flask, looking amused.

  "Rough night?" he asked.

  "Fuck off," I mumbled, and forced my eyes back open.

  Diana was watching me with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "Ah yes, it's been a long fucking day for you. Maybe having you run a gauntlet of golems at the crack of dawn wasn't my best idea."

  "Wait," I sat up straighter, alarm cutting through the exhaustion. "It's almost dawn? Fuuuuck, was Dara lying when she said it was midnight?"

  Diana shrugged, completely unconcerned. "She does that. I believe breakfast will be served in an hour, and you have your first official day at the Academy. Your Introduction to Runic Theory starts at seventh bell."

  "Seventh... what?"

  I could barely keep my eyes open. My body felt heavy, and every blink lasted longer than the one before.

  "Oh good," I said, sarcasm thick. "This is going to be fun."

  Red's mental voice touched my mind, tinged with his own exhaustion.

  "Barely," I replied. "And apparently that was just Dara's idea of a morning warm-up."

  Diana stood, smoothing her linen clothes with practiced efficiency. "Get some rest. You'll need the energy. Your classmates have had a month's head start, and they're eager to test the Terran who thinks he can challenge the Empire."

  "Fantastic," I muttered, already dreading whatever fresh hell awaited me. "Can't wait to get my ass kicked some more."

  "Oh, they don't all specialize in fighting," Diana said cheerfully as she headed for the door. "Some specialize in explosions, bitter cold, lightning, wind manipulation, and a rather interesting Vildar that seems to use a time rune. Very rare."

  The door closed behind her with a soft click, leaving Red and me alone in her office. I looked up at the Mana Lens rotating slowly above us, its hypnotic motion making my exhausted brain spin.

  "Red?" I said aloud.

  "Next time Dara offers to join us for a walk, we're saying no."

  His mental laughter was the last thing I heard before exhaustion finally won, and I passed out right there on Diana's expensive couch, still covered in stone dust and broken dreams.