"They know each other?"
Rowan watched from the shadows as Mikoto Misaka reacted to the boy. Surprise flickered across her face, but it was the shallow kind. Familiar, not close.
"What's going on?" Tōma asked, turning to the girl with the Disciplinary Committee armband.
Kuroko Shirai didn't bother hiding anything. "A hostile intruder is active in the underground district. Security forces are already engaging, but the situation could escalate. My priority is evacuation. I'll move the trapped civilians out first."
Tōma pointed behind him at the two girls. "Then take them. I'll go help the security teams."
Mikoto nodded immediately. "You can only teleport two at a time. Get them somewhere safe, then come back for anyone else. I'll support the security teams with him."
She knew exactly what Tōma was capable of. On paper, he was powerless. In reality, his right hand erased anything unnatural. No matter how strong the opponent, he could drag them down to a simple, brutal fistfight.
She had learned that the hard way.
"Wait, that's not—" Index began.
Too late.
Kuroko grabbed both girls and vanished.
Rowan didn't follow. Now that he knew Index's name, tracking her later would be trivial. What interested him far more was the mage bold enough to attack Academy City directly.
He stayed invisible and followed Tōma and Mikoto toward the sound of gunfire.
They arrived too late.
Security personnel were sprawled across the street, unconscious or worse. The mage stood untouched at the center of it all.
She was young, mid-twenties at most. A gothic black dress clung to her frame. Wild blond hair framed her face like a lion's mane, and her skin was a deep bronze. In her hand was a wax crayon, of all things.
Before her loomed a stone giant nearly five meters tall, its body etched with glowing sigils.
The mage smiled when she saw Tōma.
"So it's you. The one they call the Imagine Breaker. Didn't bring the 'Key of Imaginary Numbers' with you this time?"
Her grin sharpened. "No matter. Killing you works just as well."
Mikoto stepped forward, flipping a coin between her fingers. "Who are you, and why are you attacking this place? Answer carefully. I'm not letting you walk away."
The mage's expression darkened when she saw Mikoto. "A nuisance. A top-tier esper. I don't have time for you."
She crouched and began drawing a circle on the pavement. "Much easier to kill the walking spell archive instead. Or the Key. Either will do."
"My name is Sherry Cromwell," she said calmly. "I'm with the English Puritan faction. And I'm here to start a war."
The magic circle detonated.
The street collapsed inward, tearing open a shaft that plunged down into the subway tunnels below.
"She ran," Rowan noted. "That means she's not confident against Mikoto."
He dropped into the hole without hesitation, chasing Sherry into the darkness.
Tōma and Mikoto tried to follow, but the stone giant blocked their path. By the time they cleared it, Sherry was gone.
In the tunnels, Sherry drew another circle above her head, blasting a path back to the surface. She rose smoothly, suspended by levitation magic.
"You can't hide forever," she muttered.
Eyes bloomed along the tunnel walls. One became many, scattering and searching.
Within a minute, they found what she wanted.
Rowan followed, curiosity sharpening with every step.
Is this how magic works here? Pre-drawn formations? Or is this just her personal method?
Five minutes later, they emerged onto a quiet street.
Index and Kazakiri Hyouka stood there.
Sherry smiled.
"The Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the Key of Imaginary Numbers. One magic, one science. Killing you both is efficient."
She drew another circle, chanting as she worked. Words layered over each other, precise and alien.
Light flared.
The stone giant returned.
"Rise, Alice," Sherry commanded. "Kill them."
The giant's fist crashed down toward the two girls.
Rowan stayed still.
He was watching.
Index wasn't ordinary. Kazakiri wasn't human. He could feel it. One was a living archive of magic. The other felt like condensed energy wearing a human shape.
Index spoke.
"Forced Chant. Vector Shift to the Right."
The giant's punch twisted midair and smashed into the wall instead.
Sherry laughed softly. "As expected. You dissected my spell instantly and interfered with my control."
She knew Index well. Every spell Index countered came from the same vast mental library.
"But if I don't control it," Sherry continued, "you can't interfere, can you?"
The stone giant moved again.
This time, Index's chant did nothing.
Kazakiri stepped forward and shielded her.
The blow landed.
Kazakiri didn't fly back.
Instead, half her body shattered like glass. No blood spilled. Inside her fractured form, light pulsed and shimmered.
She stared at herself in horror.
"What… am I?"
Sherry sneered. "Did you forget? You're not human. You're something Academy City made and pretended was a girl."
The words struck deeper than the blow.
Memories surged back into Kazakiri's mind. The truth she had never been meant to remember.
She wasn't born.
She was the collective manifestation of the city's countless esper fields. A mass of energy shaped into a person.
A phenomenon.
"I'm… a monster?"
Rowan watched in silence.
The mage's spell had landed.
Not on the body.
But on the soul.