Kael's legs felt like two columns of wet sand. The trip up the Central Spire's grand staircase was a marathon of agony. Gareth Stoneheart's latest bout of "foundational conditioning" had involved holding a mana reactive monolith over his head while the Beast adjusted its gravitational pull at random intervals. Kael's Black Gold veins were still buzzing unpleasantly, like plucked strings, and the phantom weight of the stone seemed permanently stamped on his shoulders.
'He's trying to kill me,' Kael thought, not for the first time. 'Or build a god out of spare parts. I'm not sure which is worse.'
"The stone-wielder's methods are crude, but his logic is sound. Your body is a cup. It must hold an ocean without cracking. Stop complaining."
The voice in his head was dry, edged with a familiar, ancient impatience. It wasn't the grinding, sorrowful tremor of the Earth Soul Dragon buried deep below, that was a constant, quiet background ache. This was Vaelthryx. Their connection, forged in the desperation of the Iron Concord, had settled into something like a persistent, grumpy mentorship. The dragon's presence was a steady hum in the back of his skull, less like a divine oracle and more like a supremely old, marginally concerned roommate who found Kael's mortal struggles vaguely amusing.
"I'm not complaining," Kael muttered under his breath, earning a sidelong glance from a passing janitorial sprite. "I'm conducting an internal damage report."
"The report reads: 'Functioning. Could be stronger.' Now move. The thief awaits."
Thief. The word sent a different kind of chill through him, cutting through the muscle fatigue. Lord Malakai. His "supplemental instruction" was in five minutes, and the thought of that man's cool, dissecting gaze made his skin prickle more than any physical strain.
He reached the opulent, too quiet corridor housing the faculty offices and private labs. Malakai's door, with its polished nameplate, was at the end. The hallway was deserted. Kael leaned against the wall, closing his eyes, trying to will his breathing back to normal. He just had to endure another hour of prying questions and strange, tingling diagnostic spells.
"Wait."
Vaelthryx's single word was a spike of focused attention. The usual background hum sharpened into a needle point.
"What?" Kael asked, immediately alert.
"A spark… a faint one. Dragon kin. Not of my blood, but… kin. Close. It's in pain. Terrified." The dragon's mental voice had lost its dry edge. It was low, tense, thrumming with a protective instinct that resonated in Kael's own chest. "There, Behind that door."
Kael's eyes snapped open, following the psychic pull
It led straight to Malakai's lab door. The "supplemental instruction" was just a cover. The real subject was in there.
Rage, hot and immediate, washed over him. It was his own, but it was fanned by the ancient ember of Vaelthryx's fury.
"He has a dragon here."
"The door is warded, Simple things. They listen to force. Tell them there's nothing to guard."
Right. Unmaking, Not breaking, but… persuading. Kael pushed off the wall, his exhaustion forgotten. He placed a hand on the cool, enchanted wood. He didn't picture himself breaking in. He pictured the door, the wards, the very idea of a barrier here, and gently, carefully, suggested it was unnecessary. A pointless shape in an empty hallway.
There was a soft, almost disappointed click. The door swung inward silently.
The lab was a monument to cold curiosity. Gleaming silver instruments, charts of dissected magic beasts, jars of floating components. And in a glass and runestone enclosure in the corner, hooked to a sinister lattice of crystal tubes and humming wires, was the source of the psychic cry.
It was a drake. A pup. Smaller than a hunting dog, its scales meant to be a brilliant, fiery gold crimson were dull and ashen. A cruel, needle lined harness bit into its back and chest, siphoning glowing threads of its very essence into collecting vials. Its ribs shuddered with shallow, pained breaths. One amber eye was half open, glazed with suffering. The other was squeezed shut.
A weak, desperate chirp, like the sound of a dying candle, escaped it.
"THE LITTLE THIEF!" Vaelthryx's roar in his mind was not profound or cosmic. It was pure, undiluted, grandfatherly rage. The air in the room grew stiflingly hot. The glass of the enclosure fogged and trembled. "HE HOOKS IT LIKE A FISH! UNMAKE THOSE BONDS, KAEL. NOW AND GENTLY!"
Kael was already moving, his hands reaching for the enclosure. His fury was a cold, precise tool. He didn't see magic or machinery. He saw violation. He saw stolen warmth. Placing his hands on the glass, then on the harness itself through the open feeding slot, he poured his will into the construct.
He didn't try to break it. He talked to it. He unmade the purpose of the connection. The principle of the siphon. He whispered to the enchantments that they were tired, that their work was done, that they could forget their design.
The runes on the harness winked out, not in a flash, but like forgotten memories. The needles retracted smoothly, leaving no mark. The glass door simply ceased to be a barrier, its molecular structure momentarily convinced it was open air.
The drake pup slumped forward into Kael's waiting hands. It was heartbreakingly light, its inner fire banked to the faintest ember. It nuzzled weakly into his palm, a gesture of instinctual, final trust that nearly broke Kael.
"He comes." Vaelthryx's voice was a razor of urgency. "Footsteps on the lower stair, you cannot be seen with it."
"I can't leave him!" Kael whispered desperately, cradling the limp form.
"You won't. There is a space, a fold. A pocket only you can hold, I will show you, but you must listen FAST. It is not difficult, it is instinct, you cradle a soul, not a body. Watch."
A torrent of understanding, not words but raw, instinctual knowledge, flooded Kael's mind. The Beast Space. It wasn't a spell with components; it was a trick of the soul, a way to tuck a living spark into a fold of your own spiritual aura. It was meant to be learned over weeks of meditation.
He had, at most, four minutes. The footsteps were steady, climbing.
"Okay, okay," Kael breathed, panic a live wire in his gut. He looked into the drake's dimming eyes. "I need you to trust me. I need you to sleep for a little bit, okay? Just a nap."
He focused on the pup in his hands not the physical weight, but the essence of it. The stubborn, fading spark of draconic life. The playful spirit crushed under pain. He wrapped his own Primordial Sovereign energy around that essence, gently, trying to mimic the fold Vaelthryx had shown him.
It was like trying to solve a complex geometry problem in a hurricane. His mind, already strained from Gareth's training, screamed in protest. The footsteps grew louder, a rhythmic tap-tap on stone. The pup's form flickered, becoming semi-transparent, but the fold was messy, unstable. It would tear apart, and the little soul would be lost.
"Stop thinking! FEEL! It is a part of your will! An extra pocket in your soul! JUST DO IT!"
Vaelthryx's shout cut through the panic. Kael stopped trying to understand. He just… did. He reached down into that core of himself where the unmaking power lived, grabbed a fistful of his own potential, and willed a space into existence around the spark of the drake.
With a soft whoosh of inhaled air, Ignis vanished from his hands. In his mind, Kael felt it, a new, warm, quiet corner in his consciousness. A tiny, sleeping ember, safe and still.
He nearly collapsed with relief. No time. He spun, eyes scanning. The open enclosure. The inert, dusty harness on its floor. Evidence.
The footsteps were on the final landing.
Focusing a last shred of will, Kael looked at the harness and unmade its physical cohesion. It dissolved into a neat, unremarkable pile of inert metal dust and leather fibers. He kicked the dust, scattering it. He erased the scuff marks with his sleeve.
He lunged for the lab door, pulling it shut just as Malakai's shadow fell across the frosted glass. He didn't relock the wards. He just unmade the fact he'd ever touched them, letting them snap back into place, their magical memory wiped.
He threw himself into the plush guest chair before Malakai's imposing desk. He forced his breathing into a slow, tired rhythm. He let the genuine, bone deep ache from Gareth's training flood back into his limbs and slump his posture. He arranged his face into the blank, weary mask of a student who'd just been run into the ground.
The door opened.
Lord Malakai entered, his robes whispering. His sharp, analytical eyes swept the room, then pinned Kael. "You are late, Kael."
"My apologies, Professor," Kael said, his voice a flat monotone of exhaustion. "Instructor Stoneheart… his sessions don't really have a clear end time."
Malakai's gaze held for a beat too long. He glided to his desk but didn't sit. His attention wasn't on Kael. It was on the room. His eyes flicked, almost imperceptibly, to the corner. To the empty enclosure, its door standing open. A faint line appeared between his brows.
Kael sat, a masterpiece of studied fatigue. Inside, his heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. 'He sees. He knows something's off.'
"You seem… remarkably composed today," Malakai remarked, his tone light as a scalpel. "Our previous sessions left you somewhat more energetically disrupted."
"Just tired, sir," Kael said, layering a hint of strained patience over the weariness. "It's been a long day. The 'foundational conditioning' is… foundational."
Malakai didn't smile. His eyes continued their slow sweep of the room, missing nothing. The pristine desk. The undisturbed instruments. The open, empty enclosure. He looked back at Kael, his gaze sharpening into something probing, deeply suspicious. The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Kael didn't fidget. He barely blinked. He just existed in the chair, a vessel of tired student. He focused on the warm, sleepy ember tucked safely in the new pocket of his soul. That was real. That was his.
Finally, Malakai moved. He walked slowly around his desk and sat, steepling his fingers. "Very well," he said, the words crisp. "Given your evident state, we will postpone today's supplemental. My research requires a… focused subject. You are clearly in need of rest. Dismissed."
Kael didn't jump up. He nodded, a slow, weary gesture. "Thank you, Professor." He stood, his movements deliberately heavy, and walked to the door. He could feel Malakai's eyes drilling into his back. He opened the door, stepped through, and closed it softly behind him.
He didn't run. He walked down the corridor, around the corner, and into a deserted alcove. Then he slumped against the wall, trembling as the adrenaline crash hit him.
But rising through the tremor was a fierce, triumphant joy. He'd done it. Right under the monster's nose.
He reached inward, to that warm pocket. Carefully, gently, he reversed the fold. In his hands, with another soft sigh of air, the drake pup reappeared. It was still listless, but its breathing seemed deeper, its scales a fraction less dull. It blinked its amber eyes open, looked up at Kael, and let out a tiny, questioning chirp that was no longer tinged with pure despair.
A grin spread across Kael's face, reckless and bright. "Hey there, little guy." The pup nuzzled his thumb. It needed a name. Something for the spark he'd stolen from the dark. "Ignis," he whispered. "Your name is Ignis."
The pup, Ignis, chirped again, a faint but definite sound of approval, and curled its tail around Kael's wrist.
Back in his lab, the moment the door clicked shut, Lord Malakai's placid demeanor evaporated. He was on his feet in a silent rush, crossing to the enclosure in three long strides.
Empty.
The harness was gone. Not removed. Not dismantled. It was a pile of inert, unmagical dust.
The wards reported no breach, no tampering.
It was impossible.
His eyes, wide with shock, darted around the room. His mind raced. The only anomaly… was the boy. The unusually calm, tired boy. Could he have…? No. The timeline was impossible. The technique was unthinkable. To enter, disable advanced wards, free a magically secured specimen, dispose of the evidence, and hide the creature in the moments before his arrival? Preposterous.
He walked to his desk, his mind a storm of furious calculations. The boy had a strange power, yes. But this? This was the work of a professional thief or a rival researcher. Someone who knew his schedule. Someone with resources.
He sat down hard, his fists clenched on the polished wood. A low, frustrated snarl escaped him. Years of delicate conditioning, of perfect data collection, gone. A unique Ember Drake specimen, vital for his core resonance experiments, vanished.
"Whoever you are," he whispered to the empty room, his voice venomous, "this is not over. I will find that spark. I will peel back every secret in this academy until I have it back. Nothing is stolen from me."
He activated a communication crystal, his face a mask of cold fury. "Increase security on all specimen labs. Review all entry logs for the past 24 hours. Someone has been in my sanctum." He paused, thinking of Kael's weary, blank face. An absurd suspicion, but one he couldn't fully dismiss. "And discreetly double the observation on student Kael Osborn. I want to know his every move."
Far away, nestled in the crook of Kael's arm as he hurried back to the dorm, Ignis sneezed a tiny spark, yawned, and fell into a deep, healing sleep, safe for the first time since his capture. The heist was over. The hiding had just begun.