The palace corridors stretched like veins beneath the imperial complex, polished stone reflecting the flickering torches as if the walls themselves were alive. Every step Kael took was measured, careful, and silent, though his mind was anything but.
Behind him, the threads snapped and hissed, dragging him forward faster than his legs could carry him. His class teacher, Master Rion, moved alongside, partially shielding Kael from the Emperor's palace guards. But even Rion's skill wasn't enough to erase the persistent press of danger.
"Keep your head down!" Rion hissed, weaving the threads in precise arcs to redirect incoming attacks. "If we reach the Eastern Wing, there's a hidden exit. Only a few know its path!"
Kael's eyes scanned the corridor. Guards were converging from every direction, disciplined and silent, their weapons glinting ominously under the torchlight. These weren't ordinary palace soldiers—they had been trained to anticipate movement, predict escape, and crush dissent before it could sprout.
Why are they chasing us so aggressively? Kael thought, calculating angles, velocities, and probabilities. They don't just want to stop me from running—they want to end me.
The first guards caught up.
Rion's threads lashed out, snapping a spear midair, pulling it sideways, then wrapping the tip around a pillar. Kael ducked instinctively, rolling over the polished stone, but a second guard was already advancing, cutting off the corridor. Kael's pulse didn't spike. Instead, he focused.
The mental disruption inside him pulsed faintly—subtle, controlled, ready. A flicker of consciousness brushed against the second guard's mind, a tiny, invisible suggestion: hesitation.
The guard froze for half a heartbeat. That was all Kael needed.
He shot forward, rolling past him, sliding along the edge of the corridor, and instinctively counting steps to the next junction. Every corner, every torch, every shadow was being recorded in his mind, mentally mapping the palace faster than the guards could react.
"Keep up!" Rion shouted. "They're faster than we thought!"
Kael glanced at him briefly. The thread master's face was pale, beads of blood glinting where a miscalculated arrow had grazed his shoulder. But the wound was minor. Still, Kael knew the cost of even a small delay—Rion had to survive if Kael was to get out alive.
They turned a corner into the Eastern Wing, the air changing abruptly—heavier, charged with some hidden formation. Kael felt it at once: a containment array, faint but alive, a web woven into the very stones. It wasn't meant to kill, but to restrict movement.
He muttered under his breath, tracing the arcane patterns, finding the weak point. "Three steps here… and a pivot at the shadowed column. It should destabilize the binding pattern for a moment."
Rion's eyebrows rose. "That's risky. One mistake…"
Kael's mind had already worked it out. One mistake, and we die. One calculation… and we might just survive.
A pulse of thread energy shot out. The array flared. Stones vibrated. Kael and Rion dashed through just as the suppression field winked out. Behind them, a dozen soldiers collided with invisible barriers, stumbling and shouting.
They ran into a wider hall, torches swinging violently. And then Kael saw her.
A woman—a grotesque figure with twisted features, clothed in dark, strange robes, her hair streaked with silver and ash. She didn't move like a human. Every step she took seemed measured, almost wrong, as though gravity itself hesitated around her. She was blocking the exit from the hall.
Kael froze for a split second. His instincts screamed: danger beyond comprehension.
"Stay behind me!" Rion shouted, but Kael didn't move.
The woman's eyes—gray, unnatural, almost reflective like molten metal—fixed on him. She spoke without moving her lips.
"Kael Viren… you are far too clever for your own good."
His pulse spiked. This was no ordinary enemy. This was someone—or something—that had been waiting for him.
Before Kael could react, she lunged. The speed was inhuman, the precision deadly. Rion thrust a thread barrier in front of Kael, but the woman's strike shattered it effortlessly, sending shards of enchanted metal scattering across the hall.
Kael rolled, drawing on every instinct he had learned these past months. The mental disruption flared instinctively, brushing against her mind. For a moment, he felt… nothing.
She wasn't human. Not fully. Not even a skilled cultivator. Something alien flowed through her, a deadly combination of intellect and raw power.
"You…" Kael muttered, voice low, "are… experimenting on him."
The thought struck him. The pieces aligned. The palace chase. The framing. The Emperor's calm yet precise accusations.
She's a handler, not just a soldier.
Rion grunted, throwing another thread barrier, buying Kael the fraction of a second he needed to act. Kael focused, channeling a controlled surge of Mental Disruption. Not to attack. To probe. To analyze. To survive.
The pulse hit her mind. And then, to Kael's shock, she recoiled slightly.
It was the first crack. The first vulnerability.
Kael knew—survival was now possible. But it would take everything.
The hunt had begun.