The common hall had become a slaughterhouse of shadows.
Lantern light flickered across blood-slick stone. Goblins shrieked and died in twisting heaps, their crude weapons clattering away as Knights Gallant cut them down with disciplined efficiency. The line had held—barely—despite the swarm's frantic numbers. Shields interlocked. Steel rose and fell. The knights moved like a single creature with many arms, each man trusting the next to guard his flank.
And yet control was not the same as safety. Because beyond the swarm's shrieking chaos stood intelligence.
Three hobgoblins watched from the cracked breach in the wall like wolves watching dogs fight in a yard. Their eyes did not dart with panic or hunger. They tracked angles. They measured distances. They waited for openings.
Alaric stood just behind the knights' line, breath shallow, the ring cold on his finger like a band of winter wrapped around bone. His chest still burned from the Scorching Ray he'd cast—mana drained hard enough that he felt hollowed out, as if someone had scooped out a part of him and left air in its place.
Gina remained close, staff snapping and whirling whenever anything slipped too near, her movements crisp and lethal, her face a mask carved from fury. But even Gina's skill could not be everywhere. Even the knights' discipline could not erase the fact that they were fighting in cramped stone corridors where numbers mattered.
And hobgoblins were not mere numbers. They moved. Not all at once. Not with frantic swarm instinct. With intent.
One hobgoblin barked an order in harsh goblin-tongue, and several smaller goblins shifted formation immediately, throwing themselves into the knights' shields not to kill, but to bind. To hold blades and arms in place long enough for something larger to strike. The second hobgoblin stepped forward, spear low, shield high. The third raised a horn carved from bone and blew.
The sound was short and brutal.
The goblin swarm responded like a tide suddenly given direction. They surged.
The Knights Gallant captain—commander of this squadron—saw it instantly. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, his white-and-gold armor marked by grime and blood. The scar across his cheek glistened faintly with sweat. He did not retreat. He did not shout in panic.
He did what trained men did when the enemy tried to control the flow. He broke it.
He drew a short spear from the brace at his side, his arm snapping forward with practiced force. The spear flew. It cut through lantern light, a straight line of death, and impaled a goblin that had been scrambling over a fallen bench to flank the knights. The goblin's shriek cut off instantly as the spear pinned it to stone like an insect on a board.
The captain did not look to confirm the kill, he was already moving. He dropped his shield. It hit the floor with a heavy clang, shocking in its finality. A shield was life for most soldiers. Dropping it meant one of two things: desperation… or certainty.
The captain reached over his shoulder and withdrew a bastard sword from his back, the blade slid free with a whisper that sounded wrong—too smooth, too clean for a weapon that should have scraped leather and metal. The sword's edge caught lantern light and reflected it with a faint bluish sheen.
Alaric's eyes widened.
His old instincts—half fantasy reader, half tabletop veteran—recognized the feel of it before logic did. That sword was not ordinary steel, it hummed.
Not audibly to most, perhaps, but to someone who had just crossed into the first sphere and had an archmage whispering in his mind, the sword's hum was unmistakable. It was the vibration of mana trapped in metal, the subtle resonance of enchantment held taut like a harp string.
A magic blade, Alaric thought, breath catching.
The captain raised the bastard sword, webs of lightning crawled along the blade, thin filaments of bright blue-white that snapped and arced like living things. They danced from edge to fuller, from pommel to tip, illuminating the captain's gauntleted hands and the hard set of his face.
The Knights Gallant around him straightened as if the lightning had struck their spines.
The captain's voice cut through the chaos like a commandment. "Gallant! With me!"
He charged, not carefully. Not cautiously, but like a thunderbolt thrown by an angry god.
Goblins tried to intercept him. They threw themselves into his path with knives and clubs.
The bastard sword moved once, lightning flashed.
The first goblin simply ceased being an obstacle—cleaved apart, smoke rising from the cauterized edges of its split body. The captain didn't slow. He hit the line of hobgoblin-directed goblins like a battering ram, his shoulder slamming one aside while his blade carved through another.
He reached the hobgoblins.
The first hobgoblin met him with spear and shield, stance disciplined, eyes narrowed.
The captain struck.
The bastard sword crashed into the hobgoblin's shield, lightning exploding outward in a web that danced across iron and leather. The hobgoblin was driven back two full steps, boots scraping furrows in dusted stone. Its shield arm trembled. Smoke rose from the point of impact.
The hobgoblin snarled and thrust its spear forward.
The captain twisted aside, the spear point grazing his armor, sparks flying. He countered with a diagonal slash that forced the hobgoblin back again, its stance faltering.
The second hobgoblin stepped in, attempting to flank, cleaver blade raised.
The captain didn't retreat, he leapt. It was a sudden, violent motion—armor lifting off the ground like it was lighter than it should have been, lightning crackling around him as if the sword itself was propelling him. For a heartbeat, he hung above the stone like an avenging statue. Then he brought the bastard sword down.
The blade cleaved through the second hobgoblin's helm as if it were parchment, the hobgoblin's head separated cleanly, rolling across the floor with a wet thud. Its body toppled after it, knees buckling, blood spraying in a dark arc.
The goblins shrieked, a sound of fear now rather than glee. The remaining hobgoblins' eyes widened, their confidence cracked.
The captain landed, boots slamming stone, and turned his lightning-wreathed sword toward the third hobgoblin like a promise.
The third hobgoblin hesitated.
Just a heartbeat.
But a heartbeat was all disciplined soldiers needed.
Watching their commander—watching him tear through goblins and cleave a hobgoblin like a log—the Knights Gallant surged with renewed morale. It was palpable, like heat sweeping through cold bodies. Shields pressed forward harder. Blades struck with sharper intent. The line that had been barely holding became a battering wall.
They pushed. They drove the goblin swarm back toward the crack in the wall, back toward the jagged breach that had vomited them into the tower.
Goblins stumbled over their dead. They shrieked in panic. Some tried to climb over others to escape. The knights gave them no room.
"Press!" the captain roared, lightning still crawling along his sword.
The goblins broke. They spilled backward into the crack like water poured out of a bucket.
Alaric's eyes tracked the retreating bodies, relief sparking inside him—
And then the captain's voice changed.
"Seal it!" he barked.
Gina snapped her head toward the rift, then toward Alaric.
Her amber eyes widened.
"Alaric, no—" she began, because she understood before he did what "seal it" meant.
Alaric's ring-hand twitched.
Inside his mind, Alanor stirred.
Not as a whisper now.
As a presence rising.
This breach cannot remain, Alanor said, voice calm and absolute. They will return with more. They will return with numbers that even griffons and knights cannot hold within these walls.
Alaric swallowed hard. "I—I can't," he whispered aloud. "I'm—"
You cannot, Alanor agreed. But I can. For a moment.
A cold pressure slid through Alaric's skull.
Not pain.
Control.
It was like someone placing hands on the steering wheel of his mind and turning it with practiced ease.
Alaric's body moved forward without his consent.
His small feet stepped past Gina's reach.
Gina lunged, fingers outstretched, but a knight shifted accidentally in the chaos, blocking her path for half a heartbeat—and half a heartbeat was enough.
Alaric—Alanor wearing Alaric—raised his hand toward the jagged breach in the wall.
Mana surged. Alaric felt it like an ocean pouring through a cup.
It was not the careful braided thread of first-sphere training. It was not the harsh drain of Scorching Ray forced through a ring.
This was third sphere power, vast, structured, deliberate.
The spell formed in the air like invisible geometry. Stone Shape.
Alaric's eyes—no, Alanor's eyes—narrowed.
The basalt around the rift responded as if it had been waiting for the proper command. The rough, natural stone began to churn, to soften and move as though it were clay beneath a sculptor's fingers. It thickened, swelling inward, folds of rock rolling like slow waves.
The jagged crack narrowed.
Goblins still trying to crawl through shrieked as stone pressed against them—some scrambling free, some crushed, some forced back into darkness. The breach sealed. Basalt flowed into itself until there was no gap, no fissure, no weakness left. The wall became solid stone again, smoother than before, as though the rift had never existed.
Silence hit like a sudden drop.
The goblin shrieks cut off.
The knights held their weapons raised, chests heaving.
Gina stared at the sealed wall, horror dawning in her eyes—not at the goblins, but at what had just happened through Alaric's small hand. Then Alaric's body swayed. The moment the last of the stone settled, the mana flood vanished like water dumped from a cup onto sand.
Alaric's knees buckled, he toppled forward.
Gina caught him.
Her arms snapped around his small body, staff clattering to the floor as she held him against her chest. She felt his heartbeat—fast, uneven—felt the unnatural limpness of him as his consciousness slid away like a candle being blown out.
"Alaric!" she barked, voice sharp enough to cut stone.
His eyes were open for a heartbeat—distant, unfocused—then rolled back. He went slack.
The Knights Gallant captain stepped forward, lightning fading from his sword. His face was grim, but there was something like respect in his eyes. "He saved us," the captain said quietly.
Gina's gaze snapped to him, blazing. "He was used," she hissed.
The captain's jaw tightened. "Then we owe him twice," he replied.
Gina didn't answer. She gathered Alaric closer, rocking him slightly as if sheer motion could keep him tethered to waking. Her breath came fast, her control cracking at the edges. "Get us out," she commanded, voice raw. "Now."
The knights moved at once, forming a protective ring as they retraced the path to the fissure. Gina carried Alaric in both arms despite his growing weight, refusing help, refusing to let anyone else touch him. She climbed with grim determination, armor scraping stone around her, lantern light shaking in hands that were not used to trembling.
Up the spiral stair. Through the common hall. Past the library that Alaric had wanted to devour. Past the mithral doors that now stood inert and silent like a closed eye. They crawled through the cracked hillside fissure—narrow, jagged, scraping armor and cloth. The cold outside air struck them like reality returning.
And then—
Darkness, for Alaric.
When Alaric awoke, the first thing he felt was warmth. Not lantern warmth, not fire warmth. The warmth of a presence that carried moonlight and steel and a gentleness too precise to be accidental.
His eyelids fluttered and the world came into focus slowly, like ink bleeding into paper. He lay on a bed—not a camp cot, but a proper bed with clean sheets. The air smelled of lavender and faint incense, the kind used in the Imperial Faith. A canopy of pale fabric hung above him, stirring slightly.
He blinked again, and the face beside him sharpened into clarity. Asimi Ecthellion sat at his bedside.
Her silver hair fell in a smooth curtain over her shoulders, metallic eyes watching him with an intensity that made his chest tighten. She looked unchanged—perfect and composed—yet there were faint shadows under her eyes that spoke of travel and worry and sleepless hours. The moment Alaric's gaze met hers, her expression softened in a way that few people ever saw.
"Alaric," she whispered.
His throat was dry. His voice came out small. "Mother…?"
Asimi's hand—cool, gentle—rested against his cheek. "Yes," she said softly. "I am here."
Alaric's mind tried to gather scattered pieces. The goblins. The hobgoblins. The lightning sword. The ring. Alanor. The stone flowing like water. The sudden emptiness after—
He swallowed painfully. "How long…?"
Asimi's eyes held his, and in them he saw something that made his stomach sink. Enough time to summon the Empress-Consort from the capital, enough time to travel, and enough time for fear to become certainty.
"Long enough," Asimi said quietly, voice steady but edged with something dangerous. "For me to be told you were missing inside ruins. Long enough for me to be told you used magic beyond your sphere."
Alaric's fingers twitched against the sheets. His mother's gaze did not waver.
"And long enough," Asimi added softly, "for me to decide that whatever you found beneath those hills… we will address it together."
Alaric stared at her, heart thudding.
Because he could still feel the ring on his finger.
Cold.
Silent.
Waiting.
And somewhere deep in his mind, like a shadow behind a curtain, Alanor's presence lingered—quiet now, but unmistakably awake.