The quartermaster’s iron stamp fractured the silence of the vault, driving an indentation into the brass clearance tag.

  ?Marcus shoved the Valkyrie Mk. III into his hip holster. The sheer density of the pre-war steel dragged at his belt. It was a freezing, uncomfortable weight—a constant, physical reminder that he was no longer empty-handed.

  ?The iron cage elevator hauled them back to the surface, leaving the smell of grease and rusted history in the dark.

  ?The moment the grated doors slid open into Building One, a wave of sheer panic hit Marcus in the chest. The usual orderly flow of class changes was gone. Nearly fifty uniformed students were bottlenecked in the main atrium, clustered tightly around a massive, hovering holographic news feed.

  ?Silas stopped. The professor’s eyes darted to the projection for a fraction of a second, analyzing the data, before snapping back to Marcus.

  ?"Remember the toll, Etherno," Silas murmured, his voice clinically detached from the surrounding chaos. "Do not pull that trigger unless you are fully prepared to fracture your own radius bone."

  ?Without another word, the professor blended into the crowd and vanished down the left wing, leaving the slum kid alone in the shifting tide of students.

  ?Marcus shoved his way forward. A female anchor’s voice bled from the speakers, stretched thin with manufactured urgency. The hologram displayed a drone's-eye view of a collapsed residential block. Bent rebar jutted from pulverized concrete. Sickly, green-black flames—the undeniable signature of highly unstable, illegal aether-conduits—devoured the ruins.

  ?"These bastards again?" a tall senior muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

  ?"It makes no sense," a girl beside him whispered, her forehead creased. "They just bombed the Wakas capital three days ago. How did they cross the border into Dustopia this fast? What the hell are the Council checkpoints even doing?"

  ?"You don't get it," another student hissed, dropping his voice. "The Council tagged them as 'The Owls.' It’s not a single crew moving around. It’s a decentralized network. They’re embedded everywhere, just waiting for the signal to ignite."

  ?Marcus’s lungs stopped working.

  ?All the blood drained from his face, pooling heavily in his boots. The muscles that had just relaxed in the elevator locked up, pulling tight across his shoulders. Dustopia. That green-black rot on the screen wasn't basic magic. It was military-grade annihilation.

  ?Heavy, erratic footsteps pounded against the marble floor behind him. Marcus spun around, his right hand dropping instinctively to the edge of his jacket, hovering over the heavy revolver.

  ?It was Roy and Ethan.

  ?Marcus’s grip faltered. Roy—the guy who could sleep through a localized earthquake—looked like a corpse. His pupils were blown wide, lips entirely bloodless, his chest heaving as if he had sprinted across the entire campus.

  ?"Marcus..." Roy gasped, his fingers digging into Marcus’s shoulder like vice grips. The tremor in his hand was violent. "Did you... did you see the feed?"

  ?Marcus gave a slow, mechanical nod. He couldn't tear his eyes away from Roy's panic. "The Owls. They hit Dustopia."

  ?"They didn't just hit the borders, man," Ethan cut in. The giant's voice lacked its usual booming confidence; it was a rough, gravelly rasp. He shoved a glowing datapad forward. A red proximity marker blinked furiously over the disaster zone.

  ?Roy swallowed hard. "They blew the residential grid. They're engaging the enforcers in our sector... Our exact block."

  ?"Call your house. Now."

  ?Roy shoved a cracked, outdated mobile phone into Marcus’s chest. The device was slick with cold sweat.

  ?"Right. Thanks." Marcus’s voice sounded like grinding gears. The fingers that could strip a combustion engine blindfolded were shaking so badly he miskeyed the first number. He forced his thumb down, punching in the familiar landline sequence.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  ?He pressed the speaker to his ear.

  ?The line hissed with static, followed by the hollow, rhythmic pulse of an answering tone. It dragged on. A sterile, mechanical loop echoing in the void. Then, the connection severed, leaving behind a dead, suffocating silence.

  ?No answer.

  ?Marcus ground his molars together until his jaw ached. He hit redial. Twice. Five times. Ten times. Every attempt ended in the same flatline. The skin on his face went numb. Cold sweat dripped down his neck. The logical part of his brain—the mechanic—was short-circuiting, flooded with images of Lisa and his mother pinned beneath thousands of tons of concrete and green fire.

  ?"What's going on?!"

  ?Ginny, Luna, and Vanessa shoved through the outer ring of the crowd. The girls took one look at the burning hologram, then at the three boys, and the color vanished from their faces.

  ?Ginny grabbed Roy’s arm, shaking it. "Roy! What about your house? Is your sector—"

  ?Roy didn’t answer. He just looked at them and gave a slow, hollow shake of his head. The sheer despair radiating from the usually lethargic boy dropped the temperature of the group below freezing. Luna covered her mouth with both hands.

  ?Vanessa took a sharp breath. She looked at Marcus. He looked entirely hollowed out, a ghost trapped in a repetitive loop of pressing the call button. She stepped into his space and firmly gripped his forearm. She could feel the muscles beneath his sleeve vibrating like over-torqued cables.

  ?"Marcus. Breathe," Vanessa ordered. Her voice was steady, though her eyes betrayed the same gnawing fear.

  ?She squeezed his arm, forcing him to look at her. "Listen to the variables. The Sentinels likely locked down the grid and initiated forced evacuations. The lines are dead because they’ve been moved to a relief shelter. You need to process this logically."

  ?It was a clean, rational theory. But Marcus had grown up in the dirt. He knew the absolute, uncompromising truth: Government Sentinels didn’t bleed for slum rats.

  ?A heavy silence settled over their circle, isolated from the murmuring crowd. Marcus slowly lowered the phone. The freezing steel of the Valkyrie Mk. III pressed against his hip. A silent promise. An ugly, violent solution.

  ?"How utterly pathetic."

  ?The voice dripped with aristocratic boredom. Alyssa strolled past the perimeter of the crowd, glancing at the holographic inferno with mild distaste before her eyes locked onto Marcus’s pale face.

  ?"The un-chosen territories," Alyssa said, loud enough for the surrounding students to hear. She let out a dry, musical laugh. "A wasteland devoid of aether. I suppose this is simply the natural order of things."

  ?The frayed cable in Marcus’s head snapped.

  ?The paralyzing fear evaporated, instantly replaced by pure, blinding heat. His eyes darkened. Driven by sheer predatory instinct, Marcus closed the distance in two massive strides, his hand lifting to rip the arrogant noble out of her tailored uniform.

  ?"What is it, mad dog?"

  ?Alyssa didn't flinch. She tilted her chin up, a cruel, sculpted smile playing on her lips. Behind her, Bella practically skipped to a halt. The younger girl’s terrifyingly cheerful demeanor—like a child arriving at a carnival—was a grotesque contrast to the burning bodies on the news feed.

  ?Marcus stopped inches from Alyssa. The muscles in his jaw bulged.

  ?Alyssa crossed her arms, looking down her nose at him. "A stray like you will never get past the academy gates to go running back to your trash heap."

  ?She paused, letting the smile widen. "However... if you get on your knees right here, I might just feel charitable. I could sign a temporary exit permit. Say you're acting as a pack mule for the fourth-years deploying to the combat zone tomorrow. How does that sound?"

  ?She reached out and slowly ran a hand through Marcus’s hair, exactly like petting a junkyard dog.

  ?"So filthy," she whispered.

  ?"Don't do it, Marcus!" Vanessa yelled, stepping forward to pull him back. "It's a trap! She'll never sign it, she just wants to parade you around!"

  ?Marcus stood perfectly still, letting the noble girl's hand rest on his head.

  ?Kneel for a permit. Vanessa was right. The slums taught him a very simple rule of physics: A knife in the back is still a knife, even if they smile while twisting it. She would humiliate him, then deny the paperwork anyway.

  ?Marcus raised his hand. His movements were slow, entirely devoid of frantic rage. He clamped his fingers around Alyssa’s wrist and physically removed her hand from his head. He didn't crush her bones, but the grip was heavy, absolute, and immovable. Alyssa’s smug smile cracked, her arm going rigid.

  ?Marcus looked at her. The rabid, mad-dog fury was gone. His gray eyes were bottomless, cold, and radiating a dense, suffocating pressure. It was the look of a predator backed into a corner, evaluating which artery to tear open first.

  ?Alyssa involuntarily took a half-step backward.

  ?"Keep your permit, Alyssa," Marcus said. His voice was a low, abrasive scrape against the marble floor. "I don't need to lick your boots to find my way home."

  ?He let go of her wrist and stepped into her personal space. The sheer weight of his suppressed killing intent flared.

  ?"But you remember this," he murmured, his tone dropping to a dead whisper. "If my people are under that rubble, and I find out the Council let it happen... do not think for a second these academy walls will keep the fire away from you."

  ?Bella stopped bouncing. The unsettling cheerfulness melted off her face, replaced by a tilted, alien curiosity, as if she were inspecting a fascinating new breed of insect.

  ?Marcus turned his back on them. He didn't waste another second looking at the nobles. He walked straight back to his group, his eyes burning with a desperate, calculated focus.

  ?"All of you. With me," Marcus ordered quietly. "I'm not waiting for a signature. We're finding a structural flaw in the academy perimeter. I'm getting out of here. Now."