We kept descending lower and lower.

  The stone staircase sank into darkness. The walls were damp, and our footsteps sounded dull and far too loud. One of the younger children sobbed — a sound that made the entire formation shudder.

  Behind us, at the cave entrance, one of the teachers whispered a long formula. The air trembled, a glowing crack ran across the stone — and the entrance behind our backs simply… closed. First as a thin film of light, then as a solid mass of rock. As if the passage had never existed at all.

  “That’s it,” the earth teacher said quietly. “There’s no way back.”

  We walked for about half an hour. Time stretched like thick honey. The students’ breathing merged into one heavy, uneven rhythm; some of them nearly stumbled every third step. One boy ahead kept grabbing the wall, as if afraid he might fall into the darkness.

  I walked in silence, counting the steps and trying not to think about what was happening above. But the last images kept surfacing anyway: fire, the roar of demons, a wing cleaving three people at once, and a gaze — the empty, dead gaze of a boy who that very morning had argued with me over a formula.

  I clenched my fists.

  “Record it, but don’t die in the emotions. Later… if there is a ‘later’… all of this will have to be taken apart layer by layer.”

  When my knees had already started to tremble unpleasantly, the corridor finally widened. We emerged into a vast underground hall.

  The ceiling was barely visible — only rare light crystals glimmered beneath the vaults. In the center lay a smooth stone floor; along the edges were old, long-abandoned niches. It smelled of dampness, dust, and… something ancient.

  “Sit down,” our water-magic teacher said loudly. His voice was hoarse but firm. “Everyone. Now.”

  A hundred children sank onto the cold stone at once. Some simply collapsed; others sat carefully, hugging their knees. There were a little over a hundred of us. And twenty-five teachers — mages and instructors from different faculties. Normally, they seemed almost omnipotent. Now — just very tired adults.

  “You have thirty minutes,” the teacher continued. “Drink water. Eat. We’ll regroup — and then move on.”

  Bags and chests were already propped against the walls. Supplies for a “black day” — they had always been kept beneath the Academy, but none of us had ever thought those words would truly be needed.

  Bread, dried meat, dried fruits, cloaks, flasks, simple knives, bandages — everything was laid out in piles. We were each handed a small shoulder bag, as if we weren’t fleeing, but setting out on an organized expedition.

  I took my bag and automatically checked it.

  “Bread, water, knife, cloak, basic first-aid kit… minimum survival.”

  When it was my group’s turn, I saw their faces.

  Finn — usually loud, stubborn, with a constant fire in his eyes — sat staring at the stone floor. His face was pale, his lips trembling. Tara gripped the hilt of her sword so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Astra covered her face with her hands. Edgar stared somewhere past everyone, as if he had been pulled out of the world.

  And Elinia.

  There was no familiar irritation on her face, no royal pride. Just a completely dead gaze. Like those who have seen far too much.

  I walked over to them and knelt down.

  “Sit closer,” I said quietly. “All of you.”

  They obeyed automatically. We gathered into a small circle.

  I raised my hand and began quietly, almost without words, to cast a simple healing spell. Not combat — stabilizing: to even out the pulse slightly, calm the breathing, warm cold limbs. Long ago, I had adapted the formula so the body perceived it as “pleasant warmth,” rather than a raw magical impulse.

  My palm to Finn’s shoulder.

  A small flow of mana — steady, gentle.

  He flinched slightly, jerked his head, then exhaled heavily. The fingers clenched around his knees loosened a little.

  Then Tara.

  Then Edgar.

  Then Noy.

  I moved around the circle, touching each of them in turn. Warmth slowly spread through our small island of people.

  Some began to cry — quietly, without hysteria. Others, on the contrary, simply took deep breaths and, for the first time since everything began, came at least a little back to themselves.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  When I reached Astra, she didn’t even lift her head at first. I touched her shoulder — and she broke. For five minutes she sobbed, almost pressed into the stone, and then… she stood up and went to the other children, to the younger ones in nearby groups, simply sitting beside them and holding their hands. Passing on the same feeling of warmth — but now a human one.

  Elinia remained silent the entire time.

  I knelt beside her and placed my hand on her back. The mana flowed deeper — and I felt how torn everything was inside: overexertion, exhaustion, shock.

  She flinched, caught my gaze, and exhaled hopelessly.

  “I… saw them being torn apart…” Her voice broke. “I saw… how… the ones younger than us… were just… butchered… And I… What did I do, Zen? Nothing.”

  I stayed silent.

  “A mage of four elements…” she almost hissed it, as if accusing herself. “‘Genius of the court,’ ‘hope of the kingdom’… What is all that worth if I… did nothing? They were screaming… and I…” Her voice broke again.

  I didn’t come up with anything clever.

  I just hugged her.

  Not as a mage, not as someone who understands the structure of trauma — but simply as someone who had seen it too.

  “You’re alive,” I said quietly. “That alone is more than many have.”

  She pressed her forehead into my shoulder and finally allowed herself to cry for real. Without a princess’s dignity.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the teachers exchanging glances. One of them gave me a barely noticeable nod.

  “Let them cry now. Once we move on, there won’t be time for it.”

  Half an hour later, they got us up.

  The teachers divided us into groups — so that each had two instructors. Our group was assigned a water mage and an earth mage — together, they could provide us with protection and minimal control over the terrain.

  “Stand up,” the water teacher said. “Now — quietly. No panic, no questions. Follow us and don’t lag behind.”

  We approached the other side of the hall, where another staircase was hidden in the wall — this one leading upward.

  “On the surface, there could be anything,” the teacher warned. “The main thing is not to scatter. No heroics. If you stay alive, you’ll still have time for feats.”

  We began the ascent.

  Each step upward was hard — not so much on the body as on the mind. It felt as if either emptiness or a nightmare awaited us above.

  When light finally flickered at the top, it cut into our eyes. After the underground half-darkness, a sunny day felt almost painful.

  I covered my face with my hand and stepped outside.

  We were beyond the city.

  The capital I had seen just yesterday — noisy, alive, too loud — was now wrapped in war.

  Thick black smoke billowed over the distant districts.

  Dark silhouettes — winged demons — flew across the sky.

  Within the city itself, flashes of magic flickered: mages and guards were still holding out in places, trying to keep the lines.

  Screams — distant, yet clearly audible — rolled in waves. Even here, beyond the walls, they were almost physically tangible.

  Nearby, someone sobbed.

  “That’s… really our city?..”

  The earth teacher clenched his fist so tightly a crack of stone ran across his skin.

  “We look. We remember. But we don’t forget that our task right now is to survive,” he said dully. “Everything else — later.”

  The water teacher, a little calmer, added:

  “We’re heading south. To the nearest village or town. There we’ll find out what’s happening in the rest of the country. Maybe…” He hesitated, then finished, “Maybe this really is a strike only against the capital.”

  The hope sounded too fragile to believe in, but no one objected. People needed something to cling to.

  “Form a column,” we were ordered. “Don’t get lost. Eyes on the back in front of you.”

  We moved out.

  I looked back at the city one last time.

  The Academy — or what remained of it — was visible by tongues of flame and periodic flashes of mana. Even from here, it was clear: no one was studying there anymore.

  “I wanted to become part of the best minds of this place,” I noted somewhere in the dry part of my thoughts. “In the end, all that’s left is evacuation and survivor statistics.”

  We walked for a long time.

  The sun sank toward the horizon, the trees’ shadows stretched, and each step grew heavier. The teachers periodically stopped, checked that no one had fallen behind, and pushed us onward.

  At last, a small grove appeared ahead — low trees, dense canopy. A decent place for a temporary shelter: not too thick, but enough to hide us from direct eyes in the sky.

  “We stop here,” our earth teacher said. “For the night, for sure. After that — we’ll see.”

  He stepped forward and raised his hands. The stone beneath him trembled and began to rise, folding into half-open niches — small “caves” for groups. The walls looked thin, but I felt how much mana had been вложено into them: to take a hit, to hide heat.

  Other earth mages joined in — and soon a whole ring of stone shelters grew around us.

  A pair of light and illusion mages began weaving a dome — a thin, invisible shell that redistributed sound and light. From the outside, this patch of forest should now look simply… ordinary. A bit dull, even uninviting.

  “Done,” one of them said when the weaving closed. “Unless someone is led here deliberately — they won’t notice us.”

  We settled into our groups in our stone “burrows.” Inside, it was cramped, but at least not exposed to the wind — and that already felt like luxury.

  The teachers gathered in the center of the improvised camp. I saw them arguing, but quietly, restrained — to the children it sounded like a dull whisper. Then one of the senior ones stepped forward and turned to us.

  His voice spread over the camp, amplified by magic.

  “Listen carefully.”

  We lifted our heads.

  “Right now, we don’t have the full picture. We don’t know whether this attack is only on the capital or across the entire country. Our primary task is to keep you alive and reach the nearest settlement to get information. There, it will become clear what’s happening.”

  He let his gaze pass over our faces — tired, frightened, angry, empty.

  “Maybe tomorrow it will turn out that the demons struck only one city. Maybe…” He took a short breath. “Or maybe not. We won’t build illusions. But as long as we can move and breathe, we have a choice. And you do too.”

  He lowered his voice slightly.

  “For now — rest. Food. Sleep. Duty teachers are already assigned. At dawn, we move on.”

  The teachers began to disperse among the groups.

  And I lay in my stone “cave,” listening to my classmates’ heavy breathing and staring at the invisible ceiling.

  “War,” I noted somewhere deep inside. “This is what it looks like at the human level. Not maps and reports. Fear, dirt, stone beneath your back, and the attempt to convince yourself that you didn’t survive for nothing.”

  I turned my head. Nearby, pressed into her cloak, lay Elinia. Her eyes were open — like me, she couldn’t sleep yet.

  Our gazes met.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Sometimes science is formulas — and sometimes it’s just an honest recording of a fact: the night will be long.