Marek Rostova didn't wait for a reply. He raised his wrist, the device strapped there glowing with a sickly green-gold shimmer, and pointed it at the colossal, pulsating core. “This whole system is a grand, inefficient joke,” he boomed, his voice echoing with a zealous conviction that made Pavel’s skin prickle. “You try to nurse it, Orlov. I say, let’s see what happens when we *push* it.”
With a flick of his thumb, Marek activated a rune on the device. A jolt, visible even in the erratic light, surged from his wrist into the Heart of Aethel. The light, already flickering, began to spasm violently, like a dying star. The air crackled, thick with an acrid ozone scent, and the stone floor vibrated underfoot. Pavel’s spectrometer, still connected, wailed a high-pitched warning, its decay curve data spiking off the charts. The Bleed wasn’t just accelerating; it was being forcibly amplified.
“Idiot!” Pavel shouted, scrambling to disconnect his device, protecting the critical data even as the vault threatened to tear itself apart. “You’re destabilizing the entire mana matrix! This isn’t a circuit board!”
Marek merely laughed, a sound devoid of humor, full of a terrifying excitement. “Exactly! Let’s see what fails first, Orlov. The system or your precious scientific principles!”
The core pulsed one last, agonizing beat, then convulsed. The brilliance within it dimmed drastically, then surged outward in a blinding, violet explosion of raw, uncontrolled force. The alarm squealed into static, overwhelmed by the discharge, leaving only the low hum of residual charge.
But the hall was not empty. Where the violet surge had impacted the far wall, a rift tore open, not into another space, but into something… *else*. Black ichor oozed from the edges of the tear, coalescing into a formless, writhing mass that began to expand. It was a Null-Beast, but unlike the faint descriptions Pavel had read. This was a direct manifestation of corrupted mana, a void made manifest.
It clawed its way fully into the vault, a grotesque parody of life. Its form solidified into something resembling a monstrous, multi-limbed spider, but its carapace was made of solidified darkness, absorbing all light, and its many eyes glowed with malevolent crimson. It let out a guttural hiss that scraped against the eardrums, then lunged, not at Marek, but towards the Heart of Aethel, instinctively drawn to the dying energy source.
“Sentinels! To arms!”
The shout came from the newly opened entrance Marek had used. Headmistress Ksenia Chernov, her face taut with furious disbelief, strode in, followed by a phalanx of senior magi, their robes swirling around them. Their Kin sigils flared on their palms, ready for battle. Ksenia’s own light flared brightest, a beacon of pure, golden mana.
“Contain it! Do not let it reach the Heart!” Ksenia commanded, her voice ringing with authority. She hurled a lance of pure solar radiation, her signature Light Kin ability, at the Null-Beast. The bolt struck the creature’s black carapace, but instead of searing it, the light seemed to dim, to be swallowed. The Null-Beast shuddered, then let out another hiss, seemingly invigorated.
Other magi followed suit, launching torrents of elemental magic – blasts of fire, shards of ice, gales of wind. But each spell met the same fate. The Null-Beast’s darkness absorbed them, or worse, twisted them, causing the fire to fizzle into smoke, the ice to melt instantly into putrid water. The Bleed, exacerbated by Marek’s reckless act, rendered their magic inefficient, almost useless.
Pavel watched, a cold, analytical dread settling in his gut. Their magic was a blunt instrument against this creature, a hammer trying to crush mist. The Null-Beast was anti-magic, a pure manifestation of decay. What it *wasn’t*, however, was indestructible. It was a physical entity, albeit one made of solidified corruption. It reacted to energy, yes, but what about sheer, unadulterated heat? Chemical energy?
His gaze swept the stone alcoves, scanning discarded ritual scrap, ancient prayer tablets, and decayed conduits. He spotted it: a heap of cast bronze plaques, tarnished dark green with centuries of patina, alongside aluminum trimming and rust-red scrapings flaking off weathered iron supports. Iron oxide and powdered metal. The fundamentals of an incendiary redox mix.
“Anja! Keep them off me for one minute, maximum!” Pavel ordered, his voice sharp with urgency. He didn’t wait for a response, already sprinting towards the pile of plaques. Anja, without a word, drew her greatsword, Shadow-Sever, its dark steel humming faintly, and moved to intercept the instructors, who were now struggling to repel the Null-Beast’s advances toward the dais.
“Orlov! What madness are you attempting?!” Ksenia barked, turning a furious glare on him for a split second, just as the Null-Beast lashed out with a shadowy limb, forcing her to weave away, her golden aura flickering.
Pavel ignored her. He grabbed handfuls of the oxidized copper-bronze and the rust, mixing them rapidly with the fine, powdery dust of ancient, dried herbs from a shattered votive container – a binder, a catalyst. His hands worked with practiced speed, a chemical engineer’s instinct taking over. The chaotic currents in the air crackled with raw electrostatic charge. They’d be his ignition source.
He piled the gray-red mixture onto a discarded bronze shield, forming a crude cone, then aimed it directly at the Null-Beast’s central mass. The creature was engaged with the masters, who hurled spells with frantic, useless repetition.
“Get clear!” Pavel yelled over the screeching beast and shouting mages. He grounded his stance, drawing the erratic atmospheric voltage through a copper lead and snapping an arc directly into his powdered mixture.
It flared, not with magic, but with a blind, self-sustaining inferno. A searing white pillar erupted from the bronze dish, hotter than any spell in their curriculum. Reaching well past two thousand degrees, the reaction melted through the shield's lip as the surrounding air warped.
The Null-Beast screeched in agony. The focused thermal wash slagged its outer tissue, vaporizing the anomalous matter. Its limbs buckled, liquefied, and collapsed into a foul, boiling residue that hissed against the stone floor.
Silence crashed down. The instructors froze mid-cast. Ksenia Chernov stood motionless, her golden luminescence snuffed, staring at the bubbling slag, then at Pavel, who held a smoking bronze rim.
Marek Rostova, who had watched with a detached smirk, was seized by two academy guards whose sigils blazed on their gauntlets. He offered no resistance, but kept his grin fixed on Pavel. “This world is a toy for us, Orlov. You just picked a different kind of hammer.”
Ksenia, recovering her composure, her face hardening into a furious glare, pointed a trembling finger at Pavel. “Seize him! He… he used forbidden arts! Blasphemy!”
Before the guards could advance, Anja Volkov stepped between Pavel and the approaching spellcasters. Shadow-Sever rose, the tip leveling at the lead guard's collarbone. Her expression remained blank, but the steady blade held the entire phalanx at bay.