The ink-black claw tightened, crushing Carys’s throat. Her feet scrabbled uselessly against the air, and a choked gasp escaped her. Brannis saw the stark white of her knuckles as she clawed at the inky tendril, her face rapidly paling. A flicker of betrayal, raw and vulnerable, pulsed in her wide eyes, aimed not at Fendrel, but at him. He had feigned helplessness, and now she paid the price. Fendrel’s purr was a low, satisfied rumble. “Such a shame indeed, little illusionist. But some truths are meant to remain buried.” Brannis’s timid mask shattered. The Epitaph's edicts, the cautious murmurs, the looming timeline — all of it dissolved beneath a surge of fury. This wasn't about the timeline; this was about Carys. His vision narrowed to Fendrel’s smug face, to the choking tendril, to the brilliant, fading light in Carys's eyes. He moved. Not with the frantic panic of a novice, but with the honed precision of a weapon. There was no conscious thought, only instinct honed over a thousand brutal skirmishes. His hand blurred, snapping from his side, not reaching for a blade, but for the very fabric of time itself. An ancient martial artifice flared to life. Time itself seemed to shudder. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the dust motes in the sunbeam hanging in the air above Carys froze. Fendrel’s smile, fixed in its chilling predatory rictus, halted. The very air around Carys solidified, holding her suspended, immobile, the clawed tendril's pressure arrested. This was no grand, sweeping temporal distortion, but a localized, pinpointed pocket of frozen existence, just enough for Brannis. He lunged forward, his own movements seemingly unhindered by the nascent temporal stasis. His hand, shrouded in an umbral veil, became an extension of his will. He didn't need a blade; his will *was* the blade. It cleaved through the frozen, inky tendril that choked Carys. There was no resistance, only a silent, surgical severing. The severed tendril, deprived of its anchor, dissolved into soot, leaving faint char marks on Carys’s throat. The localized time-freeze shattered. Fendrel’s smile twitched, his eyes widening in disbelief as Carys gasped, a ragged, desperate sound, tumbling forward into Brannis’s arms. He caught her, his gaze locked on Fendrel. The elder’s face, moments ago so confident, now held a flicker of genuine shock, quickly replaced by cold, calculating rage. “Impossible,” Fendrel hissed, his voice tight. “No student possesses…” But Brannis didn’t wait for him to finish. With Carys clutched against his chest, he pivoted, his eyes sweeping the tower room. The academy was a maze of hidden corridors, forgotten tunnels. He knew this tower, knew its secrets from a past life. A faint tremor ran through the stone beneath his feet, a warning. The clock tower would toll soon, and with it, Othor’s final hour. “Down,” Brannis rasped, his voice rough. “The catacombs. Now.” He launched himself toward a heavy, moth-eaten hanging that hid an iron lever in the masonry. His free hand ripped it aside, revealing not a wall, but a dark, narrow opening in the stone, leading into a steep, winding shaft. Without hesitation, he plunged into the darkness, Carys still held tight. They tumbled down, the rough-hewn steps scraping against their boots, the air growing colder, heavier. The shaft dropped into a labyrinth of sunken crypts and vaulted corridors. The silence here was absolute, broken only by their ragged breathing. The air smelled of damp earth, ancient stone, and something else – a faint, sweet decay. Brannis set Carys gently on a cold, stone slab that might once have been a burial plinth. Her eyes, still wide with residual shock, tracked his every movement. She pressed a hand to her throat, her fingers tracing the faint, residual char on her skin. "What... was that?" she gasped, her voice raw. "And how did you know about this route?" Brannis knelt, his gaze searching the oppressive darkness, straining to hear any sound of pursuit. "Fendrel isn't what he seems. That dark silhouette... it's a living thing. A conduit." He paused, weighing his words. The Epitaph had penalized him for revealing his strength, but this was different. This was Carys. He couldn't lie to her, not now, not after what she'd just endured. "And this route... I've walked it before." Carys studied him, her sharp gaze piercing through the remaining vestiges of his timid act. “You weren’t just a scared student, were you? Not even a little bit.” She shifted, her hand reaching into the deep pocket of her scholar’s robe. She pulled out a thick, leather-bound ledger, its pages yellowed and brittle. It was not an official cathedral register, but a smaller, clandestine volume. “I wasn’t just watching you because you were an interesting anomaly, Brannis. I was watching everything.” She laid the ledger open on the slab. The spidery script, usually a blur to the untrained eye, was illuminated by the faint, ethereal glow of a lantern-ward Brannis had snapped from a niche. "The academy ledgers... they're forged. The public ones, anyway. But I found a hidden set. A set detailing ‘donations to the Mist’ and ‘tithes for the Fog-Lords’.” Her voice sank low. “They’re not trading coin or resources. They’re trading students, Brannis. The ones who ‘vanish’ during training, the ones deemed ‘unworthy’ or ‘too weak’. Their chronal energy, their very souls… fed to the entities in the mist. The elite, the ones like Morvath’s family, they’re getting richer, more powerful, by feeding the poor to the fog.” Brannis felt a cold dread settle in his stomach. This was the horror he had vaguely sensed, the bigger picture the Epitaph's strictures had hidden from view. The elite weren't just corrupt; they were monstrous. “Fendrel… he’s harvesting chronal energy. He tried to take mine, even before this. He intends to harvest yours, too.” He took a deep breath, the confession a bitter taste in his mouth. “Carys… the thirteenth bell. It tolled this morning. It wasn’t the first time. I’ve lived this day before. Master Othor… he dies today. The same feather. The same time.” His voice was barely a whisper now, rough with guilt and the dread of his impossible task. “I’m caught in a loop. A regression. A chance to stop it, to save him, to save you. But the entity... it feeds on me. It pushes me to follow its rules, or it accelerates the timeline. Every time I act… every time I break a rule… Othor’s death comes faster.” Carys listened, her expression unreadable in the dim light. She reached out, not with fear, but with a startling tenderness, touching the place where Fendrel’s shadow had seared Brannis’s chest. The black smoke, though gone from her throat, had left a deep, painful burn on his skin, just above his heart. It throbbed with a dull ache. Her fingers, cool and gentle, moved over the wound. Then, without a word, she began to unravel a strip of cloth from her own tunic, her movements deliberate, practiced. She tore it into a clean, thin bandage and began to bind his wound, her gaze focused, her touch feather-light. Neither spoke; the silence held a quiet, sudden trust. Her knuckles grazed his bare skin, sending a prickle of static through his chest. He felt a profound, aching longing, a desire to protect her that transcended any bleeding prompt, any rule. He wanted to tell her everything, to lose himself in the moment, to forget the looming dread. Her eyes, so close, held a depth he hadn’t fully appreciated until now. She was not just brilliant, she was brave, and utterly, fearfully real. As she finished, securing the knot with a soft tug, the air in the catacombs shimmered. A faint, crimson glow seeped from the ancient stone wall beside them. It wasn't an illusion. It was real. Bleeding text, like fresh wounds, began to carve itself into the rough surface, each syllable dripping with ominous finality. [Rule Broken: Temporal Manipulation. Gravest Fear Accelerated.] [Master Othor’s Assassination: Ten Minutes.] [Consequence Protocol Activated: Surrender the girl to the fog, or Master Othor dies in ten minutes.]

Bleeding Stones