I teleported straight to the magical tower gates. Two armored sentinels guarded the entrance. They recognized me immediately and gave me a swift salute.
“Archmage Aldric,” one greeted solemnly. “We heard about the academy. Our deepest condolences.”
I nodded. “I’m here to access the Divination Wells. Prepare the Prime Orb for immediate review.”
The guards hesitated briefly. “Even if you are the Archmage, you’ll need clearance from Keeper Talena, sir.”
“Then go fetch her,” I said curtly.
Moments later, Talena emerged. Her usual composed demeanor wavered as she approached, an unusual occurrence for the meticulous Keeper. Her green eyes locked onto mine. “Aldric,” she began, her voice gentle. “I am truly sorry for your loss. You’ll have unrestricted access. Follow me.”
She led the way deep into the tower. At the core of the surveillance room an immense sphere of liquid light was suspended mid-air.
Talena gestured to it. “Every significant magical event in the region is recorded here.”
“Show me the day of the attack, please,” I asked. “I need to see anything unusual in the academy perimeter.”
With a nod, Talena began her spellwork. She sent threads of mana toward the orb. It flared brighter, ripples cascading across its surface before images began to appear: teachers and students going in for classes. A routine morning. Nothing out of place.
“Focus on those lingering near the wards,” I pressed.
The orb shifted, closing up on the people near the wards.
Times passed slowly. We watched the screen attentively for hours.
Just when I was about to lose hope, a suspicious person caught my attention—a hooded figure. They lingered on the edges of the academy’s perimeter. The distortion in the image made it difficult to discern features, but their presence raised immediate alarm in my heart.
Then another person appeared—Carl.
Unlike the hooded figure’s discreet behavior, Carl’s demeanor was strangely tense. His posture betrayed unease, shoulders hunched as he exchanged hurried, whispered words with a group of departing students. He glanced over his shoulder frequently, his usual playfulness absent.
One particular moment stood out: he froze mid-step near the academy’s outer gate, eyes narrowing as though he’d sensed something—or someone—watching him. Then, with a brisk shake of his head, he continued on, his pace quickening.
No. Not Carl. Tell me it's not you Carl...
Talena’s voice broke my thoughts. “Aldric,” she said, noting my fixed stare. “Something about him?”
I pressed my lips into a tight line before speaking. “Carl knows the academy’s defenses better than anyone else. He helped design the wards. This...behavior isn’t like him.”
Her brow furrowed as she enhanced the clarity of the images, revealing Carl’s agitation in stark detail. “Troubled,” she observed quietly. “Or guilty.”
My glare silenced further speculation. Instead, I gestured toward the orb. “Follow him, please. Track his movements in the hours before the attack.”
The Prime Orb replayed Carl’s path through the academy. He paced near the fountain, stopping to converse with two hooded figures. Carl’s gestures were wild. His hands balled into fists one moment and splayed in frustration the next.
“Pause,” I commanded sharply as one of the figures handed Carl a small magical powered object. “Magnify that.”
The orb focused, revealing the object: a circular emblem. Carl’s hand trembled as he tucked it away into his cloak.
Talena inhaled sharply. “A relay disc,” she murmured. “High-grade. It can bypass wards if properly attuned. That’s no common artifact.”
Burning anger surged within me. “Carl knew those wards like the back of his hands,” I said through gritted teeth. “If he’d attuned that relay disc, he could have given someone direct access to the academy.”
So it was really you Carl. You a founding member of the academy and my friend... Why? For what reason? Why did you betray us? Why did Sherry have to die?
My jaw clenched. "I need to find Carl alive. He has to take responsibility for his actions and give me answers.”
Talena hesitated. “If he is working for the enemy, confronting him will be risky.”
“Doesn't matter. Find him please. I will make him talk. If they want to kill him I dare them to try.” I replied, my tone leaving no room for argument.
She accelerated the recording, and just as expected, Carl teleported away after breaching the wards, just before the attack.
This son of a bitch! I will make you pay!
Talena looked at me, "It will take some time for me to figure out his whereabouts, Aldric. I will call you when I find him."
Her words doused me in cold water.
Every minutes and every second were precious. I couldn't afford to go back too far into the past to have a higher chance of survival.
For now, my only concrete lead was Carl.
Should I go back now to investigate?
No. Not yet. It was too dangerous. Digging too deep once I rewound time could tip them off. Finding the reason of Carl's betrayal and the enemy plan now would give me the advantage.
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One more hour. I would give myself one more hour.
If nothing surfaced by then, I’d reverse time—and pray the attempt wouldn’t kill me.
I bid goodbye to Talena and teleported to my house right away. There was no time to lose.
I tapped into my mana reserves and summoned hundred of thousands of tracking orbs, sending them all over the country.
Twenty minutes later I found Carl's location.
The sight I witnessed took me by surprise.
Carl's once overweight and tanned body shrunk, looking like a sack of bones, sickly pale and haggard.
He'd aged so much since the last time we had met, I nearly couldn't recognize him.
But it wasn’t just his state that sent shivers down my spine. It was his surroundings.
He was in his garden, kneeling before a freshly dug grave. Streams of tears fell down his face, his body wracked with silent sobs.
I focused on the grave, sharpening the tracking orb's image. My heart skipped a beat when the name on the marker became clear:
Letio Black
To my beloved son
Carl had a son? He had never mentioned his family, let alone a child before. But this grief looked so raw, so genuine... It couldn't be faked.
His lips moved silently as though in prayer or apology. This wasn’t the confident, borderline arrogant man I had called my friend. This was someone crushed under an unbearable weight.
I almost felt pity. Almost.
But there was something wrong.
The garden was shrouded in powerful defensive wards, intricately layered like a web. They felt out of place—clearly not designed to deter ordinary intruders. Entering would be deceptively easy, but leaving? That would be a far greater challenge.
Carl hadn’t merely been tracked like I previously though; he had been caged and used as a bait.
I scanned the perimeter, channeling my sight through the tracking orbs. The surrounding area was unnervingly empty. This was too convenient. And then, I noticed the faint trace of a cloaking spell.
My suspicions solidified. This was definitely a trap.
Carl must have felt the spell's shift or perhaps sensed me. He stiffened and looked around the garden frantically, his eyes bloodshot. For a moment, they locked with the point of view of my tracking orb. The despair in them was unmistakable, but so was the faint warning—a silent plea.
The grave, his anguish... everything fit together. Carl hadn’t betrayed us out of malice; he had been blackmailed with the life of his child. And now he had been turned into bait.
I shut down the orb feed.
“Carl, If you’re truly a part of this, I’ll make you pay. But if you’ve been forced into this… I swear I’ll set things right.” I murmured.
I teleported at the edge of the garden.
Carl turned at the soft pop of my arrival, his face shifting from grief to horror in an instant.
“Aldric, no!” he shouted, his voice desperate. “You shouldn’t be here! Run!”
“You don’t get to tell me where I should be Carl,” I replied coldly.
He stumbled to his feet, his arms stretched as though trying to shield the grave behind him. “You have no idea what they’ll do—what they’ve done!”
“I know enough,” I growled. “I know about the Obsidian Order. I know about the attack on the academy. And I know you were involved.”
His knees buckled, and he collapsed back to the dirt. “They took him, Aldric. My son. They made me give them the plans to the wards, or they would…” He broke off, sobs wracking his emaciated body.
“Then why are you alive?”
“They used me as a bait to get you here,” he stammered. “I am so sorry. When they returned him… he was already gone.” He gestured helplessly toward the grave. “I buried what they gave me, Aldric. Nothing more than… bones.”
"Alright. Do you swear on your life and your magic that you said the truth and you won't betray me again?"
Carl looked at me. His lips trembled, but his gaze didn’t falter as he nodded. “I swear. On my life, my soul, my magic—everything I am. I said the truth and I won’t betray you again, Aldric.”
For a moment, I said nothing. I let the vow take root in the will of the world. Swearing such an oath wasn’t just words; it was a surrender to forces greater than us both.
“You’d better mean it, Carl,” I finally said. “Because if you betray me again, not even this grave will save you from what I’ll do.”
He sagged against the earth, his shoulders shaking. His broken state, while pitiful, wasn’t enough to lower my guard. There were too many questions, too much at stake. The wards, the trap—none of it added up fully, no matter his confession.
Suddenly, I felt a strong magical fluctuation in the air.
I spun instinctively, summoning a protective barrier around myself and Carl.
A faint light tore through the edge of the property, revealing two hundred cloaked figures.
Obsidian Order agents.
Each of them exuded power. The one in the center lowered their hood, revealing a woman with cruel eyes and a hideous scar running down her cheek. She smiled like a predator sizing up her prey.
“Well, well, Archmage,” she drawled, her voice as smooth as silk. “You’ve arrived faster than we anticipated. And here I thought Carl would buy us more time. Guess even bait has its limits.”
Carl flinched at her words, his trembling fingers digging into the dirt beside the grave. I noticed his desperation was being replaced with an inkling of resolve, but there was no time to gauge his intentions.
“What’s the matter?” I snapped. “Afraid to face me alone without your lowly tricks? Using a father’s grief to lure me out? Disgusting.”
The woman’s grin widened as she stepped forward, her colleagues in toe. “So what? You’ve already lost; you just don’t know it yet.”
I knew she was right, I had no chance of winning while protecting Carl. Even for me fighting these many strong opponents at once would be too much. My only way out was to flee—at least, for now.
But leaving Carl behind wasn’t an option.
I extended my senses, seeking a gap in the encircling wards. Their spellwork overlapped, intricate and suffocating, but I caught a faint instability to the east. A recent addition to their net. Perfect. It was the weak point I needed to exploit.
“Carl, get ready to move!” I snapped telepathically, stepping between him and the advancing Obsidian's Order agents.
He nodded weakly, his face pale. Whether he had the strength to keep up didn’t matter; I would drag him if necessary.
The agents didn’t wait for me to make the first move. The woman moved first, sending a dozen of dark fireballs toward us. I summoned a multi layered shield to counter them. The impact sent a shockwave across the garden, uprooting plants and mud.
I grimaced, reinforcing the barrier as more attacks rained down on us. Fire bolts. Lightening bolts. Wind slices. Earth boulders. Ice spears. Sound waves. Space cut. The pressure was immense—but I held firm, channeling my mana into the protective shield.
“Aldric, I’m sorry—” Carl began, but I silenced him with a sharp glare.
“Save it! Just focus on staying alive!”
We needed a distraction.
I plunged into the vast depths of my mana pool and unleashed a blast of fire magic that tore through the air like an incandescent tidal wave. It surged outward, slamming into the Obsidian's Order agents and scattering them like leaves in a storm. A fraction of them died on the spot, some fell back, stunned, while others raised shields just in time to deflect the brunt of the explosion.
It wouldn’t hold them for long, but it gave me the opening I needed.
I focused, extending my senses deeper into the fabric of their wards. Layers upon layers of defense. Each one seemed to be specially designed to counter magic as potent as mine. The intricacy of the spellwork was staggering, far more elaborate than I had anticipated.
I began channeling, carefully attuning myself to the slight pulse of the weak point in the ward.
As I worked to manipulate the energies of the ward, I felt the pressure building—every tiny tear of the fabric I could manage to create immediately began to stitch itself back together, faster than I could tear.
"Buy me some time Carl! I am nearly done with the ward" I shouted telepathically.
Carl nodded with greeted teeth, summoning a shield to protect us from the upcoming wave of magical spells raining down on us.
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I sustained the effort. The Obsidian Order hadn’t just designed their magic to be defensive; they'd made it alive, constantly shifting to counter threats, matching the power of my own magic in a terrifying feedback loop.
The longer I struggled, the more the ward anticipated me. Just as my pulse inched past the critical point. I used the gap—the weak point I'd spotted—but I had to craft the spell in the split second I had left.
And then we were gone.