The academy’s corridor stretched before Elliot, its stone walls leaching warmth even in the midday light filtering through arched windows. His footsteps echoed too loudly, his jaw clenched tight enough to ache. Students parted around him instinctively, sensing the storm in his gaze.

“I should’ve told him,” he berated himself, fists curling at his sides. “But how? ‘Hey, Towan—your Essentia channels were sabotaged by shadowy tendrils’? He’d charge off half-crippled and get himself killed.”

He rounded the corner—

—and froze.

Sylra leaned against the wall, arms crossed, her posture deceptively casual. Moonlight from a stained-glass window painted her in fractured hues of blue and silver, but her eyes were sharp, unblinking.

“You saw it too,” she said, not a question.

Elliot’s mask of control slipped. “Saw what, exactly?” he challenged, though his pulse betrayed him.

She pushed off the wall, closing the distance between them. “The threads. Thin. Dark. Like cracks in glass.” Her voice dropped. “They weren’t just in his channels—they were feeding from them.”

Flashback: The Tournament Grounds

Towan’s silver Essentia had blazed like a star, drowning the arena in light. But in that brilliance, Elliot’s trained eyes caught the flaw—a spiderweb of shadows threading up Towan’s right leg, pulsing in time with the crowd’s roaring cheers.

“Something’s wrong,” Elliot had muttered, but the words drowned in the cacophony.

Then the kick—Towan’s Essentia detonating in a supernova, the shadows squeezing like a serpent’s coils. The crack of breaking bone echoed louder than the shockwave.

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Present Day

“It wasn’t exhaustion that shattered his leg,” Elliot said, the words bitter. “Someone throttled his Essentia flow. Forced a surge his body couldn’t handle.”

Sylra nodded, producing a folded parchment from her sleeve. Unfurled, it revealed a sketch of Towan’s Essentia patterns during the fight—neat lines disrupted by jagged, ink-black veins. “I’ve seen this before. In the lower city. A parasitic technique—call it ‘Veinrot.’ Rare. Brutal. Only whispers of who’s behind it.”

Elliot’s breath hitched. “Who?”

“The better question,” Sylra murmured, “is how. Your brother’s Essentia is… unique. Overloading it should’ve been impossible unless—”

“—unless they had access to him before the fight,” Elliot finished, cold realization dawning. The locker rooms. The sparring sessions. The crowded mess hall.

Sylra’s gaze drifted to the library doors ahead. “The academy’s restricted archives mention techniques like this. But to pull it off here, under Rheon’s nose?” She smirked, though it lacked humor. “Either your professor’s slipping… or he’s playing a deeper game.”

Elliot’s mind raced. Rheon’s indigo Essentia. The vial. The way he’d stared at Towan after the fight—not anger, but… curiosity?

“We need proof,” he said, striding toward the library.

“We need survival,” Sylra corrected, falling into step beside him. “If they targeted Towan once, they’ll do it again. And next time, those threads might not stop at his leg.”

Above them, the academy bells tolled—a deep, sonorous sound that shook dust from the rafters. Somewhere in the shadows, a crow’s cry echoed, sharp and mocking.

The library’s upper archives loomed around them, shelves groaning under the weight of ancient tomes and scrolls reeking of mildew and forgotten wars. Dust motes drifted through shafts of pallid moonlight, the air thick with the tang of aged parchment and dread. Sylra’s fingers traced a faded illustration in a grimoire bound in cracked leather—a serpent coiled around a fractured heart, its caption inked in a dead language.

“Here,” she said, voice taut. “Ourothan’s Circle. They call Corruption ‘the Unwoven Truth.’ Their techniques exploit Essentia’s weakest seams.”

Elliot leaned over, his shadow merging with hers. The page detailed Veinrot’s mechanics: parasitic Essentia threads, invasive via channel gaps during flux states—overexertion, emotional distress, or…

“External compromise,” he muttered. “But Towan’s flow was airtight. Master made sure of that.”

Sylra snapped the book shut, sending a plume of dust into the air. “Unless someone pried those gaps open for him.”

The revelation hung between them, cold and razor-edged.