The revelations of the previous day had hit like a well-aimed mana bolt to the gut. No explosions. No dramatic speeches. Just the crushing realization that they weren't at the center of the storm—they were possibly just leaves in the wind.
The courtyard felt different that morning. The usual tension had settled into something heavier, quieter. The clatter of cups and shuffle of papers remained, but even the enchanted teapot refrained from whistling too brightly. Everyone was present, alert, but with that particular kind of stillness that comes from staring down the barrel of a much bigger problem than anyone was ready for.
They weren't the major players.
They might not even be players at all.
They could be prey.
Or collateral.
That simple possibility changed everything.
Marell sat in her usual corner, red pen in hand, but she wasn't annotating. She was staring at a blank sheet, letting the ink sink into the parchment like it had betrayed her. Jamie was scrolling through mana-thread overlays without even complaining about the interface bugs. Orin had stopped humming. That, more than anything, said something had shifted.
Pallen, who could find humor in a cursed spoon, hadn't cracked a joke since sunrise.
Davor stood near the window, arms crossed, his reflection staring back at him in the polished glass. He wasn't fuming. He wasn't even scowling. He was... calculating. Every breath measured. Every glance sharp. The kind of quiet you get right before someone kicks down a door.
Alex, sitting at the head of the table with his usual cup of tea gone cold, finally spoke.
"We've been reacting."
No one argued. Because he was right.
"Every step we've taken has been inside someone else's game board. Someone planned this. Built it. Layered it like a ceremonial cake filled with lies and glitter traps."
Rahul, finally breaking the silence, said quietly, "So what are we? Guests? Bystanders?"
Alex didn't answer immediately.
When he did, it wasn't pleasant.
"We're either the target. Or the mess they're willing to make to get to the target."
The phrase hung in the air like a blade.
They all felt it. That cold shift from clever to endangered.
Alex reached forward and tapped the edge of a map covered in overlapping illusion feeds and mana data. "From now on, assume surveillance. Assume influence. Every interaction, every new face—catalog it. I want tracking patterns of every House-affiliated invitation, every guild movement inside the walls, every petty duel that seems a little too conveniently timed."
Marell finally looked up, her voice dry. "You think we're in someone's web."
"I think we've been in it for a while. We just didn't notice the silk."
Jamie sighed. "Great. So who's the spider?"
Orin rubbed his temples. "Depends on the type. Could be a wolf spider—fast and brutal. Could be a black widow—elegant, deadly, personal. Or..."
Rahul finished for him. "A house spider. Unnoticed. Domestic. Already living in our walls."
They were silent again.
Until Alex muttered, deadpan, "Either way, I'm not getting caught dangling like a mana-drenched fly."
Clarity had replaced frustration.
There would be no more passive observation.
It was time to find the web.
And burn it thread by thread.
That clarity came just in time.
Later that afternoon, reports began surfacing from the lower residential sectors. One common family—struggling, barely scraping by with two jobs and a half-working mana stabilizer—found their son dead on their doorstep.
He was a participant in the Academy entrance exams.
The official notice claimed it was a magical backlash. An internal poisoning from unstable mana use.
But his mother disagreed.
She had seen him just the day before, right after his exam. He was tired, sure, but smiling. Excited, even. Talking about how he nailed the mana layering puzzle. He had promised to bring her a token from the Academy if he passed the next round.
Now, he was dead.
No one believed her. Or if they did, they weren't about to say it aloud. Not against the word of the Academy or the Houses whispering behind it.
She wept beside his body, while enchanters and clean-up officials quietly wrapped him up and took him away. Said it was procedure.
But it wasn't just one case.
All across Arcana, similar scenes unfolded. Streets where once-persistent, hopeful applicants had vanished, replaced by a shroud of silence. Families that had no voices loud enough to demand answers. And worse—an entire grounds near the outer west district was unofficially referred to now as "the garden of the lost." A field filled with bodies.
No ceremonies. No gravestones. No families to claim them—or at least, none within the city.
It was being buried. Quietly. Efficiently.
And someone had noticed.
So had Alex.
And now, it wasn't just a matter of burning the web.
It was about figuring out if they were next.
Even if the prophecy had whispered of a death—his death—by the hands of a so-called Chosen One, it was no longer about him.
What if the death itself, anyone's death, was just the matchstick?
A spark used not for fate, but for theater?
Not a tragedy. A stage cue.
And if it happened to be him, so what? He had a master. He had a title. He had an empire's protection. But in Arcana, that meant little. Everyone here had someone behind them. No one's back was truly bare—just cloaked in different colors.
And in a world where ambition burned brighter than laws, who wasn't willing to start a war, if it meant rising higher?
Alex didn't feel fear.
He felt weight.
If someone wanted to use his name, his life, or his corpse as a way to shuffle the hierarchy—they'd better hope he stayed dead.
Because if he wasn't the target, he was still in range.
And someone was pulling the trigger anyway
The courtyard war room was unusually quiet.
Not the heavy, contemplative quiet of before—but something sharper. Like a silence held at sword-point.
Stacks of reports were spread across the center table, layered with red-thread tags, burnt parchment edges, and more than one set of jittery handwriting. The lanterns had been dimmed. The air reeked faintly of scorched mana ink and long-suppressed panic.
Alex stood beside the board, arms crossed, as Pallen placed one more file on the stack. Jamie had stopped bothering with neat piles. Now it was about speed, not aesthetics.
Orin cleared his throat. "Confirmed. We were looking for incidents that happened after the exams. But something happened during."
Alex didn't blink. "When?"
"Third day," Davor replied, voice low. "Something spiked across multiple testing zones. Mana signatures went haywire. Records were scrubbed—or never logged to begin with."
"And deaths?"
Orin nodded grimly. "Several. All categorized as either internal failures, instability collapse, or emotional trauma triggering latent backlash. But... the timing's off. Too many in one day. Too spread out. Different sections. Different Houses."
Alex's fingers tightened against the edge of the table. "And recruitment?"
"Unchanged," said Marell. "Like nothing happened. Official rosters were finalized without a hiccup. The deaths were... absorbed. No pauses. No questions."
Rahul, staring at a rune-sealed page, muttered, "Like a reset button was hit mid-simulation."
Alex moved toward the map board and circled the date. "I want all the cause-of-death reports from that day. Every one. I don't care how sanitized the language is. I want the autopsy spells, the cleanup transcripts, the psych evals—all of it."
Jamie looked up, hesitant. "Some of that might not exist. Or might've already been overwritten."
"Then dig deeper," Alex said coldly. "Talk to the assistants. The medics. Janitors. Anyone who was there. We missed it once. We don't miss it again."
Davor narrowed his eyes at the date. "Whatever it was, it wasn't for show. It wasn't targeting anyone specific. But it meant something. Maybe a stress test. Maybe an accident. Maybe a message."
Alex stared at the map, voice low.
Alex stared at the board—at the names that weren't just names anymore.
He thought about writing to Aiden.
One line. That's all it would take.
A question from a student to his master. A simple ask for clarity. For answers.
But he didn't.
Because Aiden wouldn't just give answers.
He'd give truths.
And truths, in Aiden's world, rarely came without consequences.
'If I ask, I won't be the one steering anymore.'
He wasn't ready to hand over the reins just yet.
Not until he was sure what kind of monster they were chasing. Or what kind of trap they were already in.
He took a step back from the table and exhaled.
"Let's find out what really happened on Day Three," he said. "Before someone decides we're asking too many questions."