Chapter 13 A Slaughterhouse In The Making.

Lexi sat cross-legged on her mattress, her back pressed against the wall as she watched her new roommate set up her desk. The silence in the room wasn’t angry like it had been with Belle, but it was incredibly awkward.

Trying to break the ice, Lexi cleared her throat. “So… did the dorm Magister force you to move in here?”

Rya paused and shook her head slowly, then turned around, offering Lexi a small, genuine smile. “No. I actually wanted to.”

Her voice was very tiny, Lexi tilted her head, slightly surprised. “Why? Why leave the lower district?”

Rya’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. She placed the book on the desk and sighed. “I didn’t exactly like my roommate down there. I’m just glad they finally moved me.”

“What did she do?” Lexi pressed on forcing Rya to freeze.

Rya paused for a long while, then gave a casual shrug, avoiding Lexi’s eyes. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”  She quickly changed the subject, looking around the room.

“Since all upper-division classes have been cancelled and there are apparently no military drills today…” Rya let out a laugh.

“Honestly, those drills are the worst. We’re lucky that creepy librarian stepped in and saved everyone in the arena, or else…”

Lexi’s chest tightened at the mention of Clovis. “Yeah. Else things would have been much worse.” She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling chilled.

“So, what are we supposed to do then? Since everything is cancelled?”

“Well, we could visit the library,” Rya suggested brightly.

Lexi’s heart spiked, a surge of discomfort washing over her, as she shifted uneasily on her bed. “The… the library? Why there?”

Rya shrugged, finally walking over and sitting down on her newly made bed. “I’ve always been fascinated by it. In the lower district, they never give us time to visit the upper districts. I figured, since we’re stuck together, maybe we could go check it out? Together?”

Lexi swallowed the lump in her throat. She couldn’t say no without looking suspicious, and she didn’t want to alienate her new roommate on day one. Forced to play along, she managed a weak smile. “Of course. I’d… I’d love to.”

As they began gathering their things to head out, Rya looked up. “By the way, I realized I didn’t even ask. What’s your name?”

“Lexi,” she replied.

“Nice to meet you, Lexi.”

A few minutes later, the two girls stepped out of the dorm room and began walking down the long hallway of the residential wing.

The corridor was unusually quiet, most students sleeping off the exhaustion of the failed ritual.

Rya leaned in a bit closer to Lexi as they walked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “So… what actually happened between you and Belle? The rumors about your fight have already spread around the entire lower district.”

Lexi frowned, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “What do you mean?”

Rya looked a little embarrassed to repeat it. “Well… Belle told everyone that you were trying to force yourself onto the new, hot transfer student—Chadwick. She said you snapped when she called you out on it.”

Lexi let out an exhausted sigh, shaking her head in disbelief. “Unbelievable. That’s not even close to what—”

Lexi’s voice cut off as they passed one of the faculty office doors. From behind it came a heavy, muffled thud—then a choked, wet sound that had no business in a residential wing. She stopped. The door was slightly ajar, and through the narrow crack she saw a flash of silver rising, then the blade descending toward a man on his knees.

With a muffled thwack, the man’s head was cleanly sliced from his shoulders.

Lexi’s breath jammed in her throat, her body locking up in horror.

Rya halted a step ahead of her, blinking in confusion. “Lexi?”

“Hush,” Lexi breathed, her voice barely a whisper.

Holding her breath, Lexi took slow, quiet steps back toward the slightly opened door. Rya, sensing the sudden shift in the air, crept up right behind her.

Before they could even peek through the gap, an object hit the floor inside the room and rolled and bumped directly against the base of the door, stopping right at their feet.

Through the gap, Lexi looked down to see the lifeless eyes of a Magister’s head staring blankly up at the ceiling.

Rya let out a horrified gasp as Lexi immediately slammed her hand over Rya’s mouth, cutting off the sound, grabbed Rya’s collar and yanked her backward into the deep shadow of a recessed archway just a few feet down the hall, pulling both of them completely out of sight.

The office door slowly swung wide open.

A prominent academy Magister stepped out into the hallway. He looked left, then right, his eyes scanning the empty corridor. Finding no one, he stepped back into the office and shut behind him.

Behind the safety of the archway, Lexi’s heart battered against her as she kept her palm clamped tightly over Rya’s mouth, feeling the girl trembling against her. Rya’s eyes were wide, completely panicked behind her thick glasses.

Only when the heavy click of the locked door echoed down the hall did Lexi slowly lower her hand.

Rya collapsed against the wall, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. “Did… did we just see… was that…”

“Shh,” Lexi whispered, her own voice shaking as she grabbed Rya’s shoulders to steady her. “We need to move, like right now.”

They hurried down the corridor until they reached the safety of the main courtyard staircase. The cold air did nothing to calm Lexi’s racing mind.

The execution had been clean and completely systematic. It was a Magister. The faculty was actively purging its own, exactly as Clovis had warned.

“Lexi,” Rya choked out, pulling at her sleeve as they stopped near the massive arches leading toward the central plaza. “That was Magister Miller’s office. And the man with the blade… that was one of the High Council Magisters. Why would they—”

“I don’t know,” Lexi breathed.

“Should we tell someone?”

“Absolutely not!”  Lexi said, a bit too sharply. She softened her tone, seeing Rya flinch. “If the High Council is doing this, there is no one safe to tell. If they find out we saw, we’re next. You have to act like nothing happened. We were going to the library, remember? We stick to the plan.”

Rya swallowed hard, nodding rapidly as she pushed her slipping glasses back up her nose. “Right… the library.”

But as they crossed the courtyard toward the towering library, Lexi felt a completely different kind of dread settling into her stomach. She was running away from a literal execution squad straight into the lair of the Mage of Ruin.

When they finally pushed through the doors of the library, the familiar smell of old books and vanilla wax washed over them. The endless labyrinth of bookshelves stretched upward into the shadows, quiet and seemingly peaceful.

“Whoa…” Rya said breathlessly, looking up at the towering shelves.

From across the grand hall, Chadwick looked to see Lexi and next to him, Clovis stood.

×××

The Grand Magister sat in the solemnity of his private chamber, the curtains drawn tight to blot out the fractured sky. The room was dark, illuminated only by the dying embers of a hearth.

A knock rattled the door shattering the quietness of the room.

“Come in,” the Grand Magister murmured.

The door swung open, and the prominent Magister—the very same man who had just stepped out of Magister Miller’s blood-slicked office—walked inside.

He calmly unbuckled his weapon harness, setting the sheathed, blade onto a side table, bypassed the Grand Magister entirely, walking over to the crystal decanter in the corner and pouring himself a generous glass of dark wine.

Taking a seat directly opposite the Grand Magister, the killer sank into the plush chair and let out a weary breath. “It has been done.”

The Grand Magister didn’t look up from his desk, “And I hope no one saw you.”

The other Magister assured him with a dismissive wave of his hand, tilting his head back to sip his drink. “The residential corridors were entirely vacant. Everyone is still paralyzed with fear from the channeling failure.”

The Grand Magister let out a hum as he leaned back, “Since this monster thinks it can play games with us, we will simply play ahead of it. Let us see what happens when we have already eliminated its target.”

“Miller was a fool, but he was a loyal fool,” the other Magister noted, swirling the wine in his glass. “Are we certain he was the one the beast was hunting?”

“The blood omen left on his door made it explicitly clear,” the Grand Magister replied, his gaze detached. “The Krag is an apex predator, but it is bound by the laws of ancient tracking. It targets those whose mana signatures are tied to the structural integrity of this academy. By butchering Miller myself…I have denied the beast its meal.”

The other Magister paused, his glass hovering near his lips as the full weight of the Grand Magister’s strategy began to dawn on him. “And what of the others, sir? The tracker’s reports indicate the beast’s hunger is growing. If it cannot have Miller…”

“Then it will choose another. And we will butcher them before it can get to them, too,” the Grand Magister stated smoothly, “I have already compiled the list. Tomorrow, we move on to the faculty of the Arcane Theory department and he next day, the senior combat instructors.”

The Silence that fell was almost deafening as the other Magister stared at his superior, a flicker of genuine unease finally penetrating his cold demeanor. “An execution of the entire high faculty? Grand Magister… if we slaughter our own peers, the academy will collapse from the inside. The students will riot and the outer wards will fail entirely.”

“Let them fail,” the Grand Magister whispered, “You still do not comprehend the scope of our salvation. I am executing these Magisters because I believe one of them knows something. I believe one of them is actively holding the doorway open for the doom outside.”

The other Magister set his glass down on the table as he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Or… is it because you believe one of them IS the Mage of Ruin?”

The Grand Magister didn’t deny it, letting a smile stretch across his face, devoid of any human warmth.

“If the devil wishes to hide behind our walls as a man, then I will simply leave him no men to hide among,” the Grand Magister said, his voice dripping with an absolute certainty. “I will bleed this academy dry, room by room, colleague by colleague. I will turn Vaelenor into a slaughterhouse of our own making. And when the Mage of Ruin is finally forced to stand alone in a sea of our corpses, with no more innocent souls left to shield him… then, and only then, will I allow him to die.”

×××

That same night, far beyond the academy’s bleeding wards, something vast moved through the eastern woods.

The Krag had chosen Miller. It had tasted the Magister’s signature woven through the academy’s wards, marked him into the lattice of its ritual, and come at last to collect. But when it reached the shallow ravine where the body had been discarded, it found only cold, spoiled meat—dead for hours, the lifeforce it needed long fled from the flesh, wasted by a human blade.

The creature stood over the corpse for a long while, its breath steaming in the dark, its brilliant mind turning the discovery over like a puzzle piece: the prey had begun butchering its own.

It did not rage. Rage was for lesser beasts.

It simply adjusted.

If the men in the high tower wished to race it to its kills, then it would mark its victims faster than they could murder them—and it would no longer hunt them one at a time.