Tides of Rebellion

The week following the blood trials passed in uneasy silence.

No new announcements. No summons. No assignments.

Just an eerie stillness, like the Dominion Institute itself was holding its breath.

Nyra hadn't returned to most classes.

Neither had Voss.

The healers released him two days after he woke—on strict orders of limited movement, which he promptly ignored. His body was healing, but the damage lingered. Nyra noticed the way he moved slower, favoring his side. Not that he'd admit it.

They spoke little.

But when they did, the words were razor-sharp and deliberately few—too many unsaid things crackling between glances.

Today, they walked together down the outer corridor that overlooked the lower training yards.

Classes had resumed. The courtyard was flooded with first-years—some fresh-faced and terrified, others scarred from recent trials.

"You think they'll come for us again?" Nyra asked, her voice flat.

Voss leaned against the stone railing, arms crossed. "They never stopped."

She nodded.

A long silence stretched.

Then he asked, "You feel it too?"

Nyra didn't pretend not to understand.

"Yes. Something's changing."

Earlier that morning, Nyra had woken before the sun.

For once, it wasn't to train or stalk the halls like a predator.

It was to return to something she'd been avoiding: the Healing Studies Lab—part of the Healing arts curriculum overseen by Healer Vess Aurelian. She'd missed most of the early cycles, either deliberately or out of pride. But after what happened to Voss… after nearly watching him die beneath her hands…

She wasn't going to let that happen again.

Not if she could prevent it.

The moment she stepped into the cold, sterile chamber with its pale blue torches and floating spell diagrams, her instincts recoiled. She hated this room. Hated its soft edges, its lack of fire, its slow, precise tempo.

But she stayed.

As the lessons progressed, Nyra struggled—her magic too volatile, too aggressive. Every time she tried to tap into her healing ability, her Amethyst Inferno flared instead, destructive and uncooperative.

It was only when she thought about Voss—bloodied, broken, gasping—that something shifted. The fire dulled, calmed. And the healing thread, faint and glowing, began to respond.

Still brutal. Still searing. But stabilizing.

Her thoughts that day were few, but clear:

No one gets to die on my watch again.

Seraph was there too.

Unlike Nyra, she had attended these sessions more regularly—but her mind often wandered. She didn't like healing magic. It felt slow, inefficient. Too delicate. But after watching Riven nearly bleed out in her arms—after seeing her hands tremble for the first time in years—something inside her cracked.

During the lesson, Seraph stared at her reflection in the enchanted basin used to harness Soul Sense alignment. Her fingers hovered over the water, glowing softly with silver energy. The professor instructed them to stabilize a pulse thread.

She couldn't.

Not because she didn't have the ability—but because for once, she didn't know how to feel what was needed.

Her thoughts buzzed:

Why couldn't I move? Why did I freeze? Why did it take seeing him dying to finally understand how much I needed him?

The realization sank in like venom.

And slowly, her Moonfire adjusted.

A thin tether emerged from her fingers—a filament of silvery light that twitched and sparked, but held.

I will never let myself freeze again.

Back in the courtyard, a loud boom shattered the stillness.

Nyra and Voss snapped to attention.

Another explosion followed—closer.

Then shouting.

Not drills. Not training.

Chaos.

A flare of violet flame burst into the air from the garden quadrant.

Nyra and Voss moved instantly.

They arrived to find smoke billowing from the ground. A supply storage facility had been detonated—flames licked the sky as students screamed and scattered.

Several masked figures darted through the smoke.

Not students.

Intruders.

Voss reacted first, slamming two of them into the dirt with a gravitational crush. Nyra flared her Amethyst Inferno without hesitation, her fire exploding outward and catching another figure mid-run. He shrieked as he burned.

But one of them turned.

And locked eyes with her.

His eyes were golden.

Unmistakable.

She froze for half a second.

Then he disappeared in the smoke.

Reinforcements poured in. Instructors. Guards. Magic lit the skies.

Within minutes, the intruders were forced back, vanishing through a rift before they could be unmasked.

But the message had been sent.

Dominion wasn't untouchable.

And someone was watching.

Someone with golden eyes.

The aftermath of the attack sent ripples through Dominion's structure.

Classes weren't canceled—but every hallway now shimmered with fortified wards, instructors prowled with sharper eyes, and students whispered more cautiously. The illusion of safety had cracked. And with the mask broken, Dominion became something colder.

More dangerous.

As a response to the unrest, Headmaster Xypher Rhaegis issued a directive at the next general assembly. His voice, cold and commanding, echoed across the courtyard:

"Effective immediately, all ranked students are required to select three electives to specialize their training. Failure to choose will result in placement at faculty discretion."

It wasn't just an opportunity.

It was a command.

Adapt—or be forced to evolve.

Nyra sat in her room later that night, a list of electives hovering before her like a suspended flame. The Dominion tongue shimmered in blood-red glyphs:

• Art of Execution: Kill Without Trace

• Weapon Soulcrafting & Arcane Imbuement

• Beast Empathy, Summoning & Combat Fusion

• Dreamwalking & Mind Infiltration

• Tactical Diplomacy, Strategic Combat & Political Infiltration

• Arcane Deconstruction & Ability Remapping

• Adaptive Combat Architecture

• Emotional Alchemy & Resonance Training

• Spellweaving & Multi-Layered Magic

She tapped the list with a bruised fingertip, thoughtful, sharp.

Weapon Soulcrafting & Arcane Imbuement. Her chains needed more than fire. They needed intention.

Beast Empathy, Summoning & Combat Fusion. Her instincts already walked beside monsters. Why not command them?

And finally—Emotional Alchemy & Resonance Training.

Because her power reacted to emotion. And if she didn't master it soon… it would master her.

Seraph's scroll hovered in front of her, its glyphs reflected in her silver-ombre hair. Her gaze narrowed as she reviewed each line.

Dual-Magic Integration wasn't listed here.

But the Adaptive Combat Architecture called to her. It promised precision. Control. Structure in chaos.

Her second choice was Dreamwalking & Mind Infiltration. A risk. But Nyx had always been sharper in the subconscious.

And last—Emotional Alchemy & Resonance Training.

She hated the idea. But she had frozen during the fight. Her emotions had failed her.

Never again.

Riven's choices came fast.

Art of Execution: Kill Without Trace. He was born for it.

Tactical Diplomacy, Strategic Combat & Political Infiltration. Because he needed to understand the world he planned to tear down.

Spellweaving & Multi-Layered Magic. His reflexes were deadly. Now his traps would be too.

Voss never spoke his selections aloud.

But the registry updated silently:

Arcane Deconstruction & Ability Remapping. He wanted to dismantle what the world had built inside him.

Weapon Soulcrafting & Arcane Imbuement. Control. Precision. Design.

And—Art of Execution. Because war required more than skill. It required finality.

The next morning, the academy buzzed.

Elective assignments appeared magically on each dormitory door.

Students compared choices, whispered about overlaps, eyed their peers with new calculation.

Smaller groups. Sharper lessons. High risk.

Dominion had opened the gates.

But it wasn't a gift.

It was a countdown.

And Nyra could feel it in her bones.

Something was coming.

Something worse than blood.

Dominion never announced a test.

Not out loud.

It bled it in slowly—through narrowed gazes, restructured assignments, or a shift in instructors' body language. And this time, it came in silence.

No sirens. No alarms. No formal challenge.

Just new training rotations.

The week following the elective assignments, the academy atmosphere darkened further. The halls were colder. Instructors no longer just observed—they evaluated every breath, every flinch, every flick of magic.

Nyra felt the shift the moment she stepped into her first elective: Weapon Soulcrafting & Arcane Imbuement.

The chamber was industrial—a furnace-lit cavern beneath the main dueling hall, glowing with embers, flickering runes, and soul-reactive anvils. Smoke clung to the ceiling, the scent of scorched mana and iron burning her nose.

Master Kael Veyne, sleeves rolled back to reveal scarred forearms and sigil-branded skin, circled the students like a predator.

"There is no mercy in soulcraft," he growled. "You do not bond with your weapon. You bleed into it. You sacrifice. You forge your intent into steel—or it breaks you."

He slammed a glowing hammer onto a rune-forged slab. Sparks danced across the room.

"Pair off. You'll be crafting a weapon component that reflects your ability's core resonance. Fail to bond it correctly, and you'll be spending the next week in the infirmary, or worse."

Nyra summoned her chains and laid them across the forge slab. The metal pulsed faintly—heat, memory, rage. She stared at the raw arcanite Kael had distributed earlier. It shimmered with unstable energy.

She turned to her forge partner—a sharp-eyed girl with glasswire hair who said nothing but worked fast.

Kael came to her table, arms folded. "What are you shaping, Hellcat?"

"A weight," Nyra said. "A seal. Something to channel my fire without devouring me in the process."

Kael's lips twitched. "Smart. Brutal. Let's see if you can do it before it turns you inside out."

Across campus, Seraph entered Dreamwalking & Mind Infiltration.

The chamber was round and pulsing with subtle glamour. The air smelled like lavender and old secrets. A shallow pool reflected each student's aura. Above them, fragments of projected memory floated like smoke.

Whisperer Myrrin Vale stood barefoot in the water's center.

"Take your partner's hand," they instructed, their voice no louder than a sigh. "And walk into their dream."

Seraph frowned. "Without a barrier?"

Myrrin turned toward her, empty eyes somehow piercing. "No barrier. Trust breeds vulnerability. Vulnerability reveals truth."

The other students hesitated. Seraph did not.

She grasped the hand of the nearest peer and stepped into the shallow pool.

The air shimmered.

Her mind sank.

Suddenly she stood in a ruined garden, petals curling around broken memories. A voice echoed from somewhere behind her—a memory not her own.

"You killed them, didn't you?"

She turned. Her partner stood shaking, reliving something they hadn't spoken aloud.

Seraph watched.

And memorized everything.

In Art of Execution: Kill Without Trace, Riven stood back-to-back with Voss.

The room was dark. Lit only by three flickering runes and a single pulse torch.

Mistress Sylva Noctis drifted through the shadows like smoke.

"You are not assassins," she whispered. "You are absence. When your task is complete, there must be no trace of magic, blood, or soul. The world must forget your victim ever existed."

She gestured, and a shimmering illusion appeared—a projection of a sleeping target in a noble chamber.

"Neutralize. Leave no physical or magical residue."

Riven cracked his knuckles. "So a game of ghost and ghostlier?"

Sylva appeared at his side in a blink, blade at his ribs. "Be funnier when I make your body vanish."

He swallowed. "Noted."

Voss vanished into the shadows first—silent, weightless. Riven followed. Their blades never left their hands, but their footsteps made no sound.

Minutes later, the illusion target flickered out.

Sylva nodded.

"Acceptable. Barely."

In Emotional Alchemy & Resonance Training, both Nyra and Seraph stood before reflection chambers—mirror-like panels designed to show the true emotional source behind their magic.

Mistress Sylva led this course as well, her presence suffocating.

"Your power does not belong to you," she said, her voice coiling like a noose. "It is born of every shame you buried, every scar you refused to name. Unmask it, or be consumed by it."

Seraph stared into her panel. It shifted. Memory shimmered behind glass—Riven bleeding, her own hands frozen. A scream stuck in her throat.

Her magic burst from her core in a brilliant, silver bloom that danced around her like snow and moonlight.

Her aura cracked the surface.

Sylva stepped behind her. "Control it."

Seraph didn't flinch. She inhaled slowly, drew the flame inward.

It obeyed.

Next to her, Nyra stood rigid.

The mirror showed Voss—broken, silent.

Her own eyes glowing as she screamed into the dark.

Nyra's Amethyst Inferno bled from her palms in coiling, violent bursts.

Her reflection sneered at her.

"Coward," it whispered.

She punched the mirror.

Sylva raised a brow but didn't stop her.

"Better," she said quietly. "You're finally listening."

Riven's third class—Tactical Diplomacy, Strategic Combat & Political Infiltration—was held in the Simulacrum Hall, designed to mimic council chambers, war tables, and gala floors.

Their instructor, Prince Lucian Drayven, stood in royal armor, but his tone was icy.

"You want power? Then learn to take it in the places where blades aren't allowed. Charm. Disarm. Kill them with compliments first."

Each student was assigned a noble profile and forced to navigate a live simulation—complete with bait, backroom dealings, and betrayal traps.

Riven thrived.

"Your Royal Highness," he said, bowing to an illusion of a noble house leader, "I wouldn't dream of suggesting you're corrupt… But if I were bribed to protect your secrets, I'd start at triple the standard rate."

Lucian smiled faintly. "You're scum. You'll do fine."

Between electives, the four of them crossed paths only briefly.

Nyra leaving the forge with arcane burns curling across her fingers.

Seraph walking out of the dream chamber silent and changed.

Riven flipping a stolen noble ring between his fingers.

Voss—always moving like a storm that hadn't broken yet.

Their eyes said what their mouths didn't.

Something was coming.

And it wouldn't wait for permission.

The wind over Dominion was colder than usual.

It didn't whistle or howl—it whispered, like secrets carried on frost. Those who paid attention noticed it first. An instructor missing from rotation. A class dismissed early with no reason. Healers moving in clusters, not solitude.

Something was unraveling.

And no one wanted to admit it.

Nyra stood alone at the observation deck above the dueling atrium, her breath clouding in the cold. She could feel it crawling in her bones—the quiet before the fracture.

Below, students sparred. They moved with urgency now, desperation cloaked behind routine. They all felt it. The pulse of something bigger on the horizon.

A storm.

She didn't turn when Seraph appeared beside her.

"Word is the Queen's observers were here last week," Seraph said, her voice calm but lined with tension.

"I know," Nyra replied. "I felt them."

"They say the instructors have been splitting students into unregistered groups. Shadow rotations. No rosters. No oversight."

Nyra exhaled through her nose.

"And they say some students never came back from those."

Seraph didn't answer that.

The silence stretched.

It was the kind of silence that knew blood had already been spilled. That more would follow.

Minutes later, Riven arrived, bruised and grinning like always, the edge of a fresh cut peeking from beneath his collarbone.

"You both are terribly depressing," he said, mock-offended. "Can we talk about something less foreboding? Like the fact that I totally made Prince Lucian smirk today?"

Nyra arched a brow. "What did you say to him this time?"

"I told him I'd flirt with the Queen herself if it meant getting out of a council dinner. I think he wanted to laugh, but he was too afraid she'd feel it through the walls."

Seraph's lips twitched. "You're going to die a glorious, politically offensive death."

Riven placed a hand over his heart. "As I deserve."

Then his expression darkened slightly. "Seriously though. The whispers about students disappearing? They're not just rumors."

Seraph's eyes flicked toward him. "You heard something?"

"Found a blood trail down by the west wing vault door. Covered with glamours. Someone went to a lot of effort to hide it."

Nyra narrowed her gaze. "And?"

"Fresh. Within the last twenty-four hours."

The three of them stood in silence, tension simmering.

Then Voss arrived.

Silent.

Uninvited.

But welcome.

He leaned against the railing beside Nyra, arms folded over his chest, expression unreadable.

"There's something coming," he said.

"We know," she replied.

He glanced at her, eyes shadowed. "No. Something else."

A pause.

Nyra turned to him slowly.

"What do you mean?"

Voss's gaze dropped to the atrium below.

"I don't know yet. But I feel it in the way the instructors look at us now. Like we're not just students anymore. Like we're assets. Or threats."

Riven sighed, leaning back against the wall. "Lovely. That's exactly how I like to be classified."

"You'll love this next bit, then," Voss added. "Because I overheard Kael speaking to one of the council shadows."

Nyra stiffened.

"He said Phase Three is starting soon."

Seraph's expression sharpened. "Phase Three of what?"

Voss looked at each of them.

And said nothing.

Because whatever it was—

They were already part of it.

Later that night, Nyra sat alone in the spell-forged training hall, candles flickering in a tight circle around her. Her chains were wrapped around her hands, glowing faintly, their magic responding to her shifting breath.

She tried to meditate. Tried to focus. But her thoughts were too loud.

Phase Three.

They were all pawns on a board they hadn't chosen to play on. But if they didn't figure out the rules soon… they wouldn't just lose. They'd be destroyed.

Her chains flexed.

And she let them coil outward.

Not as a weapon.

But as an extension of her will.

Across the campus, Seraph stood outside her dreamwalking chamber. She hadn't gone back in.

Something about the last session rattled her. Not the memories. Not even the illusions.

It was what she'd felt.

Someone else was watching from the inside.

Not a student.

Not her partner.

Someone else.

Someone who knew her name.

Riven spent his evening in the library archive, flipping through restricted political dossiers. He'd bribed a third-year to get him in. It was worth it.

He found a record—barely a fragment—detailing failed uprisings within the last twenty years. One of them matched the insignia he saw stitched into the collar of one of the intruders from the garden attack.

He didn't sleep that night.

Voss sat on the roof of the Elite Dormitory.

Watching.

Waiting.

The stars above Dominion were too still.

Like something was about to fall.

By morning, the campus was already shifting again.

Instructors spoke less. Shadows moved more freely.

And a new directive was whispered through the halls:

The Phase Three Trials were imminent.

And they wouldn't be announced.

Only survived.

There was no announcement.

The Phase Three Trials began in silence.

It happened like a switch—classrooms sealed mid-lecture, dorm doors locked from the outside, wards flared to life. Students found themselves disarmed, displaced, and relocated without explanation.

At first, no one knew what was happening.

Then the illusions dropped.

Dominion's golden halls faded to stone and shadow. The walls restructured themselves, twisting into an underground labyrinth that none of them had ever seen before.

The floors were cold. Damp. Covered in sigils that pulsed with unstable magic. The scent of sulfur and blood clung to the walls like a curse.

Each student woke up alone, in a different part of the maze.

Nyra came to with blood already drying at the corner of her mouth.

Her chains were gone.

Her blades were gone.

Only her fire remained.

She sat up slowly, blinking against the flickering red light that bled from the cracks in the wall. Something was breathing nearby—not loudly, but low, raspy, and wet.

Her heartbeat drummed with instinctual rage. She didn't scream. She didn't panic.

She listened.

The walls whispered.

Far off, she heard movement. Heavy. Wet.

And somewhere else—laughter.

A child's.

She stood slowly, her bare feet tensing on the stone. Her fingers curled. Her magic surged at the base of her spine, flickering to life in faint coils of violet flame.

This wasn't a test of power.

It was something worse.

It was a test of identity.

She took a cautious step forward—then another.

The path bent unnaturally, forcing her down a hall that pulsed with lightless energy. A set of runes lit up beneath her feet as she passed, each one branding her steps with silent judgment.

The first threat came from the wall itself.

A shadow peeled free and lunged—jagged teeth, twisted limbs. Nyra spun instinctively, ducking low and letting a spike of Amethyst flame roar up from her palm. It hissed as it connected, burning through the creature's chest.

It didn't scream.

It laughed.

Then turned to dust.

Seraph awoke in total darkness.

Her Moonfire refused to ignite. The chamber she lay in devoured light. Her breath echoed as if she were submerged underwater.

A whisper slid against her ear.

"Which one are you today?"

She jerked upright. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest.

Nyx didn't answer.

And that's when she realized—

They'd separated them.

Physically. Magically.

Nyx was gone.

And Seraph was alone.

"Don't panic," she told herself aloud. Her voice sounded foreign in the void.

She stood, groping for the wall.

The air shifted suddenly.

A figure stepped forward from the black.

It wore her face.

But its eyes were hollow.

"You're weak without her," the doppelgänger said.

"I'm still enough to end you," Seraph whispered.

They attacked each other at the same time.

Riven groaned as he stumbled into a corridor lined with mirrors.

Each one showed a version of himself.

Some sneered.

Others wept.

One had no eyes.

He looked down—his daggers were missing. His poisons replaced with vials of clear liquid he didn't recognize.

A message scrawled in blood across the floor:

CHOOSE WISELY.

He reached for the closest vial. The mirror reflection showed his hand catching fire.

He grabbed another—his throat closed in the glass.

"Lovely," he muttered, heart racing. "Trial by paranoia. My favorite."

The reflection behind him changed—Riven with black veins and blood-red eyes.

It smiled.

He spun to face it. Nothing there.

Just air.

But something warm trickled down his back.

He didn't wait to think.

He ran.

Voss didn't wake up.

He was already standing.

Already watching.

He'd never fallen asleep.

He didn't remember walking here—but the moment the trial began, his body responded. Instinctively.

The hallway in front of him pulsed with gravity magic—his own, warped and turned against him.

Behind him, a voice whispered: "They'll break without you."

He didn't turn around.

"Let them try."

He stepped into the field.

The weight increased instantly. His body dragged downward, joints screaming.

But he moved forward.

One step.

Then another.

Pain blossomed across his shoulders.

Still, he walked.

Because pain was truth.

And he was tired of illusions.

Somewhere, hidden in the upper levels of the Institute, the Council watched the maze unfold.

Behind the viewing crystal, Headmaster Xypher stood unmoving, hands clasped behind his back.

Mistress Sylva watched silently. Beside her, Grand Magister Orin Kaldros muttered arcane formulas, recording magical resonance spikes.

Lucian Drayven, arms folded, leaned in.

"Will they survive?"

Kael Veyne cracked his knuckles.

"They'd better."

Then he smiled faintly.

"Or they'll make excellent ghosts."

In the deepest part of the maze, something stirred.

Not a beast.

Not an illusion.

Something older.

Something Dominion buried beneath wards and time.

And now… it was waking.