Chapter 62: A New Title
The magic airship cut through the sky, humming its engines in a steady rhythm as it soared back toward the kingdom. Through the windows, the vast ocean stretched endlessly beneath them, glimmering under the moonlight. The academy’s exam had ended, but for Velren, questions remained unanswered.
Lying on the bed of his personal quarters, he stared at the ceiling with both arms tucked behind his head. The airship’s quiet hum filled the silence, but his mind refused to settle. Even though the exam had officially concluded, a lingering unease filled in his chest, a feeling that something about all of this whole exam was deeply wrong. He had faced combat, experienced surprises, and endured hardships throughout the exam, but nothing had unnerved him quite like this.
Cloaky.
That thing—whatever it was—wasn’t human. That much was obvious. But what unsettled him the most was the way it had erased magic as if it were nothing. It wasn’t just a simple resistance or counterspell—it removed magic entirely, as if negating its very existence. No conventional spell could do that. He had heard about mages with nullification abilities before, but even they had limitations. They disrupted magic, suppressed it, but they never outright made it vanish from reality. Cloaky did.
The memory played over in his mind, sharp and clear despite the chaos of the battle. The way the spells were wiped from existence, not dissipated or deflected, but erased. As if they had never been there in the first place. He had relied on his instincts at the time, but now that he thought about it, there had been a strange void left in the wake of that erasure. A space where magic should have existed, but didn’t.
And then there was the academy’s reaction. The sudden postponement of the exam, the lack of any official statement about the intruder. If it had simply been some rogue element or outside threat, the academy would’ve at least acknowledged it. Instead, they buried it.
Why?
Why hide something so blatantly dangerous?
Velren let out a frustrated sigh, shifting on the bed. He turned his head slightly, watching the soft glow of the control panel near his bedside. The room was comfortable enough, a personal quarter granted to students aboard the airship, yet he felt no ease here. The questions in his mind churned, refusing to let him rest.
With nothing else to do, he summoned his Codex, expecting the usual interface to greet him. Instead, the moment the holographic display formed before his eyes, his body stiffened.
Something had changed.