Episode-967
Chapter : 1933
"You want my light?" she said, her voice trembling but fierce. She raised her glowing hand, holding the glass shards tight. "Then come and take it."
The Prismatic Scholar had awakened. And she was about to show the Abyss what happened when you tried to trap the sun in a glass house.
________________________________________
The afternoon sun usually brought a quiet time to the capital city of Bethelham. It was the time of day when shopkeepers pulled down their shades to block the heat, and street dogs curled up in shady corners to sleep. The city slowed down, taking a deep breath before the evening rush.
But for Lloyd Ferrum, there was no such thing as a break. There was no slowing down.
He was miles away from the Royal Academy, sitting in his private office at the large manufacturing plant on the edge of the city. The room was silent, except for the scratching sound of his pen moving across a large sheet of paper. The air smelled of drying ink and stale coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
Lloyd was working on a new design. It was a machine meant to help the people of the Northern territories survive the harsh, freezing winters. It was a complex heating system, based on science and heat theories he remembered from his previous life on Earth. He was drawing pipes, valves, and pressure gauges, losing himself in the math.
It was peaceful work. In fact, it was the kind of work Lloyd loved most. He loved it because it was simple. Metal didn't lie to you. Gears didn't have hidden agendas. Math always added up to the same number, no matter how you felt that day. Unlike the messy, complicated emotions of his three wives, or the dangerous political games of the Royal Court, engineering was safe. It made sense.
He adjusted his glasses and dipped his pen into the inkwell. For a moment, he looked like any other scholar or merchant—calm, focused, and boring.
But Lloyd never let his guard down completely. Not really. Even when he was buried in blueprints and calculations, a part of his mind was always awake. A part of him was always watching.
Months ago, he had secretly planted special seeds all over the important places in his life. These weren't normal plants. They were extensions of his "Void Wood" power—grey, ghostly roots that burrowed deep into the earth. They acted like a silent alarm system. They were his eyes and ears when he couldn't be there. He also had his "Echoes"—those ghostly copies of himself made of spirit energy—hiding in the shadows, watching over the people he cared about.
He treated his life like a fortress. He was the watchman who never slept. He had sensors on his estate to protect his family. He had sensors on the palace to watch over Princess Amina and Isabella. And, most importantly, he had sensors at the Academy.
Suddenly, the pen in his hand snapped.
It wasn't a clumsy mistake. His hand had jerked violently, crushing the wood.
A sharp, violent pain hit the back of his mind. It wasn't a normal headache. It didn't throb or ache. It felt like a physical wire snapping inside his brain, followed by the screeching wail of a siren that only he could hear. It was a psychic scream.
One of his roots had been destroyed.
It hadn't withered away from natural causes. It had been crushed. Stomped on by a hostile, corrupt energy. One of his sensors had just screamed in pain and then gone silent.
Lloyd stood up so fast his heavy wooden chair fell over backward. It hit the floor with a loud crash that echoed in the empty office.
He didn't look at the ink spilling over his blueprints, ruining hours of work. He didn't pick up the chair. He closed his eyes and focused on the mental map in his head.
A red light was blinking furiously in his mind. It was a warning signal he had hoped never to see. It pulsed with a frantic urgency, demanding his attention right now.
He checked the locations in his mind.
It wasn't the estate where Rosa or Mina were. They were safe.
It wasn't the palace.
It wasn't the main factory floor where his team worked.
The signal was coming from the Royal Academy. Specifically, it was coming from the Crystal Greenhouse.
Lloyd’s face went pale. The blood drained from his cheeks, leaving him looking like a ghost. His heart, usually slow and steady like a well-oiled engine, began to hammer against his ribs.
Chapter : 1934
He knew exactly who was at the Academy today. He knew who loved to sit in that specific greenhouse on Tuesday afternoons. She went there because it was quiet and warm. She went there because the humid air reminded her of a garden she once knew in a different life—a life they had shared eighty years ago on a different world.
Airin.
"No," Lloyd whispered. The word came out like a growl, low and dangerous.
Fear, cold and sharp, flooded his chest. It wasn't the fear of a soldier facing an enemy army. He could handle that. It wasn't the fear of a politician losing his status. He could handle that, too.
This was different. It was the terrified, irrational panic of a man who was about to lose the most important thing in the world for the second time.
The memories hit him harder than any physical blow. He remembered the rain from his past life on Earth. He remembered the sound of the phone ringing in an empty hallway in the middle of the night. He remembered coming home to a house that was too quiet. He remembered holding a cold hand and realizing he was too late. He remembered the crushing weight of the medal they pinned on his chest—a piece of metal that was supposed to replace the love of his life.
That memory was a ghost that haunted him every day. It was the reason he built armor. It was the reason he gathered power. It was the reason he was terrified to let anyone close to him again.
And now, that ghost was trying to become real again. Someone was attacking her.
"Not this time," he hissed, his voice shaking with rage. "Not again."
He didn't run to the door. Running was too slow. Running was for people who obeyed the laws of physics. Running was for people who accepted distance as a barrier.
He didn't call for a carriage. Horses were useless against this kind of distance. Even his fastest carriage would take twenty minutes to reach the Academy through the city traffic. He didn't have twenty minutes. He didn't even have twenty seconds.
Lloyd closed his eyes and reached for the power inside him. He didn't reach for the fire of his demon spirit, Iffrit. He didn't reach for the lightning of his storm spirit, Fang Fairy. Fire and lightning were travel companions, but they couldn't cut through space.
He reached for the cold, absolute authority of the [Spatial Power].
He grabbed the fabric of the world and didn't just tear it; he stepped outside of it. He accessed the "Nexus Point," his private pocket dimension of pure white nothingness.
Whoosh.
The sound was like a vacuum sealing shut, silencing the world inside the small office.
He vanished. The air rushed in to fill the space where he had been, sending the ruined blueprints fluttering to the floor. He left no footprint, no trace, only the lingering scent of ozone where a man had once stood.
In the space between heartbeats, Lloyd existed nowhere. He was a consciousness floating in the infinite white void of his inventory dimension. Here, time held no meaning. Distance was a lie. He didn't need to cross the miles; he simply needed to reject his current coordinates and accept new ones.
He formed the image in his mind with razor-sharp clarity: The Academy Gates. The stone archway. The smell of the campus grass.
He imposed his will upon reality. He pushed the "exit" door open.
Boom.
He reappeared at the main entrance of the Royal Academy, three miles away from his office, in the blink of an eye.
The sudden displacement of air caused a massive shockwave. Dust billowed out from his boots as they slammed onto the cobblestones, cracking the pavement. The world rushed back in—color, sound, gravity—hitting him with a dizzying force. Translocation was instant, but the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure felt like being punched in the chest.
But he didn't stumble. He didn't slow down. He didn't even blink.
He looked toward the Academy grounds. It was just ahead, the stone towers rising above the manicured lawns. To anyone else, it was a beautiful school, a place of learning and peace.
To Lloyd, right now, it looked like a trap. It looked like a tomb.