Episode-969
Chapter : 1937
The atmosphere inside the Crystal Greenhouse changed in a single heartbeat. Just moments ago, it had been a sanctuary of warmth, smelling of sweet nectar and damp, rich soil. It was a place where students came to nap or hide from the pressures of the Academy. But now, that peace was shattered. The air temperature dropped so fast that frost began to form on the edges of the tropical leaves. The smell of flowers was replaced by the sharp, metallic scent of ozone and the rotting stench of old blood.
Airin backed away until her spine hit the hard wood of a sturdy potting table. Her chest heaved as she took short, panicked breaths. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was slamming against her ribs like a bird desperate to escape a cage.
In front of her, the floor seemed to be boiling. The shadows, which should have been just harmless shapes cast by the tables and plants, were peeling themselves off the tiles. They twisted and stretched, defying gravity, until they formed the shapes of wolves. But these creatures were wrong. They had no fur, no warmth, and no eyes. They were composed of thick, inky smoke that swirled around them like oil in water.
There were three of them. The Collector called them "Shadow-Stalkers."
The man in the dark robes stood behind his creations. He looked bored, his expression flat and unfeeling. He looked at Airin not as a person, but as an ingredient—like a chef looking at a potato he was about to peel and boil.
"Don't make this difficult, girl," the Collector said. His voice was dry and scratchy, like sandpaper rubbing against stone. "The Shadow-Stalkers don't have physical bodies. You can't hit them with a stick. You can't kick them. If you try to run, they will snap your legs like twigs. Just surrender. Be a good little battery for the Cause."
The first wolf lunged.
It didn't run like a normal animal. It flickered. One second it was ten feet away, and the next, it was right in front of her face. Its jaws opened wide, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth made of cold mist.
Airin screamed. It was a raw, instinctual sound. She scrambled backward, her hand closing around the cold clay of a heavy pot on the table. With all her strength, she threw it.
The pot flew through the air, spinning end over end. It was a good throw. It hit the wolf right in the face.
But there was no impact. No thud.
The heavy clay pot passed straight through the wolf’s head as if the monster wasn't even there. It smashed against the stone floor behind the beast, shattering into a cloud of red dust. The wolf didn't even blink. It didn't slow down. It was like throwing a rock at a cloud.
"I told you," the Collector laughed softly, a cruel sound. "Physical objects mean nothing to them. They exist halfway between this world and the Abyss. You cannot hurt what you cannot touch."
Airin stumbled back until she hit a glass display case. She was trapped. There was nowhere to go. The three wolves spread out, moving with a silent, predatory intelligence. They circled her, cutting off every escape route to the door. They were toying with her. They knew she was helpless.
Or was she?
Inside Airin’s mind, something snapped. It wasn't the snap of fear breaking her spirit; it was the snap of a lock opening.
For weeks, she had been dreaming of another life. She had dreamed of a woman named Anastasia. Anastasia wasn't a magician. She wasn't a noble who relied on bloodlines. She was an engineer. She lived in a world of machines, math, and hard science. She didn't believe in ghosts or monsters that couldn't be killed. In Anastasia's world, everything had a weakness. Everything followed the rules of physics.
If light hits an object, it bounces. If energy hits a surface, it transfers. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed.
Airin closed her eyes for a split second. She forced herself to stop shaking. She forced her lungs to take a deep, slow breath. She pushed "Airin the scared student" to the back of her mind and let "Anastasia the Engineer" step forward to take the controls.
When she opened her eyes again, the world looked different.
Chapter : 1938
She didn't see a scary greenhouse full of monsters anymore. She saw a room made of angles and surfaces. She saw the glass ceiling panels overhead, designed to let in maximum solar radiation. She saw the silver mirrors placed in the corners to direct sunlight to the rare tropical plants. She saw the shattered remains of the glass beaker she had dropped earlier, scattered across the stone floor near her feet like diamonds.
She looked at the shadow wolves. They were made of darkness. Pure, concentrated darkness.
What is the opposite of darkness?
Light.
But not just any light. A simple "Lumos" spell—the kind first-year students used to read books under their covers at night—wouldn't be enough. That was just a soft glow, like a candle. To hurt these things, she needed intensity. She needed focus. She didn't need a lamp; she needed a laser.
"You want my light?" Airin whispered. Her voice was trembling, but her hands were steady.
She crouched down.
The Collector smirked, crossing his arms. "Begging won't help you now. It’s too late for that."
Airin wasn't begging. Her hand shot out and grabbed a handful of the broken glass shards from the floor.
The glass was razor sharp. The edges bit into her skin. Warm blood trickled down her palm, mixing with the dust, but Airin didn't flinch. She barely felt it. She remembered the stories Lloyd had told her about his handmaiden, Jasmin. Jasmin had trained for years to make her skin as hard as diamond to protect him. Airin didn't have diamond skin, but she had something else. She had diamond-hard resolve.
She stood up, clutching the jagged glass in her fist. The blood dripped onto the floor, counting down the seconds.
The lead wolf growled, a sound like grinding stones, and leaped at her throat.
"Now!" the voice in her head screamed.
Airin didn't try to dodge. She didn't try to run. Instead, she did something that made no sense to the Collector. She threw the handful of glass shards into the air.
She didn't throw them at the wolf. She threw them straight up, spinning her wrist so they scattered like glittering raindrops above her head.
At the same moment, she reached deep inside her chest. The Collector had said she had a "Solar Core." He said she was a mutation, a generator of energy. She had always been afraid of that heat inside her. She had always tried to dim it, to be normal, to fit in with the other students.
Today, she stopped holding back.
She grabbed that ball of heat in her chest and pulled the trigger.
She thrust her open palms upward, aiming right at the falling glass shards. She shouted the only spell she could think of, but she pushed every ounce of her will, every memory of her past life, into it.
"MAXIMUM LUMOS!"
It wasn't a gentle glow. It was a volcanic eruption of white light.
A beam of pure, concentrated solar energy exploded from her hands. It was blindingly bright, hotter than a furnace. It shot upward like a pillar of fire, straight toward the cloud of spinning glass shards she had just thrown.
The Collector’s eyes went wide. He realized, too late, what she was doing.
It wasn't magic. It was math.
The beam of light hit the first shard of glass suspended in the air.
In a normal situation, with normal light, the beam would just pass through or reflect slightly. But Airin had thrown the glass with a specific spin. She had calculated the angles in her head instantly—a skill borrowed from a lifetime of fixing complex engines and aligning gears in a world of steel.
The light hit the jagged edge of the glass. It didn't pass through; it fractured.
Physics took over. The principle of refraction.
The single, thick beam of light hit the shard and split. It turned into two thinner, faster, more intense beams. These two beams shot out at perfect angles and hit the other shards falling around them. Those shards split the beams again. And again. And again.
In the blink of an eye, the space above Airin’s head transformed. It wasn't just a flash of light anymore. It was a web.
The greenhouse was instantly filled with a grid of hundreds of needle-thin lasers. They crisscrossed the air in every direction, bouncing off the falling glass, reflecting off the greenhouse walls, and refracting through the floating dust motes. It looked like a geometric drawing made of pure, burning starlight. It was beautiful, and it was deadly.