Chapter 45 | Needs To Train More For The Threats Forward

Chapter 45: Chapter 45 | Needs To Train More For The Threats Forward

"That’s the wrong question," Cole said finally. "The right question is how much stronger you can get before it arrives." He stood. "You have time. Use it." He walked toward the faculty path. "Circuit. Full sequence. Left side doesn’t compensate."

He was gone before Corbyn could respond.

Corbyn turned to face the circuit path.

Three and a half minutes.

He exhaled slowly. Then he ran.

—--------------

Two floors above the training annexe, in the room that overlooked both the main courtyard and the gate road, Principal Vael stood at the window with his hands behind his back.

He hadn’t moved in twenty minutes.

Behind him, seated at the long oak table, were four people: Professor Cole’s empty chair — he was still with the boy — the head of academy security, the senior ward architect, and Professor Idris Cole’s counterpart from the combat faculty, a woman named Farren who had the particular stillness of someone who had seen too many real fights to be anxious about imagined ones.

"Eleven operatives," the security head said. He had been saying variations of this for the last ten minutes. "Eleven, inside our walls, three of them gone before we could close the net. And our mana suppression — our suppression, which we designed specifically to neutralise infiltration-class threats — didn’t flag a single one until the ceremony."

"Because they weren’t using conventional mana signatures," Farren said. She hadn’t looked up from the document in front of her. "Whoever prepared them knew our detection parameters. Knew them specifically."

"Which means the inside source wasn’t just feeding them student records," Vael said. He didn’t turn from the window. "They fed them our security architecture."

Silence.

"The students," the ward architect said carefully. "They performed well. Better than expected given the circumstances. The Veatch boy especially—"

"The Veatch boy nearly died," Vael said. "Sekhmet held because of what she is, not because Corbyn had enough left to sustain her. If the three operatives who reached the archive corridor had been better — if they’d known to move at minute four instead of minute three — we’d be having a different conversation."

Nobody argued.

"The Covenant learned something at the Summit," Vael continued. "They learned the shape of what we have. They know about Sekhmet now. They know she self-initiates, which means they know she can’t be planned around the way a conventional summon can." He finally turned from the window. His expression was the same as always — composed, unreadable, the particular calm of a man who had been the strongest thing in every room he’d ever walked into and had stopped needing to demonstrate it. "They’ll adjust. Whatever they send next will be designed for a world where Sekhmet exists."

"Then we adjust faster," Farren said.

"Yes." Vael moved to the table. "The Class Four gate twenty kilometres south has been active for eleven weeks. The pattern is consistent with deliberate cultivation — someone is feeding it, keeping it from closing, letting the mana concentration inside build." He set both hands flat on the table. "I believe the Covenant is building a staging ground. Something large enough to move a significant force through without using conventional infiltration."

The security head sat forward. "You think they’ll come through the gate."

"I think they’re preparing options. The gate is one of them." Vael looked around the table. "Which means we have a window. The gate is dangerous now. In another two months it will be Class Five — at that point, containing what comes through becomes the primary concern and there’s no bandwidth left for anything else." He paused. "Our students need to be stronger than they currently are before that window closes."

"The Veatch boy," Farren said. "His mana capacity—"

"Is insufficient," Vael said. "Cole is working on it. But there’s a ceiling to what controlled training can achieve. The body expands fastest under genuine threat." He was quiet for a moment. "The gate will serve a dual purpose. Threat containment and accelerated development."

The room understood what he wasn’t saying directly.

He was going to send students to the gate.

"Supervised?" the security head asked.

Vael looked at him. "Cole will be present."

"And if something goes wrong at that range from the academy—"

"Then I’ll handle it," Vael said simply.

The security head closed his mouth.

The ward architect cleared his throat. "The internal source. The transfer request—"

"Is being managed," Vael said. "Don’t move on it yet. I want the second contact identified first. If we close one end of the pipe before we know who’s on the other end, we lose the lead entirely." He straightened. "The Covenant is not finished with Valdenmere. They never finish with anything." He moved toward the door. "Make sure our students aren’t finished either."

He left.

The four people at the table sat in the particular silence of people who had just been reminded, quietly and without drama, of exactly how large the gap was between themselves and the man they worked for.

—------------------

Corbyn finished the circuit at half past seven.

He was on the ground. His legs had simply indicated they were done and he’d listened, sitting on the worn stone of the circuit path with his back against the annexe wall and his forearms on his knees.

His mana was thin. he hadn’t pushed integration, just the physical circuit — but the reserves felt scraped, the bottom more visible than it had been a week ago.

That’s the point, he thought. Push to the limit. Recover. Push further.

He pressed his hand to his sternum.

Cold bond. Sekhmet somewhere in the depth of it, present but unreachable. Not broken — he understood the difference now the way you understand the difference between dark and empty. She was there. Just past the edge of what he had.

Ishtar was different. Older in the bond, more settled. He could feel her attention even without calling — a composed, distant quality, like someone reading in the next room.

Your mana capacity is a problem, Cole had said.

Three and a half minutes.

He thought about the Class Four gate. Twenty kilometres south. Eleven weeks active and growing. Someone feeding it deliberately, keeping the threat alive, building something.

He thought about what Vael had said — not to him, Vael hadn’t said any of this to him — but what Cole’s document implied. What the pattern meant.

They’re coming back.

Whatever they send next will be designed for a world where Sekhmet exists.

Corbyn stared at the training ground. At the marks on the annexe wall from years of impact drills. At Cole’s low wall, empty now, the cup gone.

He had three and a half minutes.

He needed more.

He stood.

Again, he thought.

And ran the circuit a second time.