Chapter 91: [Magic Castle Bonus 2/3] Contact Spires

The golden dragon rushed fast through the clouds.

Its wings slapped the air over the school yard and the wind hit the stone floor like a wall. Papers, flags, and coats blew away as students fell backward. The noise was huge.

BOOM.

The landing shook the courtyard through everyone’s feet. Snow and dust sprayed outward from the point of impact, coating the stone tiles in white.

Students scrambled for their weapons. Mana circles formed in shaking hands. A defensive perimeter assembled around the landing zone, moving in a total panic because none of them had ever seen anything like this before.

The dragon folded its wings and went still.

The dust cleared.

A familiar figure slid down the tail first, cloak torn.

"That’s..." One of the student lowered his blade. "Nicholas?"

A ripple of confused voices moved through the crowd.

Roselle came down next, both arms receiving the weight of the unconscious figure she was lowering with Leon’s help from the other side.

The moment the crowd saw who they were carrying, the confused voices stopped being confused.

"Vice-President Seris—?"

"She’s covered in blood—"

"Is she alive?!"

Roselle and Leon maneuvered her onto an emergency stretcher a healer had rushed forward with. As they settled her head against the linen, her silver hair shifted.

The elongated ears became visible.

A student near the front blinked and looked closer.

Then the head tilted back slightly and the sharp curved fangs caught the light.

The student’s breath stopped in his throat.

"...What am I looking at?"

The realization moved through the crowd in seconds. From one person to the next, the same chain of recognition, the same widening eyes, the same moment of the world rearranging itself around a single fact.

"Is she a vampire?!"

The courtyard erupted.

"Restrain her! Don’t let her wake up!"

"She’s a monster—"

Roselle’s knuckles went white while carrying stretcher. "PLEASE, everyone calm down, she’s critically injured, we need to get her to the infirmary—"

Nobody heard her over their own panic.

Nicholas stepped forward.

He didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t raise his voice. He planted his feet between the mob and the stretcher and let what he was do the rest.

"Silence."

The courtyard stopped. Just stopped, the noise cutting off like a door closing.

Nicholas looked at them. All of them.

"You are going to be quiet," he said. His voice was even. "And you are going to forget what you saw as well." He glanced back at Seris’s face, pale and still. "She is gravely injured. We are taking her to the infirmary that it."

A student in the front row worked up the nerve. "But she’s a vam—"

"More than anything she is the Vice-President," Nicholas said. "And your Senior. Show some respect."

The student stepped back.

Nicholas turned to the infirmary doors.

"Move."

Inside, it wasn’t simpler.

The main healer met them at the doors with her gloves already on. She froze in her tracks the moment she saw Seris’s face, her pointed ears, and her sharp fangs.

Her hands went still.

Nicholas was beside her in two strides. "Don’t."

The healer looked at him.

"She is your patient," Nicholas said quietly, putting every ounce of himself into the words. "Save her life. That’s all you need to do right now."

The healer swallowed. Nodded. Crossed to the bedside and started working.

Roselle had the vial out before anyone asked. "Alden said she needed this. She hasn’t fed in a week."

The healer examined it for a second. "Get a needle and tube in her arm. Now."

The dark liquid began flowing down the tube into Seris’s arm, slow and steady.

Nicholas watched it drip. His breathing was still ragged from the mountain. His waist still had that glass-grinding pain with every inhale. He stood there anyway.

The infirmary doors opened.

Darius walked through.

He was in his traveling cloak, not long back from the capital, and his face had the expression of a man who has arrived to confirm something he’d been hoping was just rumor.

"What I’m hearing in the halls," he said, his eyes already on Seris’s bed. "Is it true?"

Nicholas stepped into the space between Darius and the bed immediately.

"Even if it’s you, Headmaster. I can’t let you near her. I promised Alden."

Darius looked at him for a long moment.

Then he exhaled and shook his head. "You absolute fool. I didn’t come here to expose her."

Nicholas hesitated. "Then what—"

"If it’s something from Alden then I came to bury it. Tell me what happened on the pass. From the beginning. Quickly."

So Nicholas told him.

He told Darius about the mountain road and the arrows. About Augustus appearing on the cliff with a vampire army. About the blood rain and Seris stepping in front of it. About the transformation — her ears, her true form, the unsealed mana she’d burned through to protect them. About the battle, and about how it had been going until Alden arrived.

He spoke about Alden last.

When he finished, Darius was very quiet for a moment.

"That arrogant boy," he said with pure cold anger instead of love. "He ruined himself with progenitor blood just for this."

"We couldn’t stop him," Nicholas said. "His regeneration was instant. We couldn’t put him down."

Leon walked over to the window while Nicholas was speaking. He turned around, his voice heavy with the stress he had been carrying during the entire trip back. "And then Alden showed up and sent us away on the dragon. He’s still out there. Fighting Augustus alone. With the whole vampire army."

The room got very still.

Darius’s expression shifted for a moment, then hardened.

Leon was already at the door. "I’m going back—"

"No." Darius stepped into his path.

"I can still fight—"

"And you would become a hostage he has to bleed himself dry protecting." Darius’s gaze didn’t move. "Do you want to make his situation worse?"

Leon’s jaw was shaking. "Then what do we DO?!" His voice cracked. "Just stand here while he’s out there alone against all of that?!"

Darius turned to the window.

The mountain peaks were just visible through the glass, storm-wreathed and distant. He stared at them for a long moment, and the room was very quiet.

"I failed to grasp how deep the rot had gone," he said, "until right now." His eyes burned with something that hadn’t been there before. "If the Crown Prince of this kingdom has truly allied himself with the vampire faction—"

He turned back. His expression was the one reserved for things that had moved past the academy’s authority to handle.

"This is not an academy matter anymore. This is an existential threat to the entire kingdom." He moved toward the heavy oak doors. "I need to contact the Upper Academy."

Leon blinked. "The Upper Academy?"

Darius paused at the door. One hand on the frame. He glanced back over his shoulder with an expression that left no room for follow-up questions.

"It’s time to request the deployment of the Spires."

The doors closed behind him.