Page 37 of Academy of the Wicked, Year Two

Atticus's expression hits hardest – pure devastation etched into features normally controlled even in the direst circumstances. His crimson eyes burn with helpless rage, lips parted in what must be a scream I cannot hear through the strange distortion affecting my perception.

All three stare not at me, but through me – their focus fixed on something directly behind where I stand.

Cold realization dawns even before I register the pressure in my chest. With reluctant dread, I lower my gaze.

Protruding from my sternum is a massive black crystalline formation – obsidian-like in appearance but pulsing with malevolent energy I recognize immediately.

Corruption, condensed and weaponized into physical form, has impaled me completely.

Blood pools around the entry point, but not the crimson liquid I expect. Instead, black ichor flows from the wound, thick and viscous like tar. It drips with agonizing slowness to theplatform beneath my feet, each drop creating rippling patterns of corruption where it lands.

Pain should be overwhelming, yet I feel strangely detached – as if the crystal has severed not just flesh and bone but my connection to physical sensation itself.

Mortimer's dragon form is nowhere to be seen. The blood prison we worked so desperately to construct stands empty, its barriers still intact but its intended captive vanished without trace.

What happened in those seconds between white void and reality?

An insistent impulse urges me to look behind. Despite the crystalline spear through my chest, I manage to turn my head with glacial slowness, neck muscles moving through molasses as I peer over my shoulder.

The sight freezes whatever warmth remained in my veins.

Lysth stands several yards back, his crystalline form no longer fractured but transformed. Where transparent beauty once dominated his appearance, corruption has infused every facet with midnight darkness. His previously melodic features have twisted into a mask of malicious delight, lips stretched into an impossibly wide grin that defies the structural limitations of his form.

Most damning is his outstretched arm, extended directly toward me – or rather, through me. For his limb has transformed into the very crystalline spear impaling my chest, a perfect extension of his corrupted body that bridges the distance between us.

His laughter, when it comes, seems to bypass my ears entirely, resonating directly within my skull.

"I can't have you remaining in Faerie," he declares, voice deepened to registers that should be impossible forhis crystalline physiology. "An abomination like you does not belong."

Faerie? Why would he mention?—

My confusion compounds as I slowly turn back to face forward. The countdown timer shows just ten seconds remaining, but what captures my attention is the number displayed beneath it.

Seven.

Seven individuals within the boundary.

Mordax is nowhere to be seen, yet he has to be somewhere within the barrier? Potentially hiding to reserve a spot? Lysth is in now…and I…well I’m fucking dying…aren’t I?

Reality seems to stutter, a momentary glitch in whatever flows between dimensions.

I blink, and suddenly find myself positioned differently – standing now at the edge of our pentagonal formation, several yards back from where I stood seconds ago.

Impossible, yet undeniable.

For I can still see myself –or rather, a version of me– impaled on Lysth's crystalline extension. I watch my own face contort with mingled pain and confusion, blood-black tears tracking down increasingly pale cheeks as corruption spreads through my system.

Am I projecting? Dissociating? Dead already? Or maybe I’m a ghost…

No explanations feel adequate for this fracturing of reality. I remain frozen at the Pentagon's edge, watching as my doppelgänger's knees buckle beneath her. The crystal spear holds her upright even as life visibly drains from her form.

Our eyes meet across the impossible distance – dying self to... whatever I am now. Recognition flashes in her gaze, resignation and resolve mingling in equal measure as her eyelids grow heavy.

"Don't let us perish in vain,"she whispers, the words bypassing physical sound to resonate directly in my consciousness.

Even as she speaks, her form begins to disintegrate – not falling or collapsing but actively crumbling like sculpture made of ash. Darkness consumes her from extremities inward, particles dispersing into the charged atmosphere of the platform until nothing remains but floating motes of corruption that slowly settle to the ground.

Lysth's laughter rises in volume and madness as my bond mates stare in horror at the space where my doppelgänger stood moments ago. Their expressions suggest they witnessed her disintegration as reality rather than the strange projection I perceived.

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