Spring had fully settled over the Academy, filling the courtyards with blooming cherry blossoms, but the atmosphere between Alaric and Lucia remained frozen in winter.
They were strangers.
They passed each other in the hallways daily. Lucia would be surrounded by nobles, walking with her head held high, wearing her mask of cold perfection. Alaric would be walking alone or with his roommates, blending into the background.
They didn't speak or wave. They barely even made eye contact.
For Alaric, it was a dull, constant ache in his chest. Initially, he had tried to rationalize it. He told himself that perhaps she would be better off without him, that a commoner had no business walking beside the sun. But as the weeks turned into months, he scrapped that idea entirely.
He would watch her from across the cafeteria, laughing politely at some noble’s bad joke, and a dark, possessive thought would grip him.
I can’t imagine her with anyone else.
She had become more important to him than he had realized in such a short time. The distance was necessary for her safety, but it only made his resolve to close that gap stronger.
The First Year was drawing to a close. The summer break would begin after the finals ended.
The academic finals were a breeze. Compared to the advanced magical theory Alaric was agonizing over in private, the Academy's curriculum felt like child's play. He breezed through the written exams, knowing he would rank near the top without even trying. The practical subject did not have any year end final, instead a result was given based on the performance throughout the whole year/
But his real work, his obsession happened in the dead of night, deep in the training forests behind the campus.
Alaric stood in a clearing, the wind whipping around him. He looked exhausted. Dark circles hung under his eyes.
"Tempest."
He didn't chant the full twenty-minute incantation. He had spent the last ninety nights dissecting the spell. He had visualized the mana flow until he could see the wind currents in his sleep. He had failed hundreds of times, nearly passing out from mana exhaustion, trying to force the natural disaster to obey his will without the crutch of the chant.
In ten seconds, he cast the initial creation sequence the "seed" of the storm. Then, instead of letting the spell guide the mana, Alaric manually seized control, feeding the vortex faster than any chant could allow.
A localized cyclone roared to life above his palm, tearing the leaves off nearby trees.
It’s stable, Alaric thought, dismissing the wind. I can do this in combat now.With this One versus an army is possible.
But offense wasn't what kept Alaric awake at night. It was defense.
He looked down at his left hand. He was wearing a new, custom-made leather glove.
It looked normal on the outside, but the inside was the result of weeks of maddeningly precise work.
Alaric had spent the first month just researching Malakor’s Attack. He realized that physical walls such as Earth & Ice were useless because the spell de-atomized matter. It didn't break walls, it split matters disintegrating anything in its way. But he remembered one crucial thing, the null barrier itself was broken through by the sheer pressure of the magic and not disintegrated. There was no physically existing matter there to split and vaporize.
He needed Null Magic.
- Physical Barrier - produces a green rectangular wall : Stops kinetic force.
- Magical Barrier - produces a blue rectangular wall : Stops mana.
The problem was efficiency. A single layer of Null Barrier was like tissue paper to a Demon General. If he poured more mana into it to strengthen it, the consumption grew exponentially, but the durability only grew a little. It was a bad trade.
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One wall isn't enough, Alaric realized. I need friction. I need to slow it down.
He needed to force the spell to rip through resistance until it dissipated. He needed multiple layers of barriers instantly.
But casting twenty spells at once was impossible. The human brain couldn't multitask that many chant structures. He had tried and failed, getting headaches that blinded him for hours.
So, he had spent the last two months engineering a bypass.
Magic Circles.
Unlike elemental spells, Null Magic circles were simple and didn't need to be big. Alaric had spent weeks huddled in his dorm room ,drawing microscopic magic circles on high-quality parchment paper. If he made a single mistake in the ink, the circle failed. He had ruined hundreds of sheets.
But he had succeeded. He had created twenty perfect, miniature circles for "Physical Barrier" and twenty for "Magical Barrier."
He had stacked the papers into a dense block and sew them into the lining of this glove.
Alaric faced a practice dummy. He didn't cast a spell. He simply pushed his mana into the glove, flooding the pre-made circuits.
BUZZ.
Instantly, twenty distinct rectangles of blue and green light snapped into existence, hovering one inch apart from each other, forming a thick, layered phalanx of shields in front of his palm.
It works, Alaric thought, letting out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for a month.
Even if the first ten shattered, the next ten would hold. And if they all broke? The paper circles were still there. He could just pump mana again and recast the entire stack instantly. With his massive reserves and potions that could regenerate 60-70% of his mana, he could keep this shield up forever.
Alaric clenched his gloved fist, the light fading.
Come back, Malakor, Alaric thought grimly, touching the leather. I'm not the same helpless kid you swatted aside.
Lucia’s POV
Life in the capital was a gilded cage.
"Saintess, you have a charity visit to the orphanage in the East District at noon," a sister droned, reading from a scroll. "Then tea with the Countess of Valois at three."
"I am aware," Lucia said, her voice even. "I will be present."
She moved through the days with practiced grace. She smiled at the nobles, blessed the children, and nodded at the priests. But inside, she felt hollow.
Every time she passed Alaric in the hallway and had to look through him like he was air, her heart felt like it was being punished. She wanted to run to him. She wanted to tell him about her day.
But I can't, she reminded herself. Not yet.
At least her father hadn't forbidden her completely. The promise of the summer break at Ironhold was the only thing keeping her sane.
But Lucia wasn't just waiting.
She had been busy. While Alaric was in the forest, Lucia was deep in the restricted section of the Central Cathedral’s library.
She sat surrounded by piles of ancient texts on Light Magic.
She wasn't looking for scriptures on peace. She was looking for power.
She had already mastered Sanctuary, one of the strongest defensive spells in the Light arsenal. But defense wasn't enough.
She learned another spell called "Spears of Judgment."
It was an Area-of-Effect attack spell. It created tens, sometimes hundreds, of solid light constructs and launched them in a general direction.
No need to aim, Lucia noted. Just overwhelm the enemy.
And finally, she found it. The spell she had been searching for since that day she saw Alaric’s chest torn open.
"Archangel’s Radiant Aegis."
An Ascendant Level healing spell. It didn't just close wounds; it could regrow lost limbs and knit destroyed organs back together. It was complex, dangerous to learn, and exhausted the caster but she didn't care.
"Saintess?"
Lucia looked up. Standing in the doorway was Cardinal Lucien Varrik, the man designated by the Church to be her personal overseer. He was a thin, pinched man who disliked Duke Thorne intensely.
"You are reading combat manuals again," Varrik sneered, wrinkling his nose at the book of offensive spells. "A Saintess should not learn how to fight like a brute. Your duty is to help people in the name of the Goddess, not to wage war."
Lucia didn't flinch.
She closed the book with a heavy thud.
"Helping people requires them and me to be alive, Cardinal," Lucia said coldly. "I am doing this for protection."
She stood up and walked past him without dismissing him.
I made a vow, Lucia thought, her fingers brushing the spine of the spellbook. I will never let harm come close to him again.
The final days of the semester arrived.
The tension in the Kingdom was palpable. The King hadn't been seen in public for weeks. Alaric packed his bag in the commoner dorms. He looked at his glove, then at the Golden Pin of Valor he kept hidden.
He wasn't going to the orphanage. He was going to Ironhold again.