Chapter 16: The First Fracture

The glass in the Great Hall didn't just break; it screamed, a thousand shards of moonlight turning into jagged teeth as the floor buckled beneath us.

One second, my mouth was still humming with the phantom pressure of Dorian’s lips—a cool, mint-dark promise that had finally silenced the years of frost between us. The next, a roar of pure, dissonant energy tore through the foundation. The shockwave reached me before the sound did, hitting my chest like a physical fist.

I was thrown backward. My heels skidded on the polished marble, and for a terrifying heartbeat, the gravity of the room held no weight. 

"Mira!"

Dorian’s voice was a jagged rasp through the smoke. I felt his hand snap shut around my wrist, his fingers biting into my flesh with a desperate, bruising strength. He anchored me just as a section of the vaulted ceiling, a ton of ancient stone and gold leaf, surrendered to the blast.

We hit the floor together. He rolled, shielding my head with his forearm as the impact vibrated through my teeth. The air was gone, replaced by a thick, suffocating veil of pulverized stone and ionized oxygen. My lungs burned. Every spark of fire in my veins felt like it was trying to claw its way out of my pores.

"The Core," I choked out, pushing against his chest. The smell of ozone was thick enough to taste—bitter, like tarnished copper. "Dorian, it's the Core."

He didn't answer with words. He rose in a single, fluid motion, his silver-blue eyes scanning the wreckage. The Great Hall, the pride of our merged academies, was a graveyard of artifacts. The tapestries were melting into slag. Students were emerging from the dust, their faces white masks of terror, their voices rising in a discordant choir of panic.

The temperature was plummeting. Without the Core’s regulation, the elemental balance was hemorrhaging. Frost began to spiderweb across the scorched floor, even as embers the size of rosebuds drifted down from the ceiling.

"Stabilize the perimeter," Dorian commanded, his voice regaining that terrifying, crystalline clarity that had once infuriated me. Now, it was the only thing keeping me upright. "I’ll hold the ceiling. Get them out, Mira. Now!"

I didn't argue. I couldn't afford to. I stood, my legs wobbly, and summoned the heat. It didn't come as a flick this time; it roared out of me, a protective dome of shimmering, amber air that incinerated the toxic gas before it could reach the lungs of the first-year students huddled by the dais.

I saw a girl, a fire-affinity student from my wing, staring at a falling beam of mahogany. She didn't move. She was too busy vibrating with a fear that threatened to ignite her own clothes. 

"Move!" I yelled, throwing a concentrated lash of flame that disintegrated the timber mid-air. 

To my left, Dorian was a statue of ice and iron. He had his palms upturned, a visible pillar of frost-static holding the remaining arches of the Hall in a precarious stasis. His face was pale, a bead of sweat freezing on his temple before it could drop. 

We worked in a terrifying, seamless rhythm. As I cleared paths through the debris and neutralized the pockets of volatile, raw energy, he reinforced the structural integrity of the escape routes. It was a dance of opposites—my heat melting the obstacles he couldn't break, his cold quenching the fires I couldn't control. It was the very embodiment of the Accord, a perfect fusion of rival powers serving a single desperate purpose.

But the eyes watching us weren't filled with gratitude. As the smoke began to thin, I saw the silhouettes of the Council guards. They weren't helping. They were standing in a semicircle, their spears leveled not at the rubble, but at us.

"Enough!"

The voice sliced through the chaos. Kaelen stepped through the main doors, which hung off their hinges like broken wings. He looked immaculate. Not a speck of dust marred the charcoal silk of his robes; not a single hair was out of place. Behind him, a dozen high-level mages from the Council stood with their hands glowing with neutral, binding energy.

"Step away from the Chancellors," Kaelen ordered the retreating students. His gaze drifted over the two of us—Dorian still holding the ceiling, me with fire licking at my knuckles. "It seems we arrived just in time to witness the fallout of your... distractions."

"Kaelen, get your men to the subterranean levels," I snapped, my voice cracking. "The Core is hemorrhaging. If we don’t seal the leak, the entire mountain will shear off."

"The Core is shattered, Chancellor Mira," Kaelen said, his voice dripping with a practiced, funereal sorrow. He didn't move to help. He simply watched as Dorian slowly lowered the ice pillars, the ceiling finally settling into a fragile, jagged rest. "And we all know the only way to breach those wards is with the combined signatures of the two people currently standing in the center of the devastation."

Dorian stepped toward me, his hand hovering near the small of my back, though he didn't touch me. "We were here, Kaelen. In this hall. When the explosion occurred. Logic would dictate we are the victims, not the perpetrators."

Kaelen’s smile was a thin, cruel line. He gestured to the floor—specifically, to the space where we had been standing seconds before the blast. The carpet was charred, but in a specific, lingering pattern of two bodies pressed close.

"The Council received reports of a 'gross dereliction of duty' tonight," Kaelen said. "It seems you two were so busy exploring the 'synergy' of your magic that you failed to notice the Core wards being dismantled from within. Or perhaps, in your haste to merge these institutions, you've managed to destabilize the very foundation of our world."

"That’s a lie," I hissed, taking a step forward. The heat around me spiked. "Someone bypassed the security. Someone with clearance."

"Exactly," Kaelen whispered. "Someone with clearance."

He signaled the guards. "Secure the Chancellors. They are to be held for questioning while the Council assesses the damage."

"We need to see the Core," Dorian said, his voice dropping an octave. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, the pressure rising so sharply my ears popped. "Now."

Kaelen hesitated, then gave a curt nod. "By all means. See the ruin you’ve made."

The descent to the subterranean chamber was a gauntlet of horrors. The walls of the spiral staircase were bleeding—thick, viscous liquid magic weeping from the masonry. The hum of the Core, which usually sounded like a low, comforting heartbeat, had been replaced by a high-pitched, tooth-rattling whine.

When we reached the chamber, I stopped so fast Dorian nearly collided with me.

The Core—the massive, rotating sphere of crystalline energy that fueled both our academies—was physically cracked. A fissure ran down its center like a lightning bolt. Raw, unrefined power was spraying out in erratic arcs, melting the lead shielding and turning the stone floor into glass.

I walked toward it, my heart hammering against my ribs. "The security dampeners," I whispered, pointing to the base. 

They were gone. Not destroyed by the explosion, but physically unbolted and removed. It was a surgical strike. 

"This required the Chancellor’s keys," I said, turning to Dorian. His face was a mask of cold fury. "And the Council override."

"Which I currently hold," Kaelen said, stepping into the chamber behind us. He held up a silver locket—the Council’s emergency seal. "The evidence is overwhelming. You two were seen together, neglecting the monitoring stations. In your absence, the seals were compromised. This 'Accord' of yours has brought nothing but ruin."

"You did this," I said, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. I looked at the way he stood, the way he wasn't even flinching at the deadly discharge from the Core. "You sabotaged the merger to keep your own power."

"A heavy accusation from a woman whose hands are still shaking from a lover’s touch," Kaelen sneered. He turned to the guards. "Separate them. Put the Ice-born in the North cells and the Fire-brand in the South. I want no further 'communication' between them."

"Dorian—" I started, reaching for him.

"Don't," Dorian said softly, though his eyes were locked on Kaelen. "Mira, look at the discharge."

I looked. The energy wasn't just raw; it was being funneled. Even now, in its broken state, the magic was being directed away from the schools and toward the Council’s private reserves. 

"He's not just framing us," Dorian said. "He's harvesting it."

The guards moved in then. Two of them grabbed my arms, their gauntlets cold and reinforced with null-stone. I tried to summon a flame, but the stones in their armor drank the heat straight from my marrow, leaving me weak and gasping. 

Dorian didn't fight. He stood tall, his eyes never leaving mine as they dragged him toward the opposite exit. There was a message in his gaze—a cold, calculated promise. This wasn't over.

But as the heavy iron doors of the Core chamber began to groan shut, Kaelen moved. He stepped into my line of sight, blocking my last glimpse of Dorian. He leaned in close, the scent of expensive sandalwood and sulfur clinging to him.

As the Council guards forced me toward the north wing, I looked back at Dorian, but Kaelen stepped between us, his smile sharper than the glass still embedded in my palms. "The Accord is dead, Chancellor," he whispered, "and you're the one who killed it."