Chapter 17: Martial Law

The iron gates groaned, not with the familiar hum of communal magic, but with the shrill, bone-deep shriek of metal being forced by a hand that did not care if it broke.

Mira stood at the center of the courtyard, the heat from her palms bleeding into the chilled air, a phản ứng to the sudden, violent shift in the atmosphere. Beside her, Dorian remained a statue of frost, his fingers twitching as the rhythmic, heavy thud of enchanted boots began to drown out the gasps of the gathered students.

General Kael did not enter the academy so much as he reclaimed it. He rode a pale charger whose hooves were shod in cold iron, each step cracking the cobblestones that Mira and Dorian had spent weeks repairing. Behind him, the Iron Legion flowed like a guttering spill of mercury—row after row of soldiers clad in null-plate armor, their shields etched with the jagged sigil of the High Council.

"By order of the Grand Hegemony," Kael bellowed, his voice amplified by a resonance sapphire at his throat. He didn’t look at the students. He peered down at Mira and Dorian from a height that felt predatory. "The Starfall Accord is hereby nullified. This union is a contagion, and the cure has arrived."

"The Accord was signed by the full Council, Kael," Dorian said, his voice a low, dangerous glacier. He stepped forward, the air around him crystallizing into shards of defensive rime. "You have no jurisdiction within these walls. This is neutral ground."

Kael didn’t argue. He simply raised a gloved hand. From the ranks of the Legion, two dozen mages in grey robes stepped forward—Inquisitors. They didn't cast fire or ice; they cast silence. As they struck the ground with their staves, a shimmering veil of dead-gold energy surged outward.

Mira gasped as the fire in her veins hit a wall of lead. The vibrant, living heat that usually pulsed beneath her skin didn't just fade—it was smothered. She reached for the flicker of the sun, for the warmth of the earth, and found only cold, suffocating nothingness. Beside her, Dorian stumbled, his breath no longer misting in the air. His eyes, usually a sharp, piercing blue, went dull with the shock of the severing.

"Martial law has no neutral ground," Kael said, dismounting. The clatter of his armor was a funeral dirge. "Seize the dissidents. Separate them by blood and by spark."

"Don't touch them!" Mira screamed, finding her voice even as her power failed. She lunged toward a group of first-year fire-males who were being dragged from the line by Legionnaires. One of the soldiers slammed the butt of a spear into the ribs of a boy named Leo, who had spent the morning learning how to weave embers into light-spheres.

A soldier intercepted Mira, grabbing her wrist with a gauntlet that felt like an ice-burn. She kicked him, her boots finding the gap in his greaves, but he didn't flinch. He twisted her arm behind her back, the pain a sharp, white needle in her shoulder.

"Chancellor!" Leo cried out, his face shoved into the dirt. "They're putting the collars on! Chancellor, help!"

Mira watched in horror as the Legionnaires produced heavy, jagged rings of blackened iron. Dimmer-shackles. They were designed for war criminals, etched with runes that fed on the wearer's life force to keep their magic suppressed. One by one, the students were forced to their knees.

The courtyard, once a place of tentative laughter and the beautiful, chaotic blend of steam and light, turned into a processing center of misery. The fire students were driven to the eastern wall, handled with brutal efficiency by soldiers wielding water-aspected suppression wands. The ice students were herded toward the west, prodded by heated brands that left weeping blisters on their skin.

Dorian was fighting with a silent, feral grace that didn't require magic. He had disarmed one soldier and was holding three more at bay with a practice blade he'd snatched from a rack, his movements a blur of noble-born fencing and desperate rage.

"Stand down, Dorian!" General Kael shouted. "Or I will have the Inquisitors execute the girl."

Dorian froze. A soldier held a blackened dagger to the throat of Elara, a gifted ice-weaver who had been the first to cross the aisle to speak with Mira's fire-teams. The blade was held so tight a single drop of blood traced a red line down her pale neck.

The practice sword fell from Dorian’s hand, clattering uselessly against the stones. Two soldiers immediately swarmed him, kicking his legs out from under him. They didn't just shackle his wrists; they forced a heavy, weighted yoke over his shoulders, the iron biting into his collarbone.

Kael walked over to Dorian and looked down at him with a mix of pity and disgust. "You held a throne in your hand, and you traded it for a heretic’s bed. Your father will be pleased to know you were captured alive, if only so he can watch your stripping ceremony."

Kael then turned toward Mira. She was being held by two men, her face pressed against the rough stone of the well-casing. The General approached her, his shadows stretching long and dark across the courtyard.

"Mira of the Cinder-Waste," Kael said softly. "The Council warned us that your tongue was more dangerous than your flames. We shall see how well you speak from the silence of the Iron Spire."

"You can't kill the Accord," Mira spat, her lip bleeding where a soldier had clipped her. "The students have seen what's possible. They’ve felt the balance. You're just a man with a leash, Kael. You’re terrified because you know the world doesn’t need your wars anymore."

Kael backhanded her. The force of the blow spun her head around, the metallic tang of blood filling her mouth. 

"Take them," Kael ordered, turning his back. "Burn the books. Shatter the statuary. By morning, I want this place to look like the fortress it was meant to be."

As the soldiers dragged Mira across the courtyard, she caught Dorian’s gaze. He was being hauled toward a separate transport carriage, his face bruised, his noble composure shattered into something raw and grieving. For a fleeting second, their fingers brushed as they were forced past one another—a final, desperate spark of heat in a world turning to ice.

The carriage doors slammed shut, the heavy bolts sliding home with the finality of a guillotine. 

The darkness that followed was not the soft dark of a shared night, but the hollow vacuum of a grave.