Chapter 5: The Inquisitor’s Warning

The heavy oak doors didn't just open; they retreated, shuddering against the stone floor as High Inquisitor Vane stepped into the library like a winter gale. 

The heat I’d been nursing—that sharp, defiant spark ignited by Dorian’s proximity—snuffed out instantly. Beside me, Dorian straightened, his hand retreating from the table where his frost had nearly touched my embers. The sudden vacuum of temperature made the air pinch.

Vane didn't bother with the pleasantries of the Council. He wore his authority like a shroud, his charcoal-colored robes trimmed in the jagged silver of the Inquisitorial seal. He didn't look at the shelves of ancient chronologies or the vaulted ceiling; his eyes, two chips of flint, were fixed solely on the space between Dorian and me.

“Chancellor Vasilias. Chancellor Solari.” Vane’s voice was a low rasp, the sound of a blade being honed against a whetstone. “I find you huddled together in a dark corner while your foundations liquefy. Should I be moved by this display of sudden unity, or appalled by the negligence?”

“Inquisitor,” Dorian said, his voice regaining that effortless, glacial poise. He stepped forward, putting himself slightly ahead of me—a gesture of protection or perhaps just ingrained habit. “Your arrival was not scheduled for another three weeks. The merger is proceeding according to the secondary phase.”

Vane’s laugh was a dry, rattling thing. He walked toward us, the heels of his boots striking the floor with rhythmic, military precision. “The secondary phase is a fantasy, Dorian. The mountain doesn't care about your paperwork. It cares about its heart.”

He stopped inches from us. Up close, Vane smelled of ozone and old parchment. He reached into the folds of his sleeve and pulled out a glass ampule. Inside, a sliver of crystal floated in clear liquid, vibrating so violently it sparked against the glass.

“This is a fragment of the anchor stone from the lower peaks,” Vane said. “It began screaming two hours ago. You aren’t merging two schools; you are grinding two tectonic plates against one another. If you don't stop the friction, the mountain will simply swallow the academy whole to stop the pain.”

I felt a cold trickle of sweat slide down my spine. “The wards are holding, Vane. We’ve monitored the thresholds daily.”

“The wards are a facade, Mira,” Vane spat, using my first name like a curse. “You’ve spent so much time fighting over who gets the larger office and whose curriculum takes precedence that you’ve missed the rot in the marrow. Come. See what your pride has wrought.”

He turned on his heel without waiting for an answer. Dorian and I exchanged a single, sharp look—the first time in months our thoughts were perfectly aligned. Panic is a powerful equalizer.

We followed him through the labyrinthine corridors of the upper library, down the spiraling servant stairs, and deep into the bowels of the mountain. The air grew heavier the further we descended. It was no longer the crisp, managed climate of the academy; it was thick, humid, and smelled of wet stone and scorched earth.

As we reached the heavy iron doors of the Core Chamber, a low, subsonic hum began to vibrate through the soles of my boots. It wasn't the steady, rhythmic thrum I’d known since my apprenticeship. It was erratic. It was a dying heartbeat.

Vane pressed his palm to the seal. The doors groaned open, revealing the cavernous hollow that housed the Great Anchor—a massive, jagged spire of raw quartz that pulsed with the collective magic of the peaks. 

Usually, the Anchor was a brilliant, translucent violet. Now, it was diseased.

Spiderweb cracks, glowing with a jagged, sickly yellow light, mapped their way across the stone’s surface. Every few seconds, the crystal would twitch, releasing a pulse of raw, discordant magic that hit my chest like a physical blow. One pulse was searing hot; the next was bone-chillingly cold. They weren't blending. They were colliding.

“Look at the base,” Vane commanded.

At the foot of the spire, the floor had begun to flake away. Shards of the mountain were being pulverized into dust by the sheer pressure of the competing energies.

“The Core is fracturing,” Dorian whispered. He stepped toward the crystal, his hand outstretched as if to steady a wounded animal. A jagged bolt of blue-white energy arched out from a crack, snapping toward his fingers. He pulled back just in time, the scent of singed ozone filling the air.

“It is rejecting you both,” Vane said, his voice echoing in the gloom. “Because you are rejecting the Accord. You were told to merge your essences, to create a harmonic ward. Instead, you have spent the last month building walls inside this mountain. The mountain is simply reflecting your discord.”

“We can fix it,” I said, my voice sounding thin even to my own ears. I looked at the cracks, seeing the way my fire magic clotted in the recesses, refusing to sit beside Dorian’s ice. “We just need more time to calibrate the resonance.”

“You have no more time,” Vane said. He stepped between us and the Core, his shadow stretching long and distorted across the vibrating floor. “The Council has already drafted the mandate. They sent me here to deliver the ultimatum, not to assist in your repairs.”

He leveled a finger at Dorian, then at me.

“The Mid-Winter Gala is in three weeks. It is the night the celestial alignment is strongest. If the wards are not harmonized—if this Core is not stabilized and the fracturing stopped by the time the clock strikes midnight on the Gala—the Council will enact Martial Law.”

The words felt like a physical weight. Martial Law wasn't just a political shift; it was an erasure.

“The Council will strip you of your titles,” Vane continued, his eyes devoid of any pity. “They will bring in a containment squad to ‘neutralize’ the academy’s autonomy. They will siphon the magic from both of you to force a temporary seal, a process that, as you well know, rarely leaves the donors with their faculties intact. The school will be shuttered. Your students will be dispersed to the fringe outposts.”

“You’d lobotomize the two strongest mages in the north just to save a pile of rock?” Dorian’s voice was dangerously low, the frost rising around his boots.

“I would destroy you both to prevent this mountain from exploding and leveling the three cities in the valley below,” Vane replied. “Do not mistake your importance for your utility, Chancellor. You are tools of the Accord. If tools break, they are discarded.”

Vane turned toward the exit, his robes swishing against the grit on the floor. “I will be staying in the East Wing to monitor your progress. Do not bother with the Gala’s guest list, Mira. Use that energy to ensure there is still a floor beneath your guests' feet. Three weeks. Not a second more.”

The iron doors slammed shut behind him, the sound echoing like a guillotine blade.

The silence that followed was worse than Vane’s voice. It was filled with that erratic, agonizing vibration of the Core. The mountain groaned—a deep, grinding sound of stone shifting against stone.

I walked to the edge of the dais, looking down at the fracture lines. My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets, but I couldn't stop the tremor in my knees. Everything I had worked for—every child who had come to me with flames in their fingertips and nowhere else to go—it was all teetering on the edge of a jagged yellow crack.

“He isn't bluffing,” I said.

“Vane never bluffs,” Dorian replied. I heard his footsteps as he moved closer. He didn't stop at the respectful distance he usually maintained. He stood right beside me, so close I could feel the cold radiating from his skin. It should have been annoying. Instead, it was grounding. 

“He’s right about one thing,” Dorian murmured, gazing at the diseased crystal. “We’ve been fighting for the wrong things. I wanted to protect my legacy. You wanted to protect yours.”

“And now neither of us will have one,” I said. I looked up at him. The arrogant, composed Chancellor was gone. In his place was a man who looked suddenly, sharply mortal. 

The floor gave a violent lurch. A chunk of stone fell from the vaulted ceiling, shattering on the ground a few yards away. The pulse that followed was a chaotic roar of heat and cold that left my skin feeling like it had been flayed.

I looked at Dorian—truly looked at him—and saw my own terror mirrored in the ice of his eyes as the mountain beneath us gave a low, hungry growl.