The fragments hung in the air.

Square-edged. Wrong. Motes of ancient stone suspended three feet off the dais like the game had forgotten to apply gravity to them. Eloy stood with both hands still raised, staring at what used to be the oldest artifact in Aethelgard, and his HUD pulsed in a blue that didn’t belong to any status effect he recognized.

Two hundred people. Complete silence.

Then Caldwell screamed.

"Heresy!" The word tore out of him. Raw, high, nothing like his usual register. The Director’s hands gripped the podium hard enough that Eloy could see the white at his knuckles from thirty feet away. "Black magic! He is an agent of the eastern sects! He destroyed the founders’ relic! Guards, guards, execute him now!"

Eloy took one step back.

The Inquisition detail was already moving, twenty armored guards pulling steel in the same motion, the sound of it a single flat chord across the courtyard. In the noble row, Maya De Alne stood up from her bench.

Her fan was on the ground at her feet.

[PraiseTheSun]: HE BROKE IT

[LMAO_cat]: BRO THE GUARDS ARE REAL

[nachtfalter]: eloy that’s twenty minimum. you cannot fight twenty.

[magicthegathering3156]: ELOY RUN RUN RUN

He was not going to run. There was nowhere to run to. The guards had already formed a ring around the dais perimeter, shields up, and the gap behind him was three men wide and closing. His inventory showed one common dagger. His HP was at sixty percent. His stamina bar had a six-second cooldown from the ceremony itself.

Eloy checked the HUD once, the way he always did when a run went sideways.

The system pulled back.

[ SYSTEM OVERRIDE COMPLETE ]

[ NEW AFFINITY UNLOCKED: ANOMALY ]

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Unlock your Magic Affinity]

[ CLASS EXCLUSIVE — INCOMPATIBLE WITH STANDARD ELEMENTAL FRAMEWORK ]

[ FUNCTION: UNDEFINED ]

"Okay," he said, very quietly, to no one visible.

The nearest guard lunged with a halberd, point-first, aimed at center mass.

Eloy moved, and something moved with him that wasn’t him. His body stuttered. That was the only word for it. A visual stutter, like a dropped frame, and for a half-second he felt the halberd’s tip pass through his chest cavity without touching anything. Cold. Not painful. Wrong in a way that had no comparison. He reappeared a meter to the right, knees catching him hard on the stone.

His MP bar dropped forty-two percent.

The guard stumbled forward with nothing in front of them and went to one knee. Three others stopped moving entirely, just staring.

[ghostrunner_x]: WAIT DID HE JUST

[SpeedrunGod]: he CLIPPED THROUGH THE ATTACK

[IsoldeSimp47]: THE MANA COST THOUGH. ELOY CHECK YOUR MP

Eloy checked his MP. It was not a number that could absorb another clip.

The guards regrouped. They were fast. Trained fast, professional-unit fast. And within four seconds the circle had re-formed tighter, shields overlapping. Valen Croi appeared at the far edge of the courtyard, not running, walking, one hand dropping to the pommel at his hip. His face said nothing.

"He has no affinity! Look at him!" Caldwell shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the glitching boy. "The monolith broke with his tremendous heresy!" He was pacing the podium now, practically frothing at the mouth. The pristine Director was acting like a cornered animal. "He is an abomination in the sight of the founders! He is a plague! Execute him before the corruption spreads and—"

The sky split.

Not metaphorically. A single crack of blue-white light opened across the cloudless morning and a bolt came down into the courtyard. The impact landed between Eloy and the forward shield line. The concussion hit him in the chest. When the smoke pulled back, three guards were on the ground, armor steaming, swords dropped.

Isolde Reichenbach walked out of the electrostatic haze.

She moved at the same pace she always moved and stopped between Eloy and the remaining guards. The electricity hadn’t left her, crawling along her forearms and gathered at her fingertips, steady and very controlled.

She didn’t look at Eloy. She looked at Caldwell.

"Lower them," she said.

Not a request. The words had no volume behind them. They didn’t need it.

Caldwell stepped forward from the podium, and something had broken in his face that Eloy had never seen break before. The administrative stillness was gone. What was under it wasn’t anger.

It was fear dressed as fury.

"Reichenbach. Step aside. You don’t understand what that boy just—"

"Arthur fell." Her voice didn’t shift. "And this one came back. Those are the facts." A pause, small enough to feel surgical. "I’m not moving."

She stepped back one half-step. Her shoulder came level with Eloy’s.

He didn’t know what to do with that. His brain cycled through three responses and abandoned all of them. He was acutely aware that every person in that courtyard was watching her choose this. That she had chosen it without asking him if he wanted her to. That he owed her something he didn’t know how to repay, and she clearly didn’t want him to try.

[IsoldeSimp47]: SHE JUST

[IsoldeSimp47]: SHE JUST STOOD NEXT TO HIM

[wo1flion]: IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE ACADEMY

[val_writes]: affinity check. ELOY. AFFINITY CHECK.

[x_DatingSimPro_x]: COMPLIMENT HER HAIR NOW IS THE BEST MOMENT

[LMAO_cat]: DO NOT COMPLIMENT HER HAIR

The system notification came before he could decide on anything.

[ WORLD LINE SHATTERED ]

[ CRITICAL ROUTE DEVIATION DETECTED ]

[ THE VILLAINESS HAS CHOSEN A NEW PROTAGONIST ]

[ INITIATING PHASE 2: SURVIVE THE WRATH OF AETHELGARD ]

[ Isolde Reichenbach — Affinity: 11.25 / 100 → 16.25 / 100 ]

The notification went gray. The courtyard went gray. Sound cut to a low droning hum, like something enormous processing in the background. Eloy stood in the still air of a paused world and looked at the number.

Five points.

One action. Five points in four seconds.

The world restarted. Sound crashed back, shouting, steel, the crackle of Isolde’s affinity still active across her hands. Caldwell had stopped pretending. His composure was done. He pointed at them both with one rigid finger, and his voice had gone past fury into something colder and more deliberate.

"Both of them," he said. "Now."

The remaining guards raised their swords.

Isolde didn’t move.