The Artificer Rooftops: 0100 Hours to

  The night air above the Artificer District tasted of soot and cold rain.

  Amari sat on the edge of a ventilation unit, legs dangling over the sixty-foot drop. The campus below was waking up. Alarms flashed silently in the windows of the server building. Security drones buzzed like angry wasps, sweeping the alleyways where Kian had fled.

  Searchlights cut across the rooftops, but never quite reached the shadows where they sat.

  Niko crouched on a gargoyle three feet away. He was sharpening his dagger again. Shick. Shick. The sound was barely louder than the wind.

  "Kian made it back to the boiler room," Niko reported, his voice a whisper in the dark. "The Custodian let him in."

  "Good," Amari said.

  He held the data chip in his hand. It was small, cold, and heavy with the weight of a war crime.

  "The Yield," Amari murmured. "They stress-test the students to flavor the ambient mana. Then they harvest the air."

  "It explains why the curriculum is so inefficient," Niko said, stopping his blade. "They teach Combustion because it releases the most energy. Cycling keeps it inside. If everyone learned it, the Academy would starve."

  Amari nodded. It was a farm. And like any farm, it needed the livestock to be fat, docile, and productive.

  "We cannot stay here," Niko said. "The trace was incomplete, but they know the breach happened physically. They will lock down the campus. Retinal scans. Mana signatures at every door."

  "I know," Amari said. "I'm already suspended. Once the lockdown starts, I won't be able to move. I'll starve in a cell."

  "So we leave," Niko said. "But where? The Kingdom controls the cities. The Guilds control the trade routes."

  Amari looked at the horizon. Beyond the lights of the Academy, the world dissolved into darkness.

  "We need a teacher," Amari said. "Idris can teach the basics of the Old Way. But he is a guardian, not a master. He knows how to hold ground. We need someone who knows how to take it."

  Amari looked at Niko.

  "You use the Shadow Step. That isn't Academy magic. It's a bloodline art."

  Niko hesitated. He sheathed his dagger.

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  "My family... serves the Throne," Niko said, the words tasting bitter. "We are the Royal Knives. We do not teach outsiders."

  "But you are here," Amari pointed out. "Helping a Ghost."

  "I am... the disappointment," Niko admitted. "I was born with the eyes. Not the loyalty."

  "Is there anyone else?" Amari asked. "Someone who knows the art but refuses the collar?"

  Niko looked away. He stared at the flashing red lights of the security drones below.

  "There is one," Niko said quietly. "My great-uncle. The family does not speak his name. They call him the Traitor."

  "Where is he?"

  "The Scorchlands," Niko said. "Beyond the Kingdom border. It is a wasteland. High-tier monsters. No law. He went there twenty years ago to die."

  "Does he have a name?"

  "Kaelen," Niko said. "Master Kaelen."

  The name hit Amari like a physical blow.

  [Flashback Triggered]

  Heat. Unbearable, dry heat.

  Amari was standing in red sand. The sky was choked with ash.

  He was looking down at a body.

  It was an old man. He wore tattered grey robes that blended with the desert. He had been dead for days. The scavengers had already taken the eyes.

  But it wasn't the monsters that killed him.

  Amari knelt in the memory. He turned the body over.

  A dagger was buried in the old man’s back. The hilt was silver, inlaid with a single violet gem.

  The Royal Crest.

  An assassination. A preemptive strike.

  Amari touched the sand. It was glassed—burned by high-tier Solar Magic. The same magic Caelum used. The same magic the Academy taught.

  They hadn't just killed him. They had erased him.

  [End Flashback]

  Amari gasped, gripping the edge of the ventilation unit. The cold rooftop rushed back into focus.

  "Amari?" Niko asked, leaning forward. "What is it?"

  Amari’s heart was hammering against his ribs.

  He didn't go there to die, Amari realized. He went there to hide. And they found him.

  In the first timeline, Amari had found the body three years into the war. By then, the resistance was already broken. Without a Grandmaster to unite the Manaless factions, they were just scattered rebels waiting to be slaughtered.

  Kaelen was the linchpin.

  "Is he alive?" Amari asked, his voice urgent.

  "I assume so," Niko shrugged. "The family says he is a ghost. Why?"

  Amari stood up. He looked at the data chip in his hand.

  The Yield data. The Harvest. The Livestock.

  The Academy wasn't just farming mana. They were preparing for a harvest. And before a harvest, you remove the weeds.

  You remove the threats.

  "He isn't a traitor," Amari said. "He's a target."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Academy is escalating," Amari said. "They are tightening the net. If they are locking down the students here, they are also cleaning up loose ends outside."

  Amari looked at Niko.

  "Your uncle is the only Grandmaster of the Old Way left. If the war starts, he is the only one who can train an army to fight without mana."

  Niko’s eyes widened. "You think they will kill him?"

  "I think they already sent the assassin," Amari said grimly.

  He checked the time on his wrist.

  01:15 AM.

  "The lockdown hasn't started yet," Amari said. "We have a window."

  He looked at the drones circling closer.

  "Windows close."

  "To do what?"

  "To run," Amari said. "We aren't just leaving the Academy, Niko. We are racing it."

  Amari looked south, toward the invisible line where the lush Academy grounds met the desolate red earth of the Scorchlands.

  "If we don't get to Kaelen before the Royal Knives do," Amari said, "there won't be anyone left to teach us how to win."

  Niko stood up. He looked at the Ghost of the Academy. He saw the calculation in Amari’s eyes.

  "Then we are already late," Niko said.

  Amari nodded.

  "Get to the boiler room," Amari ordered. "Tell Kian to scrub the logs. Tell Bronson and Elara to hold the fort. You and I leave tonight."

  "Tonight?"

  "Right now," Amari said. "Before the cage closes."