CHAPTER 287: REPORTS

Before Harlowe could bark a command, the smaller cloaked figure raised their hand. The conduits embedded in the floor pulsed crimson.

The air split with a scream of metal as five new forms rose from the ground, half-formed golems, their limbs twisted, runes glowing erratically.

Clara gasped, stumbling back. "Impossible, those conduits were inactive!"

"Not anymore," Merlin muttered.

The chamber exploded into motion.

Nathan’s daggers flashed, streaks of lightning and water colliding with the nearest construct. Sparks flew as the blades bit deep, shattering corrupted mana crystals embedded in its chest.

Seraphina extended a hand, frost spreading across the floor, the golem’s feet froze mid-step, locking it in place before she shattered it with a precise strike of ice.

Harlowe moved like a storm, every swing of his weapon igniting the air, cutting through corrupted metal.

But the Veil’s leader didn’t move. He simply watched.

Merlin noticed.

"Too quiet," he murmured, eyes narrowing.

The next instant, the red light around the room shifted.

All at once, the fragments of destroyed golems began to crawl back together, fusing into a single mass of pulsing crimson.

"Everyone back!" Merlin shouted.

The others reacted instantly, stepping away as the mana gathered and compressed, forming a hulking figure of molten crystal and living shadow.

Clara’s scanner shrieked with warnings. "That’s not a construct anymore, it’s sentient mana!"

The creature roared, a sound that rattled teeth and made the stone tremble.

Harlowe cursed under his breath. "Fall back! We regroup—"

But Merlin didn’t move.

He stepped forward. The air around him shifted, rippling like water meeting wind. His aura flared, faint, controlled, but sharp enough to make even the corrupted creature hesitate.

Nathan hissed, "Merlin—!"

"Stay back."

His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried weight, calm, deliberate.

He raised one hand, palm open. The space around him shimmered faintly as invisible threads of mana aligned. Wind gathered, swirling into a fine vortex. Within it, faint motes of light began to pulse, blue and silver, fragments of his other affinities bleeding through.

The Veil’s leader tilted his head slightly, intrigued.

"Ah," he murmured. "So that’s it."

Merlin’s golden eyes flashed. "You talk too much."

He thrust his hand forward.

The wind shot out, compressed into a spear of pure kinetic force, bending space in its wake. It tore through the corrupted creature’s core, a perfect, silent strike, and the entire mass imploded, collapsing inward into a burst of red mist.

The impact echoed through the chamber like thunder.

When the light faded, nothing remained of the creature but dust and scorched stone.

Harlowe stared, jaw tightening. "...What the hell are you, Everhart?"

Merlin didn’t answer. His gaze stayed fixed on the cloaked figures.

The leader had stepped forward, slow and deliberate, hands clasped behind his back. "You’re an anomaly," he said softly. "One the script never wrote."

Merlin froze.

He hadn’t said it in a threatening tone. It was quiet. Knowing.

And for the first time, Merlin felt a chill crawl up his spine.

"...What did you just say?"

The man’s smile widened beneath the hood. "Tell me, Merlin Everhart, how does it feel to live inside someone else’s story?"

The room went still.

Nathan’s dagger wavered mid-air. Seraphina’s breath caught. Even Harlowe’s focus slipped for half a second.

"How—" Merlin’s voice came low, dangerous. "How do you know that name?"

The figure’s hand lifted, brushing his hood back.

He was pale, hair white as ash, eyes pitch-black with faint veins of red running through the sclera, inhuman.

"Because," he said quietly, "you don’t belong here. And some of us... can see the seams."

Merlin’s entire body tensed.

There it was. The first crack. The first hint that the illusion of this world, of this novel, wasn’t as perfect as he thought.

He took a slow step forward, voice calm but edged. "...You’re going to tell me everything you know."

The man smiled thinly. "I will, but not today."

The conduits beneath his feet flared violently, swallowing him and his partner in a burst of crimson light.

Merlin reacted instantly, bending space to trace the mana signature, but the pattern dissolved mid-cast, dispersing like smoke.

They were gone.

Silence followed.

Only the faint hiss of cooling stone remained.

Harlowe lowered his blade, glancing at Merlin with suspicion and something else, calculation. "You’ll be reporting this to the Headmistress personally. Tonight."

Merlin’s eyes didn’t leave the spot where the man vanished.

"...Yeah," he murmured. "I plan to."

Nathan stepped closer, voice low. "Merlin... what did he mean by that?"

Merlin didn’t answer immediately.

His hand closed around the fragment of crystal that had fallen from the creature’s remains, a small, pulsating shard of crimson.

He could feel it thrumming faintly in his palm, resonating with something deeper.

"...It means," he said finally, his tone quiet, "that things are starting to change."

When they resurfaced an hour later, the academy’s night patrols were already on high alert. Morgana herself awaited them near the upper courtyard, cloak billowing in the cold wind, her silver hair glinting under the lamps.

Her gaze locked on Merlin instantly. "Report."

He met her eyes, expression unreadable. "We found them."

Her voice sharpened. "The Veil?"

He nodded. "And something worse."

"What?"

Merlin’s grip tightened around the crystal fragment in his pocket.

"...A man who knows things he shouldn’t."

For a brief moment, the Headmistress’s composure faltered. Then her eyes narrowed, cold and steady. "Come to my office at dawn."

Merlin inclined his head. "Understood."

As Morgana turned away, her cloak fluttered like shadow, her voice barely audible. "It begins again..."

That night, when Merlin finally sat in his dorm, the world felt quieter than it should.

He held the crimson shard under the lamplight.

Its glow pulsed like a heartbeat, steady, mocking.

He didn’t know what the Veil’s man had meant. Not fully. But the words wouldn’t leave his mind.

"You don’t belong here."

"Some of us can see the seams."

Merlin clenched his hand around the shard until it dimmed.

If this world really was beginning to notice him, then the rules were breaking faster than he thought.

And he wasn’t sure if even he could control what came next.