CHAPTER 290: INSIDER

The stairs led them into a small underground corridor, lined with stone and metal, half-devoured by roots. The air hummed faintly, not the stable pulse of modern mana circulation, but something rawer. Older.

Elara tightened her grip on her spear, her instincts prickling. "This place feels... wrong."

"It’s mana corrosion," Merlin murmured. "Residual traces from failed experiments."

They reached a rusted door at the end of the corridor. A faded plaque hung above it, the letters almost erased by time. Only one word remained legible:

LAB 7.

Merlin’s pulse slowed. He knew that name. From the novel, from a single, throwaway line describing "an abandoned research facility from a forgotten age."

He reached for the latch. It gave way with a creak.

Inside was a small lab, half collapsed, filled with shattered glass, rusted tools, and half-fused crystals glowing faintly red. The stench of old mana burned faintly in the air.

Elara stepped in beside him. "What... happened here?"

"An experiment," he said quietly. "And a failure."

His eyes caught something on the far table, a fragment of a crystal core, cracked but still pulsing with faint energy. Carved into its surface was that same sigil: the triangle and line.

"Merlin," Elara said, her voice uneasy, "this thing’s still active—"

"I know." He reached for it cautiously, but as his hand hovered close, the crystal pulsed, once, then twice, and a faint whisper filled the room.

A voice, distorted, broken, repeating:

"It sees... it sees... it sees..."

Elara took a sharp step back. "What was that?!"

Merlin exhaled slowly, watching the crystal dim again. "A memory echo. The mana still remembers what was done to it."

"That’s not supposed to happen."

"No," he agreed. "It’s not."

He looked around the ruined lab again, the scorch marks on the walls, the fused circuits, the melted runes.

All of it pointed to something deliberate. Controlled. Not a random failure, but an erasure.

Elara’s voice broke the silence. "Why do I feel like this is only the start?"

"Because it is."

He turned toward her, his expression steady but eyes cold. "This isn’t about the exam anymore. Someone’s rebuilding what the Veil started."

Elara met his gaze, her voice quiet. "Then we’ll stop them."

For a moment, he almost smiled, not because of her confidence, but because of the simplicity of it.

She didn’t understand the full scope. She couldn’t. But that belief, that unshakable determination, was what made her real.

And maybe... that was enough.

"Yeah," he said finally. "We will."

Behind them, the crystal on the table pulsed one last time, faint, almost invisible, before fracturing into dust.

The whisper faded into silence.

By the time Merlin and Elara returned to the main halls, the rain had stopped.

The academy courtyards shimmered faintly beneath the glow of crystal lanterns, their reflections rippling through shallow puddles that caught the moonlight.

Everything looked calm, still, but Merlin’s mind was far from it.

He kept his hands shoved in his pockets as they walked side by side through the archway leading toward the dormitories. The night air carried the scent of wet stone and blooming ivy. It would’ve been peaceful, if not for the cold trace of that lab still gnawing at the edge of his senses.

"You’ve been quiet since we left," Elara said finally, glancing at him. Her voice was soft, but her eyes were searching. "What’s on your mind?"

Merlin hesitated before replying. "...That place. The mana felt wrong. Not corrupted, fragmented. Like someone forced it to obey a command it wasn’t meant to."

"That’s not possible," she said immediately, though even as she spoke, her tone faltered. "Mana doesn’t have will. It’s... energy."

"Energy that reacts," Merlin countered. "Energy that remembers. If you push it too far, it pushes back."

Elara frowned, her brows knitting. "You sound like the old scholars from the Mana Ethics councils."

"I read their notes," Merlin said, dryly. "The difference is, they were right, and everyone stopped listening once their research got inconvenient."

She studied him for a moment longer before sighing. "You really don’t know how to take a break, do you?"

He smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. "Not when something’s off."

They reached the dorm entrance. Elara paused, her hand brushing against the doorframe before turning to him. "Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out. You’re not alone in this."

Merlin looked at her, really looked, and for the first time since the exam incident, the constant hum of tension in his chest eased just slightly. Her calm was steady, grounding. Real.

"...Thanks," he said quietly.

She nodded, almost shyly, before stepping inside first.

And for a brief moment, the world outside was silent again.

Meanwhile, across the academy, deep within the Headmistress’s tower, Morgana stood before a wall-sized projection of mana flow charts, her sharp silver eyes reflecting their glow.

The patterns were wrong.

They always pulsed in steady intervals, each line a living artery feeding the academy’s wards. But tonight, several had flickered, dimmed, and then returned, like a heartbeat skipping in panic.

Her hands hovered above the projection, adjusting the layers of mana threads. The anomaly concentrated around the northern quarter, near the old archives and the forgotten lower wings.

"The wards were tampered with," she murmured under her breath. "But not broken. Someone accessed them directly."

Her voice was calm, but her mana stirred faintly, like pressure building in a storm cloud.

She tapped her finger against the air, expanding one of the mana trails until a thin pattern revealed itself, faintly irregular, forming a sigil.

The same sigil Merlin had found in the restricted archives: a triangle divided by a line.

Her expression darkened.

"...The Null Sigil," she whispered.

The door behind her creaked open.

Vivienne stepped in, holding a tray with two steaming cups. "Still working, Morgana?"

The Headmistress didn’t turn. "The academy’s safety doesn’t rest."

Vivienne sighed, setting the tray down. "You’ve been staring at that screen for hours. The only thing that’s going to collapse is you."

Morgana didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze traced the faint mana flickers still pulsing irregularly through the projection. "Do you remember the incident twenty years ago? The northern labs?"

Vivienne froze for a split second. "...You can’t mean—"

"I do." Morgana’s voice hardened. "The mana pulse signature is identical. Someone is repeating the same pattern."

Vivienne’s concern sharpened. "But that project was dismantled. The records destroyed. The lead researcher—"

"Disappeared," Morgana finished for her. "Just like the records."

The room went silent. Rain tapped softly against the window now, a faint rhythm that mirrored the erratic pulse of the projection.

After a long pause, Vivienne asked, "Do you think it’s a student?"

"No," Morgana said. "Students don’t have access to the old wards. But someone does."

Her tone dropped. "Someone inside the faculty."