CHAPTER 296: EXPERIMENTS (4)

They slipped into the Arcane Research Hall later that evening.

It was nearly empty at that hour, save for a few scattered upper-year students working under lamplight. Long crystal screens hovered over desks, filled with diagrams of spell formations and affinity charts. The room smelled faintly of ink and ozone, the scent of concentrated mana.

Elara kept close as Merlin moved down the aisles, his fingers brushing across the archive drawers that lined the walls.

"You’ve been here before?" she whispered.

He nodded. "First year. I used to study mana circuit design here. The records haven’t changed."

He found the section labeled Artifact Registration Logs, Year 812–813. Pulling the heavy drawer open, he flicked through a series of metal-coded cards, each one glowing faintly as it registered his touch.

"These are all weapon batches brought in or commissioned by the academy," he explained. "Every material has a serial imprint that shows who imported or forged it."

Elara nodded, glancing around the quiet hall. "And you think we’ll find the same imprint from the gauntlet fragment?"

"If we’re lucky."

He set the fragment down on a scanning crystal. The device hummed, lines of golden light tracing across the shard’s surface. Within seconds, a string of glowing symbols appeared on the projection above, an encoded manufacturer mark.

Merlin’s eyes flicked across it. His chest tightened.

"Got something," he murmured.

Elara leaned closer, reading the glowing runes. "Invoke Armaments Division...?"

Merlin froze.

That name again.

The same company he’d invested in two years ago. The same one whose board he’d stood before, shaking hands and trading calm words with people who would probably never know what he really was.

His hand clenched slightly. "No. This doesn’t make sense."

Elara blinked at him. "Merlin?"

He forced his tone steady. "Invoke manufactures standard gear for the academy’s defense contracts, but they don’t develop military-level weaponry like this."

"Unless someone inside Invoke is selling designs under the table," she said quietly.

Merlin didn’t answer. His thoughts spun too quickly, faces from that boardroom flashing through his mind: Adrian Kael, Victor Draven, Helena Vos. He remembered Damien Cross’s faint, almost invisible smile.

Could it be them? Could Invoke’s private contractors be involved in something this dangerous?

The scanner beeped softly, pulling him out of his thoughts.

A secondary imprint appeared beneath the main serial line. One that wasn’t supposed to exist.

Coded Manufacturer ID: [Redacted, Classified Under Imperial Clearance].

Elara frowned. "It’s blocked."

"Not just blocked," Merlin said, eyes narrowing. "Erased. Whoever did this wanted no trace of the real origin left behind."

"So what now?" she asked quietly.

He turned off the scanner. "Now we find out who’s buying from Invoke."

By the time they left the research hall, the sky outside had darkened to violet. Mana lanterns lit the walkways with soft white light, and the faint murmur of students in dorm courtyards filled the air.

Elara walked beside him in silence for a while before speaking.

"Do you ever wonder why all of this seems to follow you?"

Merlin glanced at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." She hesitated, searching for words. "Every time something unusual happens, the simulation, the dungeon breach, now this, somehow you’re always at the center of it. Like the world just... bends around you."

He gave a soft laugh, though it didn’t reach his eyes. "Maybe I’m just unlucky."

"Maybe," she said softly. "Or maybe fate likes you too much to leave you alone."

He smiled faintly. "That’s one way to look at it."

They reached the dorm gates. The lamps cast long shadows across the stones. Elara turned toward him, her violet eyes shimmering faintly in the light.

"We’ll figure this out," she said, her tone steady. "Whatever this organization’s planning, they won’t touch anyone here again."

Merlin looked at her for a long moment. "You sound sure."

"I am," she said simply. "Because you’ll be there."

That silence between them carried something new, unspoken but warm.

Merlin wanted to say something, to respond, to break that fragile stillness, but before he could, one of the academy guards approached from the far side of the courtyard.

"Mr. Everhart, Miss Vaelith," the guard said, stopping to bow slightly. "Headmistress Morgana requests your presence again tomorrow morning. She wishes to discuss... developments."

Merlin exchanged a glance with Elara. "Understood," he said quietly.

As the guard left, Elara folded her arms. "Developments, huh? Sounds ominous."

Merlin’s expression hardened slightly. "It usually is."

They stood there a moment longer, the cool wind brushing past them, the glow of the academy lanterns dancing on their faces.

Whatever was coming next, Merlin knew it was just the beginning.

The Obsidian Veil’s reappearance wasn’t coincidence, it was a move.

And he could feel the next one already being played.

The morning came gray.

Not cold, not bright, just gray. The kind of half-light that dulled color and sound alike, like the world had not yet decided whether to wake or stay dreaming.

Merlin Everhart stood outside the Headmistress’s office, the tall doors marked with the faint, intricate pattern of protective wards. Elara stood beside him, her hands folded behind her back, posture composed but her pointed ears twitched slightly, the only betrayal of her unease.

He could feel her impatience; she hated waiting almost as much as he did.

Inside, faint voices murmured — Morgana and someone else. He caught a hint of another tone, deeper, clipped.

Then: "Send them in."

The doors opened on their own, smooth and silent.

The office beyond was vast, circular, lined with bookshelves that stretched to the high arched ceiling. Sunlight filtered through tall stained-glass windows depicting the elemental sigils of the Six Affinities. Behind a desk of black oak sat Headmistress Morgana Vale, her crimson eyes steady as a blade’s edge.

But she wasn’t alone.

Standing near the far side of the room, in dark navy military uniform, was Captain Rhys Alden, the Imperial investigator overseeing Starpower’s defense. His sharp expression made it clear he wasn’t here for ceremony.

"Merlin. Elara." Morgana gestured toward the two seats before her desk. "Sit."

They obeyed, the silence thick enough to press against the skin.

Rhys turned, arms crossed. "We finished the analysis on the fragments from yesterday’s attack," he said without preamble. "And what we found... complicates things."

Elara frowned. "Complicates?"

Morgana slid a crystal tablet across the desk. "Look."

Merlin leaned forward. It was a schematic, metallic lines forming the outline of a gauntlet, annotated with glowing runic text. He recognized it instantly. The same design he’d seen in the Research Hall, the one that matched Invoke’s manufacturing marks.

But there was something new.

"This rune sequence," Morgana said, tapping the screen. "It’s layered with something that doesn’t belong, an unauthorized substructure. When we decrypted the first layer, we found this."

The rune shifted, rearranging itself into a string of code.

Merlin’s breath caught.

A manufacturer’s authorization tag.