The high-altitude sun reached its zenith, but warmth never touched the stones.
Arthur spent the remaining hours of the morning sprinting across the Academy's administrative fault lines. Intermissions, passing periods, the ten-minute corridors between lectures—every breath was swallowed by diplomatic triage.
In the Second Sector rotunda, he intercepted a cluster of panicked commoner swordsmen, stepping between them with a calm, disarming hand against their leather pauldrons. He dismantled Julian's legal trap with quiet precision—explaining the limits of Section Four, Article Nine, assuring them the Educational Covenant protected their bursaries, and promising he would personally answer any docket filed by House Terrence. The boys exhaled, their white-knuckled grips releasing their hilts.
In the eastern colonnade, he crossed paths with three senior academic scribes clutching folios like shields. Rather than asserting martial force, Arthur offered a humble, deferential bow, validating their exhaustion and reframing Julian's demonstration as a misunderstanding of the joint exhibition he intended to propose. The scholars, bracing for violence from the School of Magic's apex student, stammered apologies before retreating to their archives.
He even pacified Instructor Vance outside the lecture halls, using pure non-magical physics to justify an evasion vector Vance had assumed was an illegal use of Body Aura during morning drills.
By the time the midday bells tolled at 13:00, Arthur's uniform was dry, his spine straight, and his easy, disarming composure intact. He had poured water over a dozen fires. The panic was under control.
He entered the private dining hall of the Honor Class, anticipating forty minutes of clinical silence.
He had barely taken his seat, his fingers just grazing the cool porcelain of an untouched water goblet, when the heavy oak doors crashed open.
The wood slammed into the stone with a concussive boom that rattled the cutlery.
Kaelen stood framed in the doorway.
The young knight looked as though he had sprinted through an artillery barrage. His broad chest heaved against his tunic; his silver epaulettes were askew, one smeared with white mortar residue; his disciplined jaw trembled with terror. He offered no greetings. He looked at no one else.
His wide eyes locked directly onto Arthur.
Kaelen closed the distance in four frantic strides, boots hammering the parquet. He gripped the edge of Arthur's table, leaning down so violently that water sloshed over the rim of the goblet.
"Cedric," Kaelen choked out, his baritone cracking. "Cedric... it's Celeste."
Arthur kept his posture serene, though his processor logged the tremor in Kaelen's knuckles. "Breathe, Kaelen. Sit. What happened?"
"She leveled it," Kaelen rasped, his grip shifting to Arthur's sleeve. "The western wing. Academia's primary dormitory. It's... gone."
Arthur's amber eyes remained steady, but the processor behind them stalled. "What do you mean, gone?"
"She walked up to the steps ten minutes after theory," Kaelen whispered, terror bleeding through every syllable. "No incantation. No focus. Four circles, Cedric. Water, fire, wind, earth—simultaneous, Advanced density. She tore the foundation right out of the soil and collapsed a third of the building onto the scholars inside."
The dining hall fell into a breathless hush.
"Casualties?" Arthur asked, his voice a flat wire masking a sudden lurch in his stomach.
"Dozens injured," Kaelen breathed. "Concussions, broken bones, severe burns. If Alice hadn't used an earth wall to deflect the main header beam on the portico, students would have died. Alice is pulling people out of the rubble right now."
Kaelen leaned closer, his voice dropping to a panicked murmur.
"Warden Cole had to call in the Sector Six garrison with lead suppression bands. They dragged her away in chains. Cedric... she's in Sector Six. The Academic Board is already convening. The delegates are calling it domestic terrorism. They're talking about an emergency tribunal—some northern scions are demanding execution!"
The words hit Arthur like liquid nitrogen.
The morning's diplomatic triage. The pacification of the swordsmen. The humble assurances to the scribes. The delicate deconstruction of Julian's legal leverage.
Wiped out. Annihilated by a single stroke of feral petulance.
Celeste had not merely broken a rule; she had validated every word Julian had spewed before the obsidian slab. She had become the unthinking monster Academia accused mages of being.
And the timing.
Ten minutes after morning theory.
Right after Julian's public confrontation.
This was Derrick's true intent.
Beneath his unblemished calm, within the frozen vault of his true thoughts, Arthur's internal monologue flared in white-hot fury:
Stupid girl… Did she do this because of me?!