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"Don't!"
Elise's hand shot up reflexively. "I'd really prefer not to meet you in the entrance exam, Luke. Some of us are still trying to score well."
Beside her, Lily Fairchild was nodding with the rapid, emphatic agreement of a woodpecker. The two of them were, in this particular moment, in perfect alignment. The shared sentiment was: Luke can ruin some other capital's students. That's what other capitals are for.
"Well, that's not very polite," Luke remarked.
"It's extremely polite. We're being honest."
Luke laughed and gave them another small wave. Whether they encountered each other in the exam would depend on the bracket assignments. He couldn't promise to avoid them, and he didn't intend to go easy on anyone he encountered. But the disclaimer wasn't necessary at this stage. They'd see each other when they saw each other.
He left them in the corridor and headed back to his guest quarters.
-----
Several minutes later, he reached his door and heard humming from the bathroom inside.
Mana, in her free time, had developed a habit of using the room's facilities for her own purposes. Whatever song she was currently in the middle of, the cheerful tune carrying through the door wasn't one Luke recognized.
He made an executive decision, grabbed essentials from his immediate space without entering the bathroom, and quietly stepped back out of the suite. Some battles weren't worth fighting. He could finish his planning notes in the lounge.
-----
*Night Palace.* One of the Ancient Kingdom's Forbidden Zones.
The palace's protective barriers shuddered as another wave of dimensional disturbance broke against the surrounding spatial geometry. Spectral fox-cries rang through the sky in long undulating tones, vast and reverberating, a sound that made the surrounding terrain feel small.
Reality itself had grown thin around the Night Palace over the past stretch of days. Some kind of high-grade reconstruction process was being conducted at the palace's core, and the energy bleeding outward from that process was destabilizing the local spatial framework. Dimensional cracks formed at unpredictable intervals. Some of them threatened to widen into Black Gates.
A new crack opened along the palace's eastern perimeter, dark and jagged, edges pulsing with malevolent extra-dimensional pressure. Through the opening, the silhouettes of hungry shapes pressed against the boundary. Things that wanted in.
"Skreeee!"
A clarion bird-cry split the air. A streak of brilliant blue light arced down from the upper sky, resolving into the form of a massive divine eagle, its plumage shifting through shades of cobalt and silver, its head crowned with intricate golden runes that pulsed in deliberate cadence.
*Simurgh.*
The Ten-Star Rare card spirit dove on the dimensional crack with focused intent. The runes on her crest flared, and a beam of concentrated golden radiance lanced down into the rift's center.
The rift, which had been preparing to widen into a full Black Gate, began to contract instead. The sealing-light of the Simurgh's runes wove through the crack's energy structure and began unmaking it from within. Furious howls echoed from beyond the rift, the protests of would-be invaders denied entry, but the protest meant nothing. The Simurgh's seal was absolute.
The rift collapsed into nothing. The local spatial geometry restored itself.
"Ninth time," Selene Dawnford remarked from the Simurgh's back. "I'm starting to wonder when Master will be done."
Her voice carried genuine concern beneath the surface dryness. The reconstruction process had been running for considerably longer than she'd expected when she returned with the Glacial Wellspring sample. The Night Empress had been confident at the start, but high-tier card reconstruction was inherently unpredictable. Twelve-Star reconstruction in particular tended to produce dimensional side effects requiring active intervention.
That was why Selene had been patrolling the Night Palace's perimeter for days now. Lilith was inside her ritual chamber. Selene was outside catching the dimensional cracks before they became Black Gates.
She'd never appreciated quite how dangerous high-tier card reconstruction really was until she'd watched her master's process from the outside. The energy spillover was enormous. Selene's own crafting of the Simurgh, ambitious as that had felt at the time, had been a candle flame compared to the bonfire her master was currently maintaining.
-----
A new sound rolled across the sky.
Not the panicked howling of extra-dimensional beasts. Not the strain of cracking spatial geometry. A long, exultant fox-cry, deep and primal and triumphant, the cry of an apex predator announcing that a long task had been completed successfully.
A vast fox-shape unfurled across half the visible sky. Nine tails. Crimson and gold. The silhouette was enormous, easily large enough to crush a small town beneath a single paw, and the energy radiating from it was the kind that made the surrounding landscape feel like a held breath.
The dimensional disturbances around the Night Palace stabilized in real time. Cracks that had been about to form sealed themselves. The hungry shapes that had been pressing against the spatial boundary went silent and retreated, suddenly reminded of their actual place in the predator hierarchy.
The fox-shape contracted, gathered, and condensed back into a single rectangular card that floated gently down into a pale outstretched hand.
The reconstruction was complete.
-----
"You've done well these past few days, Selene."
Lilith Crescent stepped out of empty air beside the Simurgh, the card she'd reconstructed already filed away. The Night Empress's silver hair flowed in the residual dimensional currents, and the spider-lily mark on her forehead glowed softly with sated power. She looked tired in the way that Immortals looked tired, which is to say, almost imperceptibly, but Selene had spent enough time as her student to read the signs.
Twelve-Star reconstruction was one of the few processes that could fatigue an Undying Realm Card Master.
"It was nothing, Master." Selene dismounted the Simurgh in a smooth slide that suggested years of practice. The fox-cry had told her enough that she'd already started smiling, but politeness required confirmation. "Sister Circe is fully recovered?"
"More than recovered." Lilith's smile, when it surfaced, was the soft proud expression of a parent showing off a child's accomplishment. "Circe's wounds are healed. Her quality has advanced. Her combat capability has increased. The reconstruction was a success on every front."
The reconstruction had never been merely about healing. Lilith had used the opportunity to push Circe's foundation upward, refining and expanding the Nine-Tailed Fox's worldview integration, and the result was a card that operated at a higher tier than before the injury. Twelve-Star Legendary had moved further in a direction Selene didn't entirely have words for yet.
"Congratulations, Master."
Lilith inclined her head in acknowledgment, and then her tone shifted into something more practical.
"We should be moving. The entrance examinations are not far off. If we leave now, we can return to Celestial Academy before the exam season begins."
She let the statement settle, then noticed that Selene had gone very still.
-----
"Master." Selene's voice came out carefully measured. "About the trip I mentioned earlier. The one I wanted to take after the reconstruction. I wasn't actually planning to go directly back to Celestial Academy."
Lilith's elegant eyebrow lifted by a precise quarter inch.
"Oh?"
"I was planning to visit Ashenmere first."
The peach-blossom eyes regarded Selene with the patient inquisition of a master who already knew her student was hiding something and was politely allowing the student to choose how to surface it.
She knew. She always knows.
Selene exhaled and committed.
"Governor Ashford asked me to relay information about a student in his jurisdiction. Luke Mercer. The independent Black Gate destroyer. The Original Card crafter." She paused, kept her voice even. "I wanted to meet him before the entrance exam. Before he gets pulled into the Capital's broader politics."
Lilith was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke again, her tone was thoughtful rather than disapproving.
"An Original Card crafter. Luke Mercer."
She turned the name over in the air the way one might turn over a found stone, examining the facets.
"Aldric never told me about this directly." She said it as a statement of fact rather than a complaint. "He sent the message through you instead. Which means he wanted me to know but didn't want the matter to enter formal channels. Interesting. He was always cautious."
She refocused on Selene with a faint, rueful smile.
"Let's go, Selene. We'll travel via the Capital."
Selene exhaled again, this time in relief. Her plan, having been fully exposed, had not been derailed.
But before she could relax, Lilith spoke again, almost casually.
"What Aldric told you about Luke Mercer and Original Cards is not as straightforward as you may have understood it to be."
Selene's brow furrowed.
"There's a legend that circulates only within the Immortal Realm and above," Lilith continued, her voice taking on the cadence of someone reciting information from a private archive. "The Millennial Sovereign. At your current realm, you don't yet have access to the full context. But the existence of an Original Card crafter is one of the indicators that the legend tracks. Aldric reaching out through you, rather than directly to me, suggests he's already weighing whether the indicator matters in this case."
She didn't elaborate. The implication that Selene's realm was insufficient to know more was delivered without condescension, simply as a fact of access.
The Night Empress and her student stepped through a fold of space that shouldn't have been there a moment before, leaving the Night Palace behind. The Simurgh dissolved back into its card form and slid into Selene's storage.
In the air where they had been standing, Selene's question lingered, unanswered.
The Millennial Sovereign? A legend known only to the Immortal Realm?
She'd thought she understood what Aldric had been asking her to do. Now she understood that she'd only been seeing the surface.