The wind hit him between the shoulder blades and had no interest in being gentle about it.
Eloy crashed through the supply room door before his brain processed the motion. One second he was in the corridor. The next he was stumbling over a shelf of medical glass, catching himself on a cabinet with both hands. The vials rattled. None broke.
Behind him, the door swung shut with the specific finality of a trap clicking into place.
Maya stepped inside and turned the key.
[TrollKing99]: oh he's so cooked
[LMAO_cat]: PHYSICS ENGINE JUST RAGDOLLED THE MAN LMAOOO
Eloy straightened, rolled the shoulder that had caught the door frame, and looked at Maya De Alne.
She wasn't angry. That was the problem. Angry was readable. Angry had tells, cooldown windows, predictable spike patterns. Maya stood with the fan still balanced on her fingers, watching him the way someone watches new data they haven't finished categorizing.
"You have interesting bruising on your left forearm," she said.
He pulled the sleeve down. She had already seen it.
"Forest magic," Eloy said. "Rank A side effect."
"Yes." The fan clicked shut. "That's one name for it for sure."
[nachtfalter]: she's not buying it
[coldfront44]: she's never buying it
She moved between the shelves, trailing one finger along the labeled potion racks without looking at them. He recognized the maneuver, giving him time to decide whether to run or hold still. He held still. Running was off the table; she'd redirected his body across a hallway mid-stride, and his HP sat at thirteen percent.
The HUD pulsed yellow once.
"Arthur Gildhart's mana pathways are fused," Maya said. "His core is gone. The healers' report won't say gone, but everyone already knows what will happen." She stopped at the end of the row and turned. "Caldwell built a mission to remove multiple variables from his board at once. He almost succeeded."
"You're saying the director tried to kill us."
"I'm saying the director tried to kill Isolde, and he absolutely did not give a damn about saving Arthur."
Eloy frowned slightly, playing the part. "Arthur is the golden boy. He's a dual-affinity prodigy."
"Exactly," Maya said, a slight tilt of her head. "He's the nobility's golden boy. An incorruptible hero who can't be controlled. Men like Caldwell are terrified of heroes."
She tapped the fan against her chin. "I don't think the Director orchestrated the kidnapping. But when a highly organized group breaches a secure fortress to take Arthur, Caldwell didn't see as a tragedy. He saw an... opportunity."
She began pacing again. "Why send an elite strike team to save him when you can send a suicide squad instead? Arthur's core is destroyed, which severely weakens the noble factions and gives Caldwell an excuse to demand absolute control during the ensuing 'crisis'. At the same time, the Dark Lord's daughter conveniently disappears in a dangerous forest. And Valen Croi, a veteran who doesn't play Academy politics, dies as collateral damage to leave no witnesses. Caldwell sweeps the board clean and plays the grieving Director."
[IsoldeSimp47]: maya is actually a genius
[val_writes]: it makes terrifying sense. Arthur was a threat just by existing.
Maya stopped and looked directly at Eloy. "But you... you were something else. I don't know why he threw you into that meat grinder too, but you must have pissed off the old man badly. Another one of your pretty confusing feats."
Eloy said nothing.
"The nobility built an entire generation's power balance around Arthur's dual affinity." Maya's voice dropped half a register. "Dual-element users appear once in decades, maybe even centuries. He was the pillar. Now the pillar is gone, and in approximately twenty-two hours, every senior healer, faculty member, and Inquisition examiner in this Academy will watch you place your hand on the Awakening Stone." She paused. "The Stone reads mana signatures publicly."
"I know what the Stone does."
"Then you know what happens when it reads yours."
The system notification appeared before she finished the sentence.
[ NEW OPTIONAL QUEST: SIGN THE ALNE PACT ]
[ REWARD: INQUISITION BYPASS / +FACTION REPUTATION (HOUSE ALNE) ]
[ WARNING: SEVERE RESTRICTIONS ON INDEPENDENT ACTION ]
[nachtfalter]: OPTIONAL QUEST
[ghostrunner_x]: optional like breathing is optional
[SpeedrunGod]: read the WARNING eloy READ THE WARNING
He read it. All of it. Then he looked at the bracelet in Maya's other hand, a thin loop of dull metal with an alchemical stamp pressed into the clasp, warm amber.
"An Alne suppression seal." She held it flat on her palm. "It masks prohibited mana signatures. The Inquisition uses something similar for undercover operations, which is why they won't recognize it. You wear this before the ceremony, you walk out clean." Her fingers didn't close around it. "In exchange, you work with me."
She left "work with me" undefined on purpose.
[x_DatingSimPro_x]: say yes. also compliment the fan.
[LMAO_cat]: @x_DatingSimPro_x bro READ THE FREAKING ROOM
[PraiseTheSun]: THIS IS A BIG DECISION GUYS
Eloy ran the numbers.
Maya De Alne: noble bloodline, passive elemental perception, strong enough to redirect him across a corridor mid-stride without visible effort. Currently desperate enough to corner him in a supply closet instead of going through official channels. Desperate people had already shown their ceiling. She needed a weapon and had come to him specifically, which meant she'd ruled out other options first.
He pushed off from the cabinet and crossed his arms.
"You think I was careless," Eloy said.
"I think you—"
"You think the mark on my arm was something I didn't account for." His voice stayed level. The same voice he used when chat was screaming, and he hadn't registered an actual reason to panic. "That I spent hours inside a Mugen-Za ritual site and walked out without understanding what they'd done."
Maya's fan stopped rotating.
"Those people thought they were branding me," Eloy continued. "They handed me a direct line to abilities that don't exist in any Academy curriculum. Techniques their specialists spent decades trying to isolate." He timed the pause the same way he timed a boss stagger window. "They even gave me a name. Speedrunner."
[SpeedrunGod]: WAIT HE'S ACTUALLY RUNNING THE BLUFF
[PraiseTheSun]: ROLLED A NAT 20 ON DECEPTION
Maya studied him. He watched her eyes move from his face to the covered forearm and back. She was looking for the crack in the performance.
He'd spent three years live in front of seven thousand people, failing catastrophic runs in real time and making it sound like the setback was always part of the plan. He knew exactly what comfortable looked like on him, and he knew how to produce that expression on demand. She didn't find the crack.
"Speedrunner...?" Maya repeated.
The word sat unfamiliar in her mouth. She said it like she was assigning it a category and hadn't decided which one yet.
"That's the name," he confirmed. "Use it or don't."
A long pause. The kind that in another situation would have required filling. Eloy had gotten very good at not filling silences.
"You are completely insane," Maya said.
Quietly. Closer to the tone someone used when they'd found something genuinely unexpected and hadn't finished understanding it.
She held out the bracelet.
Eloy took it.
The seal clasp was cold. He pressed it against the mark's location on his forearm. The clasp snapped shut with a soft, clean click.
The pain stopped. He exhaled through his nose, controlled, and did not let it show.
"Twenty-two hours," Maya said. "Don't be late."
He turned toward the door.
"Speedrunner."
He stopped.
"I researched you, again. More thoughtful than before." Her voice was precise. No accusation in it, which was worse than accusation. "I looked for your family records. Academy enrollment history. Rank registration filings." A pause. "You looked like a really ordinary guy before enrolling here, which makes everything you do so... strange."
He kept his hand on the door.
"You enrolled here and everything about you changed. You fought a noble on your first day and won, talked with Isolde without any fear, even ended up in the Cursed Forest on a Rank A mission in your first semester." Another pause, shorter. "I don't know what you are, Eloy Vance. But I am very patient."
He opened the door and stepped out.