After the class was released nearly two hours later, I extended my hand to Salem, who took it, and we started racing along the grounds, looking for Yushin. She should have been finishing up her alchemy class right now, so we needed to hurry.

I had been hesitant about rushing, but Salem was confident that nobody was worming their way into our minds or keeping an eye on us, and if they were, the two of us meeting up with someone we'd already met with a bunch the last year shouldn't raise any suspicion.

"Let's fly!" Salem said.

I pulled my broom from my Etherius locker and tossed it onto the ground, leaping on top of it as if it were a surfboard, while Salem's wand appeared in his hand and he began to mutter the spell. He must have put most of it into the wand, because within moments, we were rising up into the air, and Salem let go of my hand. I frowned ever so slightly, but it was probably the most logical thing to do.

We both shot through the sky, blitzing across campus until we spotted Yushin, where we both started to slow down and landed next to her. She must not have realized who it was at first, because her hand was encased with her shadow knife spell, only vanishing after a second, and she shook her head.

"You should be more careful," she admonished. "What is it?"

Salem and I exchanged a glance, and then he raised his hand to begin casting another mental communication spell. I let it slip through the shield, and we began our three way mental chat. I started by going over what had happened to me, and the questions that the man had asked.

With each question, Yushin's ochre complexion began to shift slightly paler, and her pace became slightly jagged, as if she was so focused on her thoughts that she wasn't even able to see where she was walking.

"We need to find Jackson and my uncle," she said, her voice strange even in the psychic link. "My uncle will know how to handle this. And Jackson needs to be warned."

"I agree," I sent back. "Who knows if they're going to go after Jackson."

"Aye, but there's somethin' you're not sayin'," Salem said. "I think it's time ya' told us about what exactly is goin' on."

Yushin stumbled, and for a moment, I saw the scales on her arms grow sharper and cover more of her skin before she managed to rein in her bloodline and retract them back to more what a normal serpentfolk would have. Her breath started to come in quick breaths, then she nodded.

"You're right," she said aloud, then pushed the doors to the dorms open. The moment the air touched my nose, I caught the scent of smoke, a familiar darkness, and a powerful burning light.

"And so the man replied, 'If I am of the flock, then may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!' And lo, the fire of Effervesce fell from the heavens and consumed them!"

At the sound of the prayer, a massive explosion ripped through the room, and the door to the room Salem, Wesley, Jackson, and I shared was blown off its hinges. The assassin with the Yaksha bloodline was thrown on a wave of fire, his tight navy colored clothes smoking and burning. Next to me, Yushin vanished as she cast her invisibility spell over herself.

An instant later, Jackson stepped through the smoke, a glowing golden sword in one hand, and a ball of flame streaked with silver floating over his other hand. The assassin was muttering to himself in Shen-Long, and I caught a short snippets of it.

"–only completed their first year, they should not be this powerful–"

He thrust his hand up and shadow gathered around it in the shape of claws, but before he or Jackson could continue their battle, a blade of shadow extended through his neck, severing the connection between his spinal cord and his brain.

With both being shadow techniques, I at first thought he'd used some sort of weird sacrificial technique, at least until his body crumpled to the ground, revealing Yushin, her hand raised.

Jackson frowned at her as his golden blade and flames vanished, while Seren and I both sucked in a breath, drawing in the flame and smoke from our room and consuming it.

"Why did you kill him?" Jackson asked, and Yushin looked half-ashamed for an instant. The emotion didn't last long, however, as she knelt and began to pat the assassin down, pulling off a palm-sized gourd that had been tucked away in his sash. That caused Jackson's frown to deepen, so I decided to speak up.

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"He attacked me as well," I said. "He used some sort of immortal-grade technique that assaulted my mind…"

"Nascent Immortal. A true Immortal has ascended to divinity," Yushin corrected idly as she poked through the contents of the gourd. It must have been spatially expanded, as she was taking quite a while to look through it.

"Right. Let me back up and tell you the story from the beginning."

"Please do," a voice said, and I turned to see the Erudite. In the weeks since I'd seen him, he'd regrown his leg, but his hand was still a force construct. The dark markings around his throat had faded slightly, but were still clearly visible. He looked tired, more than usual, and stressed.

"Why is it that your group has already caused me the second most problems in my entire tenure as Erudite here? You're not even in year two…" Henry grumbled, slamming his staff on the ground. The world around us seemed to shift and rumble, and he frowned. "No. None of that now. Go on, get back to how you're supposed to be."

At his words, the dorm tilted back to normal. Completely normal, as if Jackson's massive burning attacks hadn't done anything at all. I frowned – Henry seemingly hadn't used magic at all for that. Was the dorm just that linked to him? Had he been the one to cast the spells that created them?

"Well?" Henry asked. I gathered my courage and looked at him.

"Can you cast dimensional lock, hidden conversation, and any other privacy spells, to help stop us from being listened in on?"

The Erudite's eyebrows rose, but he spun his staff. The world changed, and blue light washed over us, then suddenly there were walls of gray stone, covered in sigils and runes surrounding us. I stepped back as I realized he'd teleported the body as well.

"Why don't you explain why, exactly, there is a dead body in the dorm rooms?"

"Erudite, it is my fault," Yushin started. At the same time, I launched into my description of the attack – again.

The Erudite held up a hand, and then pointed at me.

"Emrys, go."

I explained, and once I'd finished, the Erudite simply nodded, then turned to Yushin.

"Your turn."

"I believe that the Divine King has discovered my presence here and his assassins attempted to extract information from Emrys and Jackson."

The Erudite stared at her, then sighed and ran his hand through his short brown hair.

"Thousand hells… I thought your aunt and uncle were shielding you?"

"They are. The Divine King must have found a way to pierce the defenses."

"Understand that I can't directly interfere to stop them, not any more than I could stop them from coming after Emrys," Henry said. "That said, knowing that they're after you, I'll put some measures in place to prevent them from entering the university grounds."

"Why didn't you have them already?" Jackson asked, frowning.

"Subtlety," Henry responded. "While she was hiding, putting defenses against the Divine King – more than the ones that were already there, which were mainly tuned to stop eavesdropping through his spirit sense – would have attracted attention. Now that the djinn's out of the bottle, I can act."

Jackson didn't look satisfied, but Salem nodded contentedly, fiddling with his piercings, then he turned to Yushin.

"And why is the Divine King after ya?"

"Hold on," the Erudite said, closing his eyes, then flicked his wrist. Blue light flashed, and then Shé Rui was standing there. The cultivator swung his hand out, then froze as he realized that Yushin was here.

"This space will last an hour, then spit you back out into the common area of Salem's room, except the body, which I'll feed to the library," Henry said. "Rui, your niece has been found out. Now I need to go."

"Why's it mah common space?" Salem muttered under his breath. "Emrys, Jackson, an' Wesley."

"Because you've got the only problem that doesn't involve politics, and that makes you the easy one to handle. Now I've really gotta go – I'm in the middle of pushing back an aberrant that appeared in Endless Fields."

He vanished in another flash of blue light, and I turned to Yushin, who slumped onto the ground. Shé Rui looked around and shook his head.

"Mages, bah, so arrogant. What happened? Have we really been found out?"

I sighed and launched into my description of what had happened for what felt like the thousandth time. Shé Rui looked increasingly concerned as the story went on, especially when I mentioned the Nascent Immortal level artifact. I wasn't all that familiar with life enforcement, but as I understood it, it was sort of the final stage, akin to eighth and ninth circle spellcraft.

After I finished, Jackson told his story, which was similar to mine – he'd heard a knock at the door, and the assassin had struck him with a poison that would knock him out. He'd burnt it out with a single-use divine blessing, only for the assassin to then attack in full.

"Well done, Yushin," he said when our story ended. "This is bad. We need your bloodline to develop. If you have been found out, then it is time for you to begin learning life enforcement."

"I understand," Yushin responded, but Salem spoke, sounding really quite irritable – understandably so.

"I dinnae. Thousand hells, wha's goin' on?!"

"That is none of your business," Shé Rui said.

"Yes, it is," I said, stepping closer to the cultivator. "Yushin gave me my freedom. I am going to help her how I can. If it means smuggling her out of the country, then I'll do that. If it means fighting, I'll fight.

"Yushin is my friend. I protect my friends," Jackson said, and though the words were simple, they seemed to strike Shé Rui with the weight of a hammer blow. He actually stepped back, as if he could see something I couldn't.

"Yushin's fought with us, an she's gotten my… She's gotten Emrys caught up in 'er stuff," Salem said, crossing his arms. "Can't say 'm happy about it, but I'd rather help her 'an not."

Shé Rui's eyes flicked from me, then to Jackson, then Salem, then rested on his niece. She nodded slowly.

"I trust them, Uncle. I believe that they will not attempt to turn me in for the reward. They may even be able to help us with our goals."

"Fine," Shé Rui said. "The Dreki has shown himself to be competent, at least. I will reserve judgement on the others."

Yushin nodded in acceptance, took a deep breath to steady herself, then launched into her story.

"What do you know about the Traitor Wyrm?"

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