Soon enough, it was dusk again.

Finn and Elara met up at the eastern gate as the sun touched the horizon. They both wore dark clothing that would blend with the forest shadows. Only carrying minimal gear that wouldn't slow them down, focusing on speed and efficiency.

Lyssa was there to see them off, along with Torin, Maris, and Vex.

"This is still insane," Lyssa said, but she handed Finn a small crystal. "This is an emergency beacon. If you crush it, we'll know you're in trouble. We won't be able to send help immediately, but at least we'll know."

Finn pocketed the crystal. "If we're not back by dawn, assume we failed. Do all you can to send word to the academies. Defy the orders and return by yourself if you have to, and report everything directly — the coordinated attacks, the mana manipulation, the delayed Master-rank support — that something bigger is happening here."

"You think the communication delays are intentional?" Torin asked.

"I think it's blatantly suspicious that four towns are under coordinated attack and somehow every request for proper support gets delayed or misdirected." Finn's tone was flat. "Either the enemy is intercepting communications, or someone on our side doesn't want reinforcements arriving."

Finn let the implications of his words lay heavy on their minds.

They all kept silent for a moment before breaking out of their thoughts, with looks on their faces like they hoped Finn's conjecture wasn't the case.

"Be careful out there," Vex said quietly.

Finn nodded once, then turned to the forest. Beside him, Elara took a steadying breath.

"Ready?" he asked.

"No. But let's go anyway."

They slipped through the gate and into the Thornwood forest as night fell.

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Immediately they entered the forest, both their senses went into high alert.

The forest was much different at night.

During the day, the Thornwood forest was just another magical beast habitat. Dangerous, yes, but still navigable. At night, it became something else entirely. The ambient mana Finn had felt fluctuating wildly during their journey intensified. The current of it was chaotic, disturbing his senses in ways he didn't like.

But he pushed forward nonetheless, leading the way as he and Elara navigated through the fully covered forest. Just like most dense forests Finn had entered, this one also blocked the moonlight with its thick canopy of tree branches.

What little illumination reached the forest floor came from bioluminescent fungi and the occasional glow of a magical plant.

Every few dozen yards, Finn would stop, extend his senses, and check for threats. Elara, who followed close behind also did the same with her earth magic, creating subtle vibrations in the ground that let her detect movement before they saw it.

They'd been walking for perhaps an hour when Elara suddenly grabbed his arm.

"Something's following us," she whispered. "Three o'clock, maybe hundred yards out."

Finn stilled, extending his own awareness. It was in these kinds of moments he missed being an Ossuarist and borrowing the senses of soul masses like his Ferropteryx.

Now, he could only reach that far with his magic by detecting weirdness, disturbances in the ambient mana, but only when he stopped and focused.

He looked to the side into the distance. Something large was moving parallel to their path in the darkness.

"D-rank," he assessed quietly. "One of the wolves, probably. Sentry patrol."

"Do we engage?"

"No. Not unless it forces our hand." Finn adjusted their direction slightly, angling away from the pursuing beast. "We're trying to stay undetected as long as possible."

They continued walking. The wolf-beast shadowed them for another ten minutes before falling back, apparently satisfied they were moving away from whatever it was guarding.

Finn filed that information away. The beasts weren't attacking on sight. They were protecting something specific.

The forest grew denser as they pushed deeper. The mana fluctuations Vex had detected near Greystone were stronger here, more pronounced. Finn could feel them like waves of high and low density rolling through the forest in a rhythm that felt almost like breathing.

"This is wrong," Elara murmured. "Mana doesn't behave like this naturally."

"No, it doesn't."

They pressed on.

Another hour passed. They encountered two more patrol beasts, both D-rank, both shadowing them briefly before disengaging. The pattern was now clear. The beasts were herding them away from a specific direction.

So naturally, that was the direction Finn headed.

"We're going deeper, aren't we?" Elara said after noticing their change of direction.

"Yes."

"Of course we are." She sighed but didn't argue.

The trees here were even larger, even older. Some had trunks that glowed faintly with internal mana, like they'd absorbed so much ambient energy they'd become conduits themselves. The air felt heavier, harder to breathe, thick with mana that saturated everything so densely.

Finn's Error magic stirred restlessly, responding to the wrongness permeating this place. Something here was fundamentally breaking the natural order, and his attunement to Error recognized it instinctively.

They were close.

"Stop," Finn said suddenly, raising a hand.

Elara froze. "What is it?"

"Listen."

She tilted her head, straining her senses. At first there was nothing except the normal forest sounds of insects and distant beast calls. But subtly...

Voices.

It was very faint, barely even there. But now that she had heard it, it was no longer missable.

Humans.

Finn gestured for Elara to follow and moved toward the sound with even greater caution. They crept through undergrowth, staying low, and using the massive tree trunks as cover.

The voices grew clearer. Multiple speakers, conversing casually. And not just that. This direction also aligned with where Finn felt the wrongness from. It wasn't just the mana in the air that pulsed and shifted like a heartbeat now. Finn could literally hear the soft thump of a real heartbeat coming from where the voices originated.

He reached the edge of a clearing and stopped, crouching behind a fallen log and peering forward.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

The clearing was large, perhaps a hundred yards across. And at its center stood something that shouldn't exist — a massive cocoon, easily twenty feet tall, suspended between four ancient trees by thick strands of what looked like crystallized mana. The cocoon pulsed with a dull light, and with each pulse, Finn felt the ambient mana surge outward in waves.

That's the source. That thing is what is manipulating the mana density, driving the beasts outward...

Around the cocoon, casually standing guard, were people. Human Arcanists, at least a dozen of them, wearing armor that bore no house insignia. They talked and laughed like this was routine patrol duty, not some horrific magical experiment.

And right in front of the cocoon itself, studying it with intense expressions, were two figures that drew his attention immediately. Both wore superfluous robes marked with a crest Finn didn't recognize. It looked like some kind of bird with spread wings.

"The metamorphosis is proceeding perfectly," one of the two men said. "Another three days, four at most. Then we'll have a B-rank beast under complete control."

"And what about the outward effects?" the second man asked. "The wave patterns?"

"Functioning exactly as designed," the first man chuckled. "The ambient mana density fluctuations are keeping the local beast populations agitated and directing them toward the target settlements. It's beautiful, really. Mass control. We're essentially weaponizing natural migration instincts."

"The family will be pleased. Once we demonstrate we can produce and control this B-rank beast reliably, and show them its control abilities too… they'll authorize full-scale operations."

Beside Finn, Elara had gone rigid with horror. And even his lips were set in a straight line.

This wasn't a natural beast outbreak. It was deliberate. Orchestrated. They were breeding a powerful magical beast and using it to influence attacks on settlements, and based on their conversation just now, this was only a test run.

"What about the academy teams?" one of the guards asked.

The robed figure laughed. "Let them play hero. They're children with barely any real combat experience. Even if they figure out something's wrong, they'll never make it past the outer patrols. And if by some miracle they do..." He gestured at the guards. "Well, that's why they're here."

Finn's mind raced, analyzing the situation with a cold tactical mind.

Twelve guards, all Adept-rank based on their mana signatures. Two leaders, possibly Master-rank given their bearing and control. Plus whatever is in that cocoon, which could emerge at any moment.

The smart move was to retreat. Get back to Greystone, crush the beacon, wait for actual reinforcements.

But several things made that impossible.

First, the communications had been compromised. These people had clearly been intercepting or misdirecting requests for support. Any beacon signal might be intercepted too.

Second, they'd said "three days, four at most." By the time proper reinforcements arrived — if they arrived at all — the cocoon would have hatched and dozens, maybe hundreds more people would die.

And third...

This is significant—! A defining moment! For the first time, something that is large enough to matter!

He could feel it in his bones, in his soul.

This was something that might trigger the tether.

And there was no way he was going to pass up on acting decisively despite the seeming odds.

"We need to leave," Elara whispered urgently. "Right now. We need to get back to the town, send word to—"

"They'll intercept it," Finn replied perfunctorily, already analyzing the best course of action.

"Then we fight our way out and—"

"And what? Leave this operation running? Let them finish their 'test' and kill thousands more people before anyone figures out what's happening?" Finn's voice was flat, emotionless. "No. We end this. Tonight."

Elara stared at him. "You can't be serious. There are fourteen of them, two of us. Even if we had the element of surprise—"

"We do have surprise. And we have something they don't."

"What's that?"

Finn turned to look at her directly, and the look in his eyes was so cold, it made her flinch.

He smiled lightly.

"Tenacious obsession."

Before she could respond, before she could argue or question what he meant, Finn stood up from behind the log and walked into the clearing.

Every eye turned toward him. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Hands moved to weapons. The air charged slightly with the traces of elements about to actualize as spells.

One of the guards recovered first. "Who the hell are you?!"

Finn stopped about thirty yards from the cocoon, dropping his hands loosely at his sides and keeping his expression carefully neutral.

"Captain Arros, House Valeris Academy." Finn's voice traveled clearly across the clearing. "I'm here to shut down your operation."

For a moment, there was a stunned silence.

Then the guards started laughing.

"You're here to shut us down?" One of them could barely get the words out, wracked with knee-bending laughter. "You're what, seventeen? Eighteen? And you walked in here alone to take on all of us?"

"Not alone," Finn corrected. "But close enough."

The laughter died as suddenly, behind Finn, Elara emerged from the treeline with an expression that was a mix of terror and resignation.

The guards became wary, scanning the surrounding darkness for any more intruders.

One of the robed figures — the one who'd been speaking earlier — stepped forward, studying Finn with newfound interest.

"You're either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid," he said. "I'm genuinely curious which."

"Neither." Finn kept his gaze level. "I'm practical. You're conducting illegal beast manipulation that has killed hundreds and even thousands of civilians. You've been interfering with official communications to prevent intervention. And you're planning to scale up these operations."

He paused.

"The smart move would be to surrender. Cooperate with the investigation. If you do, maybe you can actually avoid execution. Live out the rest of your life in prison."

The robed figure laughed — a genuine, delighted sound. "Oh, you're serious. You actually think you can take us on." He gestured to his guards. "Kill them. Quickly. We don't have time for this distraction."

The guards moved forward, drawing their magic weapons and activating their spells. But none held any magic beast.

Finn didn't move at first.

And then, he sighed, then spoke in a conversational tone:

"Tell me something. When you set up this operation, did you perhaps consider what happens when you trap a predator till it has nowhere to run?"

One of the guards hesitated. "What?"

Finn's expression didn't change. But something in the air shifted. The ambient mana, already unstable from the cocoon's influence, began to ripple strangely.

"...The trapped predator becomes more dangerous than it ever was when it could flee."

He raised one hand, and reality inverted.

The clearing exploded into chaos.

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