Page 134 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

The thought arrives with certainty that comes from personal experience. I know what it means to be trapped in shared consciousness, to have every thought echo through spaces that should be private. But where Gwenievere and I were forced together by Elena's cruelty, Nikki and Nikolai chose their duality as survival mechanism.

Different prisons, same locks.

"Careful," Mortimer warns as they approach. His dragon senses are already alert, golden eyes tracking patterns inthe garden that shouldn't exist. "Something's wrong with the dimensional stability here."

The understatement becomes apparent the moment Gwenievere's foot crosses into the circle surrounding the frozen pair.

Everything shifts.

The garden doesn't just change—itdies.

I watch flowers wither in fast-forward decay, petals turning black and crumbling to ash that hangs in suddenly still air. The trees that bore impossible fruit from multiple seasons simultaneously now bear only rot, branches becoming skeletal fingers that claw at sky that's no longer blue.

The sky itself transforms with violence that makes reality flinch. Blue bleeds to red like a wound opening across heaven. Purple veins spread through the crimson, pulsing with sickly light that makes everything below look diseased.

Then the rain begins.

But this isn't water—it's acid given liquid form, each drop hissing where it strikes earth that's already dying. The smell reaches even me in my non-physical state: burning flesh, corroding metal, the particular stench of hope dissolving into despair.

"Barrier!" Zeke shouts, his hands already moving in patterns that pull moisture from air that doesn't want to give it up.

His frost magic erupts in a dome of crystallized ice, but this isn't the beautiful fractals he usually creates. This is desperate, utilitarian, layers upon layers of frozen protection that immediately begin to steam where the acid rain strikes. The barrier holds but barely, each drop eating through ice that Zeke has to constantly regenerate.

"Look," Gwenievere breathes, and I follow her gaze to where Nikki and Nikolai should be.

They're gone.

The space where they stood is empty, not even an impression in grass that's now black and writhing like it's in pain. I spin with the others, searching, and that's when we all see it.

Behind them rises a hill that wasn't there seconds ago. It stretches up at an angle that seems designed to exhaust rather than be climbed, its surface covered in sharp stones and thorned vines that promise agony to anyone who attempts ascent.

But it's what's at the top that makes my nonexistent heart skip.

A platform juts from the hill's peak like an accusation against the burning sky. On it, two figures hang with the particular stillness of those hovering between life and death. Nikki and Nikolai are chained together, their wrists crossed above their heads with golden chains that glow with their own malevolent light. Their backs press against each other, unconscious, barely breathing.

And surrounding the hill, covering every inch of the slope?—

Shadow beings. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

They're not quite human, not quite monster, but something between—the particular horror of almost-recognition. Each one holds a torch that burns with black flame, the kind that gives no light but somehow makes the darkness visible. They stand in perfect rows, organized like an army waiting for orders that have already been given.

"We have to get through them," Atticus states, crimson eyes already calculating angles and odds. "Fast. Those chains—they're draining them."

I can see it too, the way golden light pulses along the chains with each labored breath the prisoners take. Life force being siphoned, converted to something else, something that feeds the wrongness of this place.

"Together," Cassius commands, his shadows already writhing with anticipation of violence. "We hit them as one unit."

There's no more discussion. No time for strategy beyond instinct.

They charge.

I watch Mortimer shift mid-stride, his human form exploding outward into dragon glory that shouldn't be able to exist in this space but does through sheer will. His scales shimmer between gold and crimson, each one inscribed with draconic runes that pulse with ancient power. When he roars, the sound doesn't just fill the air—it reshapes it, creating waves of force that slam into the first rows of shadows.

The shadows scream when dragon fire touches them.

Not with pain but with release, as if being unmade is what they've been waiting for. Mortimer's flames aren't just hot—they'recleansing, burning away whatever force animates these beings and leaving nothing but ash that dissipates before it can touch ground.

His tail sweeps in devastating arcs, each movement calculated to clear maximum space. When shadows try to flank him, his wings snap out—membrane between the bones sharp as blades, cutting through multiple enemies with each extension.