No more needed to be said. They both nodded without question. We approached the teleportation circle and, in sync, extended our hands toward its edges. We channeled a small amount of mana into the activation lines. The circle reacted immediately: the runes lit up with a bluish-white glow and the air around us began to vibrate.

A low hum filled the room, like the beating of an anxious heart, the ground beneath our feet slowly faded into a haze of light, and reality seemed to fold in on itself.

***

As soon as I opened my eyes, I sensed almost immediately that something was wrong. I noticed a slight fluctuation in the transport circle, but I didn’t think it was important, maybe it was due to the weather, however the environment around me had changed completely. We were no longer in the teleportation circle, nor on the next floor of the tower. I was in a large room, with dark and smooth walls like burnished obsidian. There were no windows, no furniture, no decorations, just a cold, heavy feeling hanging in the air.

Beside me, Aziel and Erwing were also sitting up with tense faces. Their gazes reflected the same confusion I felt.

-This... is the upper floor, isn’t it? -I mumbled, still dazed from the space jump.

Aziel remained silent, observing the walls with a cautious expression. Erwing, for his part, approached one of the walls and touched it with his fingers. A faint spark of bluish mana responded briefly to the touch.

-It seems someone tampered with the teleportation circle," he said quietly. Fate was tampered with.

-Altered? By whom? And for what purpose? -I asked with a frown.

-I don’t know, but this was no mistake," Aziel replied, his voice sounding tense and alert.

The only thing of note in that gloomy room was a single metal door with a pale, opaque sheen. I immediately recognized the material: mithril, almost impossible to forge without a master smith. Cautiously, I pushed it open. There was no latch or lock, as if waiting for someone to come out through it.

As I opened it, as if to signal that we were not mistaken, the platform that was supposed to connect the upper floors of the tower was not in place I came upon a wide corridor. The walls were of the same dark material, with blue streaks that pulsed faintly as if breathing. They branched into multiple corridors and openings, like the tunnels of a beehive... or more disturbingly, like an anthill.

-This doesn’t make sense," I muttered. Where is this place?

-Underground," said Erwing, with unsettling certainty. Very deep, if the echoes are unmistakable.

We advanced in silence, our footsteps muffled by the smooth stone floor. Multiple rooms lined the sides of the corridor with opaque glass or observation windows. We stopped at the first one. Through the glass, we saw several human figures in white robes, stained with glowing substances. They looked like alchemists. They were moving flasks, checking scrolls, and manipulating instruments I could barely identify. The air behind the glass seemed thick, charged with purple vapors and floating essences.

-Who are they? -I whispered.

-I don’t know, but they’re not wearing Nova emblems... and you can see that over there," Erwing pointed to a table littered with bleeding crystals. That’s not allowed. They’re doing black alchemy.

-If the director finds out..." I started to say.

-This place would be reduced to ashes," Aziel finished.

We continued to move forward. With each step, we discovered more rooms, and each seemed to belong to a different purpose. Some were makeshift clinics, with unconscious patients connected to tubes bubbling with strange-colored liquids. Others looked like living nests, covered with roots sprouting from the walls, as if a parasitic plant had fused with the stone. One room even looked like a nursery: small children played with crayons and floating spheres of light, watched over by faceless magical automatons.

-This is not just a laboratory," I whispered. It’s a whole facility... who are brave enough to dare to do something like this under the director’s nose.

In a nearby room we saw something that made my blood run cold. Some sort of gigantic incubator contained dozens of floating capsules, each with humanoid silhouettes inside, submerged in an emerald liquid. Some looked like adults, others barely embryos. All around, a series of magic circles pulsed with runes I didn’t fully understand.

Before I could process what we were seeing, two guards appeared at the end of the corridor. They were not wearing full equipment, but dark suits and some sort of communicator strapped to their waists. One of them carried a spear with a blade that vibrated with every movement. We ducked in time and, in a quick coordinated move, knocked them out without alerting anyone else. Erwing took care of the first one with a precise electric shock, while aziel immobilized the second one with a strong blow to the back of the head.

-We have to find cyan quickly. I’m afraid they’ve done something strange to him," I said as soon as the danger passed.

-Let’s move," Aziel added firmly.

The further we walked through the halls, the faster my heart beat, not only because of the danger we were exposing ourselves to, but because of a deep, chilling certainty that was beginning to take root inside me: this wasn’t anywhere in Nova... at least, not the part that was known. We had been thrown into the belly of the academy, into the deepest subsoil, a forgotten hole where light didn’t reach and the darkest secrets breathed freely.

In my mind, all I could think of was a group capable of building something like this under the very nose of the most prestigious institution on the continent, the Demonic Cult.

Or at least, someone linked to them.

The further we advanced... The air grew thicker and thicker, saturated with a corrupted essence that made it increasingly certain that this was the work of the cult. Every step we took seemed to resonate with an echo that didn’t belong to us. The walls began to change, leaving behind the polished black stone to become more organic, as if we were walking through the interior of a living creature. Reddish veins ran through the walls, pulsing with a faint glow, and at times I thought I heard whispers... like wails trapped within the flesh of the structure.