Grace scowled.

The statue still stood incomplete.

That should not have been possible. By now, Class S should have finished synchronization, secured the final statue, and pressured the remaining classes into surrender or retreat. Instead, the mana flow remained unstable, the nodes refused to harmonize, and the battlefield was devolving into something she wasn’t sure she could control anymore.

"What’s taking so long?" someone shouted from the perimeter.

"Why hasn’t it activated yet?"

"Did something go wrong?"

"What is Iris doing?!"

Grace forced herself to tune out the noise.

She studied the statue from her command position, searching for the break in her plan. Iris remained focused at the center, hands pressed against the stone, mana flowing steadily. The support student beside her mirrored the effort.

Everything looked correct.

But it wasn’t working.

There was something wrong, that was for sure. Class S was being pushed back, but if things continued like this, they would lose altogether.

Grace left her position. She needed to see the problem directly.

Irene noticed immediately. "Grace–"

"Keep them stable," Grace said without looking back. "I’ll only be a moment."

She crossed the clearing quickly, walking though and between the support students in class S, who were offering support spells and long range attacks. When she reached Iris, she found her expression grim.

"What’s wrong?" Grace asked.

Iris didn’t open her eyes. "Something’s interfering. Every time I stabilize the flow, it destabilizes again. Almost like–" She hesitated. "Like something is actively disrupting me."

Grace’s eyes narrowed as she heard that.

She knelt beside the statue and pressed her own hand against the stone, extending her senses through the mana channels, trying to feel for anything wrong against the statue. Immediately she felt it, a subtle wrongness beneath the surface, a faint pulse of something that shouldn’t exist.

She located the interference carefully, following the mana threading through the statue’s runes until she found the source.

A small obsidian rune, hidden perfectly along a natural ridge in the stone.

Grace cursed under her breath.

The craftsmanship was elite. Someone had placed it precisely where most people wouldn’t think to look, blending it into the statue’s existing structure so well that even Iris’s expert control had failed to identify it immediately.

"Let go," Grace said sharply to both Iris and the support student.

They obeyed, and the mana flow collapsed entirely.

Grace pulled the rune free and crushed it between her fingers. The obsidian cracked, and the interference vanished.

"Someone betrayed us," Iris said quietly, her voice strained. She sounded more angry with herself for not realizing sooner.

It looked like she just thought she was making a mistake for the most of it.

Grace didn’t answer.

She studied the broken pieces in her palm, mind racing.

The same person who killed Marcus?

It had to be. Both actions were too clean, too precise, too methodical.

Whoever was moving against Class S wasn’t acting out of panic or rage. They were skilled. And they were a part of the class, that much was for sure.

No evidence was left either.

She thought of Aura first – the obvious suspect – but dismissed the idea almost immediately. This wasn’t Aura’s style. Aura would have confronted them directly, not hidden sabotage beneath layers of misdirection.

And Aura wasn’t the type to do anything like this, from how she had written her. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Freya entered her mind next.

Grace glanced toward the perimeter, where Freya stood coordinating communication between defensive positions. Her expression was calm, focused, helpful. Exactly as it always was.

Now, Freya was the type to do something like this, especially if Iris was involved. But where could she have gotten a rune like this? The Academy had made it clear no powerful runes like this could be brought into the war beforehand, as it would stir things up too much.

Though, she wouldn’t put it past Freya to sneak one in.

Grace had no proof, though.

And no time.

"Restart the synchronization," she ordered. "Now."

Iris hesitated, her ice cold expression cracking.

"Grace, if someone placed that rune–"

"Then they’re not here anymore," Grace interrupted. "We secure the statue first. We investigate after."

Iris accepted the logic, though her unease remained visible on her face. The support student looked nervous but nodded.

Grace returned to her command position and surveyed the battlefield again.

It had shifted.

Class B had pushed farther than expected. Elara’s forces were exploiting the distraction, pressing through gaps in Class S’s defensive line while Armani’s Class A recovered from the initial explosion. Adam’s forces continued creating pressure around the edges, forcing Class S to spread thinner.

They were being pushed back.

Grace’s jaw tightened.

She barked orders immediately, redirecting students, reinforcing weak points, pulling back overextended positions. Class S responded quickly – better than most classes would have – but the momentum had already tilted away from their favor.

Iris and the support student began synchronization again, mana flowing more smoothly now that the interference was gone.

But the delay had already cost them.

And Grace knew who would be taking the brunt of that, as she looked at Iris. All the more reason to suspect Freya.

The other classes sensed weakness in class S’s defenses, and they pressed harder.

Grace felt the battlefield slipping.

Then she felt something else.

A faint demonic pulse, thin and parasitic, barely there before it vanished.

Grace froze.

Her saintess nature made her sensitive to corruption in ways most people weren’t.

She’d felt demonic energy before, especially when Aura let her guard down during training. But this was different. Thinner. Hungrier. Almost...

She turned toward the source, scanning the tree line near the western perimeter.

Nothing.

The pulse disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Grace unable to really analyze what it was.

Grace wanted to investigate.

She needed to know what that was.

But she couldn’t abandon the statue.

Not while Class B was pushing forward.

Not while Luca was being delayed on the western side by coordinated attackers.

She cursed silently and turned back toward the clearing.

"Irene!" she called.

Irene appeared beside her immediately. "What do you need?"

"Double the guard around Iris. No one gets close until synchronization finishes."

"Done."

Grace exhaled slowly, forcing herself to focus despite the wrongness crawling beneath her skin.

Why was everything going so wrong?