The upper district of Oakhaven smelled of imported jasmine and desperate ambition.

  In the private study of Lord Caelen’s estate, the air was thick with tension. Caelen, a merchant-noble who had spent his entire life—and half his fortune—stuck at the peak of a Tier-4 mana core, paced the length of his Mycenian-rug.

  Sitting across from him, lounging in a velvet armchair, was Guildmaster Thorne of the Alchemist’s Coalition. Thorne was a man who looked like he had inhaled too many mercury fumes; his skin was sallow, and his eyes darted nervously around the room.

  "Three days, Thorne," Lord Caelen muttered, stopping to glare out the window toward the southern plateau. In the distance, the silhouette of The Hungry Griffon rested against the morning sky. "The Church's lapdog gave the Archmage three days before he shatters the tavern. If Malakai destroys that kitchen, the secret of forced advancement burns with it."

  "We cannot fight a Mage-Breaker, My Lord," Thorne replied, tapping a ring against his glass of wine. "If the Bishop catches us interfering with a sanctioned Church purge, we will hang from the Ivory Tower alongside the chef."

  "I don't want to fight the Bishop," Caelen snapped, turning around. "I want the recipe. Vane ate a single meal and shattered a twenty-year bottleneck. The Alchemist's Coalition has spent a millennium boiling rare herbs, and the best you’ve given me is a potion that gives me a mild headache and a burst of stamina."

  Thorne scowled, his pride wounded. "Alchemy is a refined science. Cooking is... it's peasant work. It's degrading."

  "It's effective," Caelen corrected coldly. He walked over to his desk and unrolled a map of the city and its surrounding plateaus. "The Archmage is too powerful to take by force. The Bishop proved that. But Soulsman is arrogant. He operates a public tavern. He has staff. Two children, according to my spies."

  Caelen tapped a gold-ringed finger onto the map.

  "We don't need to kill Adamas Soulsman. We just need to slip into his pantry before Malakai burns it down. Hire the Silk-Stalkers. Tell them to bypass the wards, ignore the Archmage, and steal his ledgers, his ingredient stock, and whatever notes that old fool has written down."

  Thorne’s eyes narrowed. "The Silk-Stalkers are expensive. And if they fail?"

  "Then they die," Caelen said simply. "But if they succeed, we will hold the monopoly on human ascension."

  Miles away, bathed in the soft, golden light of the early morning, the dining room of The Hungry Griffon was quiet.

  I sat alone at a small corner table, a steaming cup of Sun-Drop tea resting in my hands. The tea wasn't magical, not inherently. It was just a blend of dried herbs. But if you steeped it with water heated entirely by your own internal core, the leaves absorbed the calm of your aura.

  It tasted like a quiet morning.

  The heavy oak door to the kitchen swung open. Yuno walked out, carrying a large whetstone and his glass boning knife. He looked exhausted. Dark circles hung under his eyes, a clear sign he had spent the entire night running through the encounter with the Bishop in his head.

  A moment later, the front door of the tavern opened. Myria stepped inside, carrying an empty iron bucket. She had been out feeding the wyverns their scraps. Her tail was drooping, dragging slightly against the floorboards.

  "Sit," I said, gesturing to the two empty chairs at my table.

  They hesitated, but obeyed. Yuno set his whetstone down gently. Myria tucked her tail around her legs, looking intently at the grain of the wood. The crushing reality of Malakai's anti-magic still hung heavily over both of them.

  "You are both thinking about the void," I said, taking a slow sip of my tea.

  Yuno’s jaw tightened. "He didn't just suppress the ambient mana, Master. He unmade it. When he was in the room, I couldn't feel the leyline beneath the tavern. If I had tried to step into a shadow-walk, the technique wouldn't have just failed—it would have collapsed on me."

  "And my fire," Myria whispered, her ears pinning back. "I tried to summon a spark in the kitchen when he sat down. Just a tiny one. It felt like trying to light damp wood underwater. The Church built him to kill us."

  I set my teacup down.

  "The Church built him to kill mages," I corrected gently. "But we are not a battle-coven. We are a kitchen staff. And a kitchen does not shut down just because the oven breaks."

  I reached across the table and picked up Yuno's whetstone. It was a dense, heavy block of river-shale.

  "Malakai’s suppression tags create a vacuum," I explained, leaning back. "Magic in this world operates on pressure. If the ambient pressure is high, spells cast easily. Malakai's sword creates a zone of negative pressure. It violently sucks the mana out of the air, and out of your core, to fill the void."

  I tossed the whetstone to Yuno. He caught it instinctively.

  "But he cannot unmake what is already physically permanent," I continued. "Malakai snuffed out the glow-crystals because their light relies on a continuous flow of energy. But he didn't un-cook the basilisk meat, did he? The earth mana had already fundamentally altered the protein structure of the flesh. It was locked in."

  Myria’s ears twitched, slowly rising. "So... if the magic is already part of the ingredient's body..."

  "The void can't touch it," Yuno finished, his dark eyes widening slightly as the realization hit him. "He can stop a fireball. But he can't stop a physical reaction that has already occurred."

  "Exactly," I smiled. "The Ivory Tower teaches mages to project their power outward. To cast spells. To rely on the air. Malakai feeds on that outward projection. So, we will not project."

  I looked at both of my disciples, letting the quiet, chill atmosphere of the morning sink in.

  "For the next three days, you will not cast a single spell into the open air. You will learn to internalize your core entirely. You will cook, chop, and move using only the mana locked safely inside your own blood and the ingredients on the board."

  The kitchen of The Hungry Griffon felt strangely hollow without the roaring blue fire of the main hearth.

  Morning sunlight filtered through the porthole windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. I sat on a stool near the washbasins, nursing my cup of tea, watching my disciples unlearn everything they thought they knew about their own bodies.

  "You are leaking, Yuno," I said quietly.

  At the central prep island, Yuno froze. He stood over a wooden cutting board, a dozen tough, fibrous Iron-Root onions waiting to be diced. His glass boning knife was held in a standard chef's grip, but his knuckles were pale.

  "I didn't channel anything, Master," he replied, his voice tight with frustration.

  "You didn't cast a spell," I corrected. "But you relied on the ambient mana to grease the wheels. Assassins and martial artists pull the air's energy into their muscles to reduce friction and enhance speed. Malakai's void will strip that away. It will make the air feel like molasses. You have to lock your gates."

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  I tapped my chest. "Keep the mana in your blood. Circulate it beneath the skin. Do not let it touch the air."

  Yuno closed his eyes. He took a slow, measured breath. I could see the faint, imperceptible shimmer of his aura retracting, pulling tight against his skin until it vanished entirely. He looked heavier somehow. Grounded.

  He opened his eyes and brought the glass blade down on the first onion.

  Thwack. It was a clumsy, heavy sound. The blade bit into the dense root, but it caught halfway through. Yuno frowned, trying to force it down, but the angle was slightly off. Without the subconscious buffer of external mana guiding his wrist, his raw physical technique was suddenly laid bare. It wasn't bad, but it lacked the terrifying, silken speed he usually displayed.

  He pulled the knife free, his jaw set. He adjusted his stance, widening his feet to draw power from his hips rather than his shoulders. He struck again. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The rhythm was slower, methodical, and painfully human. Sweat began to bead on his forehead just from the sheer mental exertion of keeping his core locked tight while performing manual labor. The cuts weren't uniform—some were a fraction of a millimeter thicker than the rest—but he was adapting. He was learning to rely solely on the weight of his own bones.

  "Better," I murmured. I turned my attention to the other side of the kitchen. "Myria. Stop trying to set the bowl on fire."

  Myria groaned, dropping her forehead against the cool stone of the counter. She had a heavy granite mortar and pestle in front of her. Inside the bowl rested a handful of dried Sun-Flare peppercorns.

  "It's just sitting there," she complained, her golden tail hanging limp behind her. "Normally, I'd just push a spark of fire mana into the bowl to toast them before grinding. How am I supposed to heat them without projecting a flame?"

  "The peppercorns already possess latent fire mana," I explained, walking over to her station. I picked up a single, dried red peppercorn. "The sun did the work while they grew. The heat is trapped inside the shell. You don't need to add fire; you need to coax out what is already there."

  I dropped the peppercorn back into the mortar.

  "Press your hands against the granite. Push your internal mana into your palms, but do not let it breach your skin. Vibrate your own blood to match the resonant frequency of the spice. Let your body heat act as the key."

  Myria flattened her ears, looking skeptically at the bowl. She placed her palms flat against the thick granite sides. She closed her eyes, her brow furrowing in deep concentration.

  For a long minute, nothing happened. Then, the faint, sharp scent of toasted chili and warm earth drifted up from the bowl.

  Myria’s eyes snapped open. The granite was growing warm beneath her hands. Inside the mortar, the Sun-Flare peppercorns began to crackle softly, their dry husks splitting open as their internal heat was stimulated by her physical resonance.

  "It's working!" she gasped, a wide, fanged grin breaking across her face. "Master, I'm doing it! I'm cooking without the—"

  In her excitement, her concentration slipped. A tiny, chaotic pulse of her untamed mana leaked out of her palms and into the stone.

  Pop. A thick cloud of spicy, red smoke erupted from the mortar directly into Myria’s face. She coughed violently, waving her hands to clear the air, her eyes watering.

  From the other side of the kitchen, Yuno didn't look up from his cutting board, but the subtle, rhythmic thwack of his knife paused for a fraction of a second. "Focus on the ingredient, Myria. Not your ego."

  "Shut up, knife-boy," she wheezed, rubbing her stinging nose with the back of her wrist. "At least I made something happen. You're just fighting an onion."

  I let out a low chuckle, walking back to my tea. It was messy. It was unrefined. They were stumbling through the dark, trying to figure out how to walk without the crutches they had leaned on their entire lives.

  But as the morning wore on, the pile of uniformly diced onions grew larger, and the scent of properly toasted, smokeless spices finally began to fill the kitchen. The panic of the Bishop's ultimatum was slowly being replaced by the familiar, grounding rhythm of hard work.

  They were getting ready.

  Night fell over Oakhaven, painting the southern plateau in shades of deep indigo and silver moonlight. Outside The Hungry Griffon, the wyverns slept heavily, their massive chests rising and falling in rhythmic, rumbling snores.

  Inside the tavern, the glow-crystals had been dimmed to a faint, ambient hum. The dining room was empty. The kitchen was cold.

  And the shadows were moving.

  Three figures slipped through the cracked window of the second-floor storeroom. They did not trigger the ward-stones. The Silk-Stalkers were elite for a reason; they coated their bodies in a specialized, mana-dampening alchemical paste that made them invisible to standard magical detection. They moved with terrifying, fluid silence, their dark leather armor scraping against nothing.

  Their leader gestured with two fingers down the stairwell. Find the ledgers. Find the recipes. Ignore the inhabitants unless they wake.

  The leader slipped down the wooden steps, bypassing the creaky floorboards with practiced ease. He pushed open the swinging doors to the kitchen, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He needed the Archmage's private pantry lockbox.

  He didn't notice the boy standing in the corner until the boy inhaled.

  Yuno stood perfectly still next to the hanging copper pots. Normally, an assassin of the Silk-Stalkers would have sensed a threat. They would have felt the subtle shift in the room's ambient mana as a fighter prepared to strike. But there was no shift. Yuno had locked his core entirely. He was a closed circuit.

  The assassin drew a serrated trench knife and lunged, a silent, deadly blur.

  Yuno stepped forward to intercept. Without the external buffer of his wind mana, his lead foot came down a fraction of an inch too heavy. His boot gave a faint, dull scuff against the floorboards. It wasn't the flawless, gliding footwork of his usual shadow-walk. It was heavy. It was physical.

  But it was enough.

  Yuno adjusted his weight, pivoting off his back heel exactly as he had done with the dense Iron-Root onions that morning. He didn't try to parry the assassin's blade. He ducked under the swing, bringing his glass boning knife up in a tight, brutal arc.

  He didn't use magic to enhance the cut. He used torque, driving the momentum from his hips through his shoulder. The glass edge found the seam of the assassin's hardened leather breastplate, sliding into the softer connective tissue beneath the arm.

  The assassin's eyes went wide. He tried to twist away, but Yuno twisted the blade first, severing the brachial artery and the nerve cluster in one messy, mechanical motion. The man collapsed, dropping his knife with a muted clatter, unconscious before he even hit the floor.

  Yuno stepped back, exhaling slowly. His breathing was slightly ragged. It had taken twice the physical effort to execute the move without his mana, but it had worked. He was invisible to the void.

  Out in the hallway, a muffled thump echoed, followed by a sharp, panicked hiss.

  The second and third assassins had made it to the ground floor, only to find the hallway blocked. Myria stood at the end of the corridor, her golden eyes reflecting the faint moonlight. Her tail was completely still.

  The two assassins didn't hesitate. They rushed her in tandem, short-swords drawn.

  Myria didn't chant. She didn't summon a roaring blue flame to incinerate the hallway. She held her ground, her ears pinning back flat against her head.

  As the first assassin thrust his blade toward her chest, she stepped inside his guard. It was a sloppy dodge—the edge of the sword nicked the sleeve of her tunic—but she closed the distance. She slammed both of her bare palms flat against the iron-plated center of the assassin's chest armor.

  She closed her eyes and pushed her internalized mana into her palms, violently vibrating her blood against the metal.

  She treated the assassin like a dry peppercorn.

  The heavy iron chest plate didn't just get warm; it flash-heated from the inside out. A sickening sizzle filled the hallway as the metal instantly reached a branding temperature. The assassin let out a strangled, agonizing gasp, his nervous system completely overwhelmed by the sudden, localized extreme heat. He crumpled to the floor, tearing at his own armor.

  The third assassin froze, staring in horror at his fallen comrade. There had been no flash of light. No incantation. Just a touch.

  Myria looked up at him. She was panting, and she winced, looking down at her own palms. The technique wasn't mastered yet; the sheer conductive blowback had blistered her own skin, leaving angry red welts across her hands.

  The surviving assassin took one look at the beastfolk girl's burned hands and wild eyes, dropped his sword, and bolted for the front door.

  He threw the heavy oak door open and ran out into the night—straight into the massive, scaly chest of Crimson. The red wyvern had woken up. It looked down at the terrified man, let out a low, rumbling growl that shook the dirt, and snapped its jaws shut.

  Silence returned to the plateau.

  A moment later, the door to my private quarters opened. I walked out holding a small, glowing lantern, my slippers making soft padding sounds against the floorboards.

  I looked down the hallway at Myria, who was cradling her blistered hands, and then into the kitchen, where Yuno was quietly wiping a smear of blood off the floorboards with a rag.

  I held up my lantern, illuminating the groaning assassin with the scorched chest plate, and the unconscious one bleeding out near the pantry.

  "I explicitly stated that we were closed for the evening," I said, my voice cutting through the quiet aftermath. I looked at Yuno's heavy stance and Myria's burned palms. They had survived without projecting. They had learned to fight inside the void.

  I let out a small, approving sigh.

  "Yuno, tie them up and leave them on the edge of the plateau for the city guard. Myria, go to the medicinal cabinet and get the frost-salve for your hands. It was a sloppy heat transfer, but the core principle was sound."

  I turned back toward my room.

  "Clean up the mess, you two. Tomorrow is Day Two. We have a menu to finalize, and I won't have pests ruining my kitchen's reputation."