Free Web NovelChapter 22: Chapter 22. The Aftermath
Every eye in the room was fixed on the screen.
Several mouths were open.
Single attribute.
Lightning.
No one was laughing now. The thought didn’t even seem to occur to anyone. If anything, most of the students had gone cold, a deep, bone-level chill that had nothing to do with the storm still rumbling overhead. What they had just witnessed refused to leave them. It sat behind their eyes, replaying on a loop they couldn’t stop.
Even Carlos was motionless.
Lightning.
For years he had regarded it as an inferior affinity powerful in theory, impractical in reality. An element that appeared impressive but rarely justified the effort required to master it.
Yet the sight before him refused to fit that conclusion.
For the first time in a very long while, Carlos found himself questioning something he had accepted as fact.
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Lyra stared at the screen.
Her eyes were wide and unblinking.
Something was moving through her that she couldn’t name, couldn’t even begin to articulate. Her whole life, her father had looked at this affinity as though it were a mark of shame, something to be apologized for, something that explained everything wrong with her. Lightning. Only Lightning. Just Lightning.
And yet.
Necrotize had the same one.
The thought kept returning to her, strange and insistent. Not consolation, exactly, something with more weight than that. A pull toward something she hadn’t known she was looking for.
He has the same element as me. And only one at that.
But a thought ran through her mind all of a sudden. Did he really have only one element or is he doing this for her. After all he is the God of Destruction. Him having one element is really unusual and impossible to think of.
Why is he doing this for me? I am just a mortal who has nothing to offer him.
***
Necrotize drew his hand back from the orb.
Then he turned and looked at Nicholas directly.
"I am also a single-attribute holder," he said. His voice was even, almost mild, but it filled the silence completely. "By your own reasoning, I would like to formally request a transfer out of the Magic Department as well." A pause, unhurried. "What will you do, Professor?"
Nicholas held his gaze for a long moment.
The training grounds were still dark. The last of the thunder moved distantly across the horizon. Around them, the students who remained standing did so with visible effort, faces pale, expressions hollowed out, some of them leaning subtly against whatever was nearby.
Nicholas exhaled.
Necrotize. What are you trying to accomplish? I clearly know you don’t have only one element. But why are you claiming to have one.
"I will speak with Chancellor Eric," he said. "A decision will be made."
He looked out over the room. Most of the class was in no condition to continue, that much was obvious. The color had drained from too many faces. A few students looked like they were calculating, with quiet desperation, exactly how long until they could reasonably leave.
Nicholas made the assessment quickly and without comment.
"Class is dismissed for today."
***
Elizabeth sat at her desk, her gaze fixed on the unfolding scene beyond the classroom windows.
She had witnessed every moment of it, the sky darkening without warning, the crack of thunder splitting the air, and that strange, all-consuming light that had flooded every corner of the academy in a single, breathless instant.
The moment it happened, one name surfaced in her mind.
Necrotize.
No one else within these walls could have done something like this. No one else came close.
She glanced around the room. Most of her classmates had gone pale, their composure visibly crumbling. Even the professor who had been mid-lecture was dabbing sweat from his temple with the back of his hand.
Elizabeth exhaled quietly.
What she couldn’t quite work out was why. Yesterday, Necrotize had sat through class without causing a single disruption. During the sparring match, he had even managed to keep his power reined in, something that hadn’t gone unnoticed. So what had changed between then and now? What had pushed him to do this?
Not that it was necessarily Elizabeth’s problem to solve.
But she had been given a responsibility. One she hadn’t asked for, and one she had no particular desire to carry. Still, a responsibility was a responsibility.
She was supposed to look after Necrotize.
After class, she decided. I’ll find him after class.
***
The moment Nicholas dismissed them, a portal split open behind him and he stepped through without ceremony, leaving the room as abruptly as the storm had arrived.
The rest of the class was still struggling to collect themselves.
Necrotize let out a slow, measured breath. For the first time, he actually looked at the people around him. Faces drained of colour. Hands trembling against desks. The kind of stillness that followed something that had genuinely frightened people.
He turned his eyes upward.
The entire sky was blanketed in black clouds, heavy and churning. A darkness had swallowed the academy grounds, not the peaceful kind, but the breathless, suffocating kind. Lightning coiled silently between the clouds, waiting.
He sighed.
Then he raised one hand toward the sky, almost lazily, and gave a wave.
The clouds vanished. All of them, at once, as though they had never existed. Sunlight broke across the academy grounds in an instant, warm and unhurried, like nothing had happened at all.
Every student in the vicinity stared at him, wide-eyed, unblinking, caught somewhere between disbelief and awe.
Necrotize didn’t look back at them. He glanced at Lyra instead.
"Let’s go."
