14. Tobin
Tobin
Grey magic reaches me.
I drive silver power into it. The strand divides around the attack, reforms behind it, and continues towards Asha.
“Containment means what?” Hale demands.
“Removal from active systems,” Blackridge replies.
“That’s still vague.”
“It means the chamber takes her.”
Hale’s fire strikes the floor before Blackridge finishes. Gold heat tears through the grey magic, clearing a path around Asha. The plaques react with a chorus of whispers.
Hellhound Prince.
Hale’s flames surge. “That’s me, arseholes. You want to try me?”
A plaque behind him burns red. Script runs across the silver surface before resolving into a designation.
Infernal Heir.
“Don’t talk to it,” I say.
The chain drops another foot.
Grey power erupts from the floor and closes around Asha’s ankle.
Hale grabs her first. Leith’s death-magic severs the strand while I force silver power into the point where it entered the stone. The chamber resists. Every plaque flashes at once, flooding my magic.
The classifications drive through my barriers. I cut the connection before they reach my memory.
One plaque remains bright.
It sits near the top of the wall, directly behind the pillar. No name appears across it. Silver script covers the surface, but purple magic has corrupted the final line.
“What does that one say?” I ask Blackridge.
He follows my attention. His expression hardens.
“Nothing relevant.”
“Then you won’t mind reading it.”
“We have bigger issues,” he says and blasts the chain with black magic that freezes it in place.
“Nice to see you have some authority over these sentient objects,” I remark.
He gives me a look that suggests he’d give me the finger if he were that sort of creature.
He’s not.
“Are you saying Hale was an anomaly?” I ask, staring back at Blackridge.
“Hey,” Hale growls. “Rude.”
“Hey,” Asha snarls at him. “Even ruder.”
“Hale wasn’t recorded here as an anomaly,” Blackridge says. “The chamber assesses every creature who enters.”
“Then why did you bring us in?” Hale demands.
“I didn’t expect you to wake the system.”
Asha gives him a vicious look. “You brought an exiled goddess, sovereign death, an infernal heir, and whatever the fuck Tobin is, not to mention you, into a room designed to imprison unusual power. What exactly did you expect?”
Blackridge’s attention cuts to me.
The plaques whisper.
Nothing happens.
Asha glances around. “It doesn’t have a name for him.”
Every silver plaque dims except the corrupted one behind the pillar.
Blackridge moves closer to the chain. “That’s concerning.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I was feeling left out.”
Silver magic gathers over my hands. I direct a controlled thread towards the bright plaque, keeping it above the grey power covering the floor. The chamber detects it at once.
The eye opens inside the pillar.
It doesn’t look at Asha this time.
It looks at me.
The purple iris contracts. Pressure strikes my mind and drives through my barriers before I can reinforce them.
The chamber searches me.
It moves through every magical system I’ve studied, every spell I’ve copied, every ward I’ve dismantled. Then it reaches the sealed space at the centre where my dual power lies. “Bingo,” I mutter.
The eye recoils, as much as an eye can.
“That’s right,” I say with a smirk. “Afraid? You should be.”
“Tobin?” Asha asks, giving me a curious look that isn’t entirely full of question. She knew something. She noticed.
The pressure withdraws from my mind, but not before catching the power I’ve kept sealed since childhood. My mother calls it an inheritance. My father calls it a threat. Every instructor who sensed it called it impossible before they died.
Everyone except Blackridge.
The corrupted plaque flashes.
Silver script vanishes beneath black marks, then returns in gold.
Unbound Source.
Grey power blasts from the pillar and races towards me instead of Asha. I throw silver magic into it, but the chamber has already searched my systems. It knows how I construct barriers. The grey power divides, passes through every gap, and closes around both wrists.
My internal power explodes outwards.
The restraints around my wrists shatter. Grey fragments strike the plaques, and every designation in the chamber screams.
Power erupts from my chest. It doesn’t burn. It unmakes. Hale’s fire vanishes when the gold reaches it, then returns white and violent. Leith’s death-magic recoils into his body.
Blackridge strikes me with a containment spell. “Move away from him.”
The containment spell burns like bitch.
The chain drops.
Leith throws death at it. Black power catches the final link before it reaches the floor, holding it inches above the grey surface.
Blackridge steps back and releases me.
My power continues pouring through the chamber. Silver plaques lose their designations as the gold touches them.
Asha stares at me with wide eyes and a furious little frown that says she’s adding this to the list of things I should’ve told her earlier.
That list is getting long.
“What the fuck are you?” Hale demands.
“Busy,” I snap.
The gold power rushes from me in steady pulses, and the chamber answers with panic. Every ward in here behaves like a creature trying to crawl out of its own skin.
The corrupted plaque behind the pillar burns brighter.
Unbound Source.
I dislike it already.
Blackridge moves between me and the pillar, power gathered in both hands. “Contain it.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, you’re assessing it. Contain it.”
“I assess while containing.”
“Arrogance won’t save you.”
“It has done solid work so far.”
Asha steps towards me, but Hale catches the back of her jacket. “No.”
She glares at him. “I swear to every dead god—”
“You move into that, and I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”
“You are two seconds from losing a hand.”
“Acceptable risk.”
Leith’s death-magic strains where it holds the chain above the floor. Black power runs up his arms and disappears beneath his sleeves. His face stays still, but blood beads beneath one eye.
The chamber wants me.
That becomes obvious when the grey power abandons Asha completely and crawls towards me in careful, testing lines.
“How flattering,” I mutter.
Asha growls, still struggling against Hale’s grip. “Stop making jokes while the murder room courts you.”
“It isn’t courting me.”
“It labelled you Unbound Source. That sounds like courtship in this place.”
Blackridge’s power tightens around the pillar. “It isn’t murder. It’s classification.”
Hale gives him an incredulous look. “It tried to take her through the floor.”
“Classification with consequences,” Blackridge amends.
“Your honesty is improving,” Asha says.
The chain drops another inch.
Leith hisses through his nose, and more black magic erupts from his hands. The final link trembles above the floor, caught between the chamber’s pull and his refusal.
I need to end this before the system decides to reclassify all of us into storage.
The gold power inside me keeps pushing out, not wild, exactly. Worse. Intelligent. It recognises the architecture of the chamber faster than I can name the individual spells. It slides through silver wards, finds the grey storm threads, and touches the corrupted purple beneath them.
Yseld.
Passive residue. A hook left inside the system long ago, small enough to hide until Asha walked in and woke the whole fucking thing.
I send a thread of gold power into the hook.
It bites back.
Pain rips through my body, sharp enough to steal my breath. My silver magic rises to defend me, but the gold power gets there first. It curls around the purple hook and squeezes.
The chamber screams again.
Every plaque on the walls flashes through names too fast to read. Things SilverGate feared enough to bury beneath Blackridge’s office and pretend it was filing paperwork.
“Asha,” I say, keeping my voice level through the pain. “Can you see where the purple goes?”
She stops fighting Hale.
“Into the pillar,” she says. “Then down. Deep, under the chamber.”
“Gate systems?”
“Maybe. It’s twisted through grey. It’s old. Fucking old.”
Hale still holds her jacket, but his attention stays on me. “Can you break it?”
“Yes.”
Blackridge snaps, “No.”
I glance at him. “That sounded urgent.”
“You will die.”
“Then lend me your power, so I don’t.” It’s a challenge laid bare and one he can’t—won’t—refuse.
“You are walking the line on the wrong side right now, Mr Tobin.”
I shrug, which moves him forward. A student dying in front of him, when he knows his power could’ve avoided the headache, goes against his warped moral code.
“End this,” Leith states. “Now.”
“On it,” I say and grip Blackridge’s hand.
His power enters me like a locked door, deciding I’m the key.
Cold first. Then pressure. Then a vast, controlled force that makes every ward in the chamber turn its attention towards us with immediate alarm.
“Do not take more than I give,” Blackridge says.
I nod. I’m not stupid.
His magic locks around mine. He lends structure, not trust. Typical. Still, it’s enough. My gold power stops surging outward in angry pulses and sharpens into a single line.
Asha’s voice cuts across the chamber. “Purple hook is on the lower left side of the pillar, beneath the eye. It branches down through the floor.”
“I see it.”
My power reaches beneath silver, through grey, around black, and finds the purple residue buried in the designation system.
Yseld’s hook tightens when I touch it.
It imitates the chamber. It pretends to be part of the original architecture. If Asha hadn’t seen the colour, if the chamber hadn’t panicked when it found me, we might’ve missed it completely.
I drive Blackridge’s borrowed control around the hook. The hook fights like a living thing.
It lashes through the grey storm threads and tries to drag them around my magic, but Blackridge’s control holds the shape of my attack steady. My power presses in behind it, gold and hungry, wanting to strip the entire system down to nothing.
I don’t let it.
That might be the most impressive thing I’ve done all week.
“Left,” Asha snaps. “It’s moving left.”
“I’m aware,” I murmur.
The hook drives into the floor.
The chamber reacts instantly. The grey power surges up around us, climbing my legs in tight bands. I cut through the first two, but the third reaches my knee before Hale’s white fire destroys it. The flame doesn’t touch me. It eats only the grey.
“End this, Mr Tobin. Don’t play with it.”
“Ending,” I murmur and put the last of my strength into it. I’m waning fast now. It’s hurting in every cell of my body. Half of me suspects that Blackridge’s power is doing the hurting.
I clamp my jaw and force my power into a narrower thread.
The hook slips.
Blackridge’s grip tightens on my hand. His power hardens through mine, adding pressure until my bones threaten to fracture from the inside. “Now, Mr Tobin.”
I seize the purple hook with gold power and rip.
The chamber buckles.
Every plaque detonates with light. They tear across my mind in fragments before I seal them out. Grey storm magic strikes the ceiling and rains back down in broken threads. Hale drives fire around Asha, shielding her as the floor splits beneath her boots.
Leith loses the chain.
It drops the final inch and touches the floor.
Silence.
Then the black pillar goes still.
“Finally,” Blackridge drawls, unimpressed.
I glower at him, panting heavily. “If you’re so underwhelmed, why didn’t you stop it?”
He stares back at me with a slow smile that makes me want to hit him.
If I had a death wish.