The Acolyte Robe I wore had stopped the limb of the demon from piercing through me, and I stood up, despite feeling as if my chest bone had been crushed.

I do not know precisely why I stood up when I should have been lying down and accepting my fate. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

I think I got up because I could hear the demon coming back, and if I did not get up, it would reach me while I was on the ground, and that would be worse.

Bari was shouting my name from somewhere to my left. The camp was chaos, people running, falling, the sound of Surge casts crackling and heavy spells being released from the direction of the Academy mages, who had stopped retreating and were making a stand near the pyramid’s base, Commander Rel’s voice cutting through everything as she called for a defensive formation.

All of these details entered my mind in an instant, and in the back of my head, my status screen sent an update.

Observation 21 — 22 (Initiate)

Endurance 13 — 15 (Initiate)

I had never had such quick growth before, even though I heard about how facing dangerous situations and powerful opposition could rapidly grow your power as a Mage, but what was the use of this quick growth when you would not be alive to enjoy it?

A crash ahead, so close to me, caused me to look up and see the demon charging at me. In the brief moment I was distracted, it had already killed Bari and Dara, their bodies had been pulled apart the way a child breaks a doll, and Rex was nowhere to be found.

The demon was heading towards me, and once more I thought I would be afraid, but I was not. Maybe this was adrenaline or the last spark of resolve before everything crashed. I cannot tell, all I know is that I could not die on my back, only fight with everything I had.

Once again, my status screen vibrated with an update, perhaps the most important update I had gotten so far, but I did not really care at this moment.

Anima Depth: 34 — 35 (Acolyte)

I pushed my staff forward and cast Threadwork at the charging demon.

Magic is drawn from the soul itself, a substance the ancient academies call Anima. Every living being has it, but only those with the right inner structure can consciously shape it.

Mages don’t cast spells so much as they bleed them, as every act of magic costs something real, and it was not just fatigue, but a thinning of the self.

We have been taught that, as the special few with high Anima sensitivity and growth potential, as Acolytes, we should not push ourselves too much at the beginning.

Our ability to control magic was like a muscle, and we were still infants, so we should learn to walk before we ran.

Even as a full mage, control was still important because if you push too hard, you stop feeling things.

Push further, and you forget things, as the magic ate your soul as fuel, and you could pay the ultimate cost if you cast beyond your limit, and that is permanent soul-damage, leaving a mage hollow, vacant, alive but no longer quite there.

This was what made powerful magic genuinely frightening, not just dangerous.

The growth of a mage is slow and steady as we gradually expand the boundary of our souls and increase our Anima Depth.

With all these lessons, as Acolyte, we do not just cast spells carelessly, we made sure that we kept a tight lock over our Anima Depths, opening up a small channel for our soul power to flow through the channels of the spell, and we have been grilled many times not to go below ten percent soul power, below that is when the soul begins to wither away.

I cast Threadwork for the first time in my life without placing any control over my Anima Depth. In my mind, I would be dead before tearing my soul apart would even matter.

I had not really learned to use Threadwork offensively; it was not really a spell designed for something like that at the Acolyte level when our Anima Depths were still too weak to support attack configurations, but there had always been countless thoughts in my mind as to where I could take this spell if I had the opportunity to go all out.

With death rushing at my face, I did not have time to think much as I cast the dense lattice seal that Master Seravyn had shown us once, the kind designed to slow fast things, and I cast it directly in the demon’s path and threw every point of Anima Depth I had into holding it.

In front of me, what resembled a bright blue net appeared for an instant before it turned colorless.

"Boom!"

The ground seemed to shake as the demon hit the seal at full speed... and it slowed, the way running through deep water slows you.

The demon kept fighting the lattice with the brute indifference of something that did not understand what resistance was, only that it existed and needed to be overcome.

I held the seal with both hands around my staff and my teeth clenched, and every thread of concentration I possessed, and I bought myself approximately four seconds.

In any other time, holding this demon would be everything that I could do without risking my soul being torn apart, but I pushed through the strain, and in those four seconds, I cast Spark three more times, targeting the jaw structure of the demon each time, trying to reproduce whatever had stopped it before.

The first cast missed, but I was not surprised that it did, with the strain I was under. The second grazed it. The third hit clean, and the demon made a sound, the first sound I had heard it make, a high, flat tone that was more vibration than noise, and the pause it caused was longer this time, nearly two seconds.

The lattice broke with a loud snap, and I heard something crack inside my soul. I had nothing left to hold it with.

Although I knew I had just held this demon back for six seconds, I found myself smiling when I remembered the sound the demon made, because it almost sounded surprised.