Chapter 46: Echoes of the Abyss
The sky above Astaria Academia was streaked in pale lilac and gold by the time we returned, its towers cutting through dawn’s haze like sentinels watching over the sleeping realm. The flight back was silent — not the comfortable silence of camaraderie, but the heavy, stifling kind that clung to the air after witnessing something unspeakable.
I couldn’t stop seeing them.
The children.
Their small, frightened faces pressed together behind iron bars.
The way they were herded toward that thing — that black, pulsating sphere of corrupted mana — and the way their eyes dulled the moment their fingers brushed its surface.
It wasn’t just a weapon. It was theft — of will, of innocence, of soul.
“Luna.” Helios’s voice pulled me back to the present. We were alrea
