Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 245

Thornhill Academy

The Cage and the Relic

54

Cage

The ring stops trying to kill us. That’s how I know we’re close. Buildings like this don’t give up. They adapt. They stop snapping and start watching. The silence ahead of us feels deliberate, like the pause before a blade finishes sliding in. My shoulder burns with every step, heat and wet sticking my sleeve to skin, but I don’t slow. Pain is a background noise. It always has been. Allison’s cage stays centred, shadows gripping it tight enough to creak, and she is not fighting randomly anymore. She’s reaching. Her hands rake the bars, nails screeching metal, body snapping toward the same direction every time we pass a sealed corridor or a junction. It’s hard enough that the shadows have to compensate to keep her from tipping the whole structure. The dark magic in her is awake in a way it hasn’t been yet. It’s now focused, tuned and dragging through the air like it knows exactly where it’s going. I feel it too, in the way the magic thins and stretches like something heavy is sitting just out of sight.

“This one,” I say, already moving.

Cassian doesn’t argue. I’m sure he can feel the magic’s intent behind this door. Kael’s grin is gone, posture shifting from chaos to kill. While Evander angles his body to cover the corridor behind us, calm and sharp and ready to burn the world if it looks at Allison wrong. Rhaziel’s shadows tighten instinctively around her. This door is different to the rest. Thicker than the others. Set into the curve of the ring like it grew there instead of being built, sigils crawling over its surface in layered patterns that scream containment and consequence. It’s magic hums low and deep, a vibration I feel in my jaw, and Allison lets out a sound behind me that makes something ugly twist in my chest. She hits the bars hard enough to rattle them. Once. Twice.

“Easy,” I mutter, even though I know she can’t hear me past the noise in her head now. The cage flares, runes drinking the overflow greedily, and the pull sharpens until the dark magic in the air bends visibly toward the door.

“This is the core vault,” Cassian says.

I don’t look back at him. “I know.”

I press my hand to the sigils and let my magic wake up. My warlock magic doesn’t bloom. It grinds. It crawls up from scars and lessons learned the hard way. The lock pushes back immediately, sampling, testing, trying to decide whether I’m a threat worth killing or a tool it can use. I bare my teeth and sink in deeper, listening, memorising the rhythm of its defences. The trick with locks like this is patience. They expect panic or brute force. They don’t expect someone who learned very young that resistance is expensive and silence buys time. Behind me, Allison slams into the cage again, harder, breath tearing in and out of her like she’s drowning on dry land.

“Cage,” Kael growls. “She’s losing it.”

“I know,” I say again, jaw clenched as I find the seam. “Give me a second.”

The wards scream when I peel them apart, pressure spiking, magic shrieking as the door realises too late what I’m doing. My shoulder pulses in protest as I twist my wrist, blood running warm down my arm, but the lock gives with a deep, shuddering groan. The door opens. Cold spills out, sharp and old, sending a chill down my spine. Allison’s reaction is immediate and violent, the cage rattling as she/surges forward, shadows straining to keep her contained. The chamber beyond is circular and deep, with walls carved with containment runes, layered so densely they look like scales, each pulsing faintly in time with a slow, steady beat. The relic floats at the centre. The relic hangs suspended at chest height in a rigid cradle of dark metal bands, curved like a ribcage around it. Each strut is etched with containment runes that glow dully and never quite touch the thing they’re holding. At the centre floats a dense, asymmetrical core, about the size of a human heart, faceted like a rough crystal but uneven, as if it were grown instead of cut. Black and violet magic bleeds from it in slow, lazy spirals, clinging to the edges before peeling away and snapping back again, like smoke caught in a magnetic field. The core shifts as I watch, its facets sliding and reforming, sometimes tapering into jagged points like a broken grown, sometimes rounding into something disturbingly organic. Thin veins of silver light thread through it from the inside, pulsing faintly, like stress fractures in glass or a heartbeat trying to escape its shell. The dark magic inside of Allison loves it. She presses against the bars, breath ragged, eyes locked on the relic with an intensity that makes my stomach knot. The pull in the room sharpens, the air vibrating with it, and the cage flares bright as it struggles to keep up.

“That’s it,” I say flatly. “That’s the relic.”

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14:28 Mon, Jan 19 *

The Cage and the Relic

Evander steps closer, eyes narrowing. “It’s active.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “It’s already feeding.”

Cassian looks at Allison, then back at me. “And you’re sure it can pull the corruption out of her?”

“Yes,” I say. Then I shake my head. “But not like this.”

54

Understanding hits him instantly. “The cage.”

“The cage blocks the flow,” I say. “It absorbs. Nulls. Keeps everything contained.” I turn, meeting his gaze without flinching. “If we want the dark magic to

move into the relic, we have to open the circuit.”

Kael swears softly. Evander stills. Cassian’s shoulders tighten, attention snapping back to Allison like he can hold her together just by looking.

“You’re saying we unlock her.”

I nod once. “Yes The relic will take what it’s tuned for. But the moment the cage opens, she’s free. We have to keep her in the room long enough for the

dark magic to leave her.”

Allison slams into the bars again, a sound ripping out of her that scrapes straight down my spine. The shadows creak against the bars, and the pull in the

room becomes almost unbearable.

Rhaziel steps forward at last. He studies Allison for a long moment, ancient and unreadable, then looks at me.

“I can hold her long enough in my arms,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “Just be prepared. Her body will fight, it won’t understand.”

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