Breaking into Venn's cottage was suicide.
They did it anyway.
Seris used her Chaos fragment to mask their presenceāa skill she called "Shadow Veil." It made them harder to see, harder to hear, harder to detect.
Varyan picked the lock. The door swung open.
Inside, the cottage was cold. Not winter cold. Wrong cold. The kind that seeped into your bones and made your breath fog.
The walls were covered in maps. Maps of the academy. Maps of fragment-bearer locations across the empire. Maps of something elseāsomething with symbols Varyan didn't recognize.
On a table in the center of the room sat glass jars.
Jars filled with glowing shards.
[Chaos fragments. Harvested. Dozens of them.]
Seris's face went pale. "This is... this is years of work. Decades."
"Then we burn it all."
They moved quickly. Gathering evidence. Pouring oil. Preparing to destroy everything.
Then the door slammed shut behind them.
"You shouldn't have come here," said a voice.
Professor Aldric Venn stepped out of the shadows. He looked exactly as he did in classākind face, gentle eyes, grandfatherly smile.
But his hands were covered in frost.
And behind him, the Chaos stalker emerged from the floo
r.
*"Children are so impatient."*