Headmaster Corvin's office looked different in daylight. Less ominous. The books on his shelves were old, well-loved, with cracked spines and handwritten notes in the margins.
He offered them tea. Seris declined. Tobin accepted, mostly to have something to hold.
"So," Corvin said, settling into his chair, "you killed Venn. And two of his associates. And you're being hunted by the Lord Harvest."
"That's about the size of it," Varyan said.
"And you want my help."
"We want information. You said you were a fragment-bearer. Order Fragment 03. What happened? Why aren't you still carrying it?"
Corvin was quiet for a long moment. He stared at his handsâold, spotted, wrinkled.
"I gave it away," he said finally. "There's a ritual. It's forbidden, dangerous, and it nearly killed me. But I passed the fragment to someone else. Someone younger. Stronger."
"Who?"
"My granddaughter. She's seventeen now. She doesn't come here. She's hidden, far from the academy, far from the Harvesters."
Varyan leaned forward. "Why did you give it up?"
"Because the fragment was destroying me. Order fragments aren't benign, boy. They consume as much as they give. I was losing myselfâmy memories, my personality, everything that made me *me*. The fragment wanted a vessel, not a person."
[ăECHOă: Order Fragment 03 was transferred via forbidden ritual. Success rate: 18%. Corvin survived but lost 60% of his fragment-enhanced abilities.]
"How do we stop the Lord Harvest?" Seris asked. "We can't keep fighting his minions forever."
"The Lord Harvest isn't one person," Corvin said. "It's a title. The leader of the Harvesters. No one knows their true identity. They could be a noble, a merchant, even a member of the royal family. What we do know is that they've been collecting fragments for decades. They have a vault somewhereâa vault filled with harvested shards."
"If we found the vaultâ"
"You could destroy it. And without their power source, the Harvesters would crumble." Corvin pulled a map from his desk. "I've been tracking their operations for years. This is everything I know."
The map was covered in markingsâlocations of suspected Harvester safe houses, fragment-bearer sightings, and trade routes.
"There's a pattern," Seris said, tracing the lines. "All the routes converge here." She pointed to a spot in the mountains, east of the academy.
"The Forbidden Peak," Corvin said. "No one goes there. The mountain is cursedâor so the stories say."
"Or the Harvesters want people to think it's cursed," Varyan said. "To keep them away."
"Exactly."
[New quest: "The Forbidden Peak" â Infiltrate the Harvester stronghold and destroy the fragment vault. Recommended level: 20. Current level: 10.]
Varyan looked at Seris. At Tobin.
"W
e need to get stronger," he said. "Much stronger."