The Glitched Mage

The days following the treaty were unlike anything the Shadow Kingdom had known before.

The skies were no longer silent. Trade birds and gliding constructs circled the spires of the Academy like moths to a flame. From the upper terraces, the Academy's architects watched the influx from above. From below, the people looked upward and wondered if the sun had been replaced by a citadel.

The Academy's outer shell had been finished, its floating wings gleaming with runed stone and reinforced glass. But the true work had just begun.

The forge-wing of Ignis roared at all hours, preparing staves, armor, and arcane implements. The sacred vaults of Umbral were layered with binding seals and silence wards. Zephar's floating walkways were tested with simulated windstorms. Terran's greenhouses bloomed uncontrollably—fed by altar mana and Mal's experimental soils. Thalor's submersion chambers were flooded, drained, and flooded again. Lumae's observatory was fitted with a floating array of mirrored scrying lenses, drifting like stars just beneath the central dome.

The Academy was not yet open to the world.

But it was beginning to stir—preparing itself for the first chosen to enter its halls.

Not in haste.

Not in grandeur.

But with quiet strength and deliberate intention.

Riven moved through its halls quietly in the days that followed—often alone, sometimes flanked by one of the generals. He made no announcements. Held no fanfare. But his presence was felt in every corner of the Academy. It was in the way the lights dimmed slightly when he passed, how the mana flow curved subtly toward him. The Academy recognized its maker.

And outside, the kingdom swelled.

—x—

Within two weeks of the treaty's announcement, over three thousand people had arrived at the kingdom's southern border.

Damon oversaw the new intake stations—blacksteel outposts built just outside the edge of the leyline field. His soldiers worked alongside necromancer aides and Shadow Knights, filtering the incoming hopefuls. Some were turned away. Some were questioned. Most were registered and sent to the camps that had formed beyond the main roads.

The fields south of the city became a city in themselves.

Tents lined the hills like strange petals. Carts formed merchant roads. Open fires crackled at night, casting long shadows across the valley. There were healers offering their talents in exchange for lodgings, alchemists brewing simple potions, even a few rogue mages casting fireworks into the sky in a plea for attention.

And over all of it, the Sky Gate glowed—steady, unwavering.

Every morning, a few were selected. Those who had pledged loyalty to the kingdom. Those who had proven their ability, or made something undeniably useful.

Every morning, the Sky Gate lit with light and six mages vanished into the heavens.

Some returned.

Most did not.

Because those chosen to ascend were housed in the floating citadel now. Preparing. Training. Serving. Not as students yet—but as founders. Groundskeepers. Librarians. Silent sentinels of the Academy's future.

Riven had made it clear: the Academy would not open until it was ready to hold the weight of what it had become.

Until then, it would grow like a seed—out of reach, but not out of sight.

—x—

The next time Kael Danu arrived, he was not alone.

Six warriors clad in imperial plate followed him—mage-knights, each trained in the harmonization of weapon and spell. Their presence was not ornamental. Riven could feel it the moment they stepped through the outer ward. They pulsed with potential. Each one had been handpicked.

In the council chamber high within the Eye of the Academy—its walls etched with starlight runes and windows casting fractured beams across the obsidian floor—Kael Danu stepped forward and laid the final parchment on the central table.

It was not just paper.

It was legacy made tangible.

The seal of the Danu Empire shimmered at its crest, waxed in imperial silver and threaded with a binding spell that pulsed faintly in the mana-charged air. The parchment itself was dense vellum, the ink still fresh with magical resonance. Every letter carved onto it had been reviewed by scholars, weighed by generals, and blessed by the Empire's high mages.

Kael's voice echoed, clear and measured. "The Danu Empire stands with the Shadow Kingdom—not merely for the strength you've shown, but for the vision you now embody."

Silence followed. Not one of uncertainty, but of quiet awe.

Riven said nothing at first. He took the parchment in his hands, unrolling it slowly, deliberately. His eyes scanned the words—each clause deliberate, every sentence edged in formality and weight.

It promised military aid in times of siege, the deployment of Danu's elite mage-knights to safeguard the southern frontier. It granted the Academy rights to shared magical archives and limited scholarly exchanges. But most of all, it bore a singular recognition—declaring the Shadow Kingdom and its floating Academy not as rebellion or relic, but as sovereign territory, bound to no crown but its own.

It was, in truth, more than Riven had expected.

And exactly what he needed.

He nodded once.

Then pressed his palm to the lower glyph—a flame-shaped sigil crafted in abyssal ink, meant only for him.

The magic flared.

Golden light spilled outward in quiet ripples, dancing through the runes embedded in the table and across the floor. The air vibrated with soft resonance, like a distant bell being rung beneath the skin of the world. Symbols across the walls glowed momentarily, echoing the spell's acceptance.

A pact formed not only in politics, but in power.

Recognition.

Acknowledgement.

Alliance.

The treaty shimmered once more, then settled into stillness—its spells sealed, its promises forged.

It would take weeks for the full impact to ripple across the continent. For now, messengers would ride, and whispers would grow louder. In courtrooms, embassies, and war chambers across the realms, the old powers would stir.

But the truth had already taken root—deeper than rumor, steadier than speculation. It had spread like veins through the earth, through politics, through whispered conversations in royal courts and dim taverns alike.

The Shadow Kingdom was no longer a phantom glimpsed between war reports and intelligence briefings. No longer the whispered myth of a ruined land clinging to old bones and darker magic.

It had stepped out of obscurity.

Claimed space on the map.

Stood tall where no power was meant to rise.

It had a name now that others were forced to speak—not with disdain, but with calculation. With unease. With reluctant respect.

It was no longer a rumor.

No longer alone.

—x—

Three nights after the treaty was sealed, the Sky Gate pulsed with silver-blue light—and the first students from the Danu Empire arrived.

They stepped into the heart of the Academy like shadows drawn by destiny.

Clad in obsidian-trimmed robes and bearing the crest of the Danu crown, they emerged from the teleportation array in silence. No fanfare. No announcement. Only the subtle weight of presence—the kind carried by those raised in courts of power, trained in libraries older than cities, and tempered in both etiquette and steel.

Their eyes gleamed with calculation.

Their footsteps were measured.

And every movement whispered of discipline.

Aria watched from the edge of the atrium as they arrived—unflinching, unreadable. She had seen soldiers march into warzones with less poise than these so-called students.

She didn't wait long to act.

Evaluation began immediately.

Each Danu initiate was escorted—without exception—to the sanctum of Lumae, the wing of light and divination. There, beneath the crystal arches and starlit maps, Aria stood before them as the chosen arbiter.

They were given no room to bargain.

In the presence of Lumae's celestial flame—a pale fire suspended in the air like a floating star—each student recited the binding vow: to uphold the laws of the Academy, obey its governance, and never wield its knowledge against the kingdom that granted it.

Falsehood, in that sanctum, did not merely sting—it burned.

One initiate faltered. The flame hissed. His tongue blistered as the lie cracked his voice. He was escorted out in silence and sent back through the Sky Gate before sundown.

The rest passed.

And with that, the Academy accepted its first true students.

—x—

But not all who came bore Danu blood.

By the fourth week, messages began to arrive from every corner of the world.

A courier in ash-colored robes brought whispers from the eastern free cities—cities ruled more by guilds than kings, desperate for recognition and eager for relevance.

A gilded scroll, sealed with black wax, came from the Ashmark Syndicate—an offer of resources in exchange for "partnership rights."

And then, wrapped in silk and arrogance, came a veiled envoy from Solis.

The scroll arrived in a case of midnight-stained wood, its edges inlaid with polished gold, its seal marked with the sunburst crest of Solis. The parchment within bore words that shimmered faintly with divination ink—magic woven not for attack or defense, but diplomacy. Every stroke of the calligraphy was deliberate, composed in the careful hand of someone trained to use language as a blade sheathed in silk.

It was a request, cloaked as an invitation. A carefully postured gesture from a kingdom that had once named necromancers heretics and condemned the very kind of magic the Academy now taught.

They called it an offer of peace.

An "observation accord," they wrote—an agreement that would allow hand-picked emissaries and sanctioned scholars from Solis to walk the halls of the Shadow Academy, under guard and supervision, of course. There would be no recording of rituals, they claimed. No theft of secrets. Only a friendly exchange of ideas. An opportunity to "bridge realms through shared curiosity."

Riven read it once. Quietly. Thoroughly.

Then, without ceremony or a second glance, he let the flame rise from his palm and set the scroll ablaze.

The parchment blackened at once, edges curling like dying petals as the fire took it—not in anger, but in absolute dismissal. By the time the embers faded, not even ash remained on the table where it had rested.

Other offers had come in its wake. Missives from eastern consortiums, curious trade guilds, minor houses who had stayed silent during Solis's purges but now saw value in whispering promises of support. Some offered coin. Others, scrolls, or supposed "access to rare sites of elemental convergence."

Riven accepted none. He didn't need coin. He didn't need alliances draped in hesitation. What he needed was clarity. What he required was commitment.

And so, the decree went out—not tucked inside letters or traded behind sealed doors, but spoken aloud in the halls of the Academy and carried on enchanted wind to every corner of the kingdom. It became law, not suggestion.

Only two paths would grant entry to the Shadow Academy.

The first: be of the Danu Empire, bound by the treaty sealed in fire and ink, vetted and trusted as allies.

The second: swear full and final loyalty to the Shadow Kingdom. Not provisional allegiance. Not intellectual partnership. True, binding fealty.

There would be no in-betweens. No scholars clinging to titles from foreign crowns while hoping to sip the kingdom's knowledge like borrowed wine. No envoys smiling politely while measuring the strength of the walls for someone else's benefit. The Academy was not a sanctuary for opportunists. It was not a gallery to be toured. It was not a shrine to be admired from behind veils.

It was a fortress of thought. A crucible of spell and spirit. A kingdom's beating heart, suspended in the sky.

And it would not be shared lightly.

The reaction was immediate. Across the continent, the announcement struck like a hammer falling on fragile glass. Some called it madness. Others, tyranny. Old scholars scoffed at the arrogance, while younger ones whispered that it was bold in a way the world had forgotten how to be.

The Solis court sent no reply. But their silence rang louder than any rebuttal. Behind closed doors, the nobles seethed. Their king was said to have struck down a serving table in fury. But fury could not change the shape of the sky. And the Academy remained, untouchable above them.

Still, the decree did not stop the flood.

If anything, it refined it.

The curious no longer came out of idle interest. The opportunists, the spies, the fair-weather allies—many vanished, their silence as telling as their absence.

But those who truly wanted to be part of what was rising?

They kept coming.

The road south of the capital thickened with travel again—caravans of mages and builders, alchemists, scholars, and refugees who had given up their names and banners to claim something new. They brought what they could carry. Scrolls worn thin by generations of use. Tomes wrapped in cloth. Artifacts hidden for decades. Some even brought spells they had written themselves, offered not as bargaining chips, but as tributes—proof that they were not coming to take, but to give.

A necromancer from the fallen city of Thane arrived with her oath already carved into her skin in a spiral of sigils. An old elemental tamer whose flame had guttered decades ago walked for days on a shattered leg, offering nothing but the memory of techniques no one else remembered. A teacher from the eastern wastes arrived barefoot, claiming he had nothing but questions, and he was willing to give everything for the right to seek answers.

They came by the dozens. Then by the hundreds.

And when they reached the gates, they were not greeted with hospitality or ceremony. They were given the terms. Clear. Simple.

Swear.

Or leave.

Most of them knelt.

Inside the sanctum of Lumae, the oath-ceremonies ran without pause. Elara, Aria, and a half-dozen stewards of the Academy rotated through them with a discipline born not from cruelty—but necessity. The Lumae flame, that shimmering core of divination and truth, judged each vow with merciless precision. It could not be bribed. It could not be deceived.

And for those who passed, the Academy opened.

Not as visitors.

Not as tourists.

As citizens.

As students of a kingdom that was not only surviving—but ascending.

The halls of the Academy grew louder—not with chaos, but with purpose. Footsteps echoed through the lower spires, accompanied by the rustle of robes, the hum of spellwork, the soft thump of ancient tomes being carried into place. Some came to serve. Others to learn. A few were there only to witness—but all had sworn, and so all belonged.

Elara and Aria alternated presiding over them in the Lumae sanctum. Mal oversaw magical compatibility. Damon managed housing in the expanding districts below. Krux patrolled the outer wards with growing battalions. Nyx simply watched, amused, from the rooftops and shadows.

And every day, the Academy pulsed with new light.

—x—

By the sixth week, the plateau beneath the floating citadel had transformed.

Where once there was scorched earth and loose stone, there now stood a fledgling district of lantern-lit streets and humming ley-threaded stone. A second city—smaller, but growing—sprawled around the Sky Gate.

Floating mana-lanterns drifted lazily between wooden awnings and crystal towers. The wind carried the scent of ink, sweat, and newly turned soil. Blackstone homes and circular domes were raised along the curve of the altar's breath, drawing power directly from the veins below. Every stone was inscribed. Every wall breathed mana.

Children chased shadows along glowing cobbles.

Vendors sold charm-scrolls and iron-ribbon wards beside rune-marked food stalls.

A woman sang to the altar near sundown, her voice laced with old tongue. The crops behind her glowed faintly with each note, as if the earth itself were humming back.

Riven stood at the highest arch of the Sky Gate's watchtower that evening, a shadow cut clean against the bleeding horizon.

The Academy hovered above like a great crown—silent, watching, vast.

Its towers shimmered in the twilight. Its wings bled color into the clouds. From this height, it looked almost like it was alive—less a building than a presence, a will, a declaration etched into the sky itself.

Below, the world moved.

Above, the future waited.