Duelcrest Academy

18. Unseen

I heard someone approach behind me. It was Amy that finally caught up to me, out of breath.

«Lizzie, what's... oh!»

With a glance at the scoreboard, she quickly realized what was wrong.

«92!? Wasn't it supposed to be 93?» she asked, her voice trembling.

From her tone it was clear that she hoped to be contradicted.
But there were no doubts. Another of our classmates had died. And this time, it wasn't the school who killed them.

As confirmation, among the ranks of the fallen, another name had appeared that wasn't there before, crossed out as usual with a large X.

Mary Stillwater

I didn't know her personally, but I remembered seeing her name about halfway up the leaderboard.
But... who killed her? A new innate power wielder, or just a regular mage?
And when? While coming to class I didn't notice any commotion...

As if reading my mind, Amy promptly approached the girl who continued to cry desperately. She helped her get up off the ground and embraced her, gently caressing her curly hair. After a bit the girl seemed to calm down. It was then that Amy asked her softly:

«Are you allright, Chloe? What happened...?»

Apparently, she knew her, at least by name.

«I... I DON'T KNOW!» the girl exclaimed, her voice still broken by tears, «Yesterday when we went to bed everything was fine... This morning we were supposed to meet for breakfast but she didn't show up... I thought she was just running late... But, but...»

She started sobbing uncontrollably again. Amy gave me a worried look over her shoulder. It must have been awfull for that girl to come to class and find out that her friend was dead, just by looking at the leaderboard. But if she didn't know what had happened...

If Mary was still alive last night and we hadn't seen anything wrong coming here...

"That means she just died!"

It was the only way this made any sense. Somewhere in the school, right a this moment, a killer was standing over Mary Stillwater's corpse.

I rushed out of the classroom, thinking about where to search first.
But as soon as I stepped out of the door, someone grabbed my wrist, forcing me to stop.

«What...?!»

I turned around to see who it was.
To my surprise in front of me there was a visibly out of breath Sophia.

For a moment, I stood there with my mouth open, like a fish out of water.
These circumstances were certainly not the ones in which I thought we would get to talk again.

Finally, I snapped to reality.

«What's going on? Did you hear what happened?»

Sophia still didn't let go of my wrist but she motioned for me to wait with her other hand. She leaned against the wall and slowly caught her breath.

Finally she freed me and gasped:

«Y-you won't find anything...»

«Uh?! What do you mean I won't find anything?»

«I've already looked everywhere in the school. I haven't found... anything... no sign of a duel being fought... no body.»

«Wh- wh- what?»

There was something fundamently wrong in what she was telling me. Not that I was suspecting her but...

«She just died! How did you manage to search up the whole school in an instant? Can you teleport?»