Five minutes into the flight, the adrenaline faded, leaving only the cold.

  It wasn't just chilly; it was a physical assault. At two thousand feet, without a canopy or a windshield, the wind hit us like a solid wall of ice. It found every gap in my leather tunic, freezing the sweat on my back instantly.

  My hands, wrapped around the iron control yoke, felt like they belonged to a corpse. I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. I just had to trust that they were still gripping the metal.

  "I hate this!" Amelia shouted from the back seat. Her voice was snatched away by the wind, barely reaching my ears even though she was six inches behind me. "I can feel my eyelashes freezing! Why didn't you build a roof?"

  "Weight limit!" I shouted back, my teeth chattering so hard I bit my tongue. I ducked my head, trying to hide behind the small instrument panel. It offered about as much protection as a dinner plate. "Next time! Heated seats! I promise!"

  The Ghost shuddered as we hit a pocket of turbulence. The entire airframe groaned. This wasn't a military jet. It was a collection of scrap aluminum and iron sheets riveted together by two exhausted teenagers. The seat I was sitting on was literally a curved piece of sheet metal with zero padding. Every vibration from the airframe traveled directly up my spine. My tailbone was already numb, which was probably a mercy.

  But the machine was silent. That was the eerie part. We were tearing through the sky at eighty miles an hour, banking through the grey morning mist, but there was no engine roar. The active noise cancellation was working perfectly. The only sound was the rushing wind and the chattering of my own teeth.

  "Bank left," I muttered to myself, pushing the stick. "Stay in the cloud cover."

  We drifted over the Outer District. I looked down. From this height, the city looked like a toy set. I could see the grid of dirty streets, the patchwork roofs of the slums, and the black ribbon of the river.

  It was... peaceful. Down there, the city was waking up. I saw thin trails of white smoke rising from a hundred chimneys—bakeries firing up their ovens for the morning rush. My stomach let out a loud growl, audible even over the wind.

  "Did you hear that?" Amelia yelled.

  "Hear what?"

  "My stomach! I'm starving!"

  I looked down at a cluster of buildings near the market square. "I see the steam from Old John's soup shop," I shouted back, pointing a frozen finger downward. "He opens at six."

  "Beef stew," Amelia moaned. "With the garlic bread. If we crash, Julian, I'm going to haunt you. I can't die on an empty stomach."

  "If we crash," I corrected, "you won't have a stomach. Focus on the mana output! We're losing altitude!"

  "I'm focusing! It's just hard to channel when my blood is turning into slush!"

  We flew on, two shivering, hungry kids strapped to a silent missile, discussing breakfast while carrying enough chemical weapons to incapacitate a fortress. It felt absurd. It felt like a job. Just another morning commute.

  Then, the mood changed. The slums gave way to white stone. The chaotic streets straightened into elegant boulevards. We were crossing the perimeter.

  "Target zone," I said, my voice losing its humor. "Academy Airspace."

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Below us, the Magisterium Academy sprawled like a sleeping beast. The white towers gleaned in the early light. I could see the tiny dots of students moving between the dorms and the dining hall. They looked so small. A week ago, I was one of them. I was walking those paths, worrying about grades, worrying about tuition. Now, I was looking down on them like a god of judgment.

  "Do you see the barrier?" Amelia whispered. She didn't shout this time. The tension made her voice carry.

  I saw it. A faint, shimmering purple dome covered the central campus. The Anti-Air Ward. It was designed to detect high-velocity magical signatures—fireballs, lightning bolts, flying demons. Anything with a mana core that moved faster than a bird would trigger an automatic lightning strike.

  We were moving faster than a bird. But we had no mana core. The Ghost was just metal and air. The only magic was Amelia, and she was shielding her own signature inside the hull.

  "Hold your breath," I commanded, easing the stick forward.

  We descended. The purple shimmer grew larger. It looked like the surface of a soap bubble. If I was wrong about the engineering... if the ward detected the kinetic energy of the hull... we would be vaporized in a millisecond.

  I gripped the lever by my left hand. The drop mechanism. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat that had nothing to do with the cold.

  We hit the barrier. I flinched, expecting the flash of lightning. Nothing. We slipped through the purple light like a stone dropping through water. The ward rippled slightly, confusing us for a large, non-magical piece of debris, and then ignored us.

  "We're in," Amelia breathed. Her fingers were digging into my shoulders so hard I could feel them through the leather.

  "Targeting," I said, my voice flat.

  I didn't aim for the courtyard. I didn't aim for the library. I aimed for the massive, bronze-grated intakes on the side of the Main Hall. The Academy prided itself on its magically circulated air conditioning. It pumped fresh, cool air into every classroom, every office, every dormitory. It was a marvel of comfort. And it was their greatest structural weakness.

  "Lining up," I muttered. The wind cross-currents were strong here, buffeting the lightweight glider. I fought the stick, correcting the drift. "Steady..."

  I watched the intake vents slide into view under my left wing. I didn't feel a surge of villainous triumph. I didn't feel like laughing maniacally. I just felt cold. And tired. And ready to go home.

  "Delivery," I said.

  I yanked the lever.

  THUNK-THUNK-THUNK.

  The sound of the latches releasing was dull and mechanical. The Ghost lurched upward violently, suddenly relieved of six hundred kilograms of dead weight. My stomach dropped into my boots. "Whoa!" Amelia yelped as we shot up fifty feet.

  I banked hard to the right, looking back over my shoulder. I saw them falling. Seventy-five black iron spheres, tumbling through the air in a chaotic cluster. They looked innocuous. Just dark raindrops against the white stone.

  They hit the slanted roof above the intakes and rolled. They hit the grating. They didn't explode with fire. They cracked.

  I saw the first puffs of white gas escaping as the pressurized canisters shattered on impact. The massive suction of the ventilation fans did the rest. In seconds, the white clouds were sucked greedily into the dark maw of the Academy's lung.

  "Impact confirmed," I said, leveling the wings. "Get us out of here. Full throttle."

  "On it!" Amelia didn't hesitate. She poured every ounce of her remaining mana into the jet. The engine roared—still silently—and the pressure pinned me back into my uncomfortable seat.

  We shot back toward the wall, climbing hard to clear the barrier before anyone looked up.

  Behind us, there was no firestorm. No screaming (yet). Just the silent, efficient injection of chaos into the system. The ammonia would travel through the ducts. It would fill the lecture halls. It would flood the offices of the Discipline Committee. It wouldn't kill them—I had calibrated the dosage to be incapacitating, not lethal. But it would burn their eyes, choke their lungs, and send the entire faculty running for the exits, coughing and blinded.

  The Haber Process had officially enrolled in the Academy.

  We cleared the outer wall and dove back into the smog of the city. The adrenaline crash hit me instantly. My hands started to shake uncontrollably.

  "Did we... did we win?" Amelia asked, her voice small.

  "We sent a message," I said, wiping a frozen drip from my nose. "Now the negotiation starts."

  I banked the glider toward the river, looking for our hidden landing strip in the Rust Yard. The sun was fully up now, warming the air by a fraction of a degree. My stomach growled again, louder this time.

  "Amelia," I called back.

  "Yeah?"

  "You're buying breakfast. Double portions."

  "Deal," she said, and I could hear the relief in her voice. "But you're carrying the toolkit. My legs are jelly."