But this has to look real.
She has to believe I've given up on you.
Just a little longer.
Trust me.
The moment I'm behind the line of the golden gates—the moment my feet cross the threshold that separates the rest area from the structures that promise passage to Year Four—I act.
The chains I've been holding respond to intention I've been building since the moment I grabbed them from Zeke's magical constructs.
I whip them.
The motion is violent, deliberate, carrying all the force that my hybrid nature can channel through frost-and-silver links that were never meant to be wielded as weapons. The chains crack against the ground with sound like thunder given physical form, ice shattering beneath the impact.
And the lava responds.
Layers of molten rock that have been held at bay by Zeke's ice magic suddenly find release—not randomly, not chaotically, but in the specific patterns that my will demands. Pillars of lava shoot upward with force that defies anything natural volcanic activity could produce, walls of molten destruction rising on either side of the path that Professor Eternalis is walking.
She continues forward.
Calm despite the walls of lava that now frame her approach.
Composed despite the heat that must be radiating from both sides.
The confidence of someone who has faced worse, who has survived longer, who believes themselves beyond the reach of threats as mundane as magma.
The walls grow taller.
Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet of molten rock rising on either side, creating a corridor of destruction that narrows with each passing second. The lava's glow paints everything in shades of orange and red, hellish illumination that transforms the landscape into something that belongs in nightmares rather than reality.
She reaches the gate.
Her ancient form arrives at the threshold that I crossed moments ago—the boundary between rest area and portal, between current circumstances and whatever comes next.
She walks into a wall.
Invisible.
Impenetrable.
A barrier that didn't exist until I willed it into being.
She frowns.
The expression carries confusion that ancient beings probably don't experience often—the particular bewilderment of someone encountering circumstances that contradict everything they believed they understood.
She tries again.
Steps forward with the expectation of passage, meets resistance that shouldn't exist, bounces back with force that speaks to the solidity of whatever I've created.
Again.
And again.
Each attempt produces the same result—invisible barrier refusing to yield, passage denied despite her obvious expectation of access.
I frown with performed confusion that mirrors her genuine bewilderment.
