All Chapters of ALPHA ACADEMY:MARKED BY FOUR: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Snow fell in slow, soundless spirals, covering the battlefield’s scars. Lyra could still smell the blood and ash beneath the frost — reminders of a victory that felt more like a warning. The packs had withdrawn into the foothills, their eyes still filled with awe and quiet fear when they looked at her. The Oath inside her had gone silent since Magnus’s retreat, but the silence felt unnatural, like breath held too long. Vale stood nearby, his sword still sheathed but his eyes restless. “Something’s wrong,” he said quietly. “The Oath’s echo should’ve faded by now.” “It hasn’t,” Lyra said. “It’s waiting.” Cassian, sitting on a half-frozen rock, snorted. “Fantastic. An invisible cosmic time bomb. Anyone else want tea?” Before Vale could reply, Malachai’s voice cut through the cold. “Someone’s coming.” They turned. At first, all they saw was mist. Then — movement. A figure stumbling through the haze, half-shadow, half-light. His gait was uneven, heavy. The air bent strangely aroun

The wind howled like something alive. Snow tore across the Frostlands, a white curtain that stung her skin and erased the horizon. The world seemed to hold its breath as Lyra, Vale, Cassian, Malachai, and Ronan stood before the frozen arch known as the Gate — the same place where everything had begun, and where it now threatened to end. Lyra could feel it pulsing beneath the ice: a deep, rhythmic heartbeat echoing through the ground. The Oath wasn’t quiet anymore. It was awake. Ronan’s voice broke through the storm. “It’s stronger than before. He’s pushing through the fracture you sealed.” Lyra nodded grimly. “Then we stop him before he breaks it open.” Cassian kicked at the snow. “And how exactly do we stop an immortal lunatic with a god complex? Politely?” “By giving him what he wants,” Malachai said. Everyone turned to him. He adjusted his gloves, expression unreadable. “The Oath doesn’t answer to Magnus. It answers to balance. If we can anchor it to Lyra’s will instead o

The wind from the northern border came sharp with salt and smoke. By dawn, Frostveil’s towers were ghosted in fog, and the scouts had returned with stories of shadows moving like men and men speaking like echoes. Lyra met them in the courtyard, cloak drawn against the cold. Vale stood beside her, Malachai poring over maps, and Cassian pretending not to shiver. “They’re close,” Vale said. “Less than half a league.” “Describe them,” Lyra asked. The scout hesitated. “They look like us, my lady. But wrong. Pale eyes, black veins. Like something burned out of them and never grew back.” “Hollowborn,” Malachai murmured. “Descendants of those consumed by the first Oathfire. They shouldn’t exist.” Cassian smirked. “And yet—here they come.” The gates creaked open. Through the fog, they appeared — a dozen figures wrapped in tattered cloaks, their leader unmasked. His skin was pale as snow, eyes molten silver. When he spoke, his voice seemed to carry two tones at once — one human, one n

The road from Frostveil vanished beneath a sea of white. They rode into silence, the kind that swallowed breath and thought alike. The horizon itself looked torn — half dawn, half darkness — and where the two met, the Gate’s shadow pulsed faintly like a bruise in the sky. Lyra led the column. Her cloak streamed behind her like a banner, gold light flickering through the seams whenever her pulse synced with the mark. Vale rode at her side, every line of his posture alert, one gloved hand never far from the hilt of his blade. Behind them, Cassian and Malachai rode in near-perfect rhythm, the wolves fanning out through the snow as scouts. For a time, there were no words — only hoofbeats and the low growl of wind cutting through their path. When the first break came, it was Cassian who filled it. “Remind me,” he said, voice muffled by his scarf, “why every time we chase the end of the world, it’s colder than the last one?” Vale didn’t look back. “Because the world’s running out of

The climb began as light. It carried them upward, weightless, the Gate’s broken fire folding into itself until it was no longer flame but gravity turned inside out. Wind howled without air. The wolves’ howls stretched thin, pulled into echoes that bent around them. Lyra couldn’t tell if they were moving through the sky or through themselves. Every heartbeat felt like a step and a fall at once. Vale’s voice broke through first. “Stay close—no matter what you see.” She reached for him and felt his hand, solid for a heartbeat, then dissolving into light. Cassian’s laughter floated somewhere ahead, brittle and disoriented. “This feels like falling upward. I hate falling upward.” Malachai’s voice came from behind, steady but faint. “Don’t look down. The space below isn’t distance—it’s memory. Look too long, and it’ll take you.” Lyra looked anyway. Beneath them wasn’t ground but reflection: the world they’d left—Frostveil’s towers, the Vale’s silver forests, the broken moon bleeding