For two long weeks, she wandered frozen wastelands, wrapped in a cloak of fury and snow.
The Sorcerer Scientist had barely escaped Jubbar’s last magical surge—her once-pristine arcane bionic gauntlet now reduced to scorched slag trailing wires and crystallized circuitry. With its final spark of power, she had initiated an emergency teleportation spell. It hurled her not to safety, but to isolation: the barren ice fields of southern Alaska.
Each step through that frozen exile had been agony, not just physically—but in pride.
Now, back in Grit City, her boots crunched through the glassy rubble of what remained of her lair.
The towering ceiling had collapsed, its glass dome now a spiderweb of broken panes. The metal gantries she once commanded like the limbs of a puppetmaster were twisted and fallen. Her crystalline containment tanks—each once filled with rare magical fauna—now lay shattered and dark. Smoke-scorched walls bore witness to Jubbar’s chaotic rampage and the fierce battle that had ended it.
She moved slowly, almost reverently, through the ruins. Her hand brushed the base of a fallen terminal. She knelt beside a collapsed support beam where a familiar scarf—red, laced with embroidered runes—peeked out beneath the wreckage.
She did not flinch. She did not cry.
Only when she reached the ritual chamber and saw the scorched remains of Madam Boszorkány’s scrying table—shattered obsidian, burned velvet, broken runes—did her breath hitch.
The air tasted of ashes and loss.
Madam Boszorkány was gone.
Her mentor. Her guide. The one person who had believed in her brilliance when the covens and labs turned their backs. The one who’d taught her to channel chaos into art. Rage into ritual.
The Sorcerer Scientist stood slowly. Her breath crystallized in the cool morning air filtering through the cracked dome above. Her voice, when it came, was low and raw.
"I swear it, Madam. I’ll bind that smug djinn and crush those children like ants under a boot."
As if summoned by her fury, the wind picked up outside, howling through the ruins. It scattered old blueprints and ash-streaked scraps of parchment across the floor. One scrap fluttered wildly until it slammed against a jagged pillar. The gust pushed it onward—sailing, spiraling—until it landed directly at her feet.
She squinted down.
A newspaper.
She blinked.
THE GRIT CITY SOCIETY PAGES.
She lifted it with trembling fingers.
It was weather-worn, a few splotches of dried mud smudging the corners—but the photo was clear.
Two young boys standing beside a weeping socialite. A crowd in somber black. Flowers. Caskets.
Her eyes scanned the headline:
"PLAYBOY FUNERAL HELD ON KELLER ESTATE"
A snarl twisted her lips.
Fake funerals. She had seen enough to know. Just another rich guy trying to avoid his taxes.
What a blasphemy of death.
She zeroed in on the photograph. The children. The angles of their faces, the way they stood, even if disguised in somber suits instead of green or blue domino masks—it was unmistakable. The same boys who’d dared challenge her. Who stole the lamp. Who—through sheer reckless luck—had killed Madam Boszorkány.
Her gauntleted fingers clenched, the half-melted metal crackling with residual energy.
And then she saw it.
A single line in the article’s closing paragraph:
“Especially those likely to attend Burke Predatory School come this fall.”
Burke.
A prep school.
For the children of the elite. Future senators, CEOs, and masked vigilantes alike.
The Sorcerer Scientist stood perfectly still.
A beat passed.
And then her lips curved into a slow, delighted smile. A cruel, calculating curve.
“What better way to destroy them,” she whispered, “than from the inside?”
Her mind surged with plans—disguises, forged identities, fabricated transcripts, and magical masking spells. Her own age, her aura, her appearance—everything could be reshaped. She had the knowledge. The will. And the fury.
The woman they once knew was gone.
Now she would become what she needed to be.
A classmate. A friend. A threat they wouldn’t even see coming.
She tucked the newspaper into the remnants of her coat. Her bootsteps echoed through the ruined lair as she made her way to the only part still intact—her hidden laboratory vault. One of her contingency caches still remained, buried beneath rune-locked steel and biometric wards. A place where identities could be crafted.
Where monsters could become children.
Where revenge could begin.