Chapter 44: White Rift
Principal Whitmore stood frozen at his office window, staring down at what had once been the Academy’s grand arena. The viewing crystal in his hand had gone completely dark the moment the rift collapsed, leaving him with nothing but the horrifying sight below.
Empty. The arena was completely, impossibly empty.
Where eight hundred first-year students had been sitting moments before, there was only scarred stone and twisted metal. Where three of his most experienced professors had been trying to maintain order, there was nothing but silence. The protective barriers that had taken decades to construct lay in shattered pieces across the arena floor.
And where the rift had torn reality itself open, there wasn’t even a trace of its existence.
"This shouldn’t be possible," he whispered, his voice hoarse with shock.
He’d served the Crown through dimensional incursions before, coordinating with the Royal Military during the rift crises of the northern borders. He’d studied rift theory for forty years under the kingdom’s finest scholars. He knew the fundamental laws that governed spatial anomalies, and what he’d just witnessed violated every single one of them.
Rifts didn’t appear instantly inside protected spaces. The Academy’s wards were specifically designed to prevent dimensional intrusions, layered with enough power to stop even S-rank spatial manipulators from opening gates within the grounds.
Rifts didn’t become active immediately. It took seven days minimum for the dimensional membrane to stabilize enough for two-way travel. That was basic physics, as fundamental as gravity itself.
And rifts absolutely, under no circumstances, collapsed on their own after consuming everything in their vicinity.
"A white rift," he breathed, the words carrying terrible implications.
White rifts were legend, myth, the kind of stories told in hushed whispers among those who studied the deepest mysteries of dimensional theory. Unlike the stable, predictable rifts that had been documented and classified, white rifts were chaos incarnate. They followed no rules, obeyed no natural laws, and appeared without warning or pattern.
Most scholars believed they were theoretical constructs, mathematical impossibilities that existed only in the most extreme edge cases of dimensional mathematics. But if one had actually manifested...
Whitmore’s hands trembled as he reached for the emergency communication crystal. The implications were staggering. The white rift didn’t just transport people to another location: it consumed them entirely, pulling them into dimensional space that might not even connect to a physical location at all.
His students, eight hundred bright, promising young awakened, might have been scattered across multiple dimensions, or deposited in locations where human life couldn’t be sustained, or worse, dissolved into pure energy during the transition itself.
The communication crystal flared to life, its deep blue glow indicating a direct connection to military command. Whitmore forced himself to breathe steadily as the connection established.
"This is Principal Whitmore " he said, fighting to keep his voice professional despite the horror of what he was reporting. "I need to speak with Colonel Hestian immediately. We have a Code Black dimensional incursion."
Static crackled through the crystal for several seconds before a crisp military voice responded.
"Principal Whitmore, this is Colonel Hestian. What’s your situation?"
The familiar authority in Hestian’s voice provided a small measure of comfort. The Colonel had a reputation for level-headed crisis management, and if anyone could coordinate a response to this nightmare, it would be him.
"Colonel, I’m reporting a rift manifestation within Academy grounds. But this isn’t... this doesn’t match any known parameters." Whitmore paused, knowing how insane his next words would sound. "Duration approximately fifteen minutes. Instant activation without stabilization period. Complete consumption of eight hundred first-year students and three faculty members, followed by spontaneous collapse."
The silence that followed stretched so long that Whitmore wondered if the crystal had malfunctioned. When Hestian’s voice returned, it carried a tone Whitmore had never heard from the normally unflappable military commander: barely controlled disbelief.
"Did you say instant activation? And complete consumption? Whitmore, are you certain about these details?"
"Colonel, I witnessed the entire event personally. The rift opened inside our protected arena, bypassing wards that have never failed in the Academy’s hundred-and-fifty-year history. It was active immediately: no stabilization period, no warning signs, no preliminary energy fluctuations. Students and faculty were pulled through within minutes, and then the rift simply... vanished."
"What in the Archiet..." Hestian’s voice carried the weight of someone whose understanding of reality had just been fundamentally challenged. "Whitmore, what you’re describing... it’s not possible according to everything we know about dimensional physics. Rifts can’t manifest inside protected spaces, and they certainly can’t activate immediately. Are you absolutely certain this wasn’t some kind of spatial manipulation attack?"
"I considered that possibility," Whitmore replied, his academic training keeping his analysis methodical even in crisis. "But no spatial manipulator, regardless of rank, could penetrate our ward network. And the energy signature... Colonel, I’ve been studying dimensional theory since before the first documented rift appeared. What I witnessed today matched theoretical descriptions of white rift manifestations."
The pause that followed was even longer than before.
"White rifts are theoretical constructs, Whitmore. Mathematical models that exist only on paper. There has never been a confirmed white rift manifestation in recorded history."
"Then either our theoretical models are more accurate than we believed, or our understanding of rift manifestation is fundamentally flawed." Whitmore moved away from the window, unable to continue staring at the empty arena. "Colonel, among the missing are heirs to three major noble houses, including students with unprecedented ability classifications. This isn’t just a military emergency: it’s a political catastrophe."
The crystal went silent again, leaving Whitmore alone with the horrifying reality of what had occurred on his watch. Eight hundred families would need to be notified. The Kingdom’s future awakened, an entire generation of promising students, had vanished in a matter of minutes.
Among them were heirs to major noble houses, commoner children who had shown extraordinary potential, and students whose abilities might have shaped the kingdom’s defense for decades to come. All gone.
Petra Blackthorne, the S-ranked weapon her family had spent years creating. Sarah Millbrook, whose time manipulation had already shown signs of unprecedented development and had gained the eyes of the Crown. Gareth Thorne, whose strategic mind and hidden dual abilities had promised political sophistication. Kael Ashford, whose SS-ranked fire awakening had raised so many unanswered questions.
All consumed by something that shouldn’t exist.
Whitmore sank into his chair, the weight of responsibility crushing down on him like a physical force. In forty years of Academy administration, through wars and disasters and political upheavals, he had never lost a single student to forces beyond his control.
Now he had lost eight hundred in a single afternoon.
The political ramifications would be catastrophic. Three major noble houses alone had heirs among the vanished students.
But beyond the political and institutional consequences, Whitmore found himself haunted by simpler, more human concerns. Eight hundred young people, most barely eighteen years old, who had been laughing and arguing and betting on duels just hours before. They had trusted the Academy to keep them safe, trusted him to protect them while they learned to master their awakened abilities.
He had failed them all.
The communication crystal flared again. "Principal, this is Director Harrison. Emergency response teams are en route to your location. Estimated arrival in thirty minutes. We need you to seal the arena completely: no one enters, no one approaches. If there are any residual dimensional fluctuations, they could trigger secondary events."
"Understood. The area is already sealed by default emergency protocols."
"And Principal..." Harrison’s voice softened slightly, revealing the human concern beneath his official demeanor. "Prepare comprehensive files on all missing persons. Full documentation, family contacts, ability profiles, everything. If we’re going to have any chance of mounting a rescue operation, we’ll need complete information on every individual who was taken."
The crystal fell silent, leaving Whitmore with the crushing task ahead. Eight hundred files to compile, eight hundred families to contact, eight hundred futures that had been severed by a force that defied every natural law he understood.
’Where do I even begin?’ he thought, staring at the communication device in his trembling hands. ’How do you tell a mother that her child has vanished into theoretical space? How do you explain to the Crown that their carefully cultivated heirs have been consumed by something that’s not supposed to exist?’
The weight of inadequacy pressed down on him. All his years of study, all his experience with dimensional theory, and he could offer no answers. No hope. No reassurance that recovery was even possible.
He stood slowly, walking back to the window to stare down at the empty arena one final time. The scarred stone and twisted metal below looked like a wound in the earth itself, a physical reminder of how quickly everything could change.
Somewhere, in whatever hellish dimension the white rift had opened to, his students were fighting for their lives. Or they were already dead, their bodies adding to whatever nightmare landscape they’d been deposited into.
Either way, Principal Whitmore knew he would carry the weight of this failure until the day he died. Eight hundred bright young souls had been entrusted to his protection, and he had been powerless to save even one of them.
The Academy stood silent around him, its halls echoing with the absence of voices that would never return.