CH753 · Rewrite
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Chapter 753: The Truth Reappears

They slipped into the building and made their way up to the second floor.

The smell of burned wood still hung in the corridor. Books and scraps of paper were scattered across the floor—dropped by students who had fled in panic and never retrieved.

The group followed the smell and found the accident’s source: a classroom at the end of the corridor.

Entering the room, Lily took stock. One corner had been charred black, and the entire wall behind it had cracked open—the cracks running all the way to the floor. The fire itself hadn’t spread far. She could read the burn pattern easily: the wood nearest the origin was pitch black, while the outer edges were less scorched, forming a ripple-like gradient. This was not a fire that had started naturally.

What worried her were the cracks in the wall.

They cut like ax strokes—and the openings were entirely carbonized. She pressed two fingers to the surface and felt the faint residual warmth beneath.

“This must be the place,” Mystery Moon said, walking around the corner. “Summer, we leave the rest to you.”

“All right—but tell me if anyone’s coming.” Summer walked to the center of the room and gathered her power.

Knowing the exact time of the explosion, with less than a day elapsed since it occurred, she found the right moment quickly. As her magic gushed outward, the damaged walls restored themselves, and the disordered room snapped back to order. Students appeared—some napping at their desks, some chatting in small clusters. The teaching podium stood empty. A lunch break, then.

Margie and Vanilla, seeing this for the first time, gasped audibly before clapping their hands over their mouths and stumbling backward as a “student” walked directly through them like smoke.

“Don’t worry—they’re only illusions,” Evelyn explained with genuine enthusiasm. “Summer can replay scenes that have already happened.”

“What a gift,” Amy said in undisguised admiration, not at all frightened.

“It’s really nothing special,” Summer said, touching her head and looking bashful. “Nothing compared to Sister Nightingale.”

“Nightingale? That blonde sister who’s always beside His Majesty and almost never appears?”

“That’s her. The most powerful witch in the Western Region—maybe in the whole kingdom.”

Amy’s eyes lit up.

“Wait.” Mystery Moon cut in abruptly. “Look at that.”

Lily’s frown deepened. “This is…”

“Bullying?” Evelyn murmured.

Five or six children, all around ten years old, had cornered two girls in the corner of the classroom—arguing fiercely. Of the two cornered girls, one stood at the front, arms extended to block the others away, while the second cowered behind her, frightened. The elementary classes had no age restriction, and the tallest in the bully group looked fifteen or sixteen—taller and broader than both girls combined. The short-haired girl blocking the way, however, stood her ground without flinching.

From their lips, the witches pieced together the argument: it was about where they came from. Go back to the Eastern Region. Dogs of the rebel king. Things said when you want to wound without the effort of a real grievance.

Soon they began pushing. The tallest boy moved first, grabbing the girl’s shoulder to shove her down—and the moment his hands made contact, her knee caught his leg. He hit the floor hard.

The classroom tipped into chaos.

The short-haired girl slipped free of the encirclement, as slippery as a wet fish, and snapped a kick at a larger boy, drawing all attention to herself. The second girl, forgotten, stopped mattering to anyone. They all converged on the short-haired girl, who used the other students as cover to dodge, targeting knees and ankles with precise, economical kicks—each strike folding an opponent in half.

“What a ferocious little devil!” Mystery Moon breathed.

“Get them! Keep going!” Amy clenched her fist, barely restraining herself.

“She doesn’t have enough strength,” Vanilla said, worried. “And hitting the same spots repeatedly will stop working—they’ll guard against it.”

“How would you know that?” Mystery Moon looked at her in surprise.

“S-sorry, I just used to…”

“The Church taught you,” Evelyn said gently. “That’s all right. You’ve passed His Majesty’s examination and proven you’re different.”

Lily watched without speaking, but she agreed with Vanilla. The boys who’d been kicked down were already struggling back to their feet, more cautious now, guarding their legs. The girl was running out of openings.

Then the tallest boy lifted a chair.

While the girl’s attention was split between two opponents, he swung it at the back of her head.

“Watch out!” Amy shouted.

But Summer’s flashback only recorded what had already happened. No warning could change it.

The chair leg struck her skull. She went down—but even falling, she managed to roll away from the two boys in front of her, landing in a crouch with her hands pressed to her head, teeth clenched hard together.

Blood stained her fingertips. It trickled past her ear and dyed the side of her face red.

The tallest boy faltered. He hadn’t expected her to take it and keep moving. He stood there a moment before tossing the chair aside and walking toward her.

At the instant everyone assumed she was finished, her face convulsed—not from the blow, but from something else, something deeper. She opened her mouth and screamed. The witches couldn’t hear it, but the shape of it, the particular anguish behind it, told them the pain was worse than any chair leg could cause.

Then lightning cracked from her fingertips.

A second bolt. A third. The electricity spread across the floor in twisted orange-red trails, and when it reached the metal bolt on the window, the light became blinding. The window exploded outward. A chunk of wall blew through.

Everyone ran.

The short-haired girl was left alone in the ringing smoke, lightning still crawling across her skin.

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