Chapter 45: Iris Blackthorn’s Menacing Grimoire

The training ground fell silent the moment Iris Blackthorn and Ragna Dusk stepped into the open circle.

It wasn’t the excited silence from before. This was different — heavier. Even the wind seemed to stop.

Ragna was the first-year captain of House Dusk. Tall, short dark hair cut sharply at the jaw, sharp grey eyes, and a heavy violet Grimoire floating at her side that seemed to press against the air itself. Every time she breathed, the dust around her boots trembled. Gravity. Pure, crushing force. The kind of Grimoire that made instructors watch carefully.

Across from her stood Iris, long dark-blue hair tied neatly back, violet eyes calm, her own Grimoire held lightly in one hand like a novel. No one in the crowd knew the true nature of that book. Officially it had been recorded as Tier 8 during the Choosing. Unofficially, no one had ever seen it fight seriously.

Arthur stood at the edge of the circle with Milo, arms crossed. Julian watched from a short distance away, arms crossed too, but his eyes were locked on. The rest of the first-years packed every available space around the platform, some standing on benches to see.

Mimi’s voice spoke quietly inside Arthur’s head, less playful than usual.

"This one feels different, Master. The princess’s book is... dense. Like it’s dreaming too loudly."

Arthur didn’t answer out loud. He raised his hand.

"House captains duel. No killing blows, no head strikes. First to a clean lethal position wins. Understood?"

Ragna rolled her shoulders, her Grimoire’s pages turning on their own, humming low.

"Understood," she said, eyes never leaving Iris. "I’ve wanted to fight you since the sorting ceremony, Blackthorn. Everyone calls you the genius of our year. Let’s see if it’s real."

Iris blinked once, calmly. "You may try."

Ragna’s mouth twitched into a sharp grin. "Polite as ever."

"Begin!" Arthur dropped his hand.

Ragna moved first.

No dash, no chant. She just opened her palm and drove it down in a sharp, cutting gesture.

"Neutralizing Mass."

The effect was immediate and brutal. The dirt around Iris cracked. A perfect circle of ground five meters wide suddenly sank half an inch as if an invisible mountain had been dropped on it. The air itself rippled. Several students at the front row staggered, grabbing each other as their knees buckled from just the edge of the pressure.

Milo swore under his breath. "Shit — Arthur, that’s —"

"I know," Arthur muttered, bracing his own feet. "Area gravity well. She’s multiplying weight."

In the center of it, Iris did not flinch.

She calmly flipped her Grimoire to a page inscribed with a faint silver illustration — a figure floating in a deep, starless void. She touched it with two fingers and read a single, clipped syllable.

"—Naught."

The crushing weight arrived — and found nothing to hold.

Iris’s body suddenly obeyed a completely different set of laws. The laws of a zero-gravity dreamscape. Her uniform rippled as if underwater. As the gravity well slammed down hard enough to crack stone, she didn’t collapse — she effortlessly glided sideways across the arena, completely untethered, her feet never touching the crushed earth. She drifted a full three meters to the side and landed lightly on her toes outside the circle, then calmly adjusted the cuffs of her sleeves as if nothing unusual had occurred.

A ripple of pure shock moved through the crowd.

"She just... ignored it?"

"That wasn’t flight! She didn’t use wind! What was that?!"

Milo leaned closer to Arthur, eyes wide. "What did she do? That gravity should have pinned her!"

Arthur kept his eyes on the fight, his mind racing. "She didn’t resist it. She changed the rules her body was following for a second. If you dream you’re weightless, gravity has nothing to grab."

Inside his head, Mimi whistled.

"Clever little princess. She overwrote physics with a dream."

Ragna’s expression darkened. The elegant evasion had clearly annoyed her. Her Grimoire flared brighter violet.

"Fine. Let’s see you dream through this!"

She charged. No more ranged spells. As she ran, her right fist began to darken, the air around it distorting — density-shift. She was making her own fist weigh as much as a cannonball, preparing to deliver a crushing blow that would shatter guard and bone.

Iris did not panic or retreat. She stood her ground.

She looked Ragna dead in the eye and, with her left hand, traced a specific, jagged rune on a page labeled The Falling Sensation in curling script. A localized spark of colorless magic left her fingertip and struck directly at Ragna’s mind. No projectile, no light. Just intent.

"Fall."

The effect was instantaneous and viciously humiliating.

Ragna was hit with a flawless, magical Hypnic Jerk — the exact, full-body biological sensation of feeling like you are falling off a cliff right as you drift off to sleep. The kind that makes your whole body spasm awake.

Ragna’s eyes shot wide. In mid-sprint, mid-punch, her reflexes misfired violently. Her spine arched, her arms flailed, her legs kicked. Her body spasmed hard in mid-air, completely ruining her stance and sending her carefully prepared heavy punch wide into empty air with a low whump.

She stumbled hard, boots scraping across the dirt as she fought to regain balance, almost falling on her face.

The crowd shouted in disbelief.

"What just happened to her stance?!"

"Did she trip? She looked like she got startled!"

Julian frowned deeply from the sideline. "No... that was mental interference."

Milo stared, open-mouthed. "Arthur, did Iris just... scare her?"

"She attacked her nervous system," Arthur said quietly, more to himself than to Milo. "Not her body. She gave her brain the feeling of falling. Your body can’t ignore that. It jerks no matter what."

Mimi giggled, but there was an edge to it.

"Nasty. So nasty. She used a dream sensation as a weapon. She didn’t touch her muscles, she touched the part of her that remembers falling as a kid. That’s elegant and cruel. I like her."

Ragna recovered faster than most would have. She was on one knee, breathing hard, her face red — not from exertion, from embarrassment. She slammed her palm into the ground and pushed herself up, violet light exploding around her.

"Enough of your tricks!" she snarled, slamming both hands forward. Her Grimoire flew wide open, pages whipping. The air around her began to collapse inward. "I’ll crush the whole yard! Graviton Wave!"

This was no precise spell. This was a massive, desperate shockwave of gravitational force meant to clear the entire circle, dream or no dream.

She never finished the cast.

Before the gravity wave could expand past her hands, Iris moved.

She didn’t chant. She didn’t trace another rune.

She simply snapped her Grimoire shut with a sharp, resonant CLAP that echoed across the suddenly silent training ground.

False Awakening.

For a fraction of a second, Ragna’s mind was perfectly convinced that the duel was already over. That she had already won. That the cheering she was hearing was for her, and that she was now waking up in her soft academy bed, safe and victorious.

The illusion lasted only a heartbeat, but it was flawless. Absolute.

Ragna’s hands dropped. Her posture relaxed completely. The gathering gravity wave collapsed mid-formation with a soft pop, the violet light vanishing. Her face even softened into a confused, sleepy frown.

"—huh?"

By the time Ragna blinked and reality snapped back into place like a rubber band, Iris was already standing inches away.

The blunt edge of a wooden practice dagger rested gently against the side of Ragna’s throat.

Silence held for one long, terrible second.

Ragna stared down at the dagger, her own hands still hanging limply at her sides, her brain still catching up.

Then the training ground erupted.

Cheers and shouts exploded from every side. Students who had been holding their breath started talking over each other at once.

"WHAT WAS THAT LAST ONE?!"

"She made her think it was over!"

"Gravity didn’t even get to fight!"

Even Julian’s eyebrows had risen a fraction. He let out a low breath. "Complete control..."

Mimi let out a low, impressed breath next to Arthur. "That’s not the abilities tier 8 Grimoires should have, she’s actually taking full control over a concept."

Arthur remained still, eyes locked on Iris as she stepped back and lowered the practice dagger, her expression still that same distant calm, as if she were observing the fight from somewhere slightly removed.

Ragna stood frozen for another moment before she exhaled, long and slow, and gave a short, grudging nod of defeat. No excuses.

"You win," Ragna said, her voice rough. "That last one... what was it?"

Iris said softly. "You were tired. Your mind wanted to believe it was over, I just made it easier."

Ragna laughed once, without humor, and rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah. It really did."

Inside Arthur’s head, Mimi’s voice returned, quieter and more serious than he had ever heard it.

"Master."

Arthur answered silently. "What?"

"Are they sure she only has a Tier 8 Grimoire? The academy checked?"

"Yes," Arthur thought back. "It was checked during the Choosing. Officially Tier 8."

Mimi was silent for a beat. So long that Arthur felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.

"Then something is wrong. Very wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"I can already feel a book spirit starting to form inside that Grimoire. It’s faint. Like a baby opening its eyes for the first time. But it’s there. It’s waking up."

Arthur’s blood ran cold.

Lily Nightshade’s words from the office after the attack returned with perfect clarity, the words she had said after seeing Mimi.

Only Tier 9 Grimoires generate book spirits.

Yet Mimi — herself a book spirit, who would know better than anyone — could already sense one beginning to wake inside Iris Blackthorn’s supposedly Tier 8 Dream Grimoire.

Arthur stared at the princess as the crowd continued to cheer around them, as Ragna walked away shaking her head, as Iris quietly closed her book and adjusted her sleeves again, completely unbothered.

If used properly this Grimoire could have the most deadly potential.