AS THE PIERCING SOUND OF SIRENS RICOCHETED through the school, Cas, Warrior and Fenix pelted down the spiral stairs, with Paws speeding along on the pulley system beside them. Despite the wardsmen unsuccessfully trying to usher everyone back into their dorms, the corridors were flooded by students in pyjamas and dressing-gowns. In a rushing stampede, they overpowered the orange-clad guards and hurtled down to the entrance hall, before erupting out of the grand front doors.

Cas couldn’t explain the feeling in the air around them, the one which made everyone run towards danger instead of away from it. They should have all wanted to stay tucked up safely in their bedrooms.

But something felt different about this break-in.

Something was wrong.

The entire school spread out across the dew-drenched grass in front of the school. Shrieks and pointed fingers rang out from the onlookers, as Cas and the Abnormies pushed to the front of the crowd.

A single Heretic in the Master of All’s signature garb stood silently glaring at them through the wrought-iron WS gates – inside the wards. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t attack. Behind him, a horde of twenty similar figures stood waiting too.

“What’s going on?” Paws asked, scooting forward in her wheelchair to get a better look.

Warrior shook her head, aghast. “I don’t get it,” she whispered, her breath blooming out in cold plumes in front of her. “The Master didn’t set the wards off the last time he broke in, he just snuck in via the sewers…”

As she spoke, all of the wardsmen inside Wayward School piled out of the building to face the attackers. At least fifty, sixty, seventy more guards ran up the hill from Wayward Town, surrounding the Heretics on all sides. Flaming fireballs soared through the air towards the Heretics from the wardsmen, scorching and shaking the ground beneath them, which turned to quicksand at their feet. Yet still none of them fought or resisted.

A horrifying, terrifying thought occurred to Cas, as Mrs Crane flew up and down the line of students, waving her arms wildly. “GET BACK INSIDE, ALL OF YOU!”

Madame Aster, Professors Vulcan, Oxbow, Breezy and Everglade, and even Headmaster Higgles and Miss Grimbly were trying to contain the ruckus, but…

“Where’s Dr Bane?” Cas scanned the raucous gathering hurriedly.

“I can’t see him,” Warrior replied.

Cas turned to the others, his eyes wild with panic. “The Master of All,” he muttered urgently. Then more loudly: “It’s a distraction. This isn’t the real break-in; the real one’s happening back in there.” He pointed towards the school. “I bet you anything that after he failed to get the information out of Mrs Crane, the Master thought that Dr Bane must know where the seekerthing is.”

Warrior glanced up at the window of Dr Bane’s office, paralysed by fear.

This wasn’t just about the seekerthing for her. Her father’s life was on the line.

None of them needed to say another word.

“I’ll scout ahead with Mogget,” said Paws, giving the mangy feline a brisk stroke to wake her up. “Her cat senses are sharper than mine. Get Mrs Crane to take me back inside.”

At the sound of her name, Mrs Crane skidded to a halt, her bright green, tweed dressing-gown practically luminous in the twilight. “Miss Grover-Rosales, what on earth are you doing – wait, no, don’t you dare – BY THE THREADS!”

Paws’s eyes rolled back in her head and her body slumped forward in her chair. At the same moment, the usually half-dead Mogget shivered to life, ears twitching and whiskers rustling.

“Just as Mogget thought. Disturbance on the first floor.” Paws in Mogget’s body loped off towards the school.

Warrior and Fenix followed suit, with Cas hobbling along as fast as his funny leg would carry him.

“COME BACK HERE!” Mrs Crane wailed, clinging on to the handles of Paws’s wheelchair.

But the Abnormies were already too far away to hear.

They raced into the school and up to Dr Bane’s office. The bolt-laden door was hanging off its hinges, severely mangled. Cautiously, Cas nudged it open and they crept inside, keeping their eyes peeled in case the culprit was still lurking.

But it was empty.

The study was a complete mess. Papers and torn, shredded paintings were scattered across the floor like snow. Dr Bane’s mahogany desk and high-backed chair had been upturned, and the chains and animal skulls usually hanging on the walls were smashed to smithereens. The colourful cabinets that housed Dr Bane’s eccentric collection broke through the gloom as their glows flickered unsteadily, dull and dying.

“Bane is gone,” said Warrior, before she gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

Four words were scrawled across one of the office’s walls in what looked suspiciously like blood:

He failed to deliver

Cas picked his way over shattered glass and ceramics and bent to pick something up from the floor. He dusted off the cover of The Book of Skulls and Skin and placed it back on one of the remaining shelves, then wheeled around to the cabinets. They all seemed to have been roughed up but not ransacked. The jar of shrivelled heads teetered on the edge of its shelf, rocking precariously back and forth. The Orbialius from the Order Trials had been pulled out but was miraculously unharmed … and in the bronze-tinged cabinet, the hand-sized glowing orb with its spinning metal rings sat crooked amongst a hoard of other articles. Just then, Cas felt it again. The draw to the strange, spinning device. The rings whirled faster as he approached.

“The Master must’ve just been here,” said Fenix, eagle-eyed, noticing the rocking heads jar too.

Paws in Mogget nodded. “I think I have his scent. We can still catch him.”

Cas didn’t know why, but he pocketed the spinning device. “Come on.”

“This way,” said Paws, pointing Mogget’s paw towards the floor above.

They picked their way back through the carnage, trying not to stand on anything valuable, before rushing down the corridor, Cas taking the lead. As he hurtled around a corner, he ran slap-bang into someone.

Lucille Du Villaine.

She was dressed in a thick, fuzzy yellow dressing-gown and looking terrified.

“Have you seen Dr Bane?” Cas demanded, shaking her shoulders slightly when she didn’t reply straight away.

Lucie was ghostly pale. “Two hooded men were dragging him into the library. But, Cas – you can’t go in there. There was someone else with them … it was him.”

Cas didn’t need to ask who she meant.

Without another word, Cas changed direction and sprinted back down to the ground floor.

“Where are you going?” shouted Warrior as she, Fenix and Paws struggled to catch up. Surprisingly, Lucie Du Villaine scurried along behind them.

Cas didn’t have time to ask what she was doing.

His mind whirred with panic, but it also felt sharper than it had in months. Memories and images, scents and smells were flashing through his brain.

“If the Master has taken Dr Bane to the library, we’ll never catch him,” Cas panted. “Mrs Crane gave Dr Bane the key to the Abominable Archives for safekeeping, so presumably the Master has it now. And I think the Archives lead to a way out.”

He recalled the vile stench that had wafted from the caved-in tunnel at the back of the Abominable Archives. A distinctly repulsive smell that he had only smelt once before: when Puggle the Nuggle had taken him on his wild ride through the sewers. Paws had said the Elementie was up to something that day – what if Puggle had been trying to show him this?

“There’s a blocked passage at the back of the Archives,” Cas informed them. “I think it leads to the sewers. Since he destroyed the waygate mirror in the library, the Master is going to use the same way he broke in to escape. He’ll clear the blockage in no time if he has an Earthshaper on his side.”

“So, why are we running away from him?” puffed Warrior incredulously.

“Our best chance of stopping the Master is if we can cut him off. We need a different way into the sewers – and thanks to Puggle, I know where we can find one.”

The five of them burst out of the back of the school, slipping and sliding across the slick lawn as it rolled down to the Wayward School graveyard. Cas noticed Warrior stumble at the sight of the mausoleums, but the thought of the Master escaping with Dr Bane seemed to urge her on.

They barrelled into the mausoleum where Cas had spent his first night at school. He quickly located a grate in the corner of the spectral tomb and together they tugged it loose. One after the other, they dropped down into the sewer below.

Cas grimaced as his feet splashed into the putrid, grimy water. He fought the urge to vomit as thick sewage curled around his ankles, grimly swirling green, dark brown and grey.

Lucie gave a sharp squeal as she plopped in.

Warrior shot her a daggered look. “Shh.”

They paused for a moment, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness and listening. Voices, growing fainter. The Master of All was getting away, with or without the seekerthing in tow.

They had to find him and Dr Bane.

Fast.

Mogget’s ears flicked. “This way,” said Paws, once more using her incredible animal hearing to locate the direction of the noise. She slunk ahead along the edge of the sewer pipe, just outside the water’s reach.

Fenix ignited in a whoosh of flames to light their way and Cas felt the characteristic bump against his leg that meant Hobdogglin had appeared. Warrior was preparing herself for a fight.

The sewer pipe sloped downwards, taking them somewhere far below the school. Cas felt the Deathmaker magic of the mausoleum fading, the threads of power which lingered there tugging on the threads inside him one last time in an attempt to call him back. Fenix’s fire burned brighter as they travelled deeper into the earth. Soon, Cas felt the heat of the Firetamers’ basement dorm, the Kiln, at his back. Yet the sewer pipe continued to slope further down still.

“Stay close,” said Cas.

Eventually, the voices grew louder. The sound of fleeing footsteps grew nearer. Up ahead, the sewer pipe opened out into a cavernous hub, where six splashing pipes joined together in a circle of clearer shallows.

In the hollow, an uneven mound of obsidian rock protruded from the swirling grime, like an island in a nauseating sea. Flushed wrappers, screwed up homework sheets and clumps of toilet paper clung to the rocky island. But what churned Cas’s stomach the most was the sight of who stood atop it.

Two hooded Heretics leered on either side of a cowed, bleeding Dr Bane, forcing him to his knees. Standing in front of them, disguised by his signature cloak and silver mask, was the person Cas had been born to defeat:

The Master of All.

Heart thrumming, Cas stepped forward, pushing the Abnormies protectively behind him.

The Master swept forward too.

“Foretold,” he said smoothly. “I thought I heard you coming. We meet at last – or should I say, again.”

He moved as if flying through air, soundless and deadly and graceful. When he reached the edge of the sewer island, he ripped off his mask and tossed back his hood, revealing soot-black hair, smokeless, flaming amber eyes and the face of a man much younger than Cas had expected.

The face of a man Cas knew.

“You,” Cas croaked, recognizing the homeless stranger he had helped so long ago outside Captain Caeli’s Cakery. The one who had caught the sand snoot.

“Yes.” The Master of All chuckled. “I’m surprised the great and prophesied Foretold didn’t catch on sooner.”

“Aeurdan Darkbloom.” Cas spoke the Master’s real name through clenched teeth.

The Master of All pulled his lip back in a snarl. “Alas, I do not answer to that name.”

“But it was your name, wasn’t it,” said Cas defiantly, “once.”

To Cas’s dismay, the Master threw his head back and laughed again, the hollow, blood-curdling noise echoing around the chamber. It was an empty sound, devoid of any true emotion and filled only with darkness.

“That was a false name,” he said. “It was never my real one. It was the name I was forced to go by, because he” – he gestured towards Dr Bane – “didn’t want anyone to know who I truly was.”

Cas swallowed hard. “But I do,” he said bravely. “I know who you are and what you’ve done. You killed your mother and took her Lifemaker abilities for yourself. You’ve tormented and terrorised, kidnapped and killed in your quest for the other powers. But I won’t let you take them. I won’t.”

The Master of All prowled closer.

“What an ignorant child you are,” he said pitifully. “You believe the lies you’ve been fed because they’re easier to swallow than the truth.”

“No, you’re the liar!” spat Cas, unsure what the Master was talking about. “Are you saying you aren’t that person? That you haven’t done all those terrible things?”

“You know nothing, boy,” the Master snapped, a new note of fury alight in his voice. “Yes, I did those things and I used to go by that name – but it is not the one I go by now. Aeurdan Darkbloom was never my true identity.”

“Then what is?”

The Master of All flung an accusing finger towards Dr Bane. “Aeurdan Bane,” he declared. “Though my precious father would never want you to know that.”

Behind Cas, Fenix and Lucie gasped. Even Paws gave a yowl of surprise.

But it was Warrior’s reaction that scared Cas the most.

If what the Master of All was saying was true, and deep down she knew that Dr Bane was her real father, then that meant…

“You’re no brother of mine!” Warrior cried, shoving past Cas and narrowing her eyes with unbridled hatred in the Master’s direction.

Right on cue, Hobdogglin leapt to attention, yip-yapping and growling, before he took off at a run and launched himself, teeth bared, towards the Master’s face. At the last moment, a shard of jet-black rock flew up from the island as one of the Master’s Earthshaper Heretics moved to defend their leader. The shard pierced Hobdogglin’s side and, with a terrible cry, the funny-looking creature disappeared in a plume of misty illusion smoke.

“NO!” howled Warrior, sounding as if her heart had been ripped from her chest. She fell to her knees, the dirty water of the cavern soaking into her jeans. She clawed desperately at thin air, trying to summon Hobdogglin back.

But the creature was gone.

Apparently for good.

“Silence!” the Master of All ordered, swinging a clenched fist in Warrior’s direction. His powers sealed her throat, cutting off her tears.

Warrior opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

“Now,” said the Master, turning back to Cas, “it’s just you and me.”

Cas steeled himself. “Take me, but leave Dr Bane and my friends alone.”

The Master of All swung round and yanked back Dr Bane’s shaggy, silver-threaded head. “This Dr Bane? Your wonderful, perfect Deathmaker teacher? My, oh my, you really are naïve. Why would you want to save him? He’s the one who’s been helping me break in all year. He’s the one who’s betrayed you.”

“W-what?” stuttered Cas.

His world felt like it had been unexpectedly and violently knocked off-kilter.

“Stop, Aeurdan,” Dr Bane begged, bloodied and broken. A raw gash was oozing fresh crimson on his forehead. “Please.”

Why isn’t Bane doing something? Cas’s mind rioted. Why isn’t he using his powers to save us?

“I – I didn’t have a choice,” Dr Bane moaned.

The Master shot Bane a look of utmost disgust. “You had plenty of choices, Father,” he retorted, his voice sounding more like a boy’s than ever. He spun to face Cas. “Did he tell you what he did, Foretold?”

“Yes,” said Cas, remembering his conversation with Dr Bane after Mrs Crane’s attack. The Master is baiting you, a voice in Cas’s head said. Bane would never betray you. He’s the one who sent Warrior to find you. “Dr Bane told me that he brought you here from the Normie world, just like me. He told me that he knew what you were and what you had done, but he tried to help you anyway…”

“Help me?” The Master almost gagged on the words. “What a wondrously false tale my dear old dad weaves.

“Twenty-eight years ago, Dr Bane fell in love with my mother. He claims he had no choice now, but back then he chose to abandon us, including me, a baby, in the Normie world to rot. When I was eleven, I forced him to show his face again. After the unfortunate incident with my mother—”

“Her murder, you mean.”

“Bane realized what I was: a Lifemaker and Deathmaker in one,” the Master continued, as if Cas hadn’t cut in. “He brought me back to Wayward, to train me, but didn’t tell anyone what I was or what had happened. The Grand Council wouldn’t have approved, you see. They would have locked me up in Nowhere Prison and deprived him.”

“Of what?”

The Master of All’s eyes glinted. “Of the same thing that he sees in you. An opportunity. A prodigy. A chance to manipulate somebody to become more extraordinary and brilliant than he could ever be himself.

“Dr Bane taught me how to control my Deathmaker powers and arranged secret lessons with Mrs Crane to teach me Lifemaker magic on the sly. Of course, the repercussions of my actions became clear when the fifth Order’s powers began disappearing. But as their abilities dwindled, my ambitions grew. I was an Abnormie unlike any other. An exception to every rule. Not even the balance of nature could control me, so I wasn’t about to let my cowardly father do so.

“After I left Wayward School, Dr Bane panicked. He scampered off to the Grand Council and tattled, but left out a few essential facts. Like how I was his son. Like how he knew what I’d done to acquire my powers and how he had been stoking my ambitions from the moment I arrived. Bane began working with the Grand Council to find me, tracking my whereabouts and hunting me down, in the hopes that they would get to me before I could get to them. Because he knew he would be punished or exiled for what he had done.

“But one day, a few years ago, I found him. People say I’m cruel, but I offered my father a deal. I had heard the Oracle’s prophecy about you, Foretold. Bane could help me find you and end your life, or I would ruin his. Bane looked long and hard for the Foretold after that, sending his darling daughter here on secret missions to the Normie world to keep an eye out, just as I had my Heretics doing the same.

“Only, when he found you, something changed. His daughter didn’t know about our deal and she managed to escape my Heretics with you unscathed, so Bane decided to play both sides. He protected you here at Wayward School, so that you stood a chance of stopping me, but he also continued to assist me – all to save his own skin. He created the distraction that allowed me to slip in through the town’s wards at Christmas, after one of my Heretics heard that the Foretold was visiting from Wayward School. Shortly after, I met you, Cas. I would have done away with you then if your blithering friends hadn’t blundered into view. But no matter. I waited. I bided my time. I planned to strike the school with my Heretics as soon as possible – then suddenly Bane fed me a new piece of information. I must’ve spooked him with the message I left with the Cricket boy.

“Bane informed me that there was something much more valuable than the Foretold at Wayward. He said I wouldn’t need to worry about stopping the child who was destined to defeat me if I could succeed in taking all of the Orders’ powers first. Bane said the Grand Council entrusted numerous valuable objects to Wayward School and among them, there was a device that could help me seek out the conduits – the very thing I sought.”

“The seekerthing,” Cas whispered.

The Master sneered. “You’re smarter than I thought, Foretold. I broke into the school and tried to force its whereabouts out of Mrs Crane—”

“But she didn’t give in,” Cas interrupted, darting an accusatory look at Dr Bane.

The man who had trained Cas. The man Cas had trusted. The man who had secretly been working against them all and was partially responsible for everyone who had been hurt since Cas had arrived. Dewey Cricket. The Wayward wardsmen. Mrs Crane.

None of it was entirely Cas’s fault.

“Unfortunately not.”

“Well, don’t get your hopes up,” Cas told the Master crisply. “You don’t have the seekerthing now and you’ll never have it, because I’m not going to let you get it!”

Blood and rage thundering in his ears, Cas focused hard on the Master, ready to use his powers.

But the Master of All readied himself too.

Cas knew he couldn’t really fight him. Knew he couldn’t win. Still, he dug his hand into his pocket for the only weapon he had left: the glowing, spinning orb.

As Cas pulled the orb free, its spinning rings began to whirl faster. An ear-splitting screech tore through the chamber. It was as if the object was reacting to Cas and the Master’s combined presence, to their immense power…

No, it couldn’t be…

Madame Aster’s words from Order Studies rang in Cas’s ears: Only someone as strong and powerful as the threads of power themselves would be able to sense and find it.

It was.

The seekerthing.

The Master of All’s eyes widened and his wicked smile grew. “You found it,” he breathed. “I should have known that if I couldn’t locate the seekerthing, you would, Foretold. You were prophesied, made directly by the same threads which this object senses.” He held out his hand hungrily. “Give it to me.”

Cas tried and failed to shove the device back in his pocket. “Never.”

Snatching his powers away from Warrior, the Master of All turned them on Cas. Suddenly, Cas found his feet involuntarily moving towards him, sloshing through the sewage. Despite every effort he made to fight it, the Master had control of his muscles. Every ounce of control had been torn away from his limbs. It felt worse than any attack by his funny leg. More terrible than anything he had ever experienced in his life. He climbed like a stiff marionette up onto the island.

But at that moment, something extraordinary happened.

His funny leg broke through the spell.

It was as if the threads of power inside him could sense the threat before him and revolted. The sudden movement of walking had awoken the tingling feeling inside Cas’s leg. The energy surged, greater than ever before, through his body and into his arm, too. He had never been more grateful for the fuzzy, prickling feeling. Never more thankful for the sparks as they fought back against the Master’s control.

“Obey.” The Master’s eyes protruded as he sensed his power slipping. “Hand it to me.”

“Over my dead body,” said Cas, gripping his fingers tighter around the seekerthing. The device shimmered and gleamed in the dim light. Then, in one swift motion, Cas smashed the object against the onyx rock of the island, shattering it into pieces.

“NO!”

The Master of All roared.

Cas’s funny leg subsided and he honed his powers in on the Master. “Ok—”

But he had barely got one syllable out before he heard something whizzing towards him – and a sharp pain erupted in his gut. Cas looked down to see the same shard of rock that had snuffed out Hobdogglin sticking out of him as well.

Fenix and Lucie screamed. Paws in Mogget’s body shrieked.

But Cas said nothing as he looked down, hands shaking, his eyes refusing to believe what they could see. Around the hole in his gut, where the shard protruded and there should have been a wound or blood, there was nothing.

Nothing but the misty, smoke-like tendrils of an illusion breaking free.