I don't remember the walk back to my room. It was as if my mind had disconnected from my body, a desperate, self-preservation measure. I was a ghost piloting a flesh-and-blood machine, moving through a world that suddenly seemed muffled and unreal. Students I passed, their auras bright with mundane concerns about classes or weekend plans, were like figures from a different, simpler universe. I was no longer a part of their world. I was a citizen of Damien's, a secret, shadowy nation of two, built on a foundation of cruelty and control.
My hands were trembling, but not from fear. It was the vibration of a machine pushed too far, of a soul recoiling from the thing it had been forced to become. I had crafted a plan to torment an innocent girl, and the monster I served had looked at my blueprint, smiled, and decided to build it with real-world blood and terror instead of just ink and lies.
I had given him the loaded gun, and he had gleefully pulled the trigger.
When I reached my room and the door was finally locked, I didn't collapse. I didn't rage. I simply stood in the center of the room, hollowed out, the silence a deafening roar. The architect of ruin. That's what he saw me as. And the most sickening part? He was right. The plan was creative. It was intelligent. It had come from my mind, from the part of me that was once Aiden Verne, the part that analyzed, that saw patterns, that solved problems.
My intelligence, my greatest asset from my old life, had become my most effective tool for evil in this one.
That night, my training was not training. It was an exorcism. I fled to the courtyard, and I did not fight the echoes of Damien. I fought the echo of myself. I fought the vision of me, standing in Damien's room, calmly explaining how to break a girl's spirit.
I moved with a savage, desperate energy, my training sword a blur of fury. I didn't just practice; I attacked, over and over, until my arms felt like lead and my lungs were on fire. The pain was the only thing that felt real, the only thing that felt just. I ran the forms until my grip was so slick with sweat and blood from my torn blisters that the hilt was torn from my grasp, clattering onto the flagstones.
Then, I fell to my knees, gasping, and began the Mana Breathing. But there was no peace. There was no clean, pure world-mana. When I reached out, all I could feel was the thrum of my own corrupted heart. I was trying to wash a bloodstain out of a white tunic with a bucket of ink.
The next two days were a new kind of torture: the torture of the waiting.
Damien's plan was now in motion, a complex, real-world operation in the capital. It would take time. Time for the Crimson Syndicate to receive their orders. Time for them to find the right thugs. Time for them to pay a "visit" to The Iron Hand Smithy. Time for a terrified 15-year-old boy to find a way to get a message to his sister at the magically-shielded academy.
Every moment of that waiting was an agony.
I went to my classes. I sat in the library. I walked the halls. And I watched her.
I saw Mara in the dining hall, sitting with Leonidas. They were talking in low, worried tones, their heads bent together. They were, I realized with a fresh pang of guilt, undoubtedly discussing Thomas. They were still reeling from the first wound I had inflicted, completely unaware of the second, more insidious one that was already racing towards them.
Mara looked exhausted, her aura a steady but weary blue. But she was still the rock. She was still offering Leonidas a reassuring smile, still exuding an air of "we will get through this."
And I, watching from across the hall, felt like a god in some cruel, ancient tragedy, observing the mortals I had already doomed. Don't smile, I wanted to scream at her. It's not over. It's so much worse. And it's my fault.
I had to live with this knowledge. I had to sit there, eat my food, and watch her, knowing that at any moment, a letter would arrive. A letter that I had, for all intents and purposes, written in her brother's blood.
The waiting finally broke on the third day.
I was returning to my dorm after my morning classes when one of the academy's formal, magically-animated messengers—a small, hovering construct of polished brass—floated down the hall and stopped in front of me. It held out a single, perfectly folded piece of parchment, sealed not with wax, but with a simple, dark blue stamp.
My heart stopped. This was not how students received mail from the outside world. This was an internal, intra-academy message.
I took it from the construct, my fingers numb. I waited until I was inside my locked room before I opened it. It was not a long letter. It was a note, written in Damien's elegant, sharp, and perfectly controlled script.
It contained only eight words.
"The seeds are sown. A most promising harvest awaits."
I read it once. Then twice. The message was clear. The "visit" to Kael Stonecroft had been made. The timer was no longer counting down to the event; it was now counting down to the discovery.
The piece of parchment crumpled in my fist. The trap was set. The string was pulled. All I could do now was wait for the scream.
.
.
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[ Author's Note-
Hey everyone! The next chapter is also coming out today! It might take a little time, but it'll definitely be published within the next 2–3 hours. So stay tuned.
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