Blake's POV
Vale had seasons, but they didn't feel like change — more like the city shifted masks instead of faces.
Summer heat turned to damp autumn air, and the same streets kept their rhythm: merchants shouting, trains whining, protestors whispering.
It had been months since I'd seen the mark on the dock wall. The wolf's head.
Every day since, I wondered if I really saw her — or if I wanted to so badly that my mind created her from memory.
Senti was supposed to be gone.
But ghosts don't leave when the living still need them.
Life had become a pattern I could live with.
Work.
Sleep.
Avoid the Fang.
Renard's Dust shop had grown busier, and I'd learned to smile at customers without flinching when they mentioned the White Fang.
"You look familiar," one woman said once.
"I get that a lot," I replied.
I didn't.
But it kept me alive.
Some nights, I still wandered the city. Not to hide — just to see.
Vale was never quiet, but there were moments that almost felt like peace.
A street musician by the bridge, a vendor packing up his stall, the faint smell of tea from the café I used to visit before Ilia found me.
I stopped going there after that. I couldn't risk another reminder of what I'd left behind.
Instead, I found a small rooftop that overlooked the market square. The climb was rough, but it was the only place that felt safe.
From up there, I could see the whole district — people living, working, arguing. Human and Faunus side by side, not equal, but at least sharing the same streets.
Sometimes I let myself believe it meant something.
Then came the whispers.
Not from the Fang, but from the city itself — rumors passed between workers and traders.
A Huntsman academy opening applications again after years of closed borders. Beacon.
A place where people learned to fight for something, not against everything.
I didn't pay attention at first. It sounded too far away, too idealistic — like something from another world.
But the more I heard, the harder it became to ignore.
"Even Faunus can apply," a student said at the tea stall one evening. "New headmaster's changed the rules."
The words hit me harder than they should have.
That night, I dreamed of Menagerie. Of home before the shouting, before the anger.
Of Mom laughing, of Dad writing speeches late into the night, of Senti asleep in the chair by the window.
When I woke, I couldn't shake the thought.
Maybe Beacon wasn't just another academy. Maybe it was a way out — or a way forward.
But the world didn't stop for what I wanted.
The White Fang was restless again
.New graffiti appeared overnight — not slogans this time, but coordinates. Drop points. Recruitment calls.
Renard grumbled about it. "Can't even unload a shipment without hearing some idiot talk about revolution."
"You think they'll cause trouble here?" I asked.
"They already are," he said. "Trouble doesn't need noise. Just enough fools who think they can fix the world with gunpowder."
He looked at me over the counter. "You don't seem like one of them."
"I'm not," I said.
He nodded. "Good. You've got better eyes than that."
I didn't ask what he meant.
Later, when I closed up the shop, I saw movement in the alley across the street — a figure in a hood, silver hair flashing under the lamplight.
I froze.
For a heartbeat, I thought she'd turn. But she didn't. She walked past, tail flicking once, slow and deliberate.
Senti.
Still here. Still alive.
I didn't follow this time.
I just stood there, hands shaking, until the light flickered out.
I started hearing more stories after that.
A "Wolf" haunting the lower districts.
A Faunus vigilante who hunted White Fang cells.
Some said she worked for Atlas. Others said she was a myth.
I didn't believe rumors — except this one.
And every time I walked home at night, I found another faint mark scratched on a wall, or carved into a post — a wolf's head, barely visible in the dark.
She was leaving me a trail.
Or maybe just reminding me she still could.
I didn't know if I'd ever see her again.
But for the first time in years, I wanted to.
Because if Senti was still out there, then maybe the part of me that hadn't stopped believing — in peace, in people, in myself — was still alive too.
And that was enough.
For now.