Vyne heard her murmurs, though she was barely whispering to herself—more like a breath of frustration escaping her lips, carried away by the cold wind that perpetually swept through the courtyard's corridors.
He exhaled, a quiet sigh slipping out as he watched her hunched form against the backdrop of crumbling gargoyles and ivy-choked walls.
The courtyard's fountain gurgled nearby, its crystal-clear water a stark contrast to the murky emotions swirling between them.
Students in their pristine uniforms—moved in careful patterns around them, their conversations nothing more than whispered conspiracies and veiled threats. This place bred monsters in designer clothing, and everyone knew it.
"Drink this," he said, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of dripping water and distant chatter. He shoved a carton of artificial strawberry juice into Blazar's trembling hand, the gesture more forceful than he'd intended.
The plastic crinkled under her grip like bones breaking, the sickly-sweet scent hitting her nose before she even took a sip—artificial and cloying.
Like everything else in this godforsaken institution where nothing was ever true, where every smile hid daggers and every friendship was a transaction waiting to be cashed in.
This guy always has food with him, huh?
The thought drifted through her mind unbidden, a fragment of normalcy in the chaos that had become her existence.
Even in hell, Vyne somehow managed to care about whether she ate. Blazar smiled. I knew he will come in handy.
She swallowed a mouthful, the flavor too sugary, too fake—a synthetic approximation of something that might have once grown in soil and sunshine, before corporations decided they could do nature better than nature itself.
Vyne leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his orange uniform jacket hanging open to reveal the white shirt beneath.
His heterochromia eyes, calm and perpetually worried, fixed on her face with an intensity that made her skin crawl—not because it was unwelcome, but because it reminded her that someone still saw her as human in a place that treated her like a rabid animal to be put down.
"Is Orion your real name, though?" The question hung in the air like smoke, heavy with implications she wasn't ready to unpack.
Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy as the fog that rolled in from the moors surrounding the academy.
The air smelled of damp concrete and distant smoke, the kind that clung to the place like a bad memory.
Then—
Blazar turned, her eyes sharp as shattered glass, catching the weak morning light.
Those eyes hidden behind opaque glasses had seen too much for someone so young, had witnessed horrors that would break most people, and now they held nothing but walls—barriers built from pain and reinforced with fury.
"I'm not telling you anything." The words came out flat, final, like a door slamming shut on any hope of connection.
And just like that, she walked away, boots scuffing against the polished pavement that gleamed with recent rain.
Her steps echoed off the surrounding buildings, a staccato rhythm of defiance that seemed to mock the very foundation of this place built on hierarchy and submission.
---
She wasn't paying attention.
Her mind was a mess of half-formed thoughts, of old wounds and fresh irritations, memories bleeding into present reality like watercolors in rain.
So when she bumped into someone, it barely registered—just a brief impact, a muttered "Sorry," as she sidestepped without looking up, lost in the labyrinth of her own damaged psyche.
A mistake.
A hand yanked her wolftail held hair hard enough to make her wince, the sting shooting down to her spine like lightning, nerve endings firing in protest.
The pain was sharp and immediate, cutting through her mental fog like a blade through silk.
"Heh? A nothing bumps into me and walks off without apologizing properly?"
The voice was smug, dripping with arrogance and entitlement, the kind of tone that belonged to someone who'd never faced real consequences for their actions.
It carried the particular brand of cruelty that came from privilege, from knowing that daddy's money and family name could buy absolution for any sin.
Blazar's jaw clenched, muscles tightening as rage began to build in her chest like a furnace coming to life.
Slowly, she turned her head, taking in the sight of the blonde bastard grinning down at her, his perfect teeth gleaming in a face that had never known hunger or desperation.
His posse of five snickered behind him like a pack of hyenas, their designer uniforms pristine and their souls rotted through with casual cruelty.
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, the sound hissing between them like a threat given voice.
If I stab this guy to death, will I regret the consequences?
The answer came instantly, rising up from the dark places in her heart where survival instincts lived alongside barely contained violence.
Of course not.
Her fingers slid into her trouser pocket, brushing against the cool metal of her knife.
The familiar weight of it grounded her, reminded her that she wasn't helpless despite what these privileged parasites thought.
In one smooth motion, practiced through necessity and honed by desperation, she slashed upward, the blade biting into the hand tangled in her hair with the precision of someone who'd learned to fight dirty or not at all.
"Fuck you!" The blonde—Rai, as his lackeys called him with the reverence reserved for royalty—jerked back, his grip loosening as blood welled from the shallow cut she'd carved across his knuckles.
His face twisted in fury, the mask of aristocratic superiority slipping to reveal the petulant child beneath, spoiled and unused to being denied anything he wanted.
He reached for the sword at his hip with his hand, the ornate weapon marking him as nobility in a place where such distinctions meant the difference between predator and prey.
The wound bled more as his fingers tightened around the jeweled hilt, knuckles white with rage and humiliation.
"Do you know who you just messed with?" he hissed, voice low and dangerous, carrying undertones of genuine threat.
In this place, such words weren't empty posturing—they were promises of pain, of consequences that would echo through the shadowed halls and whispered conversations of the academy's underground.
Blazar didn't answer. She shifted her stance, weight balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to move in any direction that survival demanded.
Her body had learned to read violence the way others read books, cataloging threats and calculating distances with the cold precision of someone who'd faced death too many times to be intimidated by teenage royals playing at being dangerous.
Rai's lips curled into a sneer that revealed perfect teeth sharpened by privilege and cruelty. "Don't think you're anything special, witch boy. There's gotta be some trick to what you did to Supreme Alpha King Dante. Don't let a few minutes of fame go to your head."
---
He lunged, sword flashing toward her chest with the speed of someone trained in the art of killing, the blade singing through the air with deadly intent.
She dodged with a backflip, her body moving with the fluid grace of someone who'd learned that hesitation meant death.
Her boot slammed into his wrist mid-motion, connecting with the precise force needed to disrupt his grip without breaking bone—yet.
The sword clattered to the ground, its music now a discordant crash against stone, as Rai gasped, pain flaring across his perfect features like dawn breaking over a battlefield.
"I'll destroy you!" he snarled, lunging again with all the fury of wounded pride and aristocratic outrage.
Blazar sidestepped, her movement economical and precise, letting his momentum carry him past her while her lips pulled into a mocking grin that held no warmth, only the cold promise of violence to come.
"Is that what you call an attack?" The words dripped with disdain, each syllable carefully chosen to wound pride deeper than any blade could cut flesh.
His followers erupted like a volcano of indignation and secondhand humiliation.
"Damn it, Rai!" one shouted, his voice cracking with the strain of watching his idol reduced to stumbling incompetence by a supposedly powerless hybrid.
"You're a fucking prince!" another roared, face red with secondhand humiliation, the words carrying the weight of expectation and the crushing burden of family legacy that these privileged children carried like chains made of gold.
Rai's expression darkened, his pride wounded deeper than his hand, the cut to his ego bleeding more freely than the shallow slice across his knuckles.
His chest heaved with the effort of containing rage that threatened to consume him, fingers twitching at his sides as power began to build around him like a gathering storm.
---
"Fine," he spat, the word emerging like poison from between his teeth. "You're the first powerless piece of trash I've had to use my powers on. You'll regret pushing me this far."
The threat carried the weight of genuine danger now, no longer the posturing of a spoiled child but the promise of someone with the ability to back up their words with devastating force.
The air shifted.
A gust of wind whipped around them, sudden and violent, kicking up dust and debris that stung exposed skin and turned the world into a maelstrom of swirling chaos.
Blazar's bangs lashed against her forehead like whips, the force of the wind threatening to drive her to her knees as Rai's eyes glowed with an unnatural light.
Blazar's stomach twisted with hunger. Her abdomen throbbed where fresh bruises bloomed beneath her clothes like thorns, each breath sending a sharp reminder of her injuries racing through nerve endings that screamed for relief.
The pain was immediate and personal in a way that cut through everything else, but only one thought screamed louder than the chorus of pain in her abdomen:
Run.
She spun on her heel, boots scraping against the cobblestones as she bolted with the desperate speed of prey fleeing a predator.
The wind howled behind her like a living thing, slamming into her back like an invisible hand trying to drag her back into the nightmare she was fleeing.
Escape. Just escape. The mantra repeated in her mind like a prayer to gods who she has never acknowledged.
Dammit! Her teeth ground together with the force of her desperation. If I get out of this alive, if I get any better, if my wounds heal, I swear I'll kill this bastard. The promise burned in her chest like acid.