Theresa
It was midnight, and Theresa Apocalypse's office was a void, a pocket of absolute silence insulated from the sleeping academy. The only light was the cold glow from her monitor, painting her petite frame in shades of blue and black, making her look more like a ghost haunting the principal's chair than its occupant.
Sleep was a luxury she rarely afforded. This, now, was her actual work.
She was not reviewing budgets or mission reports. That was the work done in the daytime. At night, however, was when she carried out her more secretive endeavors.
With a press of the keyboard, the lights of her office, along with her terminal, flickered for a few seconds before settling back to normal. This was due to her privacy protocols: resetting all electronics in her office and creating a dead zone where outside signals couldn't get in unless she allowed them.
She opened the academy's security camera footage, pulling up a clip from the main cafeteria, recorded just twelve hours prior. But she only focused on one singular table where Kiana, Mei, Bronya, and Kenji sat. Her gaze bypassed the others. It landed, as it always did, on Kiana.
In the silent feed, Kiana was in the middle of a story, her arms waving with a wild, obnoxious energy that was so uniquely her. She was probably complaining about a test or bragging about a simulation. She threw her head back and laughed, a huge, goofy laugh that made Mei smile and Bronya roll her eyes.
A smile touched Theresa's lips. It was a faint, fleeting expression, one she never allowed herself during the day. This was the Kiana she was fighting for. This loud, idiotic, fiercely alive girl.
And then, as quickly as it came, the smile faded. The warmth in her chest gave way to the familiar, cold ache of the truth.
Her gaze remained locked on Kiana's laughing face, but she was no longer seeing a student. She was looking at the container.
In Theresa's mind, she could see the other image, the one that haunted her sleep, the one she monitored with far more diligence than any security camera.
The diagnostic image of Kiana's energy signature. A jagged, chaotic, violent waveform that thrummed with a power capable of ending the world.
[SUBJECT: K-423]
The Herrscher of the Void.
Every one of Kiana's smiles was a victory, a precious, stolen moment that Theresa had to fight for. Every laugh was a temporary reprieve, a defiance against the ticking bomb nestled beside her heart.
Her love for Kiana was a heavy, painful weight that was almost suffocating. To protect this one girl, she had lied to her subordinates, defied her grandfather, and turned an entire academy into a fortress, a gilded cage designed to keep the monster inside asleep.
She watched the girl on the screen lean over and steal a piece of food from Kenji's plate, who was completely oblivious. She was so bright. So full of life.
And so, so dangerous.
It didn't help that Raiden Mei, someone Kiana was extremely close to, also had a Herrscher inside her.
Theresa's small hands clenched into fists on her desk. Her gaze, still heavy, drifted on the screen. It moved one seat over, from the girl she loved as a daughter to the boy sitting right next to her.
Aoyama Kenji.
The shift in her internal monologue quickly changed from the warmth she felt for Kiana into a cold, analytical chill of the Principal of St. Freya.
On the screen, he was just a boy. Laughing at whatever Kiana had said, pushing her hand away as she stole his food. He looked, if anything, even more normal than the Valkyries around him. He still lacked their practiced, almost predatory awareness.
And that was the lie that chilled her more than Kiana's true nature. A lie she had to painstakingly hold, and never told a single soul about. Not Himeko. Not Fu Hua. No one.
Her fingers moved, closing the mundane cafeteria feed. The screen went black, plunging the office into darkness for a brief second before a new program flickered to life.
The display was no longer a video feed, but a complex, real-time diagnostic running two parallel energy signatures. It was the program she had built herself, a program that secretly monitored the three most dangerous anomalies within her walls, 24/7.
The first waveform was jagged, violent, and crimson. It looked like a continuous, uncontrolled explosion. It was the signature of a power that hated its container and everything around it.
SUBJECT: K-423 (KIANA KASLANA) - [STATUS: DORMANT - CRITICAL]
The second waveform was sharp, like electricity, already leaking from the individual's body. Though this one was already somewhat under control.
SUBJECT: RAIDEN MEI - [STATUS: SEMI-AWAKENED - CRITICAL]
Finally, the last waveform, running just below it, was a deep, brilliant red. It was just as powerful; the energy peaks were frighteningly high, but it was not chaotic. It was stable, and pulsed with the steady, controlled beat of a sleeping heart.
SUBJECT: A-001 (AOYAMA KENJI) - [STATUS: DORMANT - STABLE]
Theresa stared at the three signatures. Kiana and Mei were something she expected, something she had protocols for. Herrscher Cores were relatively easy to detect and, above all, extremely rare.
'So how the hell does he also have one inside him?!'
She remembered the day, three weeks ago, after another particularly uneven session of private training, when she decided to test out the secret program she had created, a program that was supposed to analyse energy signatures in people with greater detail and precision.
On that day, when Kenji was sparring against Fu Hua, she put her new program into action. She couldn't risk raising suspicion, so she waited until after the session to retrieve her data.
She had expected—or more accurately hoped that she would be able to get more insight into Kenji's odd energy. But what she saw in her program reports was something she did not even consider.
She would never forget the moment the results came back. The cold, leaden shock that settled in her stomach. It was not a stigmata, not a unique mutation. It was a Core. A fully-formed, impossibly stable Herrscher Core, humming away inside him as if it had always been there.
'This must be what he was trying to hide from us. What else could his secret be?' She furrowed her brows, 'More importantly, what Herrscher is he?'
Kiana's burden was a known quantity. It was a tragic inheritance, a battle Theresa had been long preparing for. She knew who she was really dealing with.
But this... this was unknown. A variable she had never accounted for. A third, entirely new Herrscher had just walked through her front door and enrolled as a student.
How in the world had her systems not detected this beforehand was a complete blunder on her part. Who knows what could have happened with an unknown Herrscher Core in the academy?
But that also raised another thought within her… If she only found out about this now, it was likely that other factions also didn't know of this.
Of the Herrscher Core within Kenji.
His core was unique compared to the others; it was as if it were being contained by itself. Somehow not releasing any of its energy to expose its presence. Something was going on here.
She had also cross-checked this with data from the previous eruption. Kenji's burst of power didn't even alert her systems that it was anything Herrscher-related; it was only his odd energy.
She looked at the three signatures again and realized that this may be something she could use to solve her problems. It had changed shape entirely.
Theresa leaned back, the springs of her chair groaning into the silence. Her mission was no longer simply to prepare Kiana and Mei. The addition of a third, unknown core had twisted the entire narrative.
It had become a strategic problem.
It was then that a cold, unwelcome memory surfaced, a fragment from her "childhood" in Otto's labs. A time when she wasn't a student, but a project.
She could almost feel the cold, ivory chess piece in her small hand. Otto sat opposite her, a patient smile on his face, but his eyes held the cold, calculating depth of the marble floor.
"Do you know why you lose, little Theresa?" he had asked as he captured her queen without a second thought. "You love your pieces too much. You cannot bear to sacrifice your queen, so you will lose your king. A true grandmaster knows that every piece on the board is a tool. A means to an end."
How she had hated that lesson. How she had hated him. Her entire life, her very purpose, had been defined in defiance of that single, monstrous philosophy. St. Freya was her rebellion, a sanctuary built on the foundational belief that children were not tools.
And yet...
Her gaze drifted back to the three waveforms on her monitor. The chaotic crimson of Kiana. The leaking, volatile energy of Mei. These were the pieces she loved. They were burdens, yes, but burdens she carried out of a fierce, protective, almost suffocating affection. She would burn the world to save them. They were her "King" and "Queen."
And then, there was the third waveform. The deep red of Aoyama Kenji.
The cold, pragmatic Apocalypse part of her —the part she inherited from Otto, the part she loathed —whispered the obvious question.
Kiana and Mei were unstable. They were threats to themselves and everyone around them, their cores chaotic and hateful, resisting their vessels. But Kenji... his was the opposite. It was in perfect, symbiotic harmony with its host, "self-containing" to the point of invisibility.
A weapon of unknown potential.
A new piece was on the board. One that neither Otto nor Cocolia nor the rest of the world knew existed. A piece that was, for now, hers alone.
Then a cold, strategic thought landed inside her head.
What if... what if this stable, unknown power is the counter to Kiana and Mei?
Is Kenji the solution?
The question itself was an immediate, profound betrayal. A wave of self-loathing so strong it made her nauseous washed over her.
She had just looked at one child —a student she had sworn to protect —and wondered whether he could be used as a tool to save another.
She, Theresa Apocalypse, had just sacrificed her queen.
"A true grandmaster knows that every piece on the board is a tool."
Her grandfather's voice, whispering in her memory. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the three waveforms were burned onto the inside of her eyelids. She understood, in that horrifying moment, the true nature of her new burden.
Her bond with Kenji could never be simple. It could never be the pure, protective love she felt for Kiana, or the weary affection she felt for Himeko.
He was, and would always be, her secret. Her trump card. Her hidden, powerful asset.
She would protect him, yes. She would guard his secret with her life, not just for his own sake, but for hers. She would give him custom sim rooms, not just to let him fail in safety, but to cultivate her asset. To learn its strengths, its limits.
Theresa opened her eyes, her expression now as cold and still as the ivory chess pieces from her past.
She let out a bitter laugh. She had built her sanctuary to defy her grandfather, and in doing so, had become a grandmaster just like him.