Two weeks later, Vhar'Zul had stopped feeling new.
The Red Horn Inn was no longer safe after House Veyth started asking questions of the residents, so he had changed rooms twice.
He had spent the days the way he planned: markets, drunk escorts, exchange-house clerks, caravan drivers, and one archivist who sold copies of academy notices for too much Demon Cash.
By the end of the second week, the map in his head was clean enough.
The Demon Academy sat in the Demon Capital.
That was where the entrance exam would be held.
That was where the heirs, the clans, and the instructors all gathered in one place and pretended it was only about education.
It was also where two things he wanted were being kept.
The first was the Undying Snake's Orb.
From what he had pulled together, it was stored among the academy's restricted evolution materials, locked behind contribution, bloodline verification, or the kind of exam result that made instructors stop asking where a student had come from.
