A blonde figure walked through the fiery hazard, his steps deliberate on the hot, cracked ground. Alaric of House Fenshore was accompanied by a handful of other students, their badges a stark, polished black against the hellish orange glow. They moved with a predatory confidence, masters in a hunting ground made just for them.
"Clarissa," Alaric said, his voice cool. "How many silver badges did you eliminate?"
The girl beside him, sharp-featured and smug, adjusted the cuff of her uniform. "At least four. They were hiding in one of the smaller archive outbuildings. Pathetic, really."
"Tsk." Alaric looked away, a flicker of something unreadable in his silver eyes. The number felt hollow. It was just a tally. It didn't bring the satisfaction he thought it would.
"Alaric, don't be so down," Clarissa purred, stepping closer. "I'm sure that silver badge, Lucid, and his little crew will run into us soon enough. We'll make an example of them."
"Oh, I hope so," she continued, her voice taking on a venomous edge. Alaric spoke "That lunatic had the audacity to *touch* me. To shove me aside and survive the cleansing ritual. He *punched* me. And my brother didn't even punish him for it. He didn't speak of it. He didn't enact any of the disciplinary action he announced in the practice yard. It's as if it never happened."
Clarissa laughed, a high, snobby sound that grated against the roar of the flames. "Don't you see? It's all part of the plan. My guess is he's being saved. Reserved for the worst death among all the silver badges. A personal project."
"Alaric! Clarissa!"
A voice called from behind them, cutting through Clarissa's gloating. They turned to see two of the professors approaching through the haze of heat and smoke. Professor Ben, an old man with hair as white as the untouched archives, and Professor Lilith, a witch-like woman whose wide-brimmed hat seemed twice the size of her head. They were two of the three who had conspired to turn this expedition into a coup.
"You are here in time," Professor Ben said, his voice a dry rasp. His hands were clasped neatly behind his back.
Professor Lilith stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with a peculiar delight as she surveyed the black-badge students. "We have such a spectacular bunch of black badges this year," she cooed, shooting a look at Ben that was shared between conspirators. It was a devious, knowing grin.
The sight of it sent an involuntary chill down Alaric's spine. He was an accomplice. He had agreed to this, hadn't he? He was here to prove his worth, to seize the power and freedom his birthright within Fenshore had never granted him. So why did that look make his stomach twist?
"Alaric," Professor Ben said, his calm tone drawing Alaric's attention. "I suppose it is time to show you what your father has sought. What House Fenshore has worked toward."
He gestured for them to follow and led the small group toward the very heart of the rift. The central clearing was dominated by a terrible, twisted tree of blackened bone, its jagged branches clawing at the orange sky. But it wasn't the tree that captured their gaze.
It was the person lying at its base.
"Oh my god..." Alaric whispered, the words escaping in a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He had seen his fair share of violence. He had participated in cruel initiations, in back-alley disciplining of those who crossed his family. He was no stranger to gore or to inflicting pain. But this was different.
The Princess of Vex lay there, a living portrait of violation. The right side of her body was a morbid, pulsing mass of deformed purple flesh, thick veins throbbing with a sick light. The left side remained untouched, heartbreakingly pristine—soft, fair skin, golden hair matted with sweat, the tattered remains of a beautiful blue dress. She was beauty and horror stitched together, a pillar of the kingdom broken and defiled on the altar of ambition.
A cold, greasy feeling settled in Alaric's gut. He had known this year's expedition would be "different." He knew the black badges would have free rein to hunt. He had thought it was about culling the weak, about establishing a new, brutal hierarchy. He was wrong. This was a plot to overthrow the ruling monarch. This was treason painted in blood and corruption. He looked away, an unfamiliar pang of something like sympathy, or perhaps just visceral shock, hitting him.
"Isn't it pretty?" Professor Lilith sighed, her voice full of perverse pride. She circled the prone form like an artist admiring a finished sculpture. "I spent weeks perfecting that corruption spell. It's a work of art, really."
Professor Ben stepped to her side. "Hmm, if I recall, we had to sacrifice a life to seed the initial catalyst. A necessary cost. Your Fate-conjuring arts know no bounds, Miss Lilith."
"I'm flattered, Ben," she replied, and they shared another laugh. It was a dry, intellectual sound, utterly devoid of humanity. To Alaric's ears, it scraped like broken glass.
"Hey, what is it, Alaric?" Clarissa leaned in, her sharp eyes studying his face. He had gone pale.
"N-nothing," he muttered, pulling away from her scrutiny. He took a few steps back, needing distance from the scene, from the professors, from the awful, triumphant glee in the air.
Miguel was nowhere to be seen. His brother, the golden heir, was likely orchestrating another part of this hellish play. Alaric found himself hoping, with a sudden, desperate intensity, that it would just be over with soon. He looked down at his own hands. They were clean. For now.
"Alaric."
He looked up, startled, and nearly collided with the very person he had been thinking of.
Miguel stood before him, a tall, imposing figure even in the chaotic light. His tan skin and sharp features were a mirror of Alaric's own, but where Alaric's eyes were a troubled silver, Miguel's were chips of cold, polished steel. His silver hair was perfectly in place. He was the perfect first son, the respected heir. Alaric had once admired him, had even believed his brother protected him. But he knew better now.
Miguel was control. He was a silent, omnipresent pressure in Alaric's life, a constant reminder that he was the spare, the secondary son with no true place or title to inherit in House Fenshore. Miguel never hit him. He never hurled insults. He simply existed as a wall, reminding Alaric of his limits with every cool glance, every casually dismissive order.
"Brother," Alaric said, the word tight in his throat.
Miguel tilted his head, his gaze assessing. "Where are you headed?"
"I... I need to find more silver badges. To eliminate them." The mission sounded flat, even to him.
"Oh, is that so?" Miguel's tone was deceptively light.
"Yes. Lucid. That silver-badged second-year. I need to find him and get rid of him. I planted the shadow-stone you instructed me to. It should be roaming, culling most of the student herd." Alaric recited the facts, trying to sound competent, trying to claim a piece of this awful game as his own.
Miguel inclined closer. His eyes, wide and unblinking, held a terrifying, manic intensity. "Brother," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Do you remember what I told you?"
Alaric remembered. How could he forget? The conversation in the quiet study, the air thick with unspoken threats.
"Yes. Yes, I remember," Alaric stammered, taking an involuntary step back.
Miguel stepped forward again, closing the distance until he was looming over Alaric, forcing him to crane his neck. "Do not," Miguel enunciated each word with chilling precision, "ever cross my path."
A shiver ran through Alaric. "He is *my* target," he managed to protest, the words weak.
Miguel's face, usually a mask of cool superiority, contorted. A visible twitch pulled at the corner of his eye, then his mouth, revealing a flash of raw, unfiltered anger beneath the polished surface. It was a fury Alaric had rarely seen, and it was terrifying.
For a moment, Alaric thought his brother might strike him. Instead, Miguel smiled. It was a wide, empty smile that didn't reach his steel-cold eyes.
"Good!" Miguel said, the anger vanishing as quickly as it appeared, replaced by that infuriating, controlled amusement. He reached out and clapped Alaric on the shoulder—a gesture that was somehow more demeaning than a shove. Then he walked past him, brushing by as if Alaric were merely an insect on the path.
Alaric stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs. The heat of the rift was nothing compared to the hot, humiliated fury that burned in his chest. He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
*Who was he to decide?* The thought screamed in his head. *Who was Miguel to decree what "crossing his path" even meant? Who decided that Lucid, a nobody silver badge, was Miguel's personal quarry, off-limits to everyone else?*
He looked at the retreating back of his brother, then back toward the central clearing, where the princess lay broken and the professors chatted over their masterpiece. This was the world they were building. A world of absolute control, where even the violence was dictated by hierarchy.
Alaric's hands curled into fists at his sides. The hollow tally of silver badges, the chilling spectacle of the princess, his brother's casual tyranny, it all coalesced into a single, seething point of rebellion in his soul. He would find Lucid. Not for the mission, not for the coup, not even for petty revenge.
He would find him because Miguel had said he couldn't. In this hell of their own making, that was the only thing that felt like his own choice.
***
They moved in a practiced, silent formation. Frederick took point, his senses stretched to their limits, every muscle coiled. Ayame flowed like smoke at Lucid's left flank, her presence a constant, watchful chill. Lucid moved between them.
The next attack came not from the shadows, but from above. With a shower of sparks and cracking stone, a section of a blazing bookshelf gave way. From within the collapsing structure, three hunched, spidery forms of molten glass and purple ichor scuttled out, -C rank, their forms more defined, more malicious than the rats.
Frederick didn't wait. He met the first one's lunge with a sidestep so fluid it seemed rehearsed, his sword arcing up in a silver flash to sever two of its needle-like legs. As it screeched and stumbled, he reversed his grip and drove the point down through its glassy thorax. It shattered into foul, sizzling liquid.
The second beast leapt for Lucid. His first impulse was to summon a chain, to fight. He set it aside. Instead, he dropped low, hitting the hot floor and rolling *toward* the creature, under its trajectory. It landed where he had been, confused for a critical second.
That second was all Ayame needed. She didn't step forward; she simply extended her arm. From her fingertips, the air itself wept crimson. A long, serrated blade of solidified blood coalesced in her hand with a wet, whispering sound. She threw it. It wasn't a graceful spin; it was a straight, brutal line of force. The blood-spear impaled the spider-creature mid-turn, pinning it to a still-standing shelf. It writhed silently, dissolving around the crimson weapon until both monster and blade melted into a steaming puddle.
The third creature, smarter, tried to scramble back into the flames. Frederick was already there. He didn't chase it. He planted his feet, took a deep breath, and hurled his sword like a javelin. It was an impractical, reckless move for any other knight. For Frederick, it was a calculation of perfect angle and force. The sword spun once in the fiery air and pierced the fleeing beast through its core, nailing it to the ground. He walked over, placed a boot on its twitching form, and pulled his blade free.
Silence descended, broken only by the eternal fire. Lucid got to his feet, brushing hot ash from his clothes. He looked from Frederick, calmly cleaning his sword again, to Ayame, where the last traces of her blood-weapon evaporated from her hand.
"You're both unawakened," Lucid observed, the statement hanging in the heated air.
Frederick gave a tight, acknowledging nod. "Hard work pays off."
Ayame said nothing. Her dark eyes were already scanning the next corridor, past the dissolving remains of their foes.
Lucid's gaze settled on her. "How are you doing that, then? The blade."
She didn't look at him. "Heritage," she replied, her voice as flat and cool as a stone in a deep well. "An inherited, latent trait. Passed on by generations. It woke up under... the right pressure." The way she said 'pressure' left no room for further questions.
Frederick, perhaps sensing a moment to build the fragile bridge of camaraderie between them, took a half-step forward. "I understand the dedication to a legacy. I began my training with the blade as soon as I could hold one. Countless hours, sunrise to sunset, year after year. It is about discipline, about—"
"I do not care," Ayame interrupted, the words a clean, guillotine slice through his earnest explanation. She turned her back on him completely, her attention caught by a faint, pearlescent glimmer half-buried in a mound of ash near the wall. She knelt, her movements slow, and brushed the debris aside.
It was a black gemstone, its inner light flickering weakly. Next to it, barely visible, was the charred, bloody hand of a silver-badge student, their journey ended here, anonymously. Ayame picked up the stone, holding it to the hellish light. She examined it with the detached assessment.
"Its planted."
"An egg..."
"That have already hatched"
"B Rank Unfaithful..." Ayame whispered as if realising the source of that monstrosity that have let her live.
She met Lucid's eyes, his expression a mixture of respect for her lethality and her ice like observation.
Lucid watched her toss him the stone.
"Here," she said swiftly.
he took it and looked at it, the situation setting in.
A lifetime of knightly discipline. And him, a vessel for an external will and a silent killer of denon heritage. They were a trio of power achieved outside the sanctioned path of Awakening, three different kinds of outsiders. In a rift that fed on conventional faith and fate, perhaps that was their only advantage, that they were unawakened.
Ayame stood, her task complete. "We need to go," she said, pointing ahead where the air visibly shimmered with a miasma of purple and black. "We are close to the source. The heart of the maze."
The heart, and whatever, and whoever, guarded it. They moved on, the strange, potent silence between them now a fourth member of their party, as they walked into the thickening dread.