Her words hit me with the force of a physical blow. The lie, that single, simple, six-word lie—"And so were you [smiling]"—was more damning than the truth.
The truth was that I was a horrified puppet, my strings tangled in a knot of self-loathing. Her lie painted me as a willing, joyous participant. A monster who enjoyed the harvest. And the most terrifying part was that, for a split second, I believed her. In the mirror of her accusation, I saw the monster I was becoming. My actions and my inner self were now so misaligned that of course she would think I was smiling.
My breath caught in my chest. The world narrowed to her sapphire eyes, cold, clear, and filled with a righteous, analytical fury. I had no mask for this. The arrogant Lucian, the bored Lucian, the cruel Lucian—they were all cheap, paper-thin defenses against this. This was not a fool I was dealing with. This was an inquisitor.
"Your face... it confirms everything," she said, her voice dropping to a low, glacial tone. She took another step, and I instinctively took one back, my foot hitting the soft grass of the courtyard.
"I knew it," she whispered, more to herself than to me. "I knew that mind from the lecture hall couldn't just be... nothing. It was you. All of it. You were the one who tormented Thomas Fell, weren't you? Your words, your presence... and then something else. Something magical. You did something to him."
She wasn't guessing. She was stating facts.
"And now Mara," she continued, her voice rising, the coldness now laced with a hot, vibrant anger. "A letter? A threat against her family? It all happens, and the one person Damien congratulates is you? You, his shadow, his... his architect."
She had pieced it all together. The scattered, chaotic events of the past weeks, she had seen the thread I had so carefully woven between them. She saw the pattern. She saw me.
"Why?" she demanded, her voice cracking with the sheer, frustrated force of the question. "That's the only thing I don't understand. Why would a mind like yours, a mind that can grasp concepts Professor Gidean himself finds novel... why would you devote it to this? To being Damien Vrael's butcher?"
My mind was a screaming void. I had no answer. I couldn't tell her the truth. Because if I don't, he'll kill me. Because I'm from another world. Because this is all a story, and I'm just trying to survive. The words were insane. They were a confession of madness.
I needed a new mask. Not the fool. Not the thug. The situation demanded something more.
My eyes darted to the side, to the training sword I had dropped, lying in the grass. An anchor. I pushed past her, my movements stiff and unnatural, and bent to pick it up. The worn leather of the hilt felt real, a solid, grounding presence in a world that was dissolving into a nightmare.
I turned to face her, the blunted steel held loosely in my hand, pointed at the ground. I let the panic recede, replaced by a cold, sharp, and utter bleakness. If she wanted the truth, I would give her a version she could understand.
"You're very clever, Vael," I said, my voice quiet, stripped of all its previous arrogance. It was the voice of Aiden, overlaid with the coldness of Lucian. "You see more than all of them. More than Leonidas. More than even Damien, I think."
She was momentarily taken aback by the admission. The lack of denial, the sudden shift in my persona, had caught her off-balance.
"But you're wrong about one thing," I continued, taking a slow step toward the center of my courtyard. "You think I'm a butcher. A butcher is a messy, passionate creature. I am not."
"Then what are you?" she challenged, her eyes narrowing.
I looked at her, and for the first time, I let her see the person behind the mask—not Aiden, but the new, cold, and broken thing I was becoming.
"I am a pragmatist," I said. "I live in the real world. You and Leonidas... you live in a fairy tale. You believe in honor, in friendship, in 'doing the right thing.' Those are luxuries, Vael. Luxuries for people who have never had their lives on the line."
"That's not pragmatism," she shot back, her voice sharp. "That's just a coward's excuse for cruelty. Crippling a boy's mind, terrorizing a girl's family... what 'pragmatic' end does that serve?"
"It serves survival!" The words burst out of me, louder and more raw than I had intended. I reined myself in, my voice dropping back to a cold, hard whisper. "This academy is not a school. It is a crucible. A training ground for the powerful and a grave for the weak. Damien Vrael is power. Leonidas Aris is a sentimental fool who will get all his friends killed. I have simply chosen the winning side. My 'talents,' as you call them, are just tools to ensure I am still standing when the game is over."
It was a good lie. It was a believable lie. It painted me as a cold, cynical, and ruthless survivalist, a third option in this world of black and white.
I watched her face, waiting for her to accept it. To be disgusted, perhaps, but to accept it.
Instead, she shook her head, a look of profound, crushing disappointment on her face. "No," she said softly.
My blood ran cold. "No?"
"I don't believe you." She took a step closer, her gaze softening from anger to a piercing, clinical pity. "I've seen pragmatic people, Lucian. I've seen cold people. Their eyes are empty. Yours... yours are filled with a self-loathing so deep I can feel it from here."
She was too close. She saw too much. My Soul Resonance was useless; she wore her observations on her sleeve, and they were all aimed at the one truth I couldn't afford to have spoken.
"You're not a pragmatist," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if she were diagnosing a patient. "You're not a monster. You're a prisoner. And you hate every single second of what you're being forced to do."
Her words... they were so accurate, so true, that they felt like a betrayal. I had no defense against her pity. I had no defense against her understanding.
I did the only thing I could. I fell back on the only power I had, the power I despised. I threatened her.
"Be very careful, Seraphina," I hissed, and the use of her first name was a sharp, cold slap. My hand tightened on the hill of my sword. "You are very smart. But smart people who dig in the wrong places... they get buried. You followed me. You are accusing a Greyfall, a proven associate of House Vrael, of conspiracy. You are walking a line so thin it might as well be invisible."
Her eyes widened, just slightly. The threat had landed. The social reality of our positions, of her word against mine and Damien's, had finally sunk in.
She held my gaze for a long, agonizing moment, the two of us locked in a silent battle. She had all the truth, but I had all the power.
"I see," she finally said, her voice hollow. The huntress was gone, replaced by the judge who had just passed a sentence. "The prisoner is rattling his chains, pretending they're a sword. I was wrong. You're not a pragmatist. You're just a coward, after all."
She didn't wait for a reply. She turned her back on me, a gesture of profound dismissal, and walked out of the courtyard.
"Thomas and Mara are good people," her voice drifted back, a final, parting shot. "Whatever game you think you're playing to survive... I hope it's worth the cost."
She was gone.
The strength, the coldness, the entire facade of the "cynical pragmatist" dissolved in an instant. The training sword slipped from my numb fingers and thudded onto the grass. I sank to my knees, my body shaking with the aftershock of the confrontation.
My sanctuary was gone. My secret was out.
I was trapped. Damien was in front of me, forcing me to become a monster. Leonidas and Mara were on one side, a living monument to the monster I had already become. And now, Seraphina was behind me, watching my every move, the one person in this entire, gods-forsaken world who saw the truth.
She saw the prisoner. And she had just left him to rot in his cell.