REN PLUTO
The first thing they teach you at Vara Rose Institute is that everyone lies.
The second thing is that the island lies best of all.
Ren Pluto learned both lessons before the ferry finished docking. He learned them from the fog—a chemical shroud rolling over the deck like it owned the water, thick and white and tasting of rust and something underneath. Something the bleach hadn't quite covered. And he learned them from the other candidates, fifty of them pressed against the rails in matching charcoal blazers with the same red rose patch stitched over their hearts.
Same costume. Different animals.
Ren kept his spine against the freezing bulkhead and his hands in his pockets. The wind cut through his thin blazer like it wasn't there—because it wasn't, not really. A rental. Polyester blend with a heat-pressed patch that still carried the ghost of his mother's convenience store: pumpkin spice air freshener and the cheap pepperoni sticks she stocked near the register. He'd ripped the tag out at 4 a.m. The itch remained.
His jaw throbbed.
A dull purple pulse where his stepfather's class ring had connected forty-eight hours ago. Don't you dare get kicked out, you ungrateful little shit. Don't you dare come back.
Ren's fingers found the swelling automatically. He traced the edge of the bruise like reading braille, then ran his hand through his black hair and pushed off the metal. The cold felt good. It sharpened things. Made the world less fuzzy around the edges.
He wasn't planning on coming back.
The ferry knifed through the fog like a blade through gauze. Ren moved along the perimeter, staying out of the wind, staying out of sight. That was the trick he'd learned early: be visible enough to exist, invisible enough to forget.
He catalogued the herd.
Near the stern, a girl swallowed by a hoodie three sizes too large. Sayer. She stared at the churning black water like she was calculating the drop. Ren clocked her in two seconds: already beaten. She'd wash out by midterms, one way or another.
Further down, a kid trying to hide his tears behind a paperback. Jules. Absolute liability. Get him separated from the herd before he infected the rest.
Then there was the girl who'd dressed for a nightclub, not a black-site ferry. Zelie Mortmain.Designer bag, skirt hemmed to there, makeup so precise it looked airbrushed. She was scanning the crowd too—but not for threats. For marks. Ren almost smiled. At least one of them had the right instincts.
His eyes stopped on the only other person who looked like she belonged in a cage.
A girl with a buzzcut stood near the bow, ramrod straight, hand resting on the kinetic baton strapped to her thigh. Nyx. She wasn't watching the fog. She was watching the other students the way a wolf watches sheep. Her eyes slid over Ren, dismissed him, then snapped back for a second look.
Good, he thought. She's smart.
The rest were just meat.
"Crazy weather, right?"
Ren's jaw tightened. He turned toward the voice.
A kid with earnest eyes and the posture of someone who'd been kicked one too many times stood vibrating with nervous energy. Ravi. He was smiling at the platinum-blonde statue next to him like he expected a response.
The statue didn't move. Platinum hair that looked expensive. Wool coat that cost more than Ren's entire childhood. Eyes the color of a frozen lake. Darian Blackwood.
"I heard the microclimate around the institute is artificially maintained," Ravi pressed on, desperate for connection. "But this seems excessive, don't you think?"
Darian turned his head. Slowly. His gray eyes traveled over Ravi like he was examining something that had landed on his sleeve. He didn't speak. Didn't blink. After a long, terrible moment, he turned back to the fog.
The silence was a surgical removal.
Ravi's smile cracked and fell. He started rubbing the back of his neck—a nervous tic so loud it might as well have been a scream.
First lesson, Ren thought. Don't talk to the top. Don't look at the top. Don't exist anywhere near the top.
The lesson was interrupted by a vibration that came up through the soles of his boots. Mechanical. Deep. The fog ahead began to glow—a cold electric blue that turned the mist into something radioactive.
"Approaching Vara Rose airspace." The voice was synthetic, genderless, calm as a funeral director. "You have five minutes. Prepare for biometric verification and initial Horacatein Assessment at the dock."
Ren straightened. Assessment. Of course. The whole ferry ride was the first test—they just didn't know it yet.
The fog ripped open like a wound.
The island rose from the sea like a god's broken tooth.
Ren had seen the brochures. Glossy propaganda for donors and legacy families—sun-drenched stone, ivy-covered towers, students laughing on manicured lawns. The kind of lies designed to make hell look like prep school.
The reality was a fortress.
Black rock jagged against the sky. Ancient towers with gargoyles hunched against the wind, fused violently with brutalist slabs of glass and steel. Red holographic roses crawled over the stone like infected veins, pulsing in a rhythm that felt almost organic. Almost alive.
Ren's eyes tracked the perimeter automatically. Choke points. Kill boxes. Sight lines. Zero escape routes. If this place was a prison—and it was—it was designed by someone who understood that the only way out was horizontal.
The ferry slammed into the dock. Metal screamed against metal.
The rich kids didn't flinch. They grabbed their leather bags and moved as one—a silent synchronized wave of ambition. Darian Blackwood led the way without appearing to walk. He simply glided, and the others parted around him like water around a whale.
Ren fell in behind them. Shadow position. Always shadow position.
The dock stank.
Under the salt and diesel, something chemical lurked. Industrial disinfectant. Bleach. The kind of smell that said we clean up messes here. The kind of smell that meant there had been messes to clean.
A chrome security drone hovered at eye level, its red optical sensor a pinprick of hostile light. "Single file. Present your wrist for initial tagging. Do not speak unless spoken to. Your baseline value is being calculated."
Baseline value. Not name. Not potential. Value.
They were herded toward a massive black gate. Above it, the school crest blazed in holographic red: a rose wrapped in razor wire. Beneath the gate stood a freestanding metal frame pulsing with that same cold blue light. The Ascension Arch.
Ren watched the line move. Watched Darian Blackwood step into the light without hesitation.
The Arch hummed. A holo display flared:
NAME: DARIAN BLACKWOOD
LEGACY STATUS: ALPHA
INITIAL RANK: 001
A collective gasp rippled through the line. Rank one. The game was over before it started.
Darian didn't look at his score. He walked through, bored, as a drone materialized to paint a glowing green path toward the upper towers. "Tier One. Welcome, Mr. Blackwood. Please proceed to Aurore Hall."
Next, a girl with cheekbones that could cut glass. Phina Craven. Rank 004. She smirked at the line and followed Darian.
Then the club girl—Zelie Mortmain. Her hands trembled as she stepped through.
RANK: 430
Her perfect mask cracked. Just for a second. Rage flickered in her eyes before she controlled it. A drone pointed her toward a rusted staircase leading down the cliff's side. No green path. No welcome.
Ren almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
Then it was his turn.
He stopped in front of the Arch. Didn't step through. Just... examined. Sensors in the frame. Emitters above. Pressure plates beneath. He mapped the trap automatically old habit from apartments with landlords who didn't appreciate being watched back.
"Move along, candidate." The security drone buzzed at his face.
Ren gave it a flat stare. Then he stepped through.
The blue light was cold. It pulled. A thousand microscopic needles burrowed into his brain, excavating every bad memory, every fight, every night he'd gone hungry so his mother could eat. The light flickered. Sick yellow. Then:
NAME: REN PLUTO
STATUS: PROBATIONARY
INITIAL RANK: 498
Out of five hundred.
Ren's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something drier. The sound that escaped his throat was a soft huff of air—almost a laugh, if laughing was something he still remembered how to do.
Four ninety-eight.
The machine saw gutter. It saw a rental uniform and a bruised jaw and a mother who stocked shelves for minimum wage. It saw a 498.
It saw exactly what he needed it to see.
High ranks got watched. High ranks got expectations, targets on their backs, people looking for the moment they slipped. But 498? Nobody watches the trash. Nobody expects anything from the bottom of the barrel.
It was the perfect camouflage.
He walked through the gate without waiting for the drone. He already knew where he was going. He'd been heading to the basement his whole life.
The drone flashed a jagged red line on the ground—the opposite direction from Darian's glowing path. Toward the rusted stairs. Toward the dark.
"Tier Four designated." All the synthetic warmth had drained from the drone's voice. "Proceed to Deathpig Hall for induction. Failure to report within thirty minutes constitutes forfeiture of placement."
Deathpig Hall.
Ren snorted. Of course that's what they called it.
He stopped at the top of the stairs and watched the rest of his unit get processed.
Ravi stepped through. Rank 455. His knees buckled. Ren looked away.
Sayer—the hoodie girl. Rank 485. She didn't react. Just kept walking like she was already dead.
Then came a small girl with glasses and eyes that were too sharp, too calculating. Maven Blackthorn. She stepped into the light and froze when the display flashed:
RANK: 500
Dead last.
Maven stared at her wristband like it had bitten her. For a moment, she looked like she might be sick. Then her expression shut down completely—which told Ren more about her than any number could. Extreme liability. Or extreme potential. Hard to tell which.
Nyx shoved past Ravi, her band glitching 495. She didn't look at it. Didn't care. Her eyes found Ren at the top of the stairs, held for a beat, then moved on. Assessment complete.
Ren gave a small nod. At least one of them wasn't crying.
He turned his back on the Arch and started down the rusted staircase.
The stairs didn't lead up toward the gleaming towers. They led down. Down into the fog, into the dark, toward the crash of waves so loud they could cover a scream. The chemical smell grew stronger. Beneath it, something else. Something metallic. Something that hadn't been fully scrubbed away.
Ren's boots hit the bottom. Before him, a squat concrete building hunched against the cliff face. A single red light pulsed above the door. The sign, bolted into rusted metal, read:
DEATHPIG HALL
"The Bottom Feeds Itself"
Ren looked at the sign. Looked at the door. Thought about his stepfather's ring. His mother's face when he'd left. The 498 burning on his wrist.
Fine.
He pushed open the door.
Let's see if you can handle what walks out.