The Great Hall wasn't a place you entered.
It took you in.
Sound arrived first, thick and layered.
Laughter pressed low against sharp-edged conversation, all of it trapped and amplified by the stone vault overhead.
The ceiling vanished into smoke, the way night erases the sky without asking permission.
It wasn't chaos. It knew what it was doing. A managed roar.
Something large, half-asleep, breathing steadily.
Somewhere above, strings tried to play something formal and slow.
The melody fought the noise and mostly lost.
Then came the smell.
Wine, red and sweet. Roasted meat from the victory feast.
Beneath that, perfumes stacked on top of one another, expensive and anxious, hair oils, warm beeswax dripping from torches.
Under everything else, heavy and impossible to miss, sweat. Power.
Testosterone that didn't bother pretending to be civilized.
An arena scent, scrubbed and dressed in manners.
Then the light.
Blue fire.
Hundreds of torches burning an unnatural, glassy blue along the walls and from the chandeliers overhead.
The color stole warmth from whatever it touched.
Skin paled, almost sickly. Shadows sank deeper beneath eyes.
Smiles bent a little too far, a little wrong.
This light wasn't here to flatter. It was here to look closely. To make sure nothing hid.
Lyra stopped at the threshold and let her eyes adjust.
Behind her, the line of Omegas compressed, bodies pulling inward, fear stitching them together into something tight and fragile.
Ahead stretched the carpet, dark red, nearly black, cutting straight through the hall.
On either side, long tables already filled with Betas and low-ranking Gammas.
Faces turned toward the entrance with open curiosity and, underneath it, relief.
They were seated. They weren't walking.
At the far end, three steps rose from the carpet.
The Alpha dais.
They sat arranged like a court, not on benches but in tall oak chairs carved with old symbols of bloodlines and victories that no one bothered to explain anymore.
Around thirty of them. Academy elites and guests from allied clans.
Metal and silk dulled under the blue light.
Their bodies sprawled just enough to claim space without seeming sloppy.
Legs stretched, arms loose, angles chosen.
Their confidence pushed outward, subtle but constant, as if the air had to move around them.
At the center, set half a step forward, sat Sion.
His chair wasn't more elaborate. It was simply bigger.
He filled it the way a predator fills a ledge.
He wasn't speaking. He didn't need to.
His eyes, dark hollows from a distance, were already fixed on the entrance, on the pale, waiting line.
He lifted a silver cup and drank, the movement spare, exact.
The room oriented itself around him without discussion.
Prestige and danger folded into a single pull.
A herald stepped forward.
A Beta, narrow-framed, with a voice that didn't match his body.
He struck the stone floor with his staff.
The crack cut the hall cleanly. Conversation died.
The music snapped off mid-breath.
The silence that followed pressed harder than the noise ever had.
"The Nocturne Academy of Fenrir," the herald said, voice steady, "receives the Seeds of Tomorrow. Let the Procession begin. Let the Destinies be acknowledged."
Sister Margot leaned toward the first girl and hissed, barely audible, "Walk. Eyes forward. Don't run."
The first Omega swallowed and stepped out.
Under the blue light, her pale blond hair looked bleached white.
Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet.
The hall watched.
Lyra felt the attention move as a single thing, tracking the girl step by step.
Twenty meters. A stop at the platform. A stiff bow.
Then, following rules no one had spoken aloud, the girl moved left, to the waiting space where the Omegas gathered afterward.
Shown. Kept.
One after another.
Slow. Too slow.
Every movement was read.
Lyra caught a murmur from a nearby table.
An older Beta leaned close to his companion.
"Narrow hips. Hard births."
A low laugh followed.
Her stomach tightened.
She was eighth.
As the line crept forward, Lyra stood still and tried to be something else.
Stone, maybe. A column. Anything that didn't sweat inside thin linen.
Cold traced a line down her spine. The fabric scratched at her shoulders.
Her hair pulled at her scalp.
A dull ache pulsed beneath her collarbone, steady, patient.
She stared at her feet against the dark carpet.
Don't think. Walk. Stay alive.
But another part of her stayed alert. Older. Quieter.
It counted torches along the eastern wall. Measured the distance to the nearest door.
Noted guards, the angles of their hands near sword hilts.
This wasn't prey panic. It was the habit of someone used to hostile rooms.
Morwen, just ahead, stepped forward.
Her shoulders were drawn so tight they trembled.
She stumbled, nearly fell.
A ripple of restrained amusement moved across part of the dais.
Morwen flushed, the color blotchy and harsh under blue light, and hurried on, her steps uneven.
Then Sister Margot's hand pressed between Lyra's shoulder blades.
Not gently.
Lyra moved.
The carpet softened the stone, but each step rang inside her bones.
She kept her head lowered, eyes fixed a few meters ahead.
Still, everything leaked in at the edges.
Faces blurred together. Blue light slicing through shadow.
The dark shapes of the Alphas swelling larger.
She felt eyes settle on her. Not as a crowd. One by one.
Jawline. Hips. The way linen shifted when she moved.
Nausea rose as she understood the math of it.
Bone structure, acceptable. Posture, compliant but tense. Viability, pending scent.
She was being reduced cleanly, efficiently, to purpose.
Halfway down, she passed a line of Beta servants along the wall, trays of food and drink balanced carefully.
Their faces were smooth, practiced into nothing.
Then she saw him.
Kael stood among them, holding a silver tray untouched.
His fingers were pale where they gripped the edge.
He wasn't looking at the dais.
He was looking at her.
Their eyes met for a heartbeat.
No signal, no comfort. Just recognition.
Kael's usual calm was gone, replaced by something tight and contained.
In his eyes burned something close to anger. Helpless anger.
He knew the ritual. He knew the rules.
And there he stood, holding wine, while she was walked forward like inventory.
They shared the shape of the trap.
Then she passed him. The connection broke.
Somehow, that single look stripped her more completely than all the Alpha stares combined.
Ten steps left.
Details sharpened.
Polished boots. Rings catching blue light. Eyes gleaming under brows.
Rokan sat behind Sion, mouth curled in a private smile.
His lips moved without sound as he watched her.
Waste.
Sion did nothing.
His face remained closed, smooth.
He didn't lean in. He didn't scent the air.
He simply watched, with an attention that felt weighty. Like a geologist studying stone.
When his eyes settled fully on her, cold cut through Lyra, sharp and sudden, like air drawn from deep underground.
Her step faltered. She forced it steady.
She reached the base of the platform and stopped.
The bow came stiff, awkward.
As she bent, her neck felt exposed in a way that made her skin prickle.
When she straightened, her gaze lifted despite herself.
Their eyes met.
Up close, his eyes weren't just dark.
They were deep gray, nearly black, with a sheen like steel in low light.
There was no hunger there. No crude interest.
There was recognition.
Not of her, exactly, but of something familiar. A pattern.
As if he were looking past her skin into something old, something echoing.
His thumb shifted on the silver cup. A small movement.
In the silence, it landed like judgment.
Lyra looked away. Reflexive surrender.
Her skin hummed.
She turned and walked to the waiting line, unsteady.
With her back to the dais, she felt his gaze linger, pressing through linen and flesh, searching for whatever ancient thing had begun to stir.
Behind her, the procession continued.
Soft steps. Tight bows. The same shape repeated.
Her part was finished, for now.
The quiet measuring was over.
Next would come closeness. Scent. Choice.
The hall breathed again.
Conversation returned, lower, heavier.
Blue light rippled along the walls, shadows twisting subtly.
Lyra fixed her eyes on the carpet's weave.
Inside her, the question she'd carried from the dormitory burned hotter now, fed by Sion's gaze and the quiet fire she'd seen in Kael.
Who am I?
And sharper than before, cutting clean:
What did he see?