Caelus slammed his hands onto the mahogany counter of the Dormitory Administration desk. The impact sent a jar of complimentary mints rattling.
"I need a room," he wheezed. "Alone. Far away. Somewhere where nobody goes. Somewhere where goodness goes to die."
The Dorm Administrator, a balding man with spectacles thick enough to see into the future, blinked slowly. He looked at Caelus's black suit, which was now dusted with courtyard pollen. He looked at the black iron ring squeezing Caelus's finger like a tourniquet.
"Name?" the administrator asked, bored.
"Caelus von Valerius."
The administrator paused. He adjusted his glasses. "Ah. The... explosive one."
"That was a tactical maneuver," Caelus snapped. He checked his wrist.
Life Force: 02:42:10
He was bleeding time. Standing in line had cost him two minutes. Breathing the air of this overly helpful academy was costing him his soul.
"I have a single room in the East Wing," the administrator said, reaching for a key. "View of the gardens. Very sunny. Neighbors are the Theology Club."
"No," Caelus said instantly.
Theology Club meant priests. Priests meant blessings. Blessings meant accidentally holding a door open for a nun and losing six hours of life.
"I need darkness," Caelus hissed, leaning over the counter. "I need a place so vile, so decrepit, so fundamentally unlivable that people cross the street to avoid it. Do you have a dungeon? A crypt? A shed with a racoon infestation?"
The administrator sighed. He opened a lower drawer—one that stuck and required a solid kick to open. He pulled out a heavy, rusted iron key. It felt cold just looking at it.
"Building 4," the man said. "The Old Quarter. We don't assign it anymore because of the... atmospheric issues."
"Atmospheric issues?"
"It moans," the man said. "The plumbing. And the walls. Sometimes the floor. Students say it's haunted by the ghost of a student who failed Alchemy and drank his own homework. We call it the Silent Hill Suite."
Caelus snatched the key. It was heavy, cold, and rusted. It was beautiful.
"Perfect," he whispered. "I'll take it."
"No refunds if you get possessed," the administrator called out as Caelus turned to leave. "And the toilets back up on Tuesdays!"
------------------------------------------------------------------
[LOCATION: BUILDING 4 - THE OLD QUARTER]
Building 4 looked like a structure that was holding itself together out of spite.
Ivy choked the brickwork, but it wasn't the nice, green academic ivy. It was brown, thorny, and looked like it was actively trying to strangle the masonry. The windows were dark, staring out at the campus like empty eye sockets.
Caelus stood before the front door. The wood was swollen from dampness.
"Home sweet hell," he muttered.
He jammed the key into the lock. It resisted, then turned with a screech that sounded like a cat stepping on a nail.
He shoved the door open.
The smell hit him immediately. Dust. Wet wool. And something sweeter underneath—like dried flowers that had been left in a vase for a decade.
He stepped inside. The floorboards groaned.
Location Identified: The Cursed Dorm.Villainy Potential: High.Ambient Gloom: Excellent.
The System text flickered, satisfied.
Caelus walked up the stairs. The banister was sticky. He didn't want to know why. He found Room 404 at the end of the hall. The number plate was hanging by a single screw.
He unlocked it and stepped inside.
A single metal bed frame with a mattress that looked like a crime scene. A desk with three legs. A wardrobe that was definitely a portal to a nightmare dimension.
Caelus closed the door and locked it. Then he dragged the desk over and wedged it against the handle.
"Safe," he breathed.
He slid down the wall, clutching his chest.
Life Force: 02:35:00
He had time. He was alone. No one would come here. No one would ask him for directions. No one would need saving. He could just sit here, radiate malice, and maybe kick the wall every hour to generate some minor evil points.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound didn't come from the door.
It came from the wall. The wall adjacent to the next room.
Caelus froze.
"Rats," he whispered. "Big rats."
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It was rhythmic. Deliberate. It sounded like a code.
Then, a sound from the hallway. The squeak of a floorboard. The sound of something heavy being dragged.
Caelus scrambled up. He backed away from the door.
The ghost, he thought. It's the alchemy student. He wants me to drink a potion.
The doorknob turned.
It rattled against the locked mechanism. Then, the desk Caelus had wedged against it began to slide.
It didn't slide because the door was being forced. It slid because the entire door frame was groaning under immense, focused pressure.
"Open up."
The voice wasn't a ghost. It was worse.
It was familiar.
Caelus stared at the door. "Go away! I have a contagious disease! I have space leprosy!"
"Caelus."
The wood around the lock splintered. Not from magic. From the sheer torque of someone twisting the handle with unreasonable strength.
CRACK.
The lock gave way. The door swung open, pushing the desk aside with a screech of timber on wood.
Sylvia stood there.
She wasn't wearing her armor. She wasn't wearing her uniform. She was wearing a loose grey sweater that was too big for her sleeves and dark trousers. Her silver hair was tied back in a messy ponytail. She looked... domestic.
If you ignored the fact that she had just broken a door.
And if you ignored the massive red toolbox she was carrying in one hand.
"You," Caelus choked out. "What are you doing here?"
Sylvia stepped inside. She kicked a piece of the broken lock under the rug.
"Living," she said.
"Here?" Caelus pointed at the floor. "In this building? It's condemned! It's haunted!"
"I bought it," Sylvia said. She set the toolbox down on the bed. It landed with a heavy thud that suggested it was filled with weapons, not wrenches. "The administration was happy to sell. Building 4 is now private property."
She looked around the room. Her nose wrinkled slightly at the cobwebs.
"It needs work," she decided.
"I want to be alone!" Caelus yelled. "That is the entire point of me being here! Solitude! Darkness! Misery!"
Sylvia ignored him. She opened the toolbox.
She didn't pull out a sword. She pulled out a hammer and a box of long, industrial iron nails.
"The windows," she said, pointing at the sash window that was rattling in the wind. "They're insecure. An assassin could slide a blade through the latch."
"I am the assassin!" Caelus shouted, gesturing to his black suit. "I am the danger!"
Sylvia walked to the window. She looked at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark, devoid of the humor that should have been there.
"You sleep with your mouth open," she said. "You wouldn't hear them."
Caelus stopped. "How do you know how I sleep?"
Sylvia didn't answer. She positioned a nail against the window frame.
BAM.
One hit. The nail sank three inches into the wood. She didn't even swing hard. It was a casual application of monstrous strength.
"Hold this," she said, holding out a nail.
"I'm not helping you barricade me in!"
"Hold it, or I'll nail your coat to the wall."
Caelus looked at the hammer. He looked at her eyes.
He took the nail.
"This is kidnapping," he muttered, holding the nail against the frame while she hammered it in. "This is unlawful imprisonment."
"It's baby-proofing," Sylvia murmured.
"What?"
"Nothing." BAM. Another nail. "Draft proofing."
They worked in silence for ten minutes. Caelus held nails. Sylvia drove them in. The rhythmic banging echoed through the empty building.
It was... domestic. In a twisted, hostage-situation kind of way.
"Why are you doing this?" Caelus asked quietly. He looked at her profile. She was focused, her jaw set. A strand of silver hair had fallen into her eyes.
"Because you're bad at survival," she said.
"I survived twelve years," Caelus said. It slipped out. A reference to the past.
Sylvia froze. The hammer stopped mid-air.
"Yes," she whispered. "You did."
She turned to him. The distance between them vanished. She was suddenly very close. He could smell her—steel and rain and that floral soap.
"And then you died," she said. Her voice was flat, terrifyingly calm. "Because you were alone. Because you pushed everyone away."
She reached out. Her hand—calloused from the sword, warm and strong—brushed his cheek.
Caelus flinched. The memory of the blade hit him. The phantom pain in his neck throbbed in time with the Suppression Ring on his finger.
"Don't," he whispered.
Sylvia's eyes searched his face. She looked like she wanted to say a thousand things. She looked like she wanted to apologize, to scream, to cry.
Instead, she dropped her hand.
"The door," she said, turning away. "We need to fix the lock I broke."
Caelus let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
She remembers, a voice in his head whispered.
No, he argued back. She can't. If she remembered, she'd kill me now. She's just... intense. She's the Sword Saint's daughter. They're all weird.
Suddenly, the temperature in the room dropped.
The breath leaving Caelus's mouth turned into white mist. The lights flickered.
A low, moaning sound emanated from the wardrobe.
The ghost.
The door of the wardrobe slowly creaked open. A dark, shapeless shadow began to spill out, forming a vague, horrifying face.
"Get... out..." a hollow voice groaned.
Caelus felt a spike of genuine fear. Not the existential dread of the System, but good old-fashioned spooked.
"Sylvia," he squeaked.
Sylvia didn't look up from the toolbox.
She reached behind her without looking. Her hand grabbed the hilt of a dagger resting in the open box.
She threw it.
It was a casual, backhanded toss.
The dagger flew across the room. It passed an inch from Caelus's ear.
THUNK.
It embedded itself in the back of the wardrobe, passing directly through the center of the shadow's "forehead."
The shadow shrieked—a high, static burst of noise. Then it dissolved instantly into nothingness. The wardrobe door slammed shut.
The temperature returned to normal.
"You have a draft," Sylvia said, picking up a screwdriver. "We should seal the wardrobe too."
Caelus stared at the wardrobe. He stared at the dagger vibrating in the wood.
[THREAT NEUTRALIZED][SOURCE: NEIGHBOR][VILLAINY POINTS: 0]
"You killed the ghost," Caelus said.
"It was annoying," Sylvia said. "Pass me the screws."
Caelus picked up the box of screws. His hands were shaking slightly.
He looked at the timer on his wrist.
Life Force: 02:20:00
He was trapped in a haunted dorm with a woman who baby-proofed windows with industrial nails and exorcised ghosts with casual violence.
"I hate this school," he whispered.
"It grows on you," Sylvia said. She took the screws. Her fingers brushed his.
She didn't pull away immediately.
"I'm in Room 403," she said softly. "If you try to leave tonight... I'll hear you."
It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
Caelus watched her work. The sun was setting outside, casting long shadows across the floor. For the first time since he woke up with a phantom blade in his neck, he realized something terrifying.
He wasn't going to die tonight.
Because she wouldn't let him.
And somehow, that was scarier than the execution.