The bell tolled a fourth time.
The sky cracked.
A jagged tear of violet and black light split the heavens above Vaelith Academy. Eldritch runes spiraled out like cold, predatory eyes, casting sickly radiance across the shattered spires and silent statues of the Obsidian Plaza.
Eryndor stood motionless among the scattered survivors. The Labyrinth had ended. But the real Trial had only just begun. A low, emotionless voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
[System Announcement: Survival Event 'The Reaping of the First Night' has commenced.]
[Current candidates: 407.]
[Maximum seats available: 300.]
[Excess candidates will be culled. Begin.]
The words dropped like a guillotine.
Around him, the first-years froze. Then chaos erupted. Screams, shouts, weapons unsheathed, mana flared uncontrolled. Some students instinctively banded together in trembling clusters; others fled into the darkness of the Academy grounds. The weak clung to hope. The strong sharpened their killing intent.
Eryndor watched them all. Panic was a currency. Fear was leverage.
His crimson eyes swept across the mob with surgical detachment. Names, House affiliations, known bloodlines. He had memorized every critical player.
A girl with cerulean hair and frost-covered fingers collapsed to her knees, sobbing. Useless.
A boy from House Varyn drew a shimmering longsword, barking orders to form a phalanx. Predictable.
Two cloaked figures melted into the shadows toward the outer gardens. Potential threats.
Eryndor adjusted his gloves slowly, cold and unhurried amid the madness.
Let them thin their own numbers.
The ground beneath them trembled. Runic circles exploded open across the Plaza. From each portal, monstrous shapes dragged themselves free: Academy-bound horrors bound by contracts older than nations.
One, a skeletal beast with obsidian feathers and a beak like a guillotine, shrieked into the night. Another, a twisting mass of molten iron and howling souls, lumbered forward. The System had not come to merely observe. It had come to feast.
Students scattered in blind terror. Eryndor's pulse remained steady.
He ducked low as a razor-sharp talon carved the air above him. A blood-slicked corpse hit the ground nearby. Eryndor barely glanced at it.
The false hero was somewhere in this crowd. Eldric Dawnspire. Golden armor. Chosen by the System.
Eryndor's lips curled faintly. The game had begun. And he was not here to follow the script.
A Dawnspire knight cadet charged.
"Vaelith filth!"
The war cry echoed harshly across the carnage as the boy lunged, silver blade gleaming with reinforced mana. His polished armor bore the sigil of House Dawnspire: a radiant phoenix clutching a sword. He was tall, broad-shouldered, overconfident.
Eryndor sidestepped.
The blade missed by inches, slicing sparks from the obsidian tiles.
The knight stumbled forward, momentum betrayed by his own weight. Eryndor seized the opening without hesitation. His gloved hand snatched a broken spear haft from the ground and drove the splintered wood savagely into the cadet's exposed ribs.
A howl of pain.
The cadet staggered back, eyes wide in disbelief. Blood dripped down his side.
"You…" the boy gasped, rage and humiliation contorting his face. "You're supposed to be dead."
Eryndor's expression remained calm, eyes burning like dying coals.
"That was the plan."
The beast shrieked again. Closer.
Eryndor circled warily, calculating. He didn't waste energy chasing a clean kill. Let the Academy do its work. Let the weak feed the System.
The cadet lunged again, reckless and sloppy. Eryndor pivoted, grabbed the boy's wrist mid-swing, twisted sharply, and slammed him into the jagged base of a broken statue.
The cadet slumped, unconscious.
Not dead. Not yet.
Eryndor wiped his hands clean and turned back toward the battlefield. Everywhere, chaos ruled.
A cluster of cursed bloodline students had been forced together by the Academy's beasts. An emaciated girl with glowing veins struggled to hold back a snapping horror with warped insect limbs. A young boy, aura flickering between unstable mana colors, collapsed nearby, coughing blood.
Discarded by their Houses. Forgotten by the narrative. Eryndor's gaze hardened.
These were the ones he had come for.
Without hesitation, he strode through the battlefield. A student tried to grab his cloak in desperation.
"Please, save me—"
Eryndor shoved them aside coldly.
He reached the cursed girl just as the beast lunged to finish her. With perfect timing, Eryndor hurled a weighted chain into the monster's open jaws. The cursed mana within the iron flared violently. The creature convulsed once… then fell limp, dissolving into ash.
The girl stared at him, trembling.
"W-why… why help me?"
"Because you're useful," Eryndor answered flatly. "Get up. Now."
The ground trembled again. A flicker crossed Eryndor's vision. Not real. System interference.
[System Anomaly Detected.]
[Candidate: Eryndor Vaelith flagged for deviation from standard behavior.]
[Correction Delay Active.]
Eryndor froze.
So. They had noticed.
A slow, cold grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Let them come."