The days bled together in a haze of precision and order.
Nox's morning began as always—before the sun even dared rise. Wake at 4:30 AM. Coffee brewed on the single electric burner nestled in the shared dorm kitchen corner. Steam curled silently as he drank it black, bitter, necessary. His fingers, scar-free but calloused from recent weeks of brutal routine, curled around the chipped ceramic cup as he stared into the rooftop's concrete horizon. Smoke curled around his violet eyes, never revealing the full weight of memories behind them.
Training followed. Nox's body, once neglected by its original owner, had been forged anew. Through blood and silence. Each drop of sweat on the rooftop was calculated. Each strike of his fists against the reinforced concrete rail, measured. The 6'2 frame was muscular, no longer just thin. It was taut with muscle, built for lethal grace. Perfect balance of power and precision. He ran through the drills—open-hand combat, static stretching for flexibility, and then the silent forms of an assassin's kata: disarm, evade, incapacitate, vanish.
By the time Ash and Leo stirred, Nox had already showered, dried, dressed, and cloaked himself in his usual armor. Black hoodie. Mask. Gloves. His side of the dorm was a fortress. Leo's gaze occasionally flicked toward it now—never long. Never questioning. He'd sensed the weight there.
Leo Morati Volkoc was sharp. Danger coiled beneath his still exterior. Nox recognized it. Leo answered only when necessary, replied with a warning edge to any unwanted intrusion. Ash, ever the sunshine between two cold moons, continued his gentle prodding. Art questions. Comments about class. Half-jokes no one laughed at.
Ash asked about composition once, and Leo actually responded. A short, clipped explanation of balance in chiaroscuro. A fragment of art school elegance buried under the gunmetal soul. Ash's eyes had lit up. But Nox? He said nothing. Just stared, unblinking.
Their days passed like this. School, art, silence.
Nox attended lectures when needed, hacking into systems to reroute attendance logs or add shadows in staff databases. His file was spotless. His presence, minimal. His knowledge of every blind spot, faculty history, and security detail—absolute.
He worked the underground in the hours between.
His fourth job was clean. A high-pass sniper assignment. Target: arms trafficker. Distance: 2.4 kilometers. Wind: mild western. He assembled the rifle in minutes, custom carbon polymer components ordered weeks prior. Thermal scope. Adaptive muzzle brake. Subsonic rounds.
The hit was perfection. Nox waited in the shadows after the drop. Watched the aftermath. Erased the footage. Scrubbed his digital fingerprints. Payment cleared in crypto routed through five ghost accounts. Then he vanished into the night.
Later that week, he entered the cage.
The underground fighting rings had no names. Just broken stairwells, steel mesh walls, blood on rust. Nox stepped in barefoot. Hood up. Mask on. Violet eyes glowing under the fluorescents like twin sins.
Opponent: 220 lbs, ex-military, favored brute force.
Nox didn't flinch. Didn't bleed. He moved like silence incarnate—every dodge precise, every strike minimal yet devastating. He broke the man's arm in three places and left him unconscious without drawing breath.
They called him Phantom after that.
He returned home bruised but silent. His face never revealed. He iced his hands, smoked under moonlight, and watched the sleeping city.
Meanwhile, Leo had grown tense.
He knew something was coming. The quiet was too perfect. His father's voice had warned him, one night through a burner line: "They've started moving. Eyes are everywhere."
That same week, extraction protocol was nearly triggered.
A figure tracked Leo from the art building to the lot. One set of footsteps too careful. Another shadow where there shouldn't have been. Leo didn't panic—he fought. Blades glinted in moonlight. He bled, but not much. He disarmed one. Disappeared two blocks west.
The black car arrived then, silent. His father's men. Cleanup. Nox watched from the rooftop of an adjacent complex. Still as stone. A single puff of smoke rising as he processed.
Leo was too deep. But he was alive.
Ash never noticed. He had his headphones in that night. Painting in the dorm until late. He mentioned, days later, how Leo seemed sharper. Angrier. Quieter.
Ash had grown used to the silence of his roommates.
The routine became familiar. Nox—forever masked, absent in the dorm except for the rare night when he emerged to reheat ramen or quietly sketch on a scrap of paper. Leo—cold, but no longer hostile. He responded now. Asked Ash once if he thought human anatomy or animal anatomy was more difficult to render.
Ash blinked, then answered. They talked for eighteen whole minutes.
Progress.
Still, he wondered about Nox. About what lay under that hood. He once walked in as Nox was finishing a sculpture in the common area—cold marble twisted into an angel with broken wings. Nox didn't acknowledge him. Ash didn't speak. But the image stuck with him.
There was pain there.
That night, Nox lay on the rooftop, smoking his third cigarette, body still humming from the underground cage and post-job adrenaline. His mind wandered.
He wasn't here to play hero.
He wasn't here to protect Leo.
Not yet.
He needed certainty. Clarity. Purpose.
Until then, he watched.
A ghost with violet eyes, folded in silence.
Ready to strike when the moment called for it.
But not before.
End of chapter 16