Cid didn't return to his dorm.
He didn't go to class.
Instead, he climbed the outer stair of the Faculty Tower steps slick with dew and cracked with age until he reached the topmost balcony beneath the watchful statues of angels long since defaced. From up here, the spires of Veilborne Academy looked like the bones of a buried cathedral, and beyond them, the forest loomed like a wound.
He lit a cigarette from the tip of his chain.
A storm was coming. One he had no intention of hiding from.
The headmaster came to him.
Caldrein Mourn did not walk. He arrived, soundless as breath. One moment, Cid was alone. The next, a man stood beside him tall, gray-robed, face hidden behind a silver mask etched with symbols no student could read. His eyes burned with black fire. His hands were gloved.
"Did you enjoy your little excursion, Hollowborn?"
Cid didn't turn. "The fuck did you just call me?"
"A name is a shape," the headmaster said calmly. "And you, Cid, are still forming."
Cid exhaled smoke and let it drift toward the man's face. "Get to the point."
"We received word from Hollow Vale," Mourn said, tone bone-dry. "Half the faculty is screaming for blood. You broke protocol. Vanished for days. Half your team is injured. The rest…" He trailed off. "You encountered something you weren't meant to survive."
"I didn't just survive." Cid looked him dead in the eye. "I learned."
Mourn's silence was permission to continue.
"They weren't random cultists. They knew my name. My power. They've been watching me since I set foot in this cursed place. The monsters in the Vale? They weren't after the seal. They were after me."
Mourn's head tilted slightly. "You say that like you're surprised."
Cid stepped forward, his voice cold. "And why wouldn't I be? Why the hell does a school for cursed elites have a god buried underneath it—and why do its staff act like it's normal?"
Mourn said nothing for a long moment.
Then, softly: "Because it is."
Cid blinked.
The headmaster gestured to the storm-heavy sky. "You think Veilborne was built to protect students from the world? You're wrong. It was built to protect the world from them. From us."
A cold wind stirred Cid's hair.
Mourn stepped closer to the edge, voice lowering. "There was a time, long ago, before empires, before even the Hollow King, when the sky cracked. When gods fell, screaming, from the dark above and brought something with them. Something that infected the soil. Something that changed what it touched."
"The Veil," Cid said.
"No. The Rot," Mourn replied. "The Veil is the seal we placed over it. To hold it back."
He turned.
"Our Ciphers? The power we wield? They weren't gifts. They were tools designed to mold what leaked from the Rot into usable form. We stole poison from the void and taught ourselves to drink it without dying."
Cid's eyes narrowed. "But I don't mold it. I devour it."
"Yes," Mourn said simply. "You are not a pipe. You are the crack in the bottle."
Cid didn't like the way he said that.
"So why am I still here? Why train me at all?"
Mourn studied him. "Because you might be the one thing worse than what we sealed away. Or the only one who can stop it when it wakes."
They stood in silence.
Then Cid chuckled darkly. "So that's what this is. Not a school. A holding pen."
"Not just for you," Mourn murmured. "For dozens like you. Students with unstable Ciphers. Broken soulmarks. Too powerful. Too twisted. Veilborne isn't an academy. It's a test. A maze made of temptation and terror. Those who survive may be of use. The rest…"
"Get fed to the dirt."
"Not all of them," Mourn said softly. "Some become faculty."
That evening, back in the dorms, Iris sat cross-legged on Cid's bed, naked under a robe that wasn't hers. Rhiannon lounged in a chair nearby, sharpening a blade shaped like a snake's fang.
"You're quiet," Rhiannon said, glancing over.
Iris didn't reply at first. Then, softly, "He knows now."
"About you?"
"No. About the Academy. The truth."
Rhiannon frowned. "And?"
Iris smiled.
"He didn't run."
Cid returned late.
When he stepped through the door, Iris rose without a word and pressed her lips to his. He kissed her back, slow, firm. She tasted like wine and violence.
Rhiannon didn't look away.
When they broke, Cid glanced at her. "You're still here."
"I live here too," she said, stretching lazily.
Cid raised a brow. "Want to leave?"
Rhiannon smirked. "Not unless you make me."
"Later," he said, and pulled Iris onto the bed.
This time, he was rougher. Purposeful. Like he was carving his name into her bones. She didn't cry out she moaned. Loudly. Shamelessly. Her fingers dug into his back. When he bit her shoulder, she laughed.
Rhiannon rolled her eyes. "He wasn't that rough with me. Kind of disappointed."
Cid didn't stop.
Iris turned her head, still gasping. "He likes me better."
"I'm sure," Rhiannon said, smirking. "Still going to try to kill me?"
Iris grinned, a little too wide. "Absolutely."
"Cool. I'd like to see you try."
Cid let go of Iris's throat just long enough for her to whisper, "Mine."
Rhiannon sighed. "Gods, you're both freaks."
Down in the catacombs, beneath the Academy's altar, something ancient twitched. It hadn't heard its Name in centuries.
But now the students were whispering them again.
And one of them…
One of them was listening back.