The air shifts the moment I step past the last stair.
Dry. Stale. Pregnant with old magic and dried blood.
Perfect.
The catacombs beneath Duskfall are older than the Academy itself—etched by the first settlers, fortified by warlocks, abandoned by time. They told stories of ghosts here. I find the silence more terrifying than the dead. You can always predict the dead.
The path narrows until the stone gives way to open space.
One chamber. No windows. Low ceiling. Arcane lights floating like wraiths overhead. A table made of scorched obsidian waits at the center.
Six figures stand around it.
They all turn as I arrive.
Some wear masks. Some wear fear. One wears betrayal like an expensive coat.
Tempestrike.
A-Class Hero. Instructor. Mole.
I smile as I remove my gloves.
"Good evening," I whisper, stepping into their circle. "Shall we begin?"
Whisper—the host—nods once and gestures for me to speak. I take the center like a guillotine claims a neck. I never raise my voice. I never need to.
"You think you want freedom."
They lean in, instinctively.
"You don't. What you want is permission to burn everything down."
I circle them slowly with measured steps. A serpent coiled in the rhythm of language.
"Heroes are nothing but war machines with sugarcoated PR. You get a pretty name, a tragic backstory, and a front-row seat to state-sanctioned violence."
A pause. Eyes dart. Even masked ones flinch.
"I offer something else."
I gesture upward.
"The Hero Festival is coming. All eyes on the academy. The Bureau. The city. The world."
I stop in front of Tempestrike.
"And me."
Bleaktide and Hexdrive nod like good pets. They understand chaos like I do. Whisper remains impassive—his presence alone unsettling enough to silence the rest.
A figure across from me raises a hand.
"What's the objective?"
I tilt my head.
"The same as always. Let them think they're watching a spectacle… when they're watching their own funeral procession."
They murmur among themselves, still thinking this is a democracy.
But I'm not done.
"Before we end, there's one more thing."
Confusion settles like dust.
Except in Tempestrike.
He stiffens.
I sigh. "I hoped you'd play it smarter."
And then his arm is gone.
Just like that.
One moment, it's attached. The next, it's sliding across the stone, spraying arterial red in elegant arcs.
His scream is a chorus, and I am the conductor.
Panic explodes in the room.
"WHAT THE HELL—"
"She just—"
"STOP—"
I don't stop.
The first dies with his mask halfway removed.
Spinal severed.
The second tries to run. I let her make it five feet. Then her throat is opened. Blood leaks from her like a broken promise.
The third lunges at Bleaktide. Poor fool. Bleaktide impales him on a fire-spear and laughs like it's a bar game.
Hexdrive fries the next one. Skin peels from bone in seconds.
Only four left.
I take them all.
Quick and elegant.
One has his head caved in with a stomp. Another drowns in his own blood. The last two I kill with a single sweeping arc of blood-blade energy, cleaving them down to memory.
All of it lasts under a minute.
When it's over, the room smells like copper and regret.
Tempestrike is still crying. Still alive.
I crouch before him.
"Why?" he sobs.
I reach into his jacket and retrieve a small transmitter—a hidden antenna fused into the lining. Clever. I hold it up for the others to see.
"Because you weren't listening."
Hexdrive blinks. "Wait… is that—?"
Whisper steps forward, wordless, and connects the device to the monitor we installed in the wall.
The screen flares to life.
And there she is.
Valkara.
Ice-type. Bureau elite. Enforcer of Order. She glares into the screen like it's prey.
I smile at her. Slowly. Softly. Like a wolf meeting another across a battlefield.
"You watching?" I whisper.
"I hope you enjoyed the show."
The screen crackles with static.
—
I paused the video.
The room went silent, save for the low electric hum of the monitor. The image on screen—what was left of it—flickered once, then stabilized. The massacre had already happened, but the phantom sound of Tempestrike's screaming still echoed in my ears.
I glanced at the others. Five senior operatives. Three junior analysts. One Bureau tech still recovering from vomiting into a waste bin. Not one of them spoke.
"This…" I finally said, my voice low and clipped, "was an execution."
Tempestrike had been our inside man for three months. No behavioural flags. No deviation from protocol. But none of that mattered. Nyxshade had known. She didn't just sniff him out—she made a show of it. She butchered an entire room of villain hopefuls just to send us a message.
And I heard it. Loud and clear.
"We lost more than a spy," said Coil, my field partner. His voice was measured but sharp, like wire under tension. "The feed was laced with signal noise. Whatever audio distortion we're picking up—it's deliberate. Pre-installed fail-safes. And the video glitches? They're not compression artifacts. Nyxshade scrambled the footage herself. She wanted the identities of her real team masked."
I nodded once, fists clenched at my sides. "So she planned this entire thing from the start. Tempestrike was never in control."
"She played us." Coil folded his arms. "And she knew we were watching."
I tapped the screen again. The still image glared back at me: Nyxshade standing over the broken body of our agent, smiling as she pulled the transmitter from his jacket. The monitor buzzed as if in protest.
"She didn't just win," I said. "She performed."
Her costume was still fresh in my mind:
Midnight black bodysuit—stitched tight for agility—overlaid with a trench-coat that moved like ink in water. Her mask: porcelain white, a red smear across the mouth like a silent scream. Her eyes glowed like they belonged to something not quite human, shimmering with illusion trails that danced across the edge of vision. I remembered seeing what looked like three pairs of eyes for a second—until the footage cut again.
A ghost made flesh. And now, a ghost with blood on her hands.
"Let's run down what we know," I said, rotating toward the tactical display on the wall. It pulsed with Nyxshade's symbol: a cracked glass fang against a violet background. "She's an illusionist. Highly skilled. Operates under a strict aesthetic. Targets are theatrical, but precise. She doesn't just kill. She unveils."
One of the analysts nodded. "And she's local."
"Correct," I said. "Her trail intersects with Duskfall Academy. We believe she's a student—embedded, possibly long-term. High probability she's building her operation from inside the school."
I turned back to the others, letting the words hang.
"She's founded her own organization. Calls it Glass Fang. And she's using the upcoming Hero Festival as her debut stage."
"Do we have a timeline?" asked one of the younger operatives.
"No," I said. "That's the point. She controls the board. We don't even know who her teammates are—outside of the codenames pulled from the broadcast: Whisper. Bleaktide. Hexdrive. Faces blurred. Audio filtered. They could already be infiltrating other academies or hero groups for all we know."
"Then what's the plan?" Coil asked.
I stepped forward, dragging my hand across the console. A map of Duskfall lit up in red. "First, we alert Duskfall Academy. They need to increase surveillance on illusionist-type students immediately. Faculty and student body alike. Every registered illusionist gets flagged. Background checks. Power analysis. Emotional profile sweeps. Quietly."
"And if she strikes before then?"
I looked back to the monitor. Tempestrike's blood pooled at Nyxshade's feet, frozen mid-frame.
"Then we burn everything around her," I said. "And pray we're not already too late."
—
The council chamber beneath Duskfall Academy was a cold, octagonal vault lined with runes and steel—designed more for containment than comfort. Magic pulsed beneath the floor, an ambient thrum woven into every tile, every flickering crystal sconce. The walls did not echo. Words here were meant to stay entombed.
Headmaster Silas Marrow sat at the helm of the obsidian table, fingers steepled. His eyes, pale as storm glass, flicked from one seated instructor to the next. Nine of the Academy's highest-ranking staff were present—A-Ranked heroes turned educators, specialists in elemental manipulation, psychic warfare, transmutation theory, and more. None of them spoke. The silence was thick, calcified by dread.
On the circular table before them, a paused holo-recording crackled mid-frame—static dancing across Nyxshade's silhouette in mid-slaughter. Blood glistened like ink in low light.
Silas leaned forward, voice low and clinical. "As of 04:17 this morning, the Bureau has officially flagged an internal threat to national hero infrastructure. Codename: Nyxshade. Confirmed illusionist. Believed to be operating from within our walls."
A low, collective breath passed through the room.
Chrona—real name Lysandra Vale—rested her chin on folded fingers. Her silver-blonde hair was swept back in a tight braid, her dark eyes cool and unreadable. "You're saying one of our students orchestrated a massacre in the Manhattan underground and walked away unseen?"
"Walked?" scoffed Instructor Brant, the hulking head of Combat Doctrine. "She vanished, more like. Left nothing but corpses and a surveillance ghost-trail we're still decrypting."
"She didn't vanish," Silas said, tapping a key on the interface. The image zoomed in on a frame—Nyxshade's cloak mid-motion, ribbons blurring into glitching violet trails. "She wanted to be seen. That's what makes her different."
He stood slowly. His presence wasn't large, but it was undeniable. Even without raising his voice, the air seemed to still when he spoke. "Effective immediately, we are invoking the Red Rook Protocol."
That did it. The council shifted—whispers, narrowed eyes, tension folding into suspicion.
"You can't be serious," muttered Instructor Mae, head of Psi-Theory. "That protocol hasn't been activated in over twenty years."
"Because we haven't had a rogue illusionist capable of counter-counterintelligence," said Silas, voice sharp. "And we have one now."
Chrona's gaze flicked sideways. "You really believe she's here?"
"I believe she's not just here. I believe she's studying us—inside our walls, embedded in our systems, feeding from the very curriculum we built to forge heroes."
The table went quiet.
Silas tapped a second key. A tactical schematic of the Academy unfolded in rotating light. Each dorm, corridor, combat wing, and subterranean training sector flickered into view. Red indicators began to blink over certain zones—Illusionist affinity detection points.
"The Red Rook Protocol integrates biometric mapping, passive spell dampeners, and psychic probes across the campus. It will monitor all students who test positive for illusionist affinities—without their knowledge."
Instructor Dran frowned. "And if it's a false flag? You'd risk detaining students based on incomplete data?"
"We won't detain anyone—yet. But we will know who bends shadows when they think no one's watching."
Chrona finally spoke, voice slow and edged with something colder than time. "And the student body?"
Silas paused.
It was the question none of them wanted to answer.
Transparency would cause panic. Containment would sow resentment. They had no proof. No face. Just a spectral silhouette, half-mask stained, eyes like a spider's reflection.
"We say nothing," he decided, cold and final. "Let them sleep under glass until we decide who's fangs."
The instructors shifted uneasily.
Chrona tilted her head slightly, watching him with a look that didn't quite challenge—didn't quite agree either. "And if she strikes during the Hero Festival?"
"She won't," Silas said.
"How can you be sure?"
He looked at her. His voice dropped to a murmur. "Because she wants an audience."
A long pause followed.
Then, one by one, the department heads nodded, quietly activating their departmental uplinks. The protocol unfurled behind their eyes, in layers of magical code and surveillance netting, in predictive threat charts and flagged profiles. Somewhere—deep in the student registry—a name would light up red.
Somewhere beneath Duskfall Academy, a ghost would smile.