The halls of St. Gregory's Academy glimmered with the hush of old money and the hush-hush of new power. Every inch of the building had been designed to amplify perfection: marble staircases arcing like the vertebrae of a leviathan, glass floors pulsing with slow currents of blue mana, even the sunlight itself refracted through enchantments so that it hit every surface just so. It was, Shiori thought, the architectural equivalent of a pearl—flawless on the surface, a slow rot at its heart.
She was barely inside before she felt the first eyes on her. Not just any eyes—the bred-for-espionage stares of children who had been taught from birth to find weakness and mine it for entertainment. The Taira legacy preceded her by several generations and at least one war crime, and it didn't help that her mother was dead, her older brothers gone to a school in Zurich, and her only close relative the man who put the "inter-" in international financial crime. Most students would have killed for a spot in the Taira dynasty; at St. Gregory's, they just tried to kill her reputation.
Shiori walked through the corridor at an even, gliding pace, head high, posture perfect. It was the only defense—let them think you didn't notice, let them wonder if you noticed and didn't care. Her own animal features were subtle: the eyes, the ears, the way her teeth cut through toast. Enough to mark her as Feran, but not enough for anyone to make a scene in public. St. Gregory's prided itself on progressive admissions, as long as the hybrids acted like purebreds.
The first assault was a note, slid with surgical precision across the floor as she passed her locker. Red paper, folded into a crude triangle. She didn't stop, didn't even lower her gaze, but scooped it up with her shoe and let it ride the momentum into her palm. Unfolded, it read:
No signature. No need. The handwriting was familiar—ultra-neat, all-caps, probably machine-aided. Shiori smirked and crumpled it, dropping it into the first incineration slot she passed. The slot glowed blue, then spat out a puff of sterilized air.
By the time she reached her first class, two more notes had appeared in her path. She let them accumulate in her pocket, an arsenal of minor grievances, as she navigated the hive.
In the classroom, the seats were arranged in a shallow amphitheater, each one a throne upholstered in organic leather. The desks adjusted to the students' biometrics—height, angle, olfactory signature. Shiori's desk greeted her with a soft chime, but the students on either side immediately picked up their belongings and moved one row back. Their silence was more eloquent than any slur.
She stared at the blackboard, waiting for the teacher—a human, genetically unremarkable, who wore his mediocrity like armor. "Welcome, welcome," he said, never once making eye contact with Shiori as he passed out the syllabus via drone. "Today we continue with the legacy of magical constitutionalism—what does it mean to self-govern when even your will is a commodity? Let's discuss…"
Shiori tuned it out, eyes drifting over the room. Everyone else sat in clusters, whispering just loud enough for her to catch snatches.
"…her father paid for the new library wing, did you know…?"
"…saw her in the arcade last week, alone, what a psycho…"
"…bet she uses spells to cheat at exams…"
And then, the inevitable: "I heard she tried to adopt a street Feran last year. Like a rescue pet."
That one stung, not because it was true, but because of how neatly it inverted her real shame. She'd only tried to help Mouse once—a year ago, in the shadow of the old canal. Mouse had bitten her, hard, and run. She'd never forgotten the look in his eyes: not fear, but total contempt. She wondered where he was now. If he'd been rounded up. If he'd survived last night.
She clenched her fists in her lap. Her claws bit tiny crescents into her palm, a self-mutilation so small it never even left a mark.
The teacher droned on, something about mana contracts and regulatory capture. Shiori's gaze flickered to the window. Outside, the city gleamed, a thousand stories of glass and alloy. She could almost see the port from here, the blue-white shimmer of the security teams still cleaning up. Above it all, her father's skyscraper loomed: a single obsidian spike in the heart of the financial district.
Halfway through class, a student in the row ahead—human, male, already bald in that way that screamed "old money's plaything"—turned and offered her a dazzling, empty smile.
"Hey, Taira," he said. "You doing anything after school? I heard there's a board meeting. You could tell us what really goes on, if you survive the bloodletting."
Snickers from the crowd. Shiori smiled back, a small, deliberate display of fang.
"Maybe," she said, "if you pass the entrance exam to my world first."
He blinked, momentarily thrown, then shrugged. "Whatever. You Ferans always think you're so clever."
She didn't bother to answer. The rest of class was a slow-motion car crash, the teacher's words bouncing off walls that had heard it all before. When the bell rang, Shiori gathered her things with the care of someone setting a trap, then swept out before anyone else could get in the last word.
Her next class was Mana Theory—her strongest subject and her least favorite. The lab was a circular vault, walls lined with crystal prisms and floating rods of enchanted copper. Each student had their own workstation, complete with isolator gloves, visors, and an AI proctor that monitored for cheating or magical misconduct.
The room buzzed with static as students settled in. Shiori donned her gloves, ran through the calibration, and waited for the exercise to start.
Today's challenge: stabilize a plasma filament using nothing but willpower and an array of archaic runes. The goal was to keep the filament contained for sixty seconds without triggering a containment alarm. Last year, Shiori had broken the record with ninety-seven. Today, she just wanted to get through it without attracting attention.
The instructor began the countdown, voice calm and slow.
At "zero," Shiori extended her hands, closed her eyes, and summoned the flow. Mana welled in her chest—cold, pure, a second heartbeat. She visualized the runes, layered them in her mind, and wrapped them around the filament like a cocoon.
There was a hitch. A slip of focus, just as the plasma stabilized.
On her desk sat a red origami crane, folded with more care than the earlier notes. Shiori's hands stuttered, the mana flickered, and a low hum sounded as the safety field tripped. The AI registered her failure with a polite chime.
The rest of the class hadn't noticed; they were too busy wrestling their own filaments. Shiori stared at the crane. Red paper, the kind used for old Shinto blessings. Her throat tightened.
She reached out, pinched the crane by its wing, and unfolded it. Inside was a tiny, hand-drawn sketch: a Feran, tiger like her, strung up by the tail and flayed open, ribcage splayed. The detail was obscene, the blood rendered in frantic red pen.
Underneath, in that same all-caps handwriting: Your days are numbered at this academy, ML.
Her fingers trembled. The world narrowed to a single point, a pinprick of heat behind her sternum. The lab spun around her, voices distant, the instructor's words suddenly a million miles away.
She tasted copper in her mouth. Sweat prickled her neck, soaked the collar of her uniform. Her claws dug deeper, enough that this time she would leave marks.
For a long moment, Shiori stared at the drawing, at the cruelty in its lines. She felt the old panic clawing at her chest—the same one that used to wake her in the middle of the night, years after the family "incident" in Tokyo, years after her mother's blood had dried on the hotel carpet.
The instructor walked past, glanced at her, then at the crane, then back at her. His face betrayed nothing. She realized with a kind of cold clarity that he'd seen it all before, and had chosen not to care.
That was the last straw.
Shiori refolded the paper, slower this time, turning the grotesque sketch inward, until the blood and the pain disappeared inside the crane's body. She set it in the center of the desk, then pressed her palm down, flattening it with a single, decisive motion.
The whispering in the class faded. Shiori looked up, eyes clear and bright.
She had no intention of letting them win. Not here, not now.
When the bell rang, Shiori was first out the door. She made for the nearest empty stairwell, ducked into its shadow, and allowed herself a single, trembling breath.
Then she pulled out her notebook, opened to a fresh page, and wrote:
"They can break my body, but I will never let them have my mind."
She underlined it twice, then tore out the page and folded it into a crane of her own.
She set it on the railing, watched it tremble in the updraft, and let it fly.
The decision was made.