The office of Ober-Inquisitor Reinhardt von Orlov smelled of beeswax, stale tobacco, and the crushing weight of bureaucracy. It was a room designed to make grown men weep, adorned with heavy oak paneling and portraits of stern, bearded Kaisers who glared down at the living with eternal disapproval.
Kiril sat on a hard wooden stool. He kept his posture slightly hunched, his hands trembling in his lap. It was a calculated performance. He needed to look like a frightened child from a fallen house, not a monster who had just liquified three assassins in a basement.
The Inquisitor paced behind his massive desk. He was a man of sharp angles, wearing the high-collared gray coat of the Gendarmerie with the double-headed eagle of the Valdroska Empire pinned to his throat.
"Repeat the statement," Von Orlov commanded. His voice was crisp, clipping the consonants in the distinctive dialect of the Western Marches.
"I was asleep, Herr Ober-Inquisitor," Kiril lied, his voice wavering perfectly. "I heard a noise. I saw a man in a black mask. He was holding the book. He laughed. He said... he said that House Strykov does not fear the Police. He said the Gendarmerie are merely glorified crossing guards for the Army."
Von Orlov stopped pacing. The leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.
"Glorified crossing guards," the Inquisitor repeated softly. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
It was the perfect bait. In the Valdroska Empire, the hatred between the the Military Nobility, the Junker-Generals, and the Internal Security Forces, the Okhrana-Gendarmerie, was older than the Empire itself. It was a feud of jurisdiction and pride.
"Yes, sir," Kiril whispered. "Then I panicked. My bloodline ability... it just happened. The book caught fire. The man fled out the window."
Von Orlov turned to the window, staring out at the snow-covered Academy grounds.
"The forensic team found traces of unregistered Necromancy in the ash," Von Orlov muttered. "And we found grappling hook marks on the exterior wall. Marks that match military-issue climbing gear."
Kiril hid a smile. Of course they matched. He had used Void Grip to gouge those marks into the stone himself while the guards were running up the stairs.
"House Strykov has been pushing boundaries for years," Von Orlov mused, tapping a gloved finger against his monocle. "General-Boyar Strykov believes his friendship with the Crown Prince places him above the Law. He believes he can assassinate a noble scion on Academy grounds to seize mineral rights."
The Inquisitor turned back to Kiril. His eyes were cold, calculating, and hungry.
"You are a complication, Drakenhof-Ashenwald. By all rights, you should be dead. But since you are alive, you are now a piece of evidence."
"I just want to survive the Selection, sir," Kiril said.
"And you shall," Von Orlov declared. He reached into his desk and pulled out a small silver pin shaped like a shield. He tossed it to Kiril.
"This is a Gendarmerie Beacon. It is a passive tracking device. If you die during the Selection, it will record the mana signature of your killer. If it is Viktor Strykov... or any of his lackeys... we will have the casus belli to raid their estate for treason."
Kiril caught the pin. It felt heavy.
"You want me to be bait," Kiril said, dropping the act for a fleeting second.
"I want you to be useful," Von Orlov corrected, sitting down and picking up a stack of paperwork. "Go to the assembly. Do not speak of this meeting. If you survive, the Gendarmerie will ensure your inheritance is protected. If you die, try to ensure your corpse is found in an incriminating position. Dismissed."
Kiril stood up, bowed stiffly, and pinned the silver shield to his collar.
"For the Kaiser and the Law," Kiril murmured.
"For the Law," Von Orlov replied, not looking up.
The Great Hall of the Imperial Arcanum Academy was a cavernous space of black stone and gold leaf, designed to make every student feel insignificant. Banners of the great noble houses hung from the vaulted ceiling, a tapestry of wolves, bears, dragons, and eagles.
The student body was gathered in the center, a sea of midnight-blue uniforms. There were nearly a thousand of them, divided strictly by caste.
At the front stood the Hoch-Adel, the High Nobility. They stood in relaxed circles, laughing, their uniforms tailored from silk and reinforced with protective enchantments.
Behind them were the Dienst-Adel, the Service Nobility. Families who had earned their titles through bureaucracy or trade. They were quieter, more anxious.
And at the back, near the drafty doors, were the Commoners and the Fallen.
Kiril walked into the hall.
Silence rippled outward from the door like a wave.
Heads turned. Whispers hissed through the air like escaping steam.
"Is that the Ghost?"
"I heard he was arrested."
"Look at his face. He looks... different."
Kiril ignored them. He walked with a new rhythm. Before, he had scurried. Now, driven by the Ashen Seed thrumming in his chest, he walked with the predatory smoothness of a wolf patrolling its territory.
He didn't go to the back. He walked straight up the center aisle.
He stopped ten feet away from the circle of High Nobles.
Viktor Strykov stood there. The blonde heir looked immaculate, his hair slicked back, his hand resting casually on the pommel of a new duel-saber. But his eyes were tight. He was looking at Kiril as if seeing a corpse that had crawled out of its grave.
"You," Viktor said, his voice carrying over the silence. "You have nerve showing your face, Ashenblood. I heard the Inquisitors dragged you away in chains."
Kiril smoothed the front of his spare uniform. He tapped the silver Gendarmerie pin on his collar.
"They did," Kiril said calmly. "We had a lovely chat about property damage. And intent."
Viktor's eyes flicked to the silver pin. Recognition flashed across his face. He knew what that symbol meant. It meant Kiril was under the protection of the State Police.
"You rat," Viktor hissed, stepping forward. "You went crying to the Okhrana? You possess no honor."
"Honor is for the living, Viktor," Kiril replied, his voice loud enough for the surrounding students to hear. "And I plan on living. Do you?"
A collective gasp went through the hall. A Fallen noble threatening a High Scion? It was unheard of.
Viktor's face turned a mottled shade of red. Mana began to gather around his fists, the air shimmering with heat.
"I will burn you to ash in the Wilds," Viktor whispered. "There are no cameras in the forest, Ashenblood. No Inquisitors. Just you and me."
"I look forward to it," Kiril said. And he meant it.
[System Analysis: Viktor Strykov.]
[Mana Capacity: 320/320.]
[Threat Level: High.]
[Deliciousness: Very High.]
Kiril's hunger spiked. The Seed pulsed. He had to physically restrain himself from reaching out and draining the boy right there in the hall.
Patience, he told the Seed. Wait for the dinner bell.
A gong sounded, deep and resonant, vibrating through the floorboards.
The massive double doors at the front of the hall swung open.
A figure floated onto the stage. It was an elderly man in heavy, ceremonial robes of crimson and gold. He had a beard that reached his waist and eyes that glowed with white mana.
Chancellor-Magister Rasputin von Moltke. The head of the Academy.
"Silence," the Chancellor commanded. He didn't shout, but his voice was amplified by wind magic, reaching every corner of the room.
The students snapped to attention.
"The Empire requires strength," the Chancellor began, his tone bored and rehearsed. "We are surrounded by enemies. The Frost Giants to the North. The Necro-Lords to the East. The Republic of Gears to the West. To lead, you must prove you are not sheep."
He raised a withered hand.
Behind him, the back wall of the stage dissolved. It was an illusion. Behind it lay a massive, swirling vortex of purple energy. A Teleportation Gate.
"Beyond this gate lies the Jagd-Zone. The Hunting Grounds," the Chancellor intoned. "It is a pocket dimension of untamed wilderness. Monsters. Ruins. Hazards."
A holographic display flickered into life above the stage, showing a map of a dense, frozen forest.
"The rules of the Selection are simple," the Chancellor continued. "You will be scattered randomly across the zone. Scattered among the ruins are Mana Tokens. Collect them. Steal them. Hoard them. The top one hundred students with the most mana density at the end of three days will form the Class A cohort. The rest will be assigned to Class B... or the infantry."
"Infantry" was a polite word for cannon fodder.
"Killing is forbidden," the Chancellor added, though his eyes twinkled with a cruel light. "However, accidents happen in the wild. The Academy accepts a mortality rate of five percent as... acceptable losses."
Five percent. Fifty students.
"You have one hour to prepare. Enter the Gate."
The Chancellor turned and floated away.
Chaos erupted.
Students began scrambling, forming alliances, checking weapons. The High Nobles grouped up, their entourages forming protective rings around the heirs.
Kiril didn't move. He stood alone in the center of the aisle.
He didn't need an alliance. An alliance meant sharing the XP.
"System," Kiril thought. "Check status."
[Kiril Drakenhof-Ashenwald]
[Level: 2]
[Class: Apprentice of the Void]
[Mana: 500/500]
[Active Quest: The Selection.]
[Objective: Place in the Top 10.]
[Bonus Objective: Hunt the Hunter (Viktor Strykov).]
He checked his inventory. He had the stone dagger he had looted from the statue, the stolen handkerchief, and nothing else. No food. No water. No camping gear.
I'll take what I need from the others, he decided.
He walked toward the purple vortex.
As he passed Viktor, the blonde boy made a throat-slitting gesture. His two lackeys, the fat boy with the staff and a tall girl with a rapier, sneered at Kiril.
Kiril offered them a polite, stiff nod.
"After you, my lords," Kiril said. "I insist."
Viktor scoffed and led his group into the portal. They vanished in a flash of light.
Kiril waited until the crowd thinned. He stepped up to the swirling energy. It felt cold, like standing in front of an open freezer.
[Translocation Detected.]
[Destination: Sector 4 (The Dead Marshes).]
[Warning: High concentration of necrotic mana detected.]
"Necrotic mana?" Kiril smiled. "Sounds like a buffet."
He stepped through.
The world twisted. Up became down. Gravity spun like a top.
Kiril hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact. He came up in a crouch, his senses expanding instantly.
He was no longer in the golden hall.
He was in a swamp.
The sky was a bruised purple, choked with heavy clouds. The trees were skeletal, black wood twisted into agonizing shapes, weeping gray moss into the stagnant water below. The air smelled of sulfur and decay.
It was freezing.
Kiril stood up, his boots sinking into the semi-frozen mud.
[Zone Entered: The Jagd-Zone.]
[Current Ranking: 984/984.]
[Tokens Held: 0.]
He was alone. The random scattering spell had worked.
"Step one," Kiril muttered. "Find cover."
He moved toward a cluster of rocks on higher ground. The mud sucked at his boots.
A twig snapped.
Kiril froze. He didn't turn. He activated Void Sight.
The world turned to wireframe grayscale in his mind's eye. Behind him, submerged in the muddy water, something was moving. A heat signature. A mana signature.
It wasn't a student.
It was a mire-snake. A constrictor the size of a telephone pole, its scales perfectly camouflaged as rotting logs. It was coiling, preparing to strike.
[Entity: Iron-Scale Viper.]
[Rank: F+]
Kiril didn't panic. He felt the Seed spin.
The snake lunged, exploding out of the water with a hiss that sounded like a steam valve rupturing. Jaws lined with needle-teeth snapped toward his head.
Kiril pivoted on his heel. He didn't dodge away; he stepped in.
He drove his left fist forward, straight into the open mouth of the viper.
"Grip."
A sphere of gravity collapsed inside the snake's throat.
The snake gagged, its momentum arresting instantly as if it had hit a wall.
Kiril grabbed a fang with his right hand to anchor himself.
"Drain."
The gray entropy flared.
The snake convulsed. The mana that fueled its muscles, the biological energy that kept it warm in the freezing swamp, was ripped out in a violent torrent.
The massive reptile withered in seconds. Its scales turned dull and gray. Its eyes rolled back. It slumped into the mud, a dried husk.
[Mana Absorbed: +15.]
[System Alert: Mana Capacity Full. Initiating Overflow Protocol.]
[Converting excess Mana to Attribute Points.]
[Conversion Ratio: 100 Mana = 1 Stat Point.]
Kiril blinked.
It converts overflow to stats?
This changed everything. He didn't just need mana to cast spells. He needed mana to fix his broken, malnourished body.
He looked at the dead snake. Then he looked deeper into the swamp.
In the distance, he heard a scream. A human scream. A student had spawned near something much worse than a snake.
Kiril checked his map. The scream came from the north.
He began to run toward the sound.
Not to help.
To eat whatever was doing the killing.
Ten minutes later, Kiril crouched on a tree branch, looking down at a clearing.
Below him, three students were fighting for their lives.
They were Dienst-Adel, judging by their sturdy but plain armor. A boy with a shield, a girl casting minor wind blades, and another boy trying frantically to load a crossbow.
They were surrounded.
Six creatures circled them. They looked like wolves made of wet moss and peat, with glowing green eyes.
[Entity: Bog Hounds.]
[Pack Tactics. Regeneration.]
The shield-boy slammed his buckler into a hound, knocking it back. But the hound didn't stay down. The mud reformed, knitting the wound shut in seconds.
"They won't die!" the girl screamed, panic making her voice shrill. "My wind isn't cutting deep enough!"
"Just hold the line!" the crossbow boy yelled. "I'm out of bolts!"
Kiril watched from above.
He could save them. It would be easy. A wave of Void energy would destabilize the magic holding the mud-hounds together.
But he waited.
Let them tire the prey, the Seed whispered. Let them soften the meat.
A hound lunged, bypassing the shield and sinking its teeth into the crossbow boy's leg. He shrieked, dropping his weapon.
"Heinrich!" the girl cried.
The formation broke. The hounds surged in.
Now.
Kiril dropped from the tree.
He didn't land softly. He landed like a meteor, slamming into the center of the pack.
[Void Nova: Radius 3 Meters.]
He released a pulse of pure negation.
There was no sound of explosion. Just a sudden, terrifying silence as the magic in the immediate area simply ceased to exist.
The six Bog Hounds dissolved instantly into puddles of lifeless mud.
The wind spell the girl was casting fizzled out. The enchantment on the shield-boy's buckler died, the metal turning dull.
The three students stared at Kiril.
He stood in the center of the clearing, the gray veins on his face pulsing. He looked at the wounded boy, then at the others.
"You," Kiril said, pointing to the girl. "He's bleeding. Tourniquet."
The girl stared, paralyzed by shock. "Who... who are you?"
Kiril ignored her. He walked over to the puddle that used to be the Alpha Hound. Something glittered in the mud.
He reached down and picked it up.
It was a small, hexagonal coin made of blue crystal.
[Item: Mana Token (Value: 10 Points).]
Kiril pocketed it.
He turned to the students. They were terrified. Not of the hounds, but of him. They had felt the coldness of his mana. They had seen the monsters simply erase.
"The Hounds are dead," Kiril said flatly. "But the smell of blood will attract more. Move."
"Wait," the shield-boy stammered, stepping between Kiril and the wounded friend. "You're... you're Ashenwald. The Ghost."
"I am," Kiril agreed.
"You saved us," the boy said, confused. "Why? Everyone says you're a Null."
Kiril looked at the three of them. They were weak. They were fodder.
But fodder had uses.
"I didn't save you," Kiril said, his eyes cold and calculating. "I'm investing."
He pointed to the south.
"Go that way. There is a ruins complex. Hold it. If anyone tries to take it, tell them you are holding it for House Ashenblood."
"For... for you?" the girl asked.
"Yes," Kiril said. "And if you find any more tokens... you keep them for me. I will come to collect interest later."
The shield-boy swallowed hard. He looked at the power radiating off Kiril. He made the smart choice.
"Understood," the boy said, bowing his head. "We are... grateful, My Lord."
They scrambled away, dragging their wounded comrade.
Kiril watched them go.
[Reputation: Fear established.]
[Minions Acquired: 3.]
He turned back to the forest.
The Seed pulsed. It detected a massive mana source nearby. Not a monster. Not a student.
Something ancient.
Kiril followed the pull. He walked deeper into the swamp, pushing aside the rotting vines.
He came to a stop in front of a massive, ancient willow tree. Its roots were wrapped around a stone archway that was half-sunk in the mire.
The archway was sealed with a familiar metal grate.
And carved into the stone was the Dragon and Sword.
[System Alert: Sub-Vault Detected.]
[The Ashenblood built bunkers all over the Empire.]
[This is Supply Cache Alpha.]
Kiril smiled.
"Supply cache," he whispered. "That sounds like weapons."
He reached for the Key around his neck.
But before he could touch the grate, a voice spoke from the shadows of the archway.
"I wouldn't open that if I were you, Liebchen."
Kiril spun around, Void energy flaring in his hand.
Leaning against the willow tree was a girl.
She wore the uniform of the Academy, but she had customized it. The sleeves were ripped off, revealing arms covered in intricate, glowing red tattoos. Her hair was a shock of white, cut short and jagged. She was eating an apple with a knife.
She looked at Kiril with eyes that were entirely black—sclera and all.
"That's a nasty curse you have there," she noted, pointing her knife at his chest. "Smells like Old Magic. The kind that gets you burned at the stake."
Kiril didn't recognize her. She wasn't a High Noble.
"Who are you?" Kiril demanded.
She took a bite of the apple, chewing loudly.
"Name's Katya," she said, grinning to reveal teeth that were filed to points. "Katya von Ruric. And I think we're going to be best friends. Or I'm going to kill you. I haven't decided yet."
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected.]
[Entity: Katya von Ruric.]
[Race: Human (Demonic Bloodline).]
[Threat Level: Deadly.]
Kiril lowered his stance.
"Decide quickly," Kiril said.
Katya laughed, tossing the apple core into the mud.
"Oh, I like him," she whispered to the air. "He bites."
She drew a second knife.
"Let's dance, Ashenblood.