Aeris stood alone on the marble courtyard once more as the seam in the floor sealed itself with a ghostly silence.
Around her, the other students reappeared. Some were pale and shaking; others were being carried away on stretchers by medics in stark white uniforms. Liora collapsed to her knees, gasping for air, while Rowan stood rigid, his lips pressed into a thin, white line.
Across the courtyard, Lucien met her eyes. A faint smile touched his lips—it wasn't approval, but recognition. He had seen what she did. He knew she hadn't just survived; she had dominated.
Caelan was the last to return. As he materialized, his reflection lingered behind him for a fraction of a second too long—a dark, defiant twin before it finally dissolved into his heels.
Aeris noticed. So did he.
Their eyes locked. There was no smile and no hostility between them. There was only a cold, mutual awareness.
The Headmaster's voice returned, booming from the very stones of the school.
"Sequence I complete. Twenty-seven percent eliminated."
A collective murmur rippled through the courtyard—a mix of grief and frantic relief.
"Sequence II begins at dusk."
As the students began to disperse, shaken but clinging to their lives, Aeris flexed her fingers. The shadow receded obediently into her skin, but it didn't feel smaller or weaker for having been mastered. It felt fed.
Her pulse remained elevated, a frantic drumming in her ears. You enjoyed that, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. She didn't bother to deny it.
And somewhere deep beneath the foundation of the academy, something ancient and cold shifted in dark approval.
As she turned to leave, Caelan's voice reached her, pitched so low it was meant for her ears alone.
"You leaned into it."
It wasn't a question. Aeris didn't slow her pace, but she let her gaze drift toward him.
"And you held back."
His eyes darkened, a shadow passing through the amber depths.
"For now," he conceded.
The words triggered another flicker of the future—a sharp, jagged fragment that brushed against her senses like a blade.
She saw blood on white marble, hot and staining, but it wasn't her own.
She smiled faintly at the vision, the expression more a baring of teeth than a sign of warmth. "Good," she said.
Dusk would come quickly, and she was beginning to understand something dangerous. The First Sequence had never been a test of strength or skill. It was a measure of appetite—a tally of who was hungry enough to devour their own soul to survive.
And hers was growing.
[End of the chapter 9]