The moon hung high above the academy, veiled in silver clouds.
Zian stood on the rooftops, staring out over the quiet courtyards. Her fingers still trembled from the name she had seen in the forbidden tome.
Kaen.
The darkness behind the angels.
> "Something even the god you served couldn't destroy," Drayven had said.
She had planned to confront Kaen again tonight—but he had vanished, as if knowing she'd come looking.
Instead, she jumped silently from the rooftop and landed on the academy's outer wall, near the forgotten training fields. Her instincts led her here. A pull in her blood… or perhaps her soul.
She was not alone.
Figures emerged from the shadows—four masked intruders, their mana flaring red and corrupt. Not students. Not staff. Assassins.
Zian raised her blade. "I don't know who sent you—"
A blade whistled through the air.
She blocked it, barely. Another followed. Then three. The masked figures moved like coordinated phantoms. They weren't amateurs.
And Zian was still not fully herself.
She parried, dodged, but her magic sputtered—resisting her call. "Not now!" she hissed.
One assassin broke her guard.
Time slowed.
She saw the curved blade slicing toward her ribs. She couldn't stop it.
Then…
Darkness swallowed the world.
The attacker vanished mid-strike, ripped apart by shadow tendrils that struck faster than thought. The remaining assassins froze, then turned—to flee.
Too late.
They never screamed. Only silence remained.
And standing in the center of it all, shadows still writhing around him, was Kaen. Ice cream stick still between his teeth.
"Tsk," he muttered. "I leave you alone for one hour…"
Zian staggered back, wide-eyed. "You… you killed them without touching them."
Kaen smiled, slow and eerie.
"Touching is inefficient."
She looked at the writhing black mist on the ground—once people. Her voice came out barely a whisper. "What are you?"
Kaen stepped forward, shadows melting into his skin.
"You already know," he said softly.
And this time, she didn't argue.