The morning sun poured golden light across the sparring field, catching in dew-flecked grass and half-awake shadows. The east side of the academy grounds always looked the softest this time of day. like it hadn't made up its mind yet whether it wanted to be part of the war everyone else felt approaching.
Isabella liked it here.
She spun once, loose and graceful, letting the vibration from her training chimes wrap around her wrist. The notes were off, deliberately. The instrument wasn't meant for beauty yet. Haku had told her: "If you can control a disharmonious tone, you'll be ready for anything."
She never questioned him.
From the sidelines, Haku stood with arms crossed, posture relaxed, but eyes razor-sharp. His gloves rested at his sides, still, but always aware. He'd made them look like performance gear, ornate and golden thread, but she knew what they really were.
Instruments. Weapons.
' Professor, I saw those in Alex and Niko's room, but who knew they would be so powerful? 'she smiled. ' He never shows his hand, never tells anyone anything, but is always ahead of everyone.'
She smiled at him mid-spin. "Sensei, that was almost a C-sharp, admit it!"
"It was almost dissonance, which is more useful," Haku replied, deadpan. But there was warmth in it.
Isabella's laugh chimed like bells, light and sharp. She landed, breathing heavily, and dropped to sit cross-legged on the grass beside him. "When's the next real lesson?"
Haku shrugged. "This is the real lesson."
"Boring."
"Controlling a scream takes more skill than raising one."
She rolled her eyes. "That sounds like a thing Alex would say."
He didn't answer.
She tilted her head, suddenly more serious. "Is something wrong?"
He glanced at her. The slightest shift in his expression. "Not yet."
Later that day, the air changed.
It wasn't immediate. It never was. The world never shouts when it wants to ruin you; it whispers.
The training group was small. Only three students stayed behind to work with resonance scripts under Haku's supervision. Isabella had insisted. "I can hear things the others miss," she said. "Even in the silences."
That was true. She had a gift for listening. Not just to the melodies or techniques, but to the in-between. The spaces music left behind.
When the pulse came, like a string being pulled across her spine, she flinched. The ink on her script blotched.
She raised her head slowly.
The others didn't seem to notice.
But something was wrong. Not loud. Not loud at all. It was... silence. A wrong kind of quiet, humming under everything like static beneath a beautiful note.
"Sensei?" she called.
Haku was a few paces off, adjusting an old scriptplate buried under moss.
He turned. "What is it?"
"I think... there's something here."
He stood straight. His whole posture changed. The easy slouch vanished. The gloves shifted into his hands without a sound. His eyes scanned the tree line.
'I hope it's not that thing.'
"Isabella, stop!!!"
Isabella should have listened. Should have waited.
But there was that thread again, tugging at the edge of her awareness. Not pulling her forward, more like reminding her, she was already moving. Already too close.
She stepped past the edge of the resonance field.
Just a little.
And the world snapped like a string pulled too far.
It wasn't a creature. Not really. It didn't have shape. It didn't walk or crawl or howl.
It remembered itself into being. A half-forgotten frequency, a buried hunger, an echo that had been waiting too long in the dark. It responded to her presence like a fire in a forest to long deprived of rain.
She gasped. Her chimes shrieked, shattered by invisible pressure. Her knees buckled as her mana twisted, not drained, not stolen... something else.
Her mana came undone in strands. No force, no violence. Just... absence. Like a song forgetting its own melody.
She tried to scream. What came out was soundless.
Haku moved before his heart caught up.
The gloves rang like temple bells, sharp and furious. He layered notes like walls, pulling at frequencies she couldn't see. His music was jagged now, defensive, loud, no longer teaching.
But it was already too late.
She was kneeling, arms limp, her skin pale with a light that wasn't hers flickering along her veins.
He saw her mouth move. No sound.
Then, barely, just barely, he caught it. The faintest hum. A broken echo of the warm-up drill she used to tease him about.
Her fingers twitched as if still trying to play.
Then silence.
He held her in the center of the collapsed resonance field long after the shadows had vanished.
The elders arrived in a rush of alarm wards and too late. They said all the right things. They began damage reports. They asked for testimonies. They looked at the crater of silence left in the grass like it meant something they could categorize.
Haku didn't move.
He only released her when Niko arrived, face frozen, eyes wide, breath gone.
He didn't cry.
Not there. Not then.
'I'm sorry Niko, I should've been faster.' Haku's eyes closed. ' I will kill them all '
He dropped to his knees beside her, touched her hand, and whispered something that didn't make sense to anyone but them.
Later, when night wrapped the academy in too much stillness, Yue stood atop the tower and watched the stars pulse wrong.
She could feel it now, too.
Something had taken root. Something that had waited long enough. And it wasn't done.
Alex stood alone under the courtyard tree, staring at the training staff someone had leaned against the base.
Ricardo stood beside him. Neither of them said anything.
Not yet.
Niko came walking up to Ricardo and Alex. "Tell me who or what killed my sister and tell me where to find the bastards," Niko said, not even looking them in the eyes, only at the floor.
"Niko, I will not say I know how you feel, but what is your plan? Do you plan to die too? " Ricardo questioned.
"He's right, we all cared about her, so let's come up with a plan first."Alex, the voice of reason, said.
"I don't care whether you come with me, but I will not kill them, I will make them feel all the pain hell and heaven has to offer, and when they beg for death itself, I will make them wish that the devil stood in front of them instead." Niko finally looked up, his eyes showed nothing, no fear, no emotion at all, just his will to accomplish his goal of utter destruction of his enemy.
Alex and Ricardo did not question him after that, and both knew it would be pointless. "What do you need us to do? "Ricardo said prepared to take lifes for his friend.