Chapter 171
MIDNIGHT (2)
IAM walked out into the midnight, letting the silence settle over his shoulders like a second cloak that he didn't want to wear.
The door clicked shut behind him. A hush followed—a kind that didn't exist during the day. One untouched by the laughter of students or the chaotic movement of their strange, winding lives. Out here, it was just him. The world as it was when no one else was looking.
Above him, the moonlight spilled across the academy grounds like silver rain—crashing down onto the buildings, the trees, the pavement below. He stepped into it like it were water, letting it wash over his skin. His hood was pulled up, but the light still found him, threading through the edges, illuminating half his face.
From where he stood, only two of the nine moons were visible tonight. The others had vanished behind the clouds or shifted beyond the curve of the world. But the two he could see hung like ancient sentinels in the sky—watchful, pale, and impossibly still.
They made the world below feel like a dream.
IAM didn't take a car. He didn't even consider it. Some part of him wanted to feel the ground beneath his feet, wanted to hear his own footsteps echo back at him, like proof that he was still here. That he was alive.
So he walked.
The streets of the academy lay stretched before him like an empty theatre stage—neatly paved, perfectly lit in places, and utterly deserted. The shadows clung tightly to the corners of buildings and the undersides of balconies. Wind stirred the air with a gentleness that belonged to a mother, brushing against the side of his face and playing with the edge of his hood.
And still, he walked.
Just forward.
There was something strangely holy about this moment—this narrow slice of time when the world had forgotten its roles and let itself be quiet.
Here, under this midnight sky, IAM was a ghost passing through a world that didn't quite belong to him.
It felt... wrong.
Wrong in a way he couldn't explain, only feel.
Wrong not to wake up to that dead grey clouds—the one that never moved , never opened, never let sunlight in. Wrong not to feel the cold grit of that strange brown sand beneath his shoes, when it clung to your soles like it wanted to crawl inside you.
Wrong not to see the fog—that living, breathing wall of grey that slithered through like it had a mind of its own.
This world was too safe.
Too soft.
The air didn't carry the sting of dust or blood or burnt steel. The wind didn't scream. And when you looked people in the eyes here, you didn't always see the ghosts standing behind them.
He exhaled.
There was no waking up to the sound of someone not waking up at all.
But perhaps the strangest thing of all—the most unbearable thing—was not the peace itself, but the absence.
The absence of what came before.
The loss of danger, of desperation, of survival measured by the second. It should have been a blessing. To others, it would've been paradise.
But to IAM, it was like—in a weird twisted way—a curse.
He walked under a series of low-hanging lights, their soft hum the only sound in the night. They flickered just slightly—tiny pulses like a heartbeat slowing down.
IAM pressed a hand to his chest.
He wasn't even sure what he was mourning.
Maybe it was the version of himself that had belonged to that old world—the one with the fog and the walls now covered in soot. Maybe it was the people who had not survived with him. Or maybe it was just the simple truth that something about this world felt like a lie.
This calm didn't feel like peace.
It felt like something was lost.
And that, more than anything, terrified him.
IAM had grown used to a world where smiles were shields to the fear and pain beneath and every breath could be the last in the hold.
Here, death wasn't lingering just outside the perimeter. It wasn't crouched in the shadows or whispering through the fog. It wasn't curled up beside your bed at night, waiting.
Because in the end, death hadn't come from the creatures.
It hadn't been the Deadline creatures with their horror-mangled limbs and unnatural disposition. It hadn't been the poisoned lands or the creeping fog that swallowed settlements whole.
No.
It had come from within.
From the hands and minds of fellow humans.
That was what shattered everything. What cracked the world in half. Greed. Hate. Envy. Ugly words, but they'd always walked side by side with humanity like old friends.
Even in the face of extinction. Even when there were beasts clawing at their doors, children crying in the dirt, skies split open with ash—humans had always found a way to ruin each other.
IAM had seen it firsthand.
And sometimes… sometimes, he wondered if the real curse on Holem had never been the creatures.
Maybe it had always been them.
Maybe they weren't the victims of this world, but the infection spreading across it.
The creatures, for all their nightmare forms, were consistent. They simply were. Born of nature or corruption—who knew—but they acted without deception.
Humans, on the other hand…
Maybe the creatures weren't the end.
Maybe they were the cure.
Maybe it was the world's way of purging what had long since overstepped its welcome. Like antibodies to a disease.
Maybe Holem was simply trying to heal itself.
And maybe that healing meant removing them.
IAM didn't know if the thought comforted him or not. But under the quiet moons, the idea had a strange sort of beauty to it.
He let out a breath and shook his head to clear it. The night had gotten into his blood. That was all. Midnight always had a way of pulling the darkest thoughts from the corners of your mind, especially when no one else was around to distract you.
He kept walking, the crunch of gravel beneath his boots the only sound for what felt like miles.
His destination was simple: the library.
But the journey there had already become something else.
When he finally reached the library, he stopped just before the steps.
It loomed before him like a sleeping colossus. The architecture was beautiful in the dark. The smooth, walls seemed almost alive beneath the moonlight.
IAM stood there for a moment, just staring.
He realized, suddenly, how strange the world looked when it thought no one was looking...
The library at Hope Academy never closed.
It was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
IAM stepped through its tall double doors and into its vast, hushed interior. A few soft lights glowed across the ceiling, casting a gentle warmth over the long aisles and towering shelves.
There were only a handful of people inside at this hour.
Scattered students sat buried in books, the kind of solitude seekers who found comfort in pages rather than people. Each one was engrossed in their pages, hoping the words might hold the answers they were searching for.
The librarian, hunched behind a marble desk, glanced up just once—before returning to the thick book they had cradled in both hands.
IAM kept walking.
Part of him envied the people in those chairs. How they could pretend, if only for a moment, that knowledge would save them. That somewhere in the pages was an answer.
He wished he could find a book like that. One that could give him all the answers.
He shook his head.
That wasn't why he'd come here.
IAM climbed the wide staircase to the second floor. The upper level was emptier still, filled with booths designed for long, private reading. He chose the most secluded one he could find—tucked in the far corner, isolated by tall shelves and a narrow hallway that bent just out of sight.
He stepped in, shut the small wooden door behind him, and was alone.
Silence wrapped around him like a blanket.
IAM stood there for a moment, just breathing. He didn't reach for a book. He simply sat down at the table, rested his arms on the wood, and lowered his gaze.
Time passed. He didn't know how long.
Finally, with a small movement, he reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled something out—a thin, worn bookmark.
It was nothing fancy. A little creased around the edges and faintly faded. But printed on it was a name.
Raj.
IAM stared at it for a long moment.
"To think… you were the president of the student council," he murmured softly. "Did you not think that was something worth telling us?"
His voice was barely audible, almost lost in the thick silence.
He turned the bookmark in his fingers, letting the moonlight from the window catch on its edges.
"I wonder what else I don't know about you…"
There was no bitterness in his tone. Just a quiet, tired kind of wonder.
But then, just as quickly, he folded the bookmark between his fingers and slipped it back into his pocket. And into the back of his mind.
Because no matter how strange this discovery was, no matter what it might mean… that wasn't the reason he had come here tonight.