Veneto University looked the same, but it never felt the same.
Everything had a scent of pretense this year. The polished marble floors, the million-euro labs, the faculty who pretended to teach us things we hadn't already learned three years ago in underground threads and encrypted circles. It was all just... noise.
Except her.
Lorelei Nochnaya.
God, even her name sounded like a secret.
Sharp, silent, beautiful in that way, knives were elegant, dangerous, and always cold to the touch.
She was the only one who didn't look at me like I was the answer key to life. The only one who didn't try to flirt, impress, or get something out of me. Her attention was like a damn eclipse — rare, fleeting, and blinding when it hit.
I hated that she never looked at me like the others did.
I also couldn't stop watching her.
There was something about Lorelei that didn't fit the puzzle here. Everyone else wore their ambition like armor. She wore hers like a scalpel — precise, hidden, dangerous. Not loud, never boastful. But effective.
I'd heard stories. So had everyone.
The girl with a mind like a quantum processor. The one who corrected the professor mid-lecture, then walked out before class ended, because she was already ten steps ahead. She didn't need this place. She chose to be here. And no one could figure out why.
But me? I saw it.
Power recognized power.
She didn't come to learn. She came to win.
Which was why today was a disaster.
LORELEI NOCHNAYA — THEO LUCENTI
Partners. For the entire semester. Simulation, project, presentation — the works.
Perfect.
I knew the second I saw the list that the universe had a sense of humor. And a death wish.
I turned just enough to catch her eyes. She was already watching me.
Only for a second — then she looked away, like I wasn't worth a second glance.
I should've been insulted. Instead, I smiled.
Let her pretend she had the upper hand. Let her think I'd play nice.
Let her try to beat me.
Because I wasn't planning to lose. Not again.
Not after what happened with Nyx.
My jaw clenched before I could stop it. I didn't even realize I'd started digging my thumbnail into the desk until I saw the dent it left in the wood.
Nyx.
The name still made my skin itch.
The only person on the darknet who had ever — ever—bested me. No traceable IP. No known gender, age, location, or anything. Just a ghost. A phantom. A shadow wrapped in fire.
A hacker who'd appeared out of nowhere tore through my encryption like it was paper, and left me a shell of what I once was.
The King dethroned.
I should've seen it coming.
I was too comfortable. Too cocky. Too busy juggling the mafia family name, the university spotlight, and a double life as Lux, the darknet's golden boy.
And Nyx? Nyx didn't care who I was.
They burned everything down — my nodes, my firewalls, my reputation — and left only one message behind:
You should've stayed in the shadows.
Every hacker I knew disappeared after that.
No one wanted to be next.
Some said Nyx was a prodigy. Others said they were a myth. A government experiment gone rogue. A ghost trained by AI. A glitch in the system.
I didn't care.
Whoever they were, I wanted them gone.
Erased.
And now — after months of silence — they were active again.
I found the message this morning. Tucked inside an encrypted backdoor I hadn't touched in months. A single line of text, sitting there like a landmine.
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
Sun Tzu.
Like this was a game of philosophy instead of war.
I'd injected a malware package into a private server just last week — a little bait to see who would bite. No one did.
Until now.
Nyx bit. Then spat it back in my face, clean and quiet.
They weren't just back — they were better.
Which meant I needed to be better, too.
And now I had to deal with Lorelei Nochnaya breathing down my neck in real life — calculating, cold, competitive — while Nyx hunted me in the shadows.
It couldn't be a coincidence. But what was the connection?
Lorelei wasn't a hacker.
Was she?
No. Impossible. I would've known.
Unless...
No. Don't go there. Don't get paranoid. Keep your head.
Lorelei was a problem.
Nyx was a threat.
And me?
I was stuck between two sides, but I was ready.
Later That Night
My penthouse apartment overlooked the canals like a silent predator.
I leaned back in my chair, fingers flying across the keyboard, the room lit only by the shifting glow of code. Screens lined the wall like windows into other realities — one for the university server, one for the darknet forums, one for the encrypted SIM node.
Nyx hadn't sent anything new. No breach. No ping.
Just silence.
Which somehow felt louder than any message.
They were out there — whatever they were.
Watching.
Waiting.
Plotting their next move.
I switched tabs, opened the Veneto simulation dashboard. Our project had already been assigned.
An AI infiltration scenario. Real-world stakes. Scaled down, but not by much.
And of course... it had to involve trust-based code injection.
Fucking poetic.
The system would be monitoring our collaboration patterns. Chat logs. Submission timestamps. The professors wanted to see how two "rivals" could cooperate under stress.
I already knew the answer.
We wouldn't.
But I'll enjoy every fucking second of it.