The academy had healed, but it had healed wrong. Like a broken bone set without a splint, the surface was smooth, but the structure underneath was twisted. The walls were repainted in a white so bright it hurt the eyes, covering the soot and scorch marks of the rebellion. The shattered glass in the library and the main hall had been replaced with reinforced, bullet-resistant panes. The records of the "incident"—the police reports, the witness statements, the hospital logs—had been buried under layers of money and political influence so thick they might as well have been concrete.
To the outside world, St. Swithin's was once again a bastion of order and elite education.
Inside, it was a high-end prison camp disguised as a school. The silence in the hallways wasn't the quiet of study; it was the quiet of fear. Students walked in single file. Laughter was a memory. The security guards, now dressed in school blazers but moving with military precision, stood at every intersection.
The heavy oak doors of the History Department opened with a groan.
A man walked in. He wore a tweed suit that smelled of mothballs and pipe tobacco, rimless glasses that slid down his nose, and he carried a leather briefcase that looked older than the building itself. He walked with a slight limp—a fake one, carefully practiced to make him look harmless and frail—but his eyes behind the thick lenses missed nothing. They cataloged the exits, the thickness of the doors, the sightlines of the cameras.
"Good morning," he said to the class, his voice a dry, dusty rasp. "I am your new substitute for European History. You may call me Mr. Blackwood. Open your books to page 394. We will be discussing the fall of empires."
It was Master Sebastian.
He had shaved his beard, revealing a jawline sharp enough to cut glass. He had dyed his graying hair a severe, ink-black, and adopted the persona of a boring, invisible academic. But underneath the tweed and the act, he was a Wolf in the enemy's den. He was a master assassin returning to the scene of his first life.
He scanned the room. He saw the terrified faces of the students, children who had seen war and were now trying to pretend they were learning algebra. He saw the empty desk in the back row, the wood scratched and worn, where Eiden used to sit. It was a void in the room, a silent monument.
And he saw Hazel.
She was sitting in the front row now, her posture rigid, her books perfectly aligned. She looked up as he wrote his name on the chalkboard. She caught his eye for a fraction of a second. In that moment, Sebastian saw the recognition. She didn't see a teacher; she saw the way he held the chalk like a knife. She saw a predator.
She looked down quickly, burying her face in her book.
Smart girl, Sebastian thought, turning his back to the class. Keep your head down. The hunt is just beginning.
During recess, the gray sky pressed down on the school grounds. A young girl sat alone on a swing, the chains creaking rhythmically. She wore the uniform of a Junior—two grades below the seniors—a plaid skirt and a blazer that was slightly too big. Her hair was braided tightly against her scalp, and her hands were moving in a blur of motion.
It was Emma.
She had been enrolled under a false name, "Elise," her papers forged by the Den's network of contacts. She was posing as the shy "little sister" of a visiting diplomat.
She wasn't knitting a scarf this time. That was for Eiden, and Eiden was... gone.
Now, she was knitting a small, black square of wool. It was tight, dense, and angry. She was knitting to keep her hands from shaking. She was knitting to keep from screaming.
She watched the senior courtyard through the chain-link fence.
She saw Emily Cronus.
The "Cold Princess" was walking with her entourage—Sasha and Luna. Emily looked perfect. Her uniform was tailored, her hair shone, and her stride was confident. But she looked completely dead inside. She didn't smile at the other students. She didn't frown at the weather. She just commanded the space around her like a localized winter.
Emma gripped her knitting needles so hard the metal bent.
That is the girl, she thought, a hot tear stinging her eye before she angrily wiped it away. That is the girl Eiden died for.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw her needles at the Princess, to march over there and demand to know why she was still breathing when Eiden wasn't. But she remembered Sebastian's order, drilled into her on the train ride down: Observe. Do not engage. We are ghosts. If you scream, you die.
Emma forced herself to look down at the black wool. Stitch. Purl. Stitch. Purl.
She would wait. Wolves were good at waiting.
That evening, the school was a tomb. The students were locked in their dorms. The janitors were buffing the floors.
Sebastian—"Mr. Blackwood"—stayed late. He told the night guard he had papers to grade.
He walked through the silent halls, his fake limp disappearing instantly. He moved silently, his weight shifting to the balls of his feet. He wasn't looking for students. He was looking for the truth of this place.
He entered the "Hall of Founders," a grand, vaulted corridor lined with oil portraits of the school's history. The eyes of dead headmasters watched him from the walls.
He walked to the end. To the largest, most ornate portrait, framed in gold leaf.
The plaque read: AKUMA CRONUS - FOUNDER AND BENEFACTOR - 1920.
Sebastian frowned, leaning in close. "1920?" he whispered to the empty hall. "Impossible. The school was here in 1915. I studied here. I walked these halls. The old headmaster was a fat man named Sterling."
He looked closer at the painting. The history had been rewritten. The past had been painted over.
The portrait depicted a man in his forties, standing proudly in a sharp suit, blueprints in one hand, a shovel in the other. The face was older, harder than Sebastian remembered from twenty years ago, the lines etched deep by power and loss.
But the eyes...
Those black, cold, predatory eyes.
Sebastian felt the blood drain from his face. The floor seemed to tilt beneath his feet, the air in the corridor suddenly too thin to breathe.
He knew those eyes.
He had seen them in the mud of the trenches in France. He had seen them in the flickering light of a campfire in the high mountains, reflecting the flames. He had seen them staring down a line of young recruits, teaching them how to kill a man with a thumb to the eye.
"The General," Sebastian breathed.
He wasn't just a businessman. He wasn't just a rich benefactor.
He was the man who had trained him. The man who had stood beside Evergreen. The man Sebastian had admired, feared, and eventually fled from when the training became too brutal.
Akuma Cronus was the General.
"You didn't just buy the school," Sebastian whispered to the painted eyes, a cold horror settling in his gut. "You erased the past. You erased... us. You built a fortress on top of my childhood."
He realized then that this wasn't just a rescue mission. It wasn't just about Eiden. It was a family feud that had been festering for twenty years.
Miles away, the world was not made of stone and lies. It was made of ice, pain, and the roar of water.
A river, swollen and black with the storm's runoff, raged through a narrow, jagged canyon at the base of the Iron Peaks. The water was freezing, carrying chunks of ice and debris from the high mountains.
It spat something out onto the jagged, rocky bank.
A body.
It lay there for a long time, half in the water, half on the sharp stones. It was a broken thing. Pale. Bleeding. Still. The cold wind howled over it, trying to freeze the last bit of warmth from its core.
A figure approached down the rocky slope. A villager, wrapped in heavy, matted furs against the biting wind. He was scavenging for driftwood or metal scraps washed down from the peaks. He saw the body. He prodded it with his iron-tipped stick. The body groaned. A low, pathetic sound. "Still alive?" the villager grunted, surprised. His voice was rough, unused to speaking. "Tough bastard. Or unlucky." He knelt down, his movements practiced and unsentimental. He checked the pockets first. Empty. No money. No ID. Just a rusted, heavy combat knife sheathed at the hip, the leather soaked through. He took the knife. It was good steel. The villager pulled the boy's torn, waterlogged shirt aside to check for a heartbeat. He saw the tattoo on the boy's chest. A mark. But it was ruined. A jagged, ugly gash—likely from a rock in the river during the fall—had sliced right through the ink, flaying the skin and turning the proud Wolf symbol into an unrecognizable, mangled scar. "No clan markings," the villager muttered, tracing the wound. "Just a stray. A nobody."
The boy's eyes fluttered open. But they were foggy. Empty. Like a mirror reflecting nothing. The villager leaned over him, his breath steaming in the cold air. "Hey. You hear me?" The boy blinked. He looked at the gray sky. He looked at the rushing black river. He looked at the villager's scarred face. There was no recognition. No fear. No anger. Just a terrifying blank slate. "Who are you?" the villager asked. The boy tried to speak. His voice was a rusted hinge, dry and cracked. "I..." He paused. He searched his mind. He reached into the dark, looking for a name, a memory, a face. He looked for a reason why his body hurt, why his heart felt heavy. There was nothing. Just the sound of rushing water and a white, blinding fog. "I don't know, who are you? Who am I?" Eiden whispered.
The villager sighed. He looked up at the towering, black spires of the Iron Peaks, where the smoke of the forges rose into the sky.
"Well, you're in Bear Claw territory now, stray," the villager said, hoisting Eiden's unconscious arm over his shoulder. The boy was heavy, dense with muscle. "Come one, let's get you fixed up."
He dragged the boy who had forgotten he was the Devil toward the dark smoke of the enemy village, into the heart of the clan that wanted him dead.