The Hallway
Eiden walked out of the workshop, his cloak billowing, his Pack—Harry, Hazel, Margot, Linda, and Emma—flanking him like a royal guard. They moved with a new energy. They weren't just students anymore; they were the resistance, and their leader had returned from the grave.
They made it ten paces down the corridor before the air pressure changed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling. The silence that falls before a guillotine drops.
At the end of the hallway, the double doors swung open.
They didn't bang. They glided.
A wall of black blocked the exit. Twelve Shadow Guards, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks, their rifles held at the low ready. They didn't aim; they just existed as a barrier of composite armor and violence.
In the center of the wall, a single man stood.
He wore a charcoal three-piece suit that cost more than the building they were standing in. His hands were clasped behind his back. He looked calm, bored, and utterly terrifying.
Akuma Cronus.
The General had come down from the tower.
Eiden stopped. He held up a hand, signaling the Pack to halt.
Behind them, the workshop door opened. Emily stepped out, looking pale and shaken, flanked by a groggy Luna and Eva.
Eiden was trapped between the King and the Princess.
"I hear," Akuma said, his voice a low, smooth baritone that carried effortlessly down the hall, "that there is a ghost story being told in my school."
He took a step forward. The Shadows moved with him, a single organism.
"I do not like ghost stories, Mr. Killian. They frighten the children."
Eiden stepped forward, meeting Akuma halfway. He didn't look like a student facing a elder. He looked like a Wolf facing a Tiger. "It's not a story if it's true," Eiden said. Akuma smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. Those black eyes were scanning Eiden, noting the new scars, the way he favored his ribs, the way his hand rested near his knife. "You are hard to kill," Akuma noted. "The sea refused you. You are like a persistent weed in my garden." "I'm not a weed," Eiden said. "I'm the rot in your foundation. And I'm spreading."
Akuma chuckled. He looked past Eiden at the terrified group of students.
"And this? This is your army?"
Akuma's gaze landed on Harry. Harry tried to stand tall, but he trembled under the weight of the General's attention.
"You are using children as shields, Wolf," Akuma said, his voice dripping with disappointment. "Just like she did. Evergreen hid behind the innocent, too."
"Don't speak her name," Eiden warned, his voice dropping to a growl. "I will speak whatever I please in my house," Akuma snapped, the facade cracking for a split second to reveal the warlord beneath. "You threaten me? You threaten to burn my legacy?" Akuma stepped closer, invading Eiden's personal space. "Do it," Akuma whispered. The hallway went dead silent. "Call them," Akuma challenged. "Call your savages. Call the wolves and the Birds. Bring your war to these halls. Let us see who bleeds more." He gestured to the students behind Eiden. "But know this. If a single stone of this school is scratched... if a single window breaks... my Shadows… They will shoot them."
He pointed a manicured finger at Harry, Hazel, and Margot.
"You want to play General, boy? Then learn the cost. Soldiers die. Are you willing to bury your friends to hurt me?"
Eiden froze.
It was a checkmate. Akuma knew Eiden's weakness. It wasn't his own life. It was the Pack. Eiden could fight his way out, but Harry and Margot would be cut down in seconds.
Eiden looked at Akuma. He saw the man Sebastian had described. The tactician. The monster.
"You're bluffing," Eiden said, though he knew he wasn't.
"I never bluff," Akuma said coldly. "I execute."
Akuma looked over Eiden's shoulder at Emily, who was watching from the workshop doorway.
"Emily," Akuma called out. "Come here."
Emily hesitated. She looked at Eiden's back. She looked at her father.
"Come to me, daughter," Akuma commanded. "Stand where you belong."
Slowly, mechanically, Emily walked past Eiden. She didn't look at him. She walked to her father's side and turned to face the Pack.
Akuma put a hand on her shoulder. A possessive, heavy grip.
"You see, Wolf?" Akuma said. "You have nothing. You have no army here. You have no leverage. You are just a trespasser with a few frightened children."
Akuma checked his watch.
"I am declaring a state of emergency. The school is under lockdown. Total isolation. No one enters. No one leaves. If you try to signal your 'army,' I will jam the frequencies. If you try to leave, you will be shot."
He looked at Eiden with a look of pure, hateful triumph.
"You wanted to be a student so badly? Fine. You are enrolled. Classes start at 0800 hours. Do not be late."
Akuma turned, guiding Emily away.
The Wall of Shadows remained, blocking the hall, their guns trained on Eiden's heart.
Eiden stood there, his fists clenched. He had the Wolf Army outside. He had the Bear King's title. But in this hallway, against this man, he was powerless. He looked at his Pack. They were terrified, but they were looking at him. Waiting. "We're not done," Eiden whispered to them smiling. "That fool. he just trapped himself in here with us."
By 0800 hours, St. Swithin's had ceased to be a place of learning. It was a high-security containment facility.
Steel shutters had descended over the ground-floor windows. The majestic iron gates were reinforced with concrete barriers. Shadow Guards stood at every intersection, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks, checking student IDs with scanners.
The students walked in terrified silence. They didn't understand the politics, but they understood the guns.
Eiden sat in his first class—Advanced Physics.
He wasn't hiding. He sat in the middle row. He wore his uniform perfectly. His hands were folded on his desk.
At the back of the room, two Shadow Guards watched him.
The teacher, Mr. Henderson, was sweating as he wrote equations on the board, his hand shaking so badly the chalk squeaked.
"The... the velocity of an object..." Henderson stammered.
Eiden raised his hand.
The class froze. The guards tensed, hands drifting to their holsters.
"Yes, Mr. Killian?" Henderson squeaked.
"You forgot the friction coefficient, sir," Eiden said calmly. "Without resistance, the object never stops."
He turned slightly, locking eyes with the guard in the corner.
"And there is always resistance."
Lunch was the only time they could talk without being overheard—if they were careful. The Pack gathered at a table in the center of the cafeteria, surrounded by the noise of hundreds of frightened students. It was the best cover. "The jamming is total," Harry whispered, staring at his mashed potatoes. "Cell signals, radio frequencies, We're in a black hole. I can't signal the Den." "We don't need to signal the Den yet," Eiden said, eating calmly. "If Durai attacks a fortified position without intel, he'll lose men. He also doesn't know about Akuma's real identity. We need to soften the target first." "So what do we do?" Linda asked, looking at the guards patrolling the catwalks above. "We're trapped." "We're not trapped," Hazel corrected, adjusting her glasses. "We're embedded." She slid a napkin across the table. It was covered in diagrams. "The camera network," Hazel said. "Akuma is watching everything. But the system has a lag. The sheer amount of data from the new thermal sensors is overloading the server." "Harry," Eiden said. "Yeah?" "Can you crash it?" Harry smiled. It was a nervous smile, but it was there. "If I can get into the sub-basement junction... I can create another feedback loop. I can blind him." "Do it tonight," Eiden ordered. "Margot, I need you to map the blind spots in the patrol routes. Linda, Emma... you're on distraction." "Distraction?" Linda asked, horrified. "Be high maintenance," Emma grinned, patting Linda's hand. "Be the 'Parisian Thorn.' Make them look at you so they don't see Harry." "Don't worry dear Harry. They won't be able to take their eyes of me."
Harry nodded slowly.
That night, the school was a tomb. Curfew was strictly enforced.
But walls don't stop ghosts.
At 0200 hours, a fire alarm began to chirp in the East Wing girls' dorm.
"It's too cold!" Linda was screaming at a bewildered guard in the hallway. "My radiator is making a noise! It sounds like a dying cat! Fix it!"
"Miss, please go back to bed—"
"I will call my embassy!" Linda shrieked. "I demand a maintenance crew!"
While the guards were dealing with the hysterical Cronus cousin, a shadow slipped into the sub-basement stairwell.
Harry moved fast. He was sweating, terrified, but he had Eiden's voice in his head.
He found the junction box. He pried it open. He connected his modified Game Boy (scavenged parts) to the port.
"Eat this," Harry whispered.
He uploaded a logic bomb. A simple, recursive algorithm that would flood the camera feeds with static every thirty seconds.
Up in the security office, the screens flickered. Then they went grey. Then back. Then grey.
"We're losing visuals!" a tech shouted. "Sectors 4 through 9 are unstable!"
In the confusion, nobody noticed the figure moving through the ventilation shafts of the main library.
The Study
Akuma Cronus was watching the screens in his office when they flickered. "Sir," Maverick's voice came over the intercom. "We're having technical difficulties. It looks like a system overload." "It's not an overload," Akuma said, his voice calm and dangerous. "It's the boy." He stood up and walked to the window. He looked down at the dark campus. "He is blinding us. He wants to move unseen." "Shall I send a squad to his room?" Maverick asked. "To check on him?" "No," Akuma said. "If he's not there, we have to sound the alarm, and he knows we won't risk a firefight in the dorms at night. He is baiting us." Akuma turned to Emily, who was sitting in the armchair, staring at the fire. She hadn't spoken in hours. "Emily," Akuma said. She looked up. Her eyes were dull. "The Wolf is testing the fences," Akuma said. "He thinks he is clever. He thinks he can outsmart the General." He walked over and handed her a radio. "Go to the command center. Take control of the manual patrols. If the cameras are blind, we use eyes. Show him that you know this school better than he does." Emily took the radio. It felt heavy. "Yes, Father." She walked to the door. "Emily," Akuma called out. She stopped. "Remember what he took from you." Emily touched the pocket where she kept the torn photo of her mother. "I remember," she whispered. And she walked out to hunt the boy she loved once again.
The Library
The library was a cavern of shadows. The towering bookshelves loomed like canyon walls, and the smell of old paper and dust was thick in the stagnant air. With the security cameras blinded by Harry's logic bomb, the room was a void on Akuma's screens.
It was the only place Eiden could breathe.
He moved silently through the geography section, his hand brushing the spines of the books. He wasn't looking for a map. He was waiting.
He knew she would come.
Akuma would send soldiers to the exits. He would send Shadows to the dorms.
But he would send her to the places that mattered. To the memories.
A beam of white light cut through the darkness, sweeping across the tables where they used to study.
Footsteps. Not heavy boots. Hard-soled shoes, clicking with a deliberate, hunting rhythm.
"I know you're here, Eiden," Emily's voice echoed in the silence. It wasn't the voice of the girl who liked meat pies. "You're predictable. You always go to the high ground. Or the quiet ground."
Eiden stepped out from behind a stack of encyclopedias. He didn't raise his hands. He didn't run. He stood in the center of the aisle, letting the flashlight beam hit him square in the chest.
"And you're obedient," Eiden said softly. "Your father points, and you march."
Emily lowered the light slightly, aiming it at his face so she could see his eyes. In her other hand, the black pistol was steady.
"I'm protecting my home," she said. "You're the invader. You blinded the cameras. You terrified the staff. You're tearing this school apart."
"I'm turning off the lights so you can see," Eiden countered. He took a slow step toward her.
"Stop," Emily warned, raising the gun. "I won't miss this time."
"You didn't miss last time," Eiden said. "You chose not to hit. There's a difference."
He took another step. He was ten feet away.
"My father told me what you are," Emily said, her voice wavering for the first time. "He told me about the Wolves. About how you manipulate. How you find the weak spot in a person's heart and dig in."
"Is that what I did?" Eiden asked. "Did I manipulate you by being there for you? Did I manipulate you into laughing?"
"Yes!" Emily shouted, the sound shocking in the quiet library. "It was all a lie! You were just getting close to the target!"
"If I wanted to kill you," Eiden whispered, "I would have done it in the crypt. I would have done it in the vault. I had the dagger, Emily. I had the weapon."
He took another step. Five feet.
"Stay back!" She backed up, hitting a table. The flashlight wobbled.
"I'm not the one with the gun," Eiden said.
He stopped right in front of her. The barrel of the pistol was inches from his chest, right over the healing scar of her last bullet.
He looked down at her. The flashlight illuminated her face—the fear, the anger, the confusion warring behind her eyes.
"Shoot me," Eiden said.
"What?"
"If I'm the monster... if I'm the villain your father says I am... then shoot me. End the threat. Prove you're a Cronus."
Emily's finger tightened on the trigger. She looked at his chest. She remembered her mother's scream in the story. She remembered the blood.
But then she looked at Eiden's face. He wasn't looking at her with hate. He wasn't looking at her with fear.
He was looking at her with patience.
"I can't," she whispered, her voice breaking.
"Why?"
"Because..." She choked on the words. "Because you're unarmed."
"No," Eiden said. "Because you know. Deep down, in the part of you Akuma hasn't crushed yet... you know he's lying."
The radio on Emily's belt crackled to life.
"Emily," Akuma's voice hissed, distorted by the jamming but still terrifying. "Status. Have you found him?"
Emily froze. She looked at the radio. She looked at Eiden.
Eiden didn't move. He let her choose.
Emily took a shuddering breath. She pressed the transmit button.
"Sector 4 is clear, Father," she lied, her eyes locked on Eiden's. "Just shadows. Moving to the West Wing."
"Understood. Keep hunting."
She lowered the radio. She lowered the gun.
"Go," she whispered. "Before I change my mind. Before the cameras come back online."
Eiden nodded. He reached out, hesitating, then gently touched her arm.
"He's scared, Emily," Eiden said. "He's not locking us in to keep me out. He's locking us in to keep you close. Ask yourself why." He melted back into the darkness, silent as smoke. Emily stood alone in the library, the flashlight beam trembling in her hand. She looked at the darkness where he had been. "I know why," she whispered to herself.