Blackridge Academy looked like someone tried to design a temple, a prison, and a spaceship… all at once. The architecture made zero sense until you'd lived in it long enough to stop trying.
Twisting towers with no obvious foundations. Walkways that curved into fog and still somehow arrived at the dorms. Windows that blinked instead of reflected.
Today, though… it all felt heavier.
The corridor lights flickered with exhausted magic. The dome ceilings were still bandaged with reinforcement sigils. And someone had duct-taped a banana to the emergency alarm.
(Kio swore it was "performance art." Pix called it "bio-hazard.")
Dae walked the east wing hallway with a kind of detached autopilot. His head still throbbed from the memory breaches, and the ring on his finger pulsed in erratic warmth.
He wasn't sure if it was trying to warn him or flirt with him.
Honestly? Mood.
⸻
The academy had activated a semi-lockdown, which basically meant no outside visitors, random classroom relocation, and a ton of therapy recommendation popups on everyone's neural links.
In the common room, the survivors of the relic incident lingered like survivors of a group project gone horribly wrong.
Pix's voice droned above them:
"Reminder: First-years are advised not to duel inside the cafeteria. Again."
Kio was trying to build a mini fort out of healing packs and cafeteria trays.
"Strategic defense," he claimed.
Rea sat beside Dae on the velvet bench near the observation deck, legs pulled to her chest. She hadn't said much since the attack… just stayed close. Closer than usual. Eyes shadowed, jaw tight.
Across from them, Nira was refreezing the same cup of water every thirty seconds. Zane buzzed between tables like a lightning storm in jeans. Isha was distributing healing charms shaped like tiny rubber ducks.
Riven casually held a test tube of her own poison and whispered lullabies to it.
Normal stuff.
But the dorm still felt… off.
An was gone.
As in ripped-from-history gone.
And no one remembered except Dae. And maybe… Selene.
The silence around that missing bed still echoed too loudly.
⸻
Headmaster Hellek had announced a special reinforcement schedule. That meant:
• No combat classes for a week
• Mandatory psyche-eval (Syra got banned for flipping a couch)
• Two new transfer students were arriving "to assist in tactical reinforcement and class balance"
Which made zero sense.
But also, this was Blackridge.
Nothing made sense.
⸻
They entered mid-morning during a lecture on relic contamination theory. The instructor was late. Again. So Kio was drawing abs on Dae's notebook sketch of the Leviathan while Rea silently judged him.
Then the door opened.
Two girls walked in.
Both in regulation uniforms, though one had adjusted hers into a crop top with a utility belt and glitter-coded boots, and the other wore hers perfectly pressed… with a katana casually slung on her back.
"Yo," the sparkly one grinned. "Is this the trauma room?"
Zane immediately fell out of his chair.
Pix's voice chimed over the speakers:
"New students registered:
• Lyra Nox: Tactical Illusionist, Rank A
• Mira Solen: Spatial Displacer, Rank B+
Dorm placement: Group D."
Dae blinked.
Group D… was his dorm.
Kio whispered, "Bro. Bro. BRO. We're doomed. Or blessed. I can't tell anymore."
⸻
Lyra tossed her hair like it was part of her skillset.
Her eyes shimmered with multi-tone magic, and her smile screamed trouble but make it hot.
She strolled straight up to Dae and said, "You're him, right? The ring boy."
Dae, confused and vaguely panicked, replied, "Uh… I mean. Yeah? I guess?"
Mira stepped beside her, gaze sharper than steel.
She tilted her head. "You look smaller in person."
"I… what?"
She leaned in slightly. "Not a complaint."
Rea made a sound like a cough crossed with a warning growl.
Kio whispered, "Dude. You just got two DLCs."
⸻
Pix assigned Dae, Rea, and Kio to give the new girls a tour.
They started with the lower dome atrium, where energy vines still flickered from last week's attack.
Lyra immediately summoned a flock of illusionary crows and made them chase Zane through the halls.
Mira opened a closet portal by accident and pulled out Drayk mid-shift.
He snarled. Then blushed.
She smirked.
They reached the Academy Gardens, where Aro was deep in communion with a Venus flytrap named Brenda. Lyra tried to feed Brenda glitter. It went… badly.
Back in the dorm, the girls inspected their new room.
Lyra sprawled across the top bunk and declared, "I call this one. Unless you sleepwalk. Then I call your bed."
Rea narrowed her eyes. "You can try."
Mira just set her katana gently by her nightstand and asked Dae, "You snore?"
"I don't think so?"
"Shame," she said, completely unreadable.
Kio fell off his bed with a "bro they're gonna eat you alive" expression.
⸻
That night, Dae returned to the Vault Room.
Not physically. But in dream-space.
The ring pulsed. The Book of Knowledge opened again.
The pages were different this time. Ancient language unfolding like a whisper.
"The Rings were not built.
They were echoes… crystallized memory.
Each chooses not a wielder… but a wound."
Dae traced the glyphs.
He saw… symbols.
A tree with roots of light. A child's eye with constellations in it. A flame shaped like a tear.
And at the center… a name.
Caladra
The same name from Selene's dream. The same word that made the Vault tremble.
Then…
A voice.
Not a memory.
A message.
"You were never meant to open it alone."
Dae shot up in his bed, gasping.
Rea was already at his side.
"Another dream?"
He nodded.
She didn't ask for details. She just stayed.
Kio mumbled something about "turning the pillows into weapons" in his sleep.
Lyra and Mira were both eerily silent.
He glanced over.
Both were awake.
Watching him.
Smiling.
And outside, the dome shimmered with faint, unnatural light.
Something was still shifting beneath the academy.
And the vault door… was beginning to breathe.
⸻
To be continued in Chapter 28: The Vault of Shadows