The Academy had a basement.The basement had a floor.And beneath that floor, there was a door.It had remained untouched for seven hundred and forty-three years.They met at midnight.Ronan was the last to arrive. The others were already waiting in the Forbidden Division: Lyra held a lantern that burned without fuel, Kael gripped two knives, Mira sat with her hands clasped and her lips moving in silent prayer, and Darius stood there looking like he would have preferred any other place on earth.Silas stood in the center of the room, his head tilted as if listening to something far away."It’s under the east wing," he said. "Three floors down, past the old cistern. The stairs are still there they’ve just been sealed shut.""How do you know that?" Ronan asked."I can hear it breathing."No one dared to question him.They moved through the Academy in total silence.The hallways were empty in the dead of night. The floating lights had faded into dim, blue embers. Every footstep seemed to

They climbed the stairs in silence, one step after another, no one saying a word. Not until they reached the top.Ronan brought up the rear. His legs still shook, and pain shot down his sword arm with every move. His chest throbbed where the First had gripped his throat, where something inside him had flared up and wouldn’t burn out. He kept count of the steps. It was just something to keep his mind busy while his body slogged on.Twenty. Forty. Sixty.The higher they went, the warmer the air; that metallic tang in the air faded away. Lyra’s lantern steadied too. Its light looked braver now, reaching out toward the walls instead of shrinking back.At one hundred, they stepped into the east corridor.Darius didn't even try to hide how shaken he was. “What the hell was that?”Nobody answered.“That thing, the First, whatever you call it, it was sitting on a throne under our school. Under our dorm.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “How long’s that been there?”Silas answered, voice l

The crowd roared, but Ronan barely noticed.He just stood there, eyes locked on the ranking board. His name had finally budged up one spot, from 999 to 998. It wasn’t much, honestly just a single digit, but for the first time, his name wasn’t dropping. It climbed.Darian was gone. Two friends hauled him off the field. He never looked back, never said a word.Ronan caught that. Darian wasn’t the loud, vengeful kind; he’d gotten quiet. The kind who waits. Ronan would handle him later.For now, someone fought their way through the crush of bodies.Lyra.She stopped right in front of him, scanning his face. The blood, the cut above his eye, the ripped collar.“You’re bleeding,” she said.“I know.”“You’re also insane.”“I know.”She held his gaze, then cracked a grin.“Good. Now let’s go, before the instructors decide they want to put you on a pedestal... or a pike.”When they finally made it back, the Forbidden Division felt strangely calm.Kael perched on his desk, polishing knives. Mir

Silas had warned them the gears were already turning.Ronan had no idea just how fast they were moving.The Forbidden Division was deathly still when he walked in.The floating lights had faded to nothing more than dim, dying embers. Lyra’s lantern sat dark on her desk. The rest of them were huddled in the center of the room Silas sat cross-legged on the floor, Kael was leaning against a desk with both his knives drawn, Mira had her hands tightly clasped, and Darius was pacing a restless line near the window.They all turned to look at him the moment he entered."Sit," Lyra commanded.He took a seat.She reached for a book on her desk the same untitled volume she’d been studying since day one and flipped it open to a page near the center."This is a history of the Church of Mercy," she explained. "It was published forty years ago, fully sanctioned by the Academy's own censors."She turned the book around so Ronan could see the contents.The page featured an illustration of a woman in