Location: Blanche's private study – the next morning
Blanche stood by the window, flipping through the documents from the "Gray Zone" case. Her eyes scanned over sketches of rune interference, half-torn reports from professors, and a red circle over a storage wing that wasn't even listed on the academy map.
Yuxin sat on the armrest of a lounge chair, legs propped up, looking... suspiciously bored.
"Are we gonna keep reading, or do we actually sneak into this place?" she asked.
"We'll need someone else," Blanche murmured without looking up.
Yuxin frowned. "Someone else?"
"There's a lot we don't know—especially about the way Æther behaves in that part of campus." Blanche turned her head slightly. "And I know someone who can read patterns better than anyone else I've met."
Before Yuxin could argue, a soft knock echoed on the wooden door.
Blanche smiled slightly. "Speak of the shadow."
The door opened slowly, and Tanaka Ruka stepped inside. Slender frame, long dark greenish hair tied loosely, expression as unreadable as always. Her uniform was tidy but looked like it hadn't been ironed in days.
She didn't say anything—just glanced at Blanche, then Yuxin, then the folder on the desk.
"You're early," Blanche noted.
"You said it might be interesting," Ruka replied quietly, moving to stand near the desk but not too close.
Yuxin blinked. "Wait—you invited her?"
Ruka tilted her head at Yuxin, eyes calm. "Hello, Yuxin."
"Since you've known each other, I think she's the best choice." Blanche asked.
"Same hometown," Yuxin muttered, arms crossed. "But we didn't exactly hang out."
Ruka glanced at her. "You used to ignore me."
"Yeah, and you used to stare like I owed you money."
Blanche raised a hand. "Focus."
She passed the file to Ruka. "This area—no one's supposed to know it exists. But I think you can help us figure out what's wrong with it."
Ruka's fingers brushed over the parchment, and for the first time, a flicker of something—curiosity, maybe—touched her face.
"There's Æther distortion," she said softly. "This isn't random. It's being pulled."
"Pulled by what?" Yuxin asked.
Ruka didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Not what. Who."
(In the distance, deep within the trees of Myrdvawein, a pair of golden eyes watched from the shadows. The wind did not move. The leaves did not rustle. And the presence there... did not belong.)
Eastern Storage Wing – Restricted Zone, Late Night
The eastern wing of Asterblume was silent.
Too silent.
Three figures moved in the dark, their footsteps muffled against the cold stone floor. Blanche led with a lantern enchanted to emit minimal light—just enough to see, not enough to be seen. Behind her, Yuxin walked with one hand half-raised, her shadows twitching faintly like restless dogs. Ruka trailed slightly, eyes scanning everything like she was reading hidden lines in the architecture.
"This place wasn't built for storage," Ruka whispered after a while, running her fingers along the wall. "Too much reinforcement. Magical insulation. Like something used to be sealed here."
"Or someone," Yuxin muttered, her tone low.
They reached a door at the end of the corridor—old, rusted, chained shut with thick silver bindings etched with sigils long since faded.
Blanche knelt by the seal. "These runes... Caelumortis family design. But primitive. Generations old."
"Someone tried to erase them," Ruka noted. "Badly."
Blanche reached into her coat and pulled out a small relic—a silver coin inscribed with a phoenix crest. She pressed it to the door's center. There was a pulse of resistance—like a heartbeat—and then the chains fell away with a slow, metallic clatter.
The door creaked open.
Inside was darkness. Not just absence of light, but presence of something unseen. Heavy. Watching.
They stepped inside.
The room was circular, lined with old artifacts: broken Pacta tools, shattered masks, cages large enough to hold a person. Dust blanketed everything, but it wasn't untouched—there were footprints. Bare, faint, recent.
"...Someone was here," Yuxin said, stepping beside a half-collapsed bookshelf. She reached down and picked up a small item—a feather. Long, silvery white, shimmering with residual Æther.
Blanche's eyes narrowed. "That doesn't belong to any known species kept in Asterblume."
Ruka turned toward the far wall. Her voice dropped. "There's a glyph here."
They followed her to the stone surface, where a glyph had been burned into the wall. Circular, elven, but twisted—lines that should've been graceful now jagged, almost violent.
"Elf script," Blanche whispered. "But corrupted."
Ruka stared at it. "It says… The roots will rot when stars forget their names."
Yuxin blinked. "What the hell does that mean?"
Before anyone could answer, a gust of wind swept through the room—from nowhere. The lantern flickered. Ruka froze.
Then Blanche turned.
In the doorway stood a figure—tall, slender, white-haired.
Not approaching.
Not attacking.
Just... standing. Watching.
A pair of glowing golden eyes stared at them from beneath the hood of a dark cloak. The edges of her form flickered—not entirely solid.
"Who—" Yuxin took a step forward.
But the figure vanished.
Gone. Not like she ran, but like the shadows folded around her and took her away.
Silence returned.
Blanche's hand gripped. Her voice was calm, but shaken underneath.
"We're not alone in this."
Ruka stared at where the figure had been. Her voice barely a whisper.
"That wasn't just some ghost."
Yuxin held up the feather again. It shimmered faintly in the dark.
"…That was her. The elf from the forest. Vila.
Location: Blanche's dorm – Late Night
The windows were shut. Curtains drawn. Only the low hum of Æther wards pulsing from the edges of the room broke the stillness.
Blanche sat at her writing desk, a cup of untouched tea growing cold by her elbow. Ruka sat on the edge of the bed, legs curled beneath her, flipping slowly through a set of photos they had managed to copy from the archive.
Yuxin leaned against the wall, arms crossed, staring at the white feather resting in the middle of the table. It shimmered faintly under candlelight, as if unwilling to fade completely into silence.
"So," Yuxin said, breaking the stillness. "We all saw it. That figure. Her."
Blanche nodded. "Golden eyes. Blonde hair. Elven script."
"Vila," Ruka murmured. "It matches what we've heard from the forest team last month."
Yuxin pushed off the wall. "Then we ask her."
Blanche blinked. "Ask?"
"We confront her," Yuxin said, her tone flat. "You know where she disappears to. She's not subtle. I say we drag her out of her forest and demand answers."
"She could be dangerous," Ruka said quietly.
"She is dangerous," Yuxin replied. "That's why we need to get ahead of whatever she's planning."
Blanche studied her carefully. "And what if she's not behind it?"
Yuxin shrugged. "Then she better prove it."
An hour later at edge of the forest
The air was colder here. Wilder.
Vila stood by a stream, eyes half-lidded as she dipped her fingers into the water. She didn't turn when the three approached—almost like she'd known they were coming.
Yuxin stepped forward first.
"You watching us now, Vila?"
Vila blinked slowly, her voice as calm as ever. "You trespassed on a sealed chamber. That much noise doesn't go unnoticed."
"You were there," Yuxin said. "We saw you. The feather. The glyph. That was elven—twisted, but familiar."
Vila turned her head toward them. "I haven't left the forest tonight. Not even for a breath."
Blanche stepped closer. "But someone was there. Someone that left traces of you. Explain that."
Vila's gaze didn't flicker. "There are many who want to mimic what they do not understand. Not all of them are born of this world."
"…Are you saying it wasn't you?" Yuxin narrowed her eyes.
"I'm saying," Vila said, standing fully, her cloak catching the wind, "if I had wanted to stop you, you wouldn't have seen me at all."
That shut them up for a second.
Ruka watched her carefully. "You have an alibi."
"I have the truth," Vila said. "Whether you believe it is not my concern."
She turned, walking away into the woods—but just before the trees swallowed her form, she said one last thing:
"Beware the ones who bottle Æther and smile with painted lips."
Later that night – they back to the main campus
Ruka suddenly raised a hand. "Wait."
Yuxin stopped. "What is it?"
"The air just changed. Smell that?"
They sniffed—faint, sickly sweet, almost floral.
A figure stepped out from behind a pillar. Then another. And another. Three students—upperclassmen, clad in robes tinted green and violet. Their eyes half-lidded, voices slow but sharp.
"Well well," said one of them. "Sniffing around places you shouldn't be?"
Yuxin shifted her stance. "Back off."
"Or what?" said the girl in front. She pulled a vial from her belt. Inside: a swirling liquid the color of dying leaves. "You'll scream before you even blink."
A faint mist curled over the stones as Blanche, Yuxin, and Ruka came to a halt. Three figures blocked their way—two girls and one boy, all clad in robes with emerald and violet trim. Decorative at a glance, but unmistakably fanged beneath the surface.
Their leader, a pale-skinned girl with sharp violet eyes and a mocking smirk, stepped forward first.
"Well, well," she said. "Blanche Van Equinox. That's a bit off-path for someone of your... station."
Blanche didn't blink. "And you are?"
The girl gave a short, theatrical bow. "Marleth Rive. Third-tier alchemist, top of her class, and—more importantly—a proud hand of Lady Seryn Eloweth."
At the name, Yuxin tilted her head. "Who?"
Ruka's eyes narrowed. "Never heard of her."
Marleth's smile widened. "How quaint. She prefers to stay... behind the scenes. But let's just say, she ensures this academy keeps running—smoothly."
"She's the leader of one of the underground factions," Blanche said flatly, "focused on chemical enhancement and control of rare substances. Illegal, mostly."
The boy behind Marleth chuckled. "Big words, Lady Equinox. Got any proof to go with that accusation?"
Blanche took a step forward. "You were near the restricted section tonight. We sensed your Æther trail near the old chamber."
Marleth's face didn't change. "That's quite a leap. I had a tea session in the greenhouse all night. Do you want the herbal menu?"
Yuxin scoffed. "You expect us to believe you weren't involved?"
The second girl, standing calmly beside a hedge, finally spoke. Her voice was softer, but held that same venomous poise. "Believe what you want. We didn't invite you to that place, did we?"
Blanche's eyes sharpened. "But you knew about it."
Marleth placed a finger on her lips. "We know many things, Lady Equinox. The difference is—we don't get caught with half-burned runes and feathers in our hands."
Ruka, still silent until now, finally stepped forward. Her gaze pinned on the three. "You're circling something. Either you don't know what happened there, or you do—and you're afraid of it."
The boy gave a dramatic sigh. "Honestly, I just came out for air. Didn't expect an interrogation."
Blanche crossed her arms. "If you're clean, why intercept us at all?"
"Because you're wandering into deeper gardens than you understand," Marleth said sweetly. "And sometimes... the things you dig up are better left buried."
Blanche took a beat, watching for a crack—a twitch, a tell, even a flicker of guilt. But they were trained. Too trained. They deflected everything with elegance and passive aggression.
No evidence. No slips. Just poison dressed as politeness.
Then Marleth's expression shifted—just slightly.
"If you really want answers," she said, her eyes gleaming, "why not ask the one who left the feather?"
Ruka stiffened. Yuxin stepped forward. "You—"
But they were already turning, the three walking away into the mist like nothing had happened.
Blanche exhaled, low. "They know something. But they won't say it directly."
"They don't need to," Yuxin muttered. "They're trying to pull us into their game."
"And maybe... into Seryn's attention," Ruka added softly.
The feather in Blanche's pocket pulsed faintly again.
They were getting close.
Too close.