Josephine sat alone at the back of the classroom, knees tucked under the desk, a stub of charcoal in her hand. She drew the way she breathed — quietly, carefully, like keeping a secret alive. Nobody had ever seen her drawings; she kept them folded and hidden inside the lining of her drawer, smelling faintly of pencil shavings and bread crumbs. Today she sketched the way the sunlight slanted through the tall academy windows, and the way a speck of dust hung in that light like a tiny planet.
The heavy classroom door opened without ceremony and a figure slid in: the masked man. Even from across the room she could tell him apart — not just by the ivory mask that hid his expression, but by the slow, precise way he moved, as though every step was measured against a memory. He walked straight to her desk.
"Hello, Josephine," he said. She waved at him the only way she could — a small, practised motion. He crouched as if to better see her feet and checked them with gentle concern. "How are your feet?" he asked.
She answered in her sign language, the curl of fingers and quick flicks everyone at the academy had come to understand. They are bad, she signed, they hurt me a lot.
"Sorry about that," he said, soft and oddly apologetic, then straightened as the lesson began. Josephine followed along. She understood everything the teacher said; she always did. When the exercise asked for personal viewpoints she wrote hers down with neat, spidery letters — then slid the paper across the desk toward the masked man. He took it, read, and an impressed sound escaped him. "You've got a sharp mind," he murmured. She nodded.
"How old are you?" he asked after a while.
She spelled the number with her hands: 16.
"Hm…" He considered her. "Are you married?" She signed
No I am not He said
He let out a tired chuckle. "I was about to marry a woman I loved," he said aloud, and his voice tightened. "She stole from me, broke my heart, and left me with a child for her lover." He said it as if replaying a wound. Josephine reached out impulsively and patted the edge of his mask, as if to soothe. He seemed to take the comfort without answering.
"Why a mask?" she signed later, curious.
"The mask is personal," he wrote on a scrap of paper. "And my broken heart is because of a deep betrayal." She mouthed an apology and he ruffled her hair. "You don't wear shoes. Why?" he asked.
She wrote slowly, concentrating: They always get burned after I take them off or they make me angry. He read, brows knitting at that strange confession.
"Alright. Bye, Ms Josephine," he said, rising to leave. She packed her satchel and stood. Her head spun with the dizziness that came sometimes — a cloud at the edge of her vision — but she shook it off and walked toward the corridor.
She collided with someone. Books skittered across the tiled floor. Madison — the fourth-best student, notorious for both status and cruelty — stood over her. Madison's laughter had the sharpness of ice. She was half-witch, half-giant, and the daughter of the king of the Giants; the arrogance in her was thoroughbred. "Are you mad?" Madison sneered. Josephine signed a careful, shy apology, stepping back.
A gawking boy nearby muttered, "Hey — your King Hendrick's last born? The ordinary one?" Josephine tried to slip past, but Madison stepped in front and, with a flourish and a cruel grin, made a show of humiliating Josephine.
"I heard your own mother hates you and sent you away because you're weak," Madison spat. The gang laughed. Josephine pushed past, but Madison levitated her with a small spell. Books clattered. Someone in the group hissed with amusement.
"Should I put you down?" Madison cooed. Josephine's small frame hovered, the air cold and the corridor oppressive. Before Madison could make a spectacle of it, a voice snapped through the hall.
"Yes. Put her down now." Anesthesia's command was sharp; her friends gathered behind her like a wall. Madison blinked, surprised, and shoved Josephine, who crashed against the far wall. Pain flared, and blood blossomed on Josephine's lip.
"Jojo!" Oliver shouted. He came like a blur, a living wind. He scooped Josephine up with astonishing speed and carried her straight to the nurses' wing — the were-healers who smelled faintly of herbs and rain. Josephine sobbed in muffled gasps. The healers worked quietly, their hands warm and steady. Oliver's face was a thunderhead of fury when he stormed back.
He found Madison and, in a heartbeat, had her by the throat. "Put me down!" she choked. "No," Oliver said, voice low and dangerous. Tess stepped forward and struck Madison hard enough to stun her, while Anesthesia and the others surrounded the bully.
"She's just a kid," Tess hissed. "You lay a hand on her again and I swear I'll break every bone in you." The corridor fell into a hush. Madison, humiliated and coughing, was shoved to the floor.
Oliver was the academy's third-strongest student; the threat in his voice was not empty. Josephine watched with small, tear-bright eyes as her friends stood guard until the healers called them back. Their loyalty wrapped around her like a cloak.
Far away, in the masked king's castle, his infant boy crawled across a rug and called, "Dada?" His tiny voice cut through the night like a bell. The masked king stooped, bundled the child to his chest, and together they watched the moon — though the king's eyes were not on the sky. From his high window he was watching King Hendrick's estate, listening.
He had not wanted to be present when the academy children had hidden the ancient books away, but his super-hearing — and the ever-watchful hunger of his curiosity — carried the academy's whispers to him. He listened as Noah and the others clustered in the library, where the Liberian had let them in for a price.
Back at the library, the group had fanned out among towering shelves of green-bound tomes. "Where do we even begin?" Noah asked, the air in the library thick with dust and old paper. Tess suggested they split up. They did. Hours slipped by and at first they seemed to find nothing. Then Theodore, struggling beneath the weight of a huge volume, called out, "I found something!"
Callum and Anesthesia used telekinesis to help drag the book; it was heavy with age and the scent of iron and ash. At the Liberian's desk they pleaded for permission to borrow the restricted volumes. "Those ones are off-limits," she said at first, looking at them as if weighing the danger. Noah pressed a small bag of coins across the table — four hundred thousand golden coins — and she relented.
They piled the ancient books into a carriage and hurried back to the academy, page edges whispering secrets. In one of those books was a painting: a woman — a queen — whose features made Josephine's heart heave. Her name was written beneath the portrait: Queen Hetragon.
Piere turned the pages with trembling fingers. "Forty years ago," he read, "there lived a princess with all the powers of every creature. She was raised in Zephyria by her father, the king. She was the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen. Many men came for her hand, but she refused all — until she fell in love with a servant."
They read about a secret love: the princess, Hetragon, and a humble servant named Simon. When the king arranged a marriage to a spoiled werewolf prince — Prince Zeno — Hetragon refused. Her refusal enraged the prince and set war in motion. On her wedding day to Simon, Zeno burst in. A fight erupted. Simon — a white Naga — shielded Hetragon from an arrow and died.
Piere read the passage aloud and his voice shook. "Simon said to her: 'Till we meet in our next life. I love you so much.' He kissed her before he died."
Grief turned Hetragon to something else. She chanted dark spells that night; wind roared, the ground shuddered, and light bent to her will. She was consumed by sorrow and rage. She burned Zeno's kingdom, summoned giants and monsters, and carved a throne from skulls and bones. In the end, her powers—wild and unsteady—destroyed her. She died on the night of the purple moon.
"And on that night," Piere said, voice lower, "a prophecy was spoken."
He read the verse aloud and the words fell like cold rain into the library:
"When the Purple Moon bleeds, the next Chosen Queen shall rise.
Her silence will shatter kingdoms, her crown will drink the blood of kin.
She shall not rule, but ruin.
For the Queen of Silence is not salvation…
She is the storm that even Titans fear."
Noah's breath hitched. "Jojo was born on the night of the purple moon," he said.
Anesthesia's face paled. "I remember that dream," Oliver said, eyes haunted. "You told me about it."
As the group turned pages, one image made them freeze: a portrait that looked like Josephine. "Jojo?" Tess whispered. "No," Piere corrected. "This name is Queen Hetragon."
Somewhere in the masked king's castle the man froze as well. He had been listening to the library conversation from afar, and the mention of Hetragon and that purple moon brushed against a dread he couldn't name. He used his vision to search the Hendrick estate, closing his eyes and slipping images into place — and there, in the small room of a humble dwelling, Josephine slept.
Crumbs dotted her cheek. The boy from the carriage had called her Jojo before; she breathed evenly, hands curled under her chin. The masked king's mouth softened. Cute, he thought…and then, hating himself, wondered what kind of man had a reaction so small to such a large danger. He shook his head and left the window.
Meanwhile the group returned to the small room where Josephine slept. They hovered in silence, unsure whether to wake the sleeping child and tell her the truth. "We should tell father," Oliver whispered.
"No. Not yet." Theodore's voice was a soft restraint. They looked at her: there was something small and pale on the inside of her right hand. "Hey — look at Jojo's hand," Callum said.
They leaned in, breath held, and a thin mark began to show — an infinity sign, faint and shimmering on her skin. It unfurled like a memory waking. Tess's face went white. "Hetragon had the same mark," she said.
They all understood, in a sudden, awful way, the gravity of their discovery. Noah measured the time with a blotched finger on a page. "The purple moon is in seven months," he said. "On Josephine's birthday."
Tess swallowed. "We must keep her calm. We must make sure she never loses herself to anger."
"And we must watch her hair braids," Anesthesia added oddly, as if the small things mattered in spells and fate.
"So… are we a team now?" Tess asked, hope threading through her words.
"Hell yeah we are," Oliver answered, and something like laughter — warm and fierce — broke the tension as they clustered around the sleeping girl. They did not wake her. For now she was only Josephine: quiet, bread-crumbed, and sixteen, drawing small planets in the corners of scrap paper. For now, they would keep her safe.
Outside, the masked king held his sleeping son and watched the moon. The prophecy had been read aloud in a library that night; names and faces had been matched with portraits and fate. Somewhere, centuries-old words had begun to move again.