The academy slept under silver moonlight. Towers loomed like dark sentinels, their windows glowing faintly with candlelight. The vast courtyards lay silent, disturbed only by the whisper of leaves and the soft scrape of boots on stone.
Lucian Ardelion sat at his desk, quill scratching across parchment. The candle beside him burned low, casting his features in sharp relief. He was not writing an assignment; he was mapping memory.
Names. Faces. Families. Each one linked to his downfall in the first life. Each one a thread in the great noose that had strangled House Ardelion. He wrote not as a student, but as an archivist of vengeance.
The hairs on the back of his neck stiffened.
Someone was outside.
He set the quill down, movements measured. He did not look to the window, nor the shadows pooling in the corners of his room. Instead, he dipped the quill again, feigning focus. His breathing slowed, steady, masking the readiness coiled in his muscles.
So. They finally come.
The latch on the window shifted with a soft click. The sound would have gone unnoticed to any ordinary boy. But Lucian had died once, and death taught sharper hearing than life ever could.
A shape slid inside, cloaked in black. The assassin moved with lethal grace, dagger already unsheathed. The blade glimmered with a faint green sheen—poison.
Lucian's lips curved faintly. Poison. How poetic.
The intruder crept forward, silent, patient. Each step calculated to end him before he could wake.
But Lucian had never slept.
At the last moment, he tipped the inkwell. It toppled with a loud clatter. The assassin froze, eyes narrowing.
Lucian moved.
He slammed the chair backward, its legs crashing into the assassin's knees. The man hissed, stumbling. Lucian spun, seizing the dagger wrist, twisting hard. The blade clattered to the floor.
"Amateur," Lucian whispered, his voice cold.
The assassin struck with his free hand, a blur of shadow. Lucian ducked, driving his knee into the man's gut, then wrenched his arm until bone cracked.
The intruder gasped in pain—but he was trained. He surged forward, headbutting Lucian, driving both of them into the desk. Papers scattered. The candle fell, flame guttering dangerously close to the parchment.
Lucian's vision blurred, but his grip did not falter. With a snarl, he slammed the man's head into the wood. Once. Twice. A third time. The assassin went limp, dazed but breathing.
Lucian drew the dagger from the floor. He pressed it to the man's throat, breathing steady.
"Who sent you?"
The assassin spat blood, lips curled in defiance. "The Crownless… dies again."
Lucian's eyes narrowed. He drove the dagger an inch into the man's shoulder. The assassin hissed but did not scream.
"I asked," Lucian said softly, "who."
No answer. Only silence, cold and deliberate.
Lucian tilted his head, studying him. This was no reckless thug. His eyes held discipline—the discipline of someone sworn to silence.
So Lucian shifted tactics. He pressed the blade deeper, until blood welled.
"You think death ends your duty," he murmured. "But you forget—I have died once. I know death's silence better than you ever will. If you will not speak, then you will serve as a message."
The assassin's eyes flickered—fear, for the first time.
Lucian's smile was thin. "Yes. You will speak. Not with words. With your corpse."
And before the man could react, Lucian slit his throat.
The body slumped to the floor, blood pooling dark across the stone. Lucian wiped the blade clean with deliberate calm.
He dragged the corpse to the window, hauling it with effort but no hesitation. The courtyard below yawned wide and silent.
With one heave, he dropped the assassin from the window. The body struck the cobblestones with a sickening crack.
The sound echoed through the night.
Curtains stirred. Lanterns flared as students peered from their rooms. Gasps rose, shouts followed.
And there, bathed in moonlight, lay the corpse of a would-be killer—throat slit, dagger still in hand.
Lucian leaned casually out the window, voice calm but carrying.
"Let it be known," he said, his words slicing through the night air, "that wolves hunt wolves. And this one trespassed in my den."
The courtyard erupted in chaos. Students shouted, guards rushed forward. But their eyes all turned upward—to the calm, crownless boy standing in his window, watching the storm he had unleashed.
By dawn, the academy seethed with rumors.
An assassin, here?He killed him without fear.He left the body as a warning.Who would dare strike so openly at a student?
Instructors whispered in guarded tones. The rector demanded an inquiry. Noble families sent urgent letters to their houses, demanding answers.
And in the halls, wherever Lucian walked, silence followed. Not fear—not yet. But wariness. The same way one regards a wolf whose teeth have been bared.
Later that day, Seren cornered him in the library, eyes blazing.
"You killed him in cold blood."
Lucian closed the book in his hands, his expression unreadable. "I defended myself."
"You didn't have to—"
"I did." His voice was sharp enough to cut. "If I had let him live, he would have tried again. Or worse—his masters would send another. Dead men cannot return to their masters, Seren. But they can return as warnings."
She stared at him, searching for some crack in his calm mask. "You're changing."
"No," Lucian said quietly. "I've already changed. What you see now is only the truth revealed."
Kael joined them then, grinning darkly. "I, for one, approve. You want wolves to stop circling you? You leave one of them gutted in the courtyard. That sends the right message."
Seren shook her head, frustration written in every line of her face. But she did not argue further.
Lucian returned his gaze to the book, though his mind was elsewhere.
The attempt came sooner than before. Which means they fear me more quickly this time.
He closed the book with a snap. Good. Let them fear. Let them come in shadows and blades. I will answer each attempt with blood until they learn.
Far away, in a candlelit chamber, Calvus Renard slammed his fist against the table.
"He killed him! A trained assassin, dead—and in public!"
Alaric Veynar's voice was cold. "Then he is more dangerous than we thought."
A third voice, smooth and venomous, emerged from the shadows. "Do not mistake danger for invincibility. The boy bleeds, as all men do. We will find another way."
Calvus's teeth ground. "He humiliated me in the courtyard. He humiliated me at the banquet. Now he humiliates us all with this spectacle. When will you act?"
The voice from the shadows chuckled softly. "Patience. Wolves must circle before they strike. Let him bare his fangs. The sharper they grow, the easier they are to break."
That night, Lucian stood once more at his window, the air cool on his face. Below, the cobblestones had been scrubbed clean, but he could still see the stain in his memory—the dark pool where his would-be killer had bled out.
He did not smile. He did not frown.
He only whispered into the night.
"Come, then. Send more. Every blade you send only sharpens mine."
And the moon bore witness as the crownless wolf awaited the next hunt.