He allowed them five beats. Five heartbeats for the leaders to stew, to show intent, to reveal character. Every flinch, every tightening of muscle, every shift in posture added to the ledger.
Then, with the calm authority of someone who had already won in principle, Aarav turned. He walked toward the door with deliberate steps, each measured, each echoing in the tense silence.
As the door closed behind him, the room was left in a thick fog of uncertainty, anger, and awe. He had not raised a hand. He had not drawn a weapon. He had not shouted. And yet, he had already shifted the balance of power.
> This is how wars are won before the first sword swings. Observation. Calculation. Patience. And the right strike, at the right time.
They parted like animals wounded and still loud — the meeting disintegrating into a thousand small conspiracies even before the door had fully closed. The room smelled of stale coffee and sweat and something sharper: ambition curdling into anger. Where moments ago there had been a gathering of equals, now there were fissures, fresh and bright as cracks in glass.
Yuvan's fury did not bother to be elegant. It arrived hot and blunt, hands balled into fists under the table until the knuckles glowed white. His voice was a raw thing, split between humiliation and ownership. "Crush him," he said, each syllable landing like a hammer. It was not an appeal so much as an oath he carved into his own bone. "We will make him pay. We will make an example."
The call to arms sent sparks across the table. Some rose instinctively, throats raw with the taste of battle. Others murmured plans that read like quickfire: staged confrontations, planted witnesses, public shaming. Pride demanded spectacle; pride demanded blood. For men of reputation, defeat tasted like rot — and rot must be excised.
But the room did not collapse into a single fever. Kiaan of Vortex of Sins wore his resistance like a tailored smile. He toyed with the rim of his glass, amused and slow to anger. "To crush is to parade weakness in public," he said, voice leveled with the kind of leisure that unsettled the impatient. "It is crude theatre. If we strike now, we might win a battle of fists but lose the war of consequence. Let him move. Watch the pattern. Learn before you burn."
The sentence cut through the heat. Fingers stilled mid-gesture. Heads turned. A different sort of calculation began to unfold: fire tempered by patience, pride laced with prudence. Kiaan's stance was not cowardice; it was a wager on knowledge. He wanted to see how Aarav behaved under provocation, how he distributed weight, who he protected, where he showed impatience. Kiaan preferred a net woven of observation to a sword raised in blind vengeance.
Around them the others split into factions of instinct. Advik of the Reapers, spidery and efficient, sketched maps of provocation in quick, narrow lines — choke points, witnesses, timing. Aarush of Blood Count thumped a fist into his palm and exhaled a harsh, hungry laugh; his hunger was immediate and animal. Ishir of Ash Born muttered cautions, the sound of embers warning, "Measure. Do not light a blaze you cannot control." Ronav and the vice-captains traded barbed whispers tuned to self-preservation and revenge.
Yuvan's jaw worked visibly. He saw only what he had lost: face, respect, the easy domination of campus corridors. "If we let him breathe," he snapped, "he grows. If we strike now, we reclaim what is ours." His words were a drumbeat, and for a few they were enough.
Kiaan's amusement did not fade. He leaned back, speaking slow so that the weight of the sentence pressed into the room like gravity: "Or you hand him the role of martyr. Or you force him to vanish, leaving us a phantom to chase. I prefer knowledge to blind fury. Let us build the scene—pressure in measured waves, probes first, spectacle if it becomes necessary. Observe; then commit."
That compromise — pressure without collapse, spectacle without haste — settled like a truce of wills. It was not unity; it was the more dangerous thing: coordinated impatience. The leaders agreed to dance on the same floor but not in the same rhythm. Pride would be appeased in stages; vengeance would be administered with an eye on consequence.
Aarav heard each syllable as data. The room's murmur was a map; the arguments, vectors. He recorded not with pen but with the cold ledger of pattern and consequence. Yuvan's rawness gave him a timer — predictability baked in anger. Kiaan's reluctance offered time and therefore openings. The others' division promised the central advantage of any patient strategist: his enemies would act, and in acting they would reveal themselves.
He cataloged the likely moves as if arranging pieces on a board. Within three days—Yuvan's temper permitting—there would be a baited incident: public, humiliating, designed to force a reaction. Over the week that followed, quieter attacks would unfurl: rumors seeded like poison, a sabotaged delivery here, a hostile video edited with malice there. Some would prefer the spectacle, others the slow strangling of reputation. They would, in their zeal, leave tracks.
Aarav's lips lifted into a small, wry shape — not a smile, because he had no need of warmth, only the satisfaction of calculation. He imagined the scene he wanted to design in answer: not brute resistance, but a controlled counterpoint that turned each planned move into the very mechanism of their undoing. Let Yuvan move like a man with a brand to prove; let Kiaan bait and stall until he reveals his thresholds; let the rest rush to reclaim pride and show their seams.
In the quiet after the leaders dispersed, the corridors filled with footsteps that announced intent. Some left in clustered, conspicuous flanks; others slunk away in pairs, plotting in whispers. The campus outside already tasted of rumor — video clips passed from hand to hand, messages that glowed with outrage and curiosity. Pride would be fed tonight with plans. Pride would also be the engine of their mistakes.
He walked the corridor once more, the abandoned building's light a thin smear behind him, and cataloged faces as they left: Yuvan's rigid, breath like a coiled spring. Kiaan's measured stride, as if pacing a game he intended to enjoy. The others — varied, loud, soft, careful. Each departure was a data point. Each choice they made would crack a place to pry open.
Aarav's voice in his head was dry, methodical, without drama. They will choose how they burn. They will decide the tempo. Their pride will choreograph their fall. He folded that sentence into his ledger and felt the clean clarity of a plan snapping into place.
Outside the night was indifferent. The rain had stopped; neon and sodium light cut the slick pavements into hard, bright slices. Amid the campus's ordinary movements, the next act was already being written — by Yuvan's blunt hunger, by Kiaan's patient curiosity, by the restless ambitions of ten groups who had misread the shape of power.
He did not fear the coming storm. He had already learned its direction. He would not beat them with raw strength alone; he would bend them into the role they had volunteered to play. When they moved to crush, to bait, to humiliate, his counters would be precise as surgery.
The room emptied of schemes and noise. In the echo that remained, Aarav stood for a moment and let the silence confirm the calculation he had just made. Then he turned away, impassive, and began to arrange his replies in the precise order the world had unwittingly provided.
The ten groups soon came to know—
a new force had risen among them.
A name whispered through corridors, carried by curiosity, suspicion, and unease.
Aarav.
No one knew where he came from, nor why his presence felt like a silent storm, waiting to break. But to Aarav, the college wasn't a playground or a battlefield—it was a stage where wrongs were rewarded, and chaos was law.
He remembered the night she died. He had pulled her from the merciless water, saved her body from the river's grasp. And yet… the hospital had stolen her life anyway. A bullet. Someone had aimed, and someone had succeeded. He had carried her limp form into hope—and then watched death claim her without ceremony.
Her death was a wound he did not show. A secret carved into his chest. He would not speak of it. Not yet.
His group knew only this:
> "We stop wrongs in this college," he had said once, voice calm, precise, eyes like a blade. "We act where others fail. We protect those who can't protect themselves. That's all you need to know."
Vihaan, Rishi, and Ishaan had nodded. Their loyalty was built on action, not questions. And Aarav liked it that way. Questions were dangerous, and some truths could not be shared—not yet.
The rumors spread. Other groups whispered in hallways, calculating the newcomer, the strange leader who moved like a storm: unseen, untouchable, yet always watching. The Forsaken had felt it most sharply—Yuvan's anger burned hot. He had been toppled once by Aarav's small group, and now his pride demanded a reckoning.
But not everyone agreed on how to respond. Among the chaos of ambition, Kiaan of Vortex of Sins watched differently, with interest, not rage.
"Let him come," Kiaan muttered to his vice-captain, voice low but certain. "Let's see if he's worth more than whispers. If he grows too fast, we'll deal with it… but for now, let him play his hand."
Aarav walked past them once in the hallway. Nobody stopped him. Nobody dared. He didn't announce himself. He didn't need to. He simply existed, like the quiet before the storm, measuring, calculating.
Inside his mind, the memory never left—the hospital room, the stolen life, the cold bullet that had silenced her. That wound fueled everything: his vigilance, his careful strategy, his calculated rise. Every fight with another group, every intervention, was a step closer to the truth.
He would hide the real motive. He would let the world see only Nullvein's rise, the new group enforcing justice, striking where corruption festered. But behind the smiles, behind the victories, Aarav's eyes were always elsewhere—searching, calculating, hunting.
And the killer… someone in this college had crossed the line. Someone had dared to end a life he had saved. That person would answer.
Rain pattered softly against the campus windows that night, a quiet drumbeat against the quiet storm Aarav carried inside him.
He stood alone on the terrace, letting the storm soak him through, and whispered into the night—not to the world, not to his group, but to the shadow of the one who had taken her life:
> "I will find you. And when I do… nothing will stop me."
Somewhere below, the lights of the college flickered. Somewhere, someone watched.
And Aarav knew… the hunt had only just begun.