Saint Celene Primary Institute, Luthvian Capital
Third day of the Frost Moon, Year 1756
Theron Altaire walked the corridors the way a shark moves through warm water: silent, inevitable, and deeply uninterested in anything that wasn't bleeding.
He was ten, already taller than most twelve-year-olds, black coat cut sharp enough to slice bread. The black cloth tied over the right side of his face was the only thing that ever looked rumpled; his mother re-stitched the sealing runes every new moon, and the fresh thread always itched.
Today it burned.
He ignored it. Itch, burn, whatever. Pain was just another expense you paid to stay alive.
The hallway smelled of chalk dust, elf-wood incense, and the faint iron tang of minotaur sweat. Students parted for him the way water parts for a thrown knife. Girls giggled behind fans. Boys pretended they weren't measuring the distance to his throat. A demon third-year with small curling horns flicked a coin across his knuckles and smirked when Theron didn't even glance over.
Theron kept walking, counting steps and interest rates in the same breath.
Left turn at the marble fountain shaped like an angel weeping blood—three more paces—there.
He almost made it.
A body slammed into his chest hard enough to stagger him half a step.
Books detonated across the floor in a glorious mess of cracked spines and loose parchment.
Theron looked down.
A wood-elf girl was on her knees, scrambling after pages like a squirrel chasing nuts. Long ears flat against emerald-green hair, uniform skirt grass-stained at the knees, one ribbon already coming undone. She couldn't have been older than eleven.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—" she babbled, voice bright with panic. "I was reading the section on unbound spirits and I looked up too late and—"
Her gaze lifted. Big green eyes met the single black one visible beneath his blindfold.
And widened.
The runes on his cloth flared white-hot.
Theron felt it the same moment she did: the low, hungry song of the golden eye hidden underneath. It recognized her mana the way a wolf recognizes another predator on the wind.
The girl—Liora, her name tag read—froze with a book half-lifted.
"Your eye…" she whispered, so low only he could hear. "It's… singing."
Theron crouched, slow and deliberate, picked up the fallen book closest to his boot. Advanced Spirit Contracts, Volume III—library copy, overdue stamp already red. He set it on top of the pile in her trembling arms.
"Next time watch where you're going," he said, voice flat as winter steel. "Hallways aren't for reading."
He straightened to leave.
Liora surged to her feet, clutching her books like a shield. "You're Theron Altaire."
He didn't stop.
"They say you could beat a senior with one hand tied behind your back," she called after him, reckless. "They also say you don't have friends. That true?"
Twenty paces ahead, Alysia was leaning against a pillar, arms folded, smirking like she'd just won a bet. Mathon snoozed on the windowsill beside her, one leg dangling.
Theron kept walking.
Liora's voice chased him anyway. "Some people inside this school can feel God's Eyes, you know. They're already looking."
He didn't answer. Didn't need to.
Because the moment she said it, the blindfold stopped burning and went ice-cold.
Someone was watching him right now.
He felt the stare like a blade laid against the back of his neck.
Theron reached his friends.
Alysia flicked his shoulder. "New admirer? She's cute. Pointy ears, good lungs."
Mathon cracked one green eye open. "She smells like pine sap and trouble."
Theron exhaled through his nose. "Both of you shut up."
The bell tower began to toll—five minutes to Elemental Theory.
They moved.
Behind them, Liora Sylvarei stood alone in the corridor, hugging her books so hard the covers creaked.
She whispered to the empty air, "He's going to need help whether he wants it or not."
High above, in the rafters where no student was supposed to climb, a figure with six wings folded tight against a child's back opened eyes the exact same molten gold as the one hidden beneath black cloth.
Camael, Third Choir of the Seraphic Host, smiled with too many teeth.
"Let the hunt begin," he murmured, voice sweet as funeral bells.
And in the hallway below, Theron Altaire's blindfold itched worse than it ever had in his entire life.
To be continued…