Twilight didn't so much arrive at Fenrir Academy as it dragged itself in.
A cold, blue haze rolled through the tall corridor windows and pooled in the corners, slow and reluctant—like a guest who eats the food and then won't leave.
In the Omega dorm the oil lamps were already lit, their flames jittering against the stone.
The room smelled of strong soap, hot water, and under everything a sour, sticky note: fear.
The Betas were already there.
Faces like tools. Hands that knew what to do.
No smiles. No softness. Short lines. Flat commands.
"Line up. Basket. Don't drag."
Lyra moved.
Her body had the habits of someone who'd been here before—hundreds of times in lives she couldn't quite call up, but that her limbs remembered.
Seven other Omegas fell into a quiet line.
Elara stood rigid, the white streak in her hair pulled tight; her chin looked like a promise and a wound at once.
Morwen, the youngest, had eyes rubbed raw.
The other faces blurred together until they were only pressure and breath.
Zinc tubs had been dragged to the center.
Steam rose from them, the water tinted a pale medicinal blue—verbena, maybe, and something sharper, bitter on the nose.
It wasn't a bath. It was sterilization.
"Get in."
The water took Lyra's breath.
It was scalding, a bright burn that flushed her skin immediately.
A Beta ladled water over her—hair, face, shoulders—the motion precise and mechanical.
The soap was coarse and unscented; the fingers that scrubbed were efficient, not cruel.
She felt like an object being readied, a surface stripped of distraction.
She closed her eyes.
The heat pressed in. The herbs bit at the back of her throat.
Water slapped zinc and sent small metallic echoes through her chest.
Morwen sobbed in the tub beside her; the sound was muffled, small.
Lyra's mind tried to drift—botany notes, a quiet garden, Kael's voice—but the water pulled her back.
Anchored to this body, this role, this stage.
"Out. Dry. No lingering."
The towel was rough. She dried on auto-pilot.
Around her, others moved the same way—young bodies under tremulous light, eyes down.
Shame had a weight you could feel, heavier than the steam.
Tunics lay folded on beds made with military neatness.
Raw linen, bone-colored. Loose cut but mean.
No trim, no cord at the waist.
The thing they wore was designed to erase: to hide individuality, to spotlight the body's bare fact—scent, timbre, availability.
Lyra drew the tunic over her head.
The linen was cold against skin still hot from the bath, rough as a cat's tongue.
It fell straight, shape-less, ending above the knees. A small shiver ran through her legs.
"Hair. Back. Nothing loose."
She sat on the wooden stool, and a different Beta took a horn comb and worked through her hair with a force that pulled at the roots.
Knots were not gently untied; they were torn out.
Lyra looked at a cracked seam in the mortar across the room and held on to the dull, steady ache of pain.
When it was done, her hair was twisted into a bun so tight the skin at her temples hummed.
No stray locks. No softness.
Only a face, exposed.
The Beta opened a small ceramic jar and smeared a colorless paste over Lyra's face, neck, arms.
Matte-ifying, flattening—any gleam, any hint of heat removed.
Her skin looked like plaster when the work was finished.
"Look."
She walked to the large, clouded mirror.
The girl who met her was familiar and not.
Not pretty. Not ugly. Unavoidably ordinary.
Hair severe, skin dulled, large gray eyes framed by dark lashes that made them look hollower.
The tunic made her look younger and older at once—like a novice in a strict order. A faded copy of a person.
Who am I?
The thought wasn't philosophy. It clawed at her like breath stolen from the throat.
This wasn't teenage doubt. It was older, a grievance lodged under the ribs.
The woman in the glass was Lyra—Omega of Fenrir.
But the part of her that had glimpsed battlefields, that smelled acid rain, that knew the weight of a blade—where had she gone?
The reflected Lyra felt like a shell. A mask made to pass.
Around her the room whispered.
Morwen's shoulders shook; a monitor snapped at her to contain herself.
Elara stood with lips drawn tight, eyes burning with something like fury.
Livia, the redhead, tried to rub color back into her lips—until a Beta wiped it off with a rough rag and said, flat:
"Only what's yours."
"One of you may be lucky tonight."
An older Beta said it, voice like scraped metal. No pity. Just fact.
"An important Alpha wants strength. A bond. The rest—will serve. Remember why you're here. Don't get silly."
Heads bowed. Some hardened.
Lyra kept watching the mirror.
The idea of being chosen by some powerful Alpha—Sion, maybe—should have sent terror punching through her bones.
It did, somewhere in the background.
But it felt distant, muffled by that blankness. Like watching your life in a language you almost understand.
Time sped up.
The monitors inspected them—adjusting a fold, clipping a pin, enforcing sameness.
Outside, twilight had sunk to ink. Stars pricked coldly.
Then the bell.
Not the hour bell.
One heavy toll from the Great Hall, a sound that seemed to run through the stones themselves.
A summons. A verdict.
"It's time."
The head monitor opened the dormitory door.
"Single file. Silence. Follow Sister Margot. Remember who you are and why you're here."
Why they were here: to be seen, judged, taken.
Lyra fell in line behind Morwen—still trembling—and ahead of Elara, whose breath came in quick, sharp pulls.
Sister Margot, an older Beta with a face like weathered leather, gave a small gesture and began to walk.
The corridor to the Great Hall was long, lined with iron-bracketed torches.
Light leaned and fell; the walls seemed to breathe with the shadows.
Twenty pairs of bare feet on polished stone sounded like ghosts moving.
Cold ran up through Lyra's soles and kept her planted.
At the far end the doors loomed—oak, massive—flanked by two Alpha guards that might as well have been pillars.
With each step the doors grew, the air grew thick with roast meat, wine, perfume, and the animal perfume of Alphas gathered in a room designed to devour.
It felt, with a strange calm, like walking toward the gallows.
You could see the structure. The only mystery was who would tie the rope and how quick the drop.
Morwen stumbled.
Lyra reached out without thinking and touched her arm—one quick, tiny contact.
The younger girl looked back, eyes wide with panic.
Lyra saw her own pale face reflected in those eyes: severe, almost spectral.
The touch steadied Morwen a hair; she inhaled and straightened.
As they moved toward that bright, roaring center, Lyra felt something new uncoil inside her.
Not fear—not quite. Not the numb blankness either.
Observation.
Quiet, steady watching from deep somewhere.
She noticed the tremor in Morwen's back, Elara's set jaw, the way light slid off armor ahead.
Like someone watching a season begin.
In that watching, even amid the terror, a small, hard thing sparked: purpose.
Not for this ritual. Not for the hierarchy's hunger.
But for whatever began in this place.
Awakening often starts in the dark, she thought—something like a private gospel—small at first, then sharp.
The Great Hall doors opened with a slow, ceremonial groan.
Heat and light and noise pushed out like a physical thing. Music. Voices. Smells.
Sister Margot turned. The firelight painted her face.
"Enter," she said.
Presentation now, not command.
"And remember—survive."
Lyra stepped across the threshold.
From shadow into the gilded blaze.
Last in a line of linen shirts, their long shadows stretching behind them like things that might move if you looked away.
The hall's brightness wanted them.
It wanted to consume.