The bodies disappeared into the Shadow Storage with a wet, unsettling sound.
Revan leaned against the alley wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The cold brick pressed against his back, sending fresh waves of pain through the gash that ran from his shoulder blade to his spine.
Three corpses. One mysterious organization. Zero answers.
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling—not from fear, but from blood loss and the fading adrenaline that had kept him alive for the past ten minutes.
The Garden. Black orchid tattoos. Suicide capsules built into their teeth.
These weren't common thugs or hired mercenaries. These were fanatics. The kind of people who believed in something strongly enough to die for it without hesitation.
And they were after him specifically. Not Sylvia. Not the Vespera family. Him.
'Why me?'
'I'm just a servant. A glorified butler with a sword. What could a shadow organization possibly want with someone like me?'
If he bled out right here, amongst the trash and the rats, the House of Vespera wouldn't shed a tear. They would simply fill out a form, complain about the inconvenience, and requisition a replacement. To them, a broken tool is simply discarded.
The question gnawed at him, but his bleeding body didn't have the luxury of deep contemplation right now.
Revan pushed himself off the wall, immediately regretting it when his vision swam with black spots. He stumbled forward, catching himself on a wooden crate before he could collapse.
"Stay put in your dorm and do not show your face or do anything without my direct order."
Sylvia's words echoed in his skull like a death sentence waiting to be executed.
Do not show your face. Do not do anything. Without my direct order.
And what had Revan done? He had snuck out of the academy, traveled to the criminal underbelly of the capital, met with an illegal blacksmith, and gotten himself nearly killed by a mysterious assassination squad.
'If there was an award for "Most Thorough Violation of Direct Orders," I'd win first place without competition.'
A bitter laugh escaped his throat, turning into a wet cough that splattered blood onto the cobblestones.
He remembered how casually Sylvia had crushed Vargos—a Master-rank warrior reduced to nothing beneath her gravity magic. And that man had merely stolen cargo. Revan? Revan had looked his master in the eyes, promised obedience, and immediately done the exact opposite.
The image of a blooming Black Rose flashed through his mind. That suffocating pressure. Those cold pale violet eyes narrowing with displeasure.
'Yeah. I'm absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent dead if she finds out.'
'Maybe I should just let these wounds kill me first. At least bleeding out in an alley sounds more dignified than being crushed into a meat patty by gravity magic.'
Revan shook the morbid thought away and reached into his Shadow Storage. His fingers closed around a small vial—the liquid inside glowing a faint green, casting eerie shadows on the alley walls.
Minor Healing Elixir. Not strong enough to fully repair the damage, but enough to stop the bleeding and keep his organs from staging a mutiny.
He drank it in one gulp, grimacing at the bitter taste that coated his tongue like expired medicine mixed with grass.
Warmth spread through his body. The bleeding slowed. The pain dulled from "actively dying" to "merely wishing for death."
'Good enough.'
The academy was on the other side of the city. Normally, a thirty-minute walk through the merchant district and noble quarter. But in his current state—covered in blood, looking like a corpse that forgot to lie down—discretion wasn't just preferred. It was mandatory.
Revan pulled his torn shirt tighter around his wounds, wincing as the fabric stuck to drying blood with a sickening squelch. He retrieved a dark cloak from his storage and wrapped it around himself, pulling the hood low over his face.
He looked less like a murder victim and more like a suspicious homeless person.
He glanced at his reflection in a puddle of stagnant water.
'...Actually, no. I still look like a murder victim. Just a murder victim who stole someone's cloak.'
Progress. Sort of.
The journey back was a blur of pain and paranoia.
The streets of Valorheim were never truly empty, even past midnight. Drunks stumbled out of taverns. Night workers hurried between establishments. Shadows moved in alleyways, conducting business that preferred darkness.
Revan navigated through them like a ghost, keeping to the edges of streets where the lamplight didn't reach. Every footstep behind him made his hand twitch toward the kunai hidden in his sleeve. Every sudden movement in his peripheral vision sent a spike of adrenaline through his exhausted system.
But no attack came.
'Either The Garden only sent three operatives, or the rest are regrouping for another attempt.'
Neither option brought comfort.
By the time Revan reached the academy's outer walls, the moon had risen high in the sky. The main gates were closed—curfew had started an hour ago.
'Perfect. As if this night couldn't get any better.'
Now he had to sneak into his own school like a delinquent trying to avoid detention. The absurdity of the situation wasn't lost on him.
Fortunately, fifteen years of serving as Sylvia's shadow had taught him every secret of this place. Every passage. Every blind spot. Every guard rotation. He knew which walls had loose stones. He knew which windows were never properly locked.
He knew exactly how to become invisible.
Revan scaled the eastern wall, gritting his teeth against the screaming protest of his wounds. His fingers found familiar grooves in the stone—handholds he had used dozens of times before. But tonight, each pull upward felt like dragging his body through broken glass.
He dropped into the servant's garden on the other side, rolled to absorb the impact—
And immediately regretted that decision when his ribs reminded him, quite violently, that they were cracked.
"Ngh—!"
He bit down on his tongue to stifle the groan, tasting copper as fresh pain exploded through his torso.
'I'm fifteen years old. Fifteen. Why does my body feel like it belongs to a seventy-year-old veteran who lost a war?'
Revan limped through the servant passages, avoiding the night patrols with practiced ease. The dormitories loomed ahead, their windows dark except for a few scattered lights from students studying late—or more likely, procrastinating on assignments due tomorrow.
'Almost there.'
'Just a few more corridors and I can collapse in my bed and pretend this entire night was a fever dream—'
"My, my. What do we have here?"
Revan froze.
The voice came from behind him. Soft. Melodic. Amused.
Like honey poured over a hidden blade.
Slowly, painfully, he turned around.
A woman stood in the moonlight, leaning against a pillar as if she had been waiting for him all along. She appeared to be in her early twenties, with long black hair that cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall of ink. Her features were sharp and elegant, carrying an aristocratic beauty that reminded him uncomfortably of Sylvia.
But her eyes were wrong.
They were violet. Pale violet, almost identical to Sylvia's. But where his master's eyes were cold and empty like frozen fog, this woman's burned with something else entirely.
Curiosity. Hunger. Amusement.
The look of a predator that had cornered interesting prey and was deciding how to play with it.
She wore a simple black dress that seemed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. No jewelry. No accessories. No house crest or status marker.
Nothing that would identify who—or what—she was.
Revan's mind raced through possibilities. A teacher? No—he knew every faculty member, and none of them had that face. A noble visiting the academy? Possible, but why would a noblewoman be lurking in the servant passages at midnight?
'An assassin? Another one from The Garden?'
His hand inched toward his kunai.
The woman noticed. Her smile widened, but she made no move to stop him.
"Relax, little servant. If I wanted you dead, you would have died before you climbed that wall."
Her voice carried absolute confidence. Not the hollow arrogance of nobles who had never faced real danger—but the quiet certainty of someone who knew exactly how dangerous they were because they had proven it countless times.
"Who are you?" Revan asked. His voice came out steadier than he expected, though his body was screaming at him to either fight or run.
"Straight to the point. No groveling, no stammering, no false pleasantries."
She pushed off from the pillar and walked toward him. Each step was graceful, deliberate—like a dancer performing for an audience of one. Or a predator closing the distance to its prey.
"I like that. Most people waste so much time on meaningless words when they're terrified."
She stopped an arm's length away, close enough that Revan could see the individual flecks of darker purple in her pale violet irises. Close enough that he could smell her perfume—something floral, with an undertone of something darker.
Something that reminded him of funerals.
"I've been watching you, Revan von Alstaire."
She tilted her head, studying him like a scholar examining a particularly interesting specimen.
"The servant who challenged a Master-rank warrior and lived. The shadow who serves the Vespera princess."
Her eyes traveled down to his blood-soaked clothes, then back up to meet his gaze.
"You're wounded. Those cuts on your chest—blade wounds, precise angles, delivered by someone trained in close combat. And unless my nose deceives me..."
Her nostrils flared slightly.
"You smell like the Undergallows. Coal smoke. Rust. Molten metal. You've been to the old forges recently."
'She knows. She knows everything.'
The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water.
"The question is," the woman continued, her violet eyes gleaming with barely contained amusement, "does your precious mistress know where her little dog has been wandering tonight?"
A pause. Her smile turned razor-sharp.
"Because I'm fairly certain she ordered you to stay in your dorm. To not show your face. To do nothing without her direct command."
Revan's jaw tightened.
'How? How does she know Sylvia's exact words? Has she been watching since the train incident? Before?'
'Who the hell is this woman?'
The stranger laughed—a soft, musical sound that echoed through the empty passage like wind chimes in a graveyard.
"Don't look so alarmed. I'm not here to expose your disobedience to Lady Vespera. Quite the opposite, actually."
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out something small, holding it up between two fingers. The moonlight caught its surface, revealing dried petals pressed flat and preserved with meticulous care.
A black orchid.
Revan's breath caught in his throat. The same symbol. The same flower tattooed on the wrists of the three corpses currently rotting in his Shadow Storage.
"The Garden," she said. The playful warmth in her voice vanished instantly, replaced by something cold. Something ancient.
"They took something precious from me. And I intend to take everything from them in return."
She tucked the flower back into her sleeve, her violet eyes never leaving his face.
"You killed three of their operatives tonight. Impressive, considering your condition. But those three?"
A dismissive flick of her fingers.
"They were expendable. Scouts sent to test your capabilities and gauge your reaction patterns."
Revan's stomach dropped.
'Scouts. They were just scouts.'
'Then the real threat...'
"The real threat hasn't revealed itself yet," the woman said, as if reading his thoughts. "And when it does, that broken body of yours won't last three seconds against what they'll send."
She took one final step closer, close enough that Revan could count her eyelashes if he wanted to. Her violet eyes bore into his, and for a moment—just a moment—he swore he saw something ancient lurking behind them.
Something that had witnessed far too much death to be surprised by anything anymore.
"So tell me, Revan von Alstaire..."
Her voice dropped to a whisper that somehow felt louder than a shout.
"Would you like to know what The Garden is really planning? Or would you prefer to keep stumbling around in the dark... until they finally decide to stop playing with their food?"