On the seventh day of his time at the Academy, something happened that wasn't on any schedule.
Midnight. Kayan asleep — or trying. Sleep doesn't come easily to someone who knows his father might be alive somewhere.
Then a sound.
Not the pulse from before. Something different. Breaking glass. Then silence. Then — a scream cut short in the middle.
Kayan was out of bed instantly.
The corridor outside his room was lit in a strange way — faint blue light, not from the lamps. Coming from the end of the hall.
He moved carefully.
In the main hall — the gathering space for meals — four students lay on the floor. Unconscious or asleep. And in the center, something.
Kayan had no name for it.
A shadow — but not anyone's shadow. A black shape moving independently, with no body to cast it. It absorbed the blue light around it.
And worst of all: it was moving toward a student still conscious, pressed against the wall, unable to move from fear.
Ria.
Kayan didn't think.
He ran.
The shadow turned — and if a shadow can have eyes, they were here, he felt them fix on him — and something came from it. Not a sound. A wave. It reached Kayan and threw him backward three meters.
He hit the wall. Sharp pain in his back.
But — the First Ghoul. Consecutive pulses now, not one. Like something waking up.
And in his palm — heat. The same heat from the wall strike. Stronger.
Kayan screamed — not from fear, but from something else. Something leaving him for the first time.
He slammed both palms into the ground.
A wave of ash — literally, silver-grey ash — shot across the floor. It reached the shadow.
And for one moment — just one — the shadow retreated.
Then Salar entered.
The lights came on.
The shadow vanished.
Salar looked at Kayan, the floor, Ria, the four students. His face showed nothing.
Then he said something strange:
"It was looking for you. Not them."
"For me?"
"The shadow came from outside the Academy, Kayan. And it came before. Once. Thirteen years ago."