Midnight in the west wing of Astrea Academy carried an entirely different atmosphere from its grand, sunlit daytime persona. By day, the towering stone halls echoed with the arrogant laughter of highborn nobles and the hurried footsteps of eager scholars. By night, however, the place transformed into a silent labyrinth, hoarding rotten secrets behind its pristine white marble walls.

Rian moved without a sound along the third-floor corridor. His dark cloak blended seamlessly with the shadows of the stone walls, illuminated only by the faint, pulsing glow of magical wall torches. Following the lethal incident inside the Underground Labyrinth—where he had been forced to slaughter the Spider Queen just to keep his team alive—Rian knew Lord Julian’s faction wouldn't let the matter rest. Yet, the danger stirring behind the scenes of the academy was far greater than a petty aristocratic rivalry.

Through stray pieces of intelligence he had quietly gathered from serving staff and Professor Vane’s misplaced archive logs, Rian had caught the unmistakable scent of a high-level conspiracy. Tonight, he intended to find the truth with his own eyes.

At the very end of the corridor, standing before a heavy wooden door carved with the emblem of a winged lion—the private chamber of the Academy's Steering Council—two full-plate elite guards stood at rigid, unblinking attention.

Rian melted into the dark corner of a structural pillar. Making not the slightest sound, he activated the advanced Shadow Step technique he had recently deciphered from a forbidden grimoire. His physical form dissolved into a wisp of dark vapor, creeping silently up the stone pillar before anchoring itself to the high vaulted ceiling, directly above the ventilation grate of the restricted chamber.

Below him, a massive round disk table was illuminated by the steady, cold blue flame of a localized fire spell. Three figures sat in a triangle: Master Vane, the academy’s notoriously ruthless combat instructor; Lord Vane, Julian’s father and the high-ranking noble governor of the district; and a mysterious man draped in a midnight-black cloak, his face shrouded deep beneath a heavy hood that bled an oppressive, suffocating aura of darkness.

"The latest reports from the labyrinth yielded interesting results," Lord Vane’s heavy, gravelly voice cut through the silence of the room. He dropped a parchment dossier onto the polished wood. "The mutant arachnid swarm failed to eliminate those commoner brats. Worse yet, the Sector Southwest Queen was found dead, cleaved right down the center with unnervingly precise energy slashes."

The cloaked man at the end of the table let out a low, raspy scoff, his voice scraping like grinding tombstones. "That boy from Oakhaven... he’s no ordinary student. Our border informants flagged anomalies in his baseline mana capacity the very day he registered."

Hanging silently in the overhead ventilation shaft, Rian narrowed his eyes. His heartbeat remained locked in a steady, controlled rhythm, while the mana circulating through his meridians coiled tightly, bracing for any sudden shift.

"What is the next directive for the commoner students who survived the labyrinth trial?" Master Vane asked, his tone devoid of even a shred of human empathy. "Our collection quota for pure-resonance mana samples to feed the core project is almost at its ceiling."

Lord Vane smirked, a cruel twisting of his lips. "Enforce Protocol Standard Two. Route them straight into the energy-cloning experiment logs in the level-four subterranean labs. After all, they are just commoner orphans with no influential family crest to back them up. If they vanish from the academy grounds, we can easily write it off as a fatal training accident."

Hearing those words, a surge of glacial fury flashed through Rian’s chest. So this prestigious academy—held up as the pinnacle of magical education throughout the entire kingdom—was nothing more than a glorified hunting ground. A front for corrupt aristocrats to kidnap and exploit commoner students as sacrificial fuel for depraved mana-cloning experiments.

Before Rian could burn any more names of traitors into his memory, however, the cloaked man's next sentence made every drop of blood in Rian's veins run instantly cold.

"Don't be reckless with that Oakhaven boy," the cloaked figure murmured, sliding a broken-link chain artifact onto the table—the exact same symbol Rian had found etched into the forbidden grimoire and the pockets of the forest bandits. "The resonance signature flowing through his bloodline matches the frequency of our ancient relics. That magical signature... it's identical to the technique our sect used when we cleansed those remote villages in the southern territories ten years ago."

Master Vane gave a slow, contemplative nod. "You mean... the boy is a survivor from the massacre we carried out in his ancestral settlement back then?"

"It’s entirely possible," the cloaked man replied, a horrific grin stretching beneath his dark hood. "And if he is, he makes the perfect vessel to anchor and complete our sect's resurrection right here, inside the very walls of Astrea Academy."

Up in the shadows of the vent, Rian’s grip on the stone ledge tightened until hairline fractures webbed across the surface. His usually calm, calculating expression was utterly fractured, replaced by a dense, suffocating wave of pure, unadulterated killing intent.

The Shadow Sect... Rian thought, his eyes flaring with a sharp, violet luminescence cutting through the absolute dark of the ceiling. To think the bastards who shattered my past and slaughtered my home were hiding right underneath the academy's nose all along.