NOVEL NEXT Chapter 135: Whispers of Nocturne
The air in the Grand Hall was thick and cold as the fang of a vampire. An official welcome ceremony was in progress at that moment for the delegation from the Vampire Academy of Nocturne, and the years of mistrust and rivalry of one century were merely covered with the thin, fragile veneer of the Ashborn facliced faculty and students.
They were starkly beautiful as opposed to the fiery, proud dragonkin of Pyronis. The vampires were moving with silent fluid grace, clad elegantly in high-collared, deep midnight blue silver robes. Their faces were an aristocratic beauty; their skin was as pale and as luminous as the twin moons; their eyes a kaleidoscope of strange captivating colors-amethyst, emerald, sapphire.
All of them were led by a woman called Lady Seraphina, a name that caused ripples of amused and somewhat irritable whispers through our own ranks. She is tall, quite impossibly so, with long, flowing hair as spun moonlight and with eyes like a twilight sky. She was not their queen, not their headmistress, a student, but a representative of their own powerful student council. And she moved with the quiet, confident, and utterly absolute power of a woman who had never known fear.
No, my gaze wasn't on her at all. I was looking at the boy who stood back in shadows of her retinue, his own face a mask of quiet, unassuming scholarship. Good old Silas. He is a ghost in the heart of a storm, a single reference point that has been built into this grand, theatrical circumstance. He was watching me, his stormy, sea-gray eyes filled with a quiet, watchful intelligence that sent a cold, prickling sensation down my spine.
The ceremony was a tedious, excruciating mess, a symphony of long, boring speeches, of forced, polite applause, and of a thousand different hidden agendas. Headmistress Evelyn and Lady Seraphina held small talk with words that were as sharp and as deadly as any sword, being masterclassed in subtle brutal art forms of political warfare.
And through it all Silas would watch.
Finally, the ceremony came to an end, mercifully, and began to mingle among delegates, and the air seemed thickened at the sounds low murmuring buzz of a hundred different, unaudible conversations. I was almost moving out when a familiar, melodic voice stopped me dead in my tracks. "Leaving so soon, Ashen Crimson?" Silas asked, his own voice a low, quiet murmur that was somehow more commanding than any shout. He had moved with a silent, fluid grace, his own form a shadow in the heart of the crowd. "I was hoping we could continue our conversation."
I turned and looked at him, my own face a mask of cool, detached indifference. "I don't remember having a conversation," I said, my own voice a low, gravelly thing. "I remember you making a series of… unfounded assumptions."
He smiled, a polite, almost apologetic expression that did not reach his eyes. Did I? he asked, his own voice a low, amused murmur. So then let me make another one: You aren't from around here, are you, Kai?
The force within the world slowed as the chaotic, festive energy of the hall faded to a distant, irrelevant hum. The name, my name, the one I had left behind in a world of steel and smoke, was a physical blow-a dagger to the heart that stole the breath from my lungs.
I stared at him, my own mind a chaotic battlefield of conflicting emotions. How? How could he possibly know?
"You see," Silas began, an intimate, slightly conspiratorial whisper intended for me once again, "the Vampire Academy of Nocturne... dwells on unique scholarship. We study the ancient, forbidden arts. The ones that speak of other worlds, of other lives. Of souls that are, in simple terms, made anew." He took a step closer, his own eyes, for the first time, filled not with the quiet, watchful intelligence of a scholar, but with cold, hard, and far too real hunger. "And you, Kai," he said, his own voice a low, final and utterly devastating blow, "are the most interesting specimen I have ever seen."
I mean, he hadn't even finished speaking before words of pure, incredible audacity stirred in me, when suddenly another voice-cutting, sharp, and possessive- pierced the tense, charged air.
"And who," Seraphina of Ashborn asked, her own voice a low, dangerous purr as she stepped between us, her own body a shield between me and this new more insidious threat, "are you?"
His smile never faltered as he offered a slight, respectful bow. "Silas," he said, his own voice a low melodic hum. "A humble scholar. And a great admirer of Lord Ashen's.
Seraphina's violet eyes narrowed as her own gaze swept over Silas with her own mind going into a whirlwind of suspicion and a dawning, unwilling respect. She could sense power, a powerful yet understated air that stood in contrast to the subtle artful intuition behind his meek scholar disguise.
"Then you shall view him from afar," she said, her own voice a cold, final thing. "He is... occupied."
She took my arm, firm and possessive, and started leading me away, her own movements a silent and graceful dance of proprietary indignation. I did not resist. I was still reeling from Silas's words, with my thoughts a chaotic and swirling vortex of a thousand different questions, of a thousand different fears.
As we walked away, I glanced back over my shoulder. Silas was still standing there, his own face a mask of quiet, unassuming scholarship. But his eyes…his eyes were on me, and in the stormy, sea-gray depth of them I saw not just a scholar, not just a player, but something else entirely—something older, more dangerous. Something...waiting.
Everything else about the day slipped past in a hazy blur. I simply went through the motions again, a ghost in my own life, attending a strategy meeting for the up-and-coming inter-academy dueling tournament, my own voice a low, detached thing as I offered my own, calculated insights. I sat at lunch on the blustery table amongst friends, the stark boisterousness and cheer falling very, very hard against that cold, hard knot of worry that had now made its place in my gut.
Sasha, her own face a mask of quiet, gentle concern, asked me if I was alright. I told her I was fine. Eren, in a rare moment of insightful observation, told me I looked like I had just seen a ghost. I told him he was an idiot. And Seraphina... Seraphina simply watched me, her own violet eyes filled with a quiet, watchful intelligence that was a perfect, and very unnerving, mirror of Silas's own.
I retired to my dormitory that evening, the weight of Silas's words weighing heavy and suffocating on my shoulders. I needed answers. I needed to know who he was, what he wanted, and how, in the name of all the gods and devils of this world, he knew my name.
I sat in quiet, dusty dark in my room, the soft silvery glow of the twin moons casting light over the room, and I called for the System.
'Inform me on Silas' I then projected into the silence that was my own mind. 'Disclose everything it knows.
The System's voice, when it replied, was a smug, infuriating purr. [I am afraid, my dear host, that my knowledge is… limited. Silas is a new variable, a piece on the board that was not present in the original timeline. He is… an anomaly.]
'An anomaly?' I shot back, my own voice a low, dangerous growl. "He knows my name, you sentient pile of code. He knows I am not from this world. That is more than just an anomaly. That is a threat.
[Indeed,] the System replied in low, amused murmurings. [And a very interesting one at that.]
The rest of the night was filled with restless, agitated anxiety. I paced the floor of my room, my own mind a chaotic battlefield of conflicting emotions. I was a strategist, a manipulator, a king in the making. But for the first time since I had arrived in this world, I was truly, completely, and utterly, in the dark.
A small, unmarked package was found the next morning outside my door. It was wrapped in simple, brown parchment and tied with a single black silken ribbon. There was no note, no seal, no clue as to its origin. But I knew, with the certainty that rose with the twin moons, it was from.
I brought it in, my own hands tremoring almost imperceptibly as I unstrung the ribbon and peeled open the parchment. Inside, nestled in a bed of soft, black velvet, lay a single, perfect, and all-too-real dragon's tooth, its surface carved and marked by a single elegant and very familiar runic symbol.
This was a communication rune. A way to talk from somewhere very far off. A tool used only by the most elite and most secretive members of this world's power structure.
And as I looked at it, as I felt the faint, dormant magic that pulsed within it, I heard his voice, Silas's voice, a low, melodic hum that was not in my ears, but in my mind.
"I believe," he said, voice low, conspiratorial whisper that was for me alone, "that we have a great deal to discuss. Meet me tonight, at the highest peak of the Dragon's Tooth mountains, where the sky meets the earth, and the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. We have… a common interest. And a common enemy."
The message ended, the rune's light fading into a dull, inert thing. And I was left alone in this quiet, sunlit room, with the weight of his impossible and very dangerous invitation hanging between us. The game has just become terribly dangerous. And I knew that the Vampire Academy was not yet done with me.