Not the Hero, Not the Villain — Just the One Who Wins

The dragon tooth rested there on the glossy obsidian of my desk, starkly white in form against the advancing gloom of my room. An attraction more than that; it was also a tether. Silas's voice, a sweet, polite hum of scholarly curiosity, continued to echo in my mind's empty corners, a reminder of unrepaired damage that I do so well to have made by walls around my past.

And the next day, I passed through the Academy like a specter: my physical presence occupied lecture halls and crowded corridors, while my mind transpired a thousand miles away, confused by calculation and contingency. The arrival of the Nocturne delegation had cast a long, cold shadow over Ashborn.

They bore a sharp, exquisite contrast to the fiery, proud dragonkin of Pyronis. The vampires moved in a silent and fluid grace, garbed in elegant high-collared robes of deep, midnight blue and silver. Their faces were like an aristocratic beauty, their skin as pale and luminous as the twin moons, and their eyes a pure kaleidoscope of strange, captivating colors-amethyst, emerald, sapphire.

But it was their silence that was most disturbing. Such grandiosity was not to be seen here. They simply...observed. Their gazes, sharp and analytic, seemed to miss nothing; and their quiet, confident power was a more potent declaration of their strength than any shouted challenge.

And at the center of that silent watch of storm, was Silas.

He moved through the Academy with this simple scholarly grace, unremarkable presence-his presence always unnoticeable as it were but one couldn't really help but feel those eyes boring into him constantly but rather subtly into his neck. He had ingested more than what was right for a student. He was a hunter. And I... I was his prey.

I needed information. The System, my ever-present, sarcastic companion, had already proven to be a dead end. Silas was an anomaly, a ghost in the machine-of a fate I was so desperately trying to rewrite. So I turned to my own-more, conventional resources.

I found Seraphina in an upper-level training ground, her own form a blur of motion as she danced through a complex and wondrously deadly series of sword forms. She moved like a storm in its beauty and danger, silver-blonde hair an stark and beautiful contrast against the dark and practical leathers she wore.

She stopped as I approached, a single bead of elegant sweat making its way down her temple. "Ashen," she said, her voice a pleasant, low purr. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you finally come to beg for a private lesson?"

"I need your eyes," I said, my own voice low and serious. "The Nocturne delegation. Silas, particularly. I want to know everything. Who he talks to. Where he goes. What he studies. I want to know the color of the socks he wears in the morning."

Her grin widened, growing dangerously beautiful. "And what will you give me in return?" she asked in a low, conspiratorial whisper.

"My eternal gratitude," I replied, my own voice a dry, sarcastic thing.

"Tempting," she said, her violet eyes twinkling with that familiar dangerous light. "But I think I shall settle for another one ... date."

It was a long-drawn sigh of resignation, weary. "Well," I murmured in my low, defeated voice, "but this time…you're indebted into it."

Information trickled in the next few days, snippets of mundane, inconsequential details that, woven together, began to form a dark and rather disturbing tapestry. Silas was a prodigy, studying ancient, forbidden magic. He clearly spent his days hidden deep in the most secret chambers of the Academy library's greatest spaces, restricted to the point where even faculty rarely traveled. He was poring over the very texts that spoke of worlds beyond this life, in other lives-but of souls that were...reborn.

And he was not only studying; he was... searching. It was reported by Seraphina's network of spies, mostly made up of gossiping noblemen and lower-class students in debt, that he had started asking quieter, subtle, and really dangerous questions. About me. About my sudden, inexplicable rise to power. About the strange new magic I wielded.

He was more than simply an oddity. He was an investigator. And thus, he came too close to the truth.

The dragon tooth on my desk was no longer just to be a chain. It was a time bomb, too. I could not ignore it. I could not escape it. I had to answer it.

I found Eren in the armory, the rhythmic scrape of steel on whetstone the only sound in the quiet, dusty air. He was a different man now; the arrogant, hot-headed prince had been transformed to a quieter, more focused warrior.

"I am leaving tonight," I said, my own voice low, somber. "A...personal matter. If I am not back in three days...tell Masha to take Yumi and leave the Academy. There's a little, secluded sanctuary in the lower district of the capital-a place called The Little Sprouts. She will be safe there."

Eren froze, his own hand, which had been so steady, so precise, now still. He looked at me, his own eyes, for the first time, filled not with the competitive fire of a rival, but with a quiet, profound, and very real, concern. "Ashen," he said, his own voice a low, serious thing, "what are you walking into?"

"A conversation," I replied, my own voice a low, honest murmur. "With a man who knows too much."

I did not tell him everything. I did not tell him about Silas, about my past, about the secret that was a constant, heavy weight on my soul. But I told him enough. Enough for him to understand the danger. Enough for him to know that this was not a game.

He stared at me for a contemplative, long silence, while the storm within him raged. Then, he nodded. "I will keep them safe," said he with a promising whisper in his voice. "But you… you'd better come back. Yumi… she needs you."

Yumi was the hardest thing I had ever given up; I found her in the garden chasing after the same mana-butterflies, now so enamored with them that her face seemed one of pure, unadulterated joy, the same beauty she possessed that day we arrived.

"I have to go away for a little while," I told her, my voice a low, soothing murmur as I crouched down to meet her gaze.

"Another adventure?" she said, widening her rose-pink eyes filled with a childish, hopeful excitement.

"Yeah," I said with a small sad smile. "Solo adventure."

Her own smile faltered in turn, a slight tremor in her quivering bottom lip. "But… you'll come back, right?"

"I'll come back," I promised, my voice a quiet, unbreakable vow. "And when I do, we'll go on that dragon ride. Just you and me."

Then, she hugged me tightly, her small arms wrapped around my neck, her small body a comforting weight against my own. "You better," she whispered into my shoulder. "Or I'll be very, very cross with you."

I would be leaving the Academy before dawn-both pre-dawn dark and alive with the booming, magical hum of my bike echoing through quiet, sleep-hold streets. I did not look backward. I could not. The road was far ahead, and the shadows gathered. And me… I had a promise to keep.

The long, tough haul to the Dragon's Tooth mountains was left in a hu. Beyond the pleasant, green lands of the Nowa Empire was a brilliant memory of the towers, an academy with flying, gothic spires; they faded behind my rearview mirror. The twisted, nightmarish landscape was of jagged, black-rock mountains, clawing toward the sky while the peaks twisted and wreathed in a constant, swirling mist.

Then I saw it.

The tallest peak of the Dragon's Tooth mountains: a single, huge spire of rock that seemed to split the very sky open above. And at its very apex was a small flat plateau, a place where the sky brushed the earth, and the veil separating worlds was at its thinnest.

He was already there.

Silas stood at the very edge of the plateau, his form silhouetted against the background of the two moons that hung heavy in the sky with their fine silver light, casting long skeletal shadows on the ground beneath him. He was not the mild, bespectacled boy from the Academy but something else entirely. He was no longer clad in simple, unadorned robes but instead a body-hugging suit of articulated, black leather armor, its surface shimmering with a faint magical light. And his eyes…no longer the color of a stormy sea, they were the color of a starless, midnight sky, burning with a power as ancient as it was profound.

"You came," he said, his voice a low, melodious hum as it contrasted starkly with that beautiful darkness and the dangerous world he inhabited.

"You knew, I would," I replied, my voice low, grim as I dismounted from my bike, the Black Sword of Ruin a silent, hungry promise at my back.

"I did," he said almost imperceptibly and smiled faintly. "Because we are the same, you and I. Two souls who have been… misplaced."

He turned to face me then, his own eyes, for the first time, filled not with the quiet, watchful intelligence of a scholar, but with a cold, hard, and very real, hunger. "And I believe," he said, his own voice a low, final, and utterly devastating blow, "that it is time we had a proper… family reunion."

The game had just become far more dangerous. And the Vampire Academy, I knew, was not yet done with me.