The icy water dripping from the rusted faucet in the infirmary sink cut through the sterile silence like a knife with every drop. Vane gripped the edges of the porcelain until his knuckles turned white. His reflection in the mirror stared back at him like a stranger. The exhaustion in his eyes wasn't just from a lack of sleep; it was the crushing weight of the dark secrets now anchored to his soul.
He traced the pitch-black, burn-like scar on his right palm. Somewhere deep inside, the boy who missed his mother's warm smile and Kael's reassuring voice was absolutely terrified of this mark. But Vane violently shoved that boy into the darkest, most locked-away corner of his mind. Emotions will only get you killed, he whispered to himself.
Right then, the air in the room grew heavy. When the sickeningly sweet scent of lilies began to burn his throat, a cold shiver ran down Vane's spine. Just behind his reflection in the mirror, a silhouette woven from shadows materialized.
Vane's breath caught in his throat. Lysandra... In the pitch-black of the archive, she had been a figure of pure terror. But here, under the pale blue light of the infirmary, the woman's sheer beauty shattered Vane's logical barriers for a split second. Her skin, as smooth as porcelain; her midnight-black hair cascading down her bare shoulders; and the dark purple gown hugging her figure with lethal elegance... Vane had never seen such a breathtaking sight in his entire life.
His heart began to pound rapidly, entirely betraying his will. For a few brief seconds, he forgot his strategies, his revenge, and the danger he was in; he just stared at the mesmerizing masterpiece standing before him. As he felt himself getting trapped in Lysandra's bottomless violet eyes, he ground his teeth together to suppress the terrifying mix of fear and sudden attraction waking up inside him. She's not a woman, Vane. She's a parasite. A monster.
As if noticing this brief, human falter, Lysandra stepped closer to his reflection with a mocking smirk. Her freezing breath made the hairs on the back of Vane's neck stand on end.
"Does my beauty cloud your mind, my little pawn?" Lysandra murmured. Her voice was like venom seeping directly into his soul. "Everything beautiful is dangerous. Just like that rusted dagger in your hand."
Vane forced himself to tear his gaze away from her and locked his eyes onto his own reflection in the mirror. He fought to keep his voice steady. "You were going to tell me how to control that power."
Lysandra smiled, seemingly pleased that Vane had so quickly slipped his "cold mask" back on. "Your body isn't forged enough to carry that Black Hole yet. If you try to swallow everything at once like last time, your veins will pop one by one." The woman pointed at the pitch-black scar on his right palm. "You will take the aether leaking through that crack in the seal like a sip. Just a tiny sip. Crack the door open, draw the energy in, and let your cells burn with that fire. As your body is forged by that agony, it will slowly transform into a vessel truly ready for absolute power."
While Vane stared at the black mark on his palm, Lysandra gave her final warning: "You will suffer, Vane. Your flesh will scorch. But if you don't feel that pain, you will never become a hunter. At the first opportunity... take a sip."
At the creak of the door opening, Lysandra dissipated like mist. Vane rapidly scrubbed away the lingering traces of the spellbound trance he had been in mere seconds ago. Elian appeared in the doorway. The scrawny boy looked at Vane's bandaged arm, genuine concern swimming in his eyes.
"Vane... Are you okay?" Elian asked. "The healers finally gave us the green light to leave. We have history class after breakfast."
Vane wanted to return Elian's pure, honest gaze. There was a nerve inside him screaming to say, "I'm fine, don't worry." Elian was the only person in this hellhole who had helped him without expecting anything in return. But as Lysandra's black mark burned on his palm, Vane settled for a distant, stiff nod. Getting close to him means dragging him into this darkness, he thought. The only way to protect Elian was to build an impenetrable wall between them.
The amphitheater where history class was held was no different from a torture chamber for Vane. As he listened to the old professor point at the map and describe New Nocturne as a "dead bloodline," the scar on Vane's palm began to throb.
"King Vorian cleansed this disgusting lineage, saving the world from a plague," the professor declared with pride.
A surge of anger flared up in Vane's chest, but he ruthlessly crushed it with cold logic. His gaze drifted to Lyra Corvus, sitting a few rows ahead of him. The girl's silver hair gleamed in the light, and the faint scent of chamomile she radiated shifted the stuffy air of the professor's dusty classroom.
Vane recalled the way Lyra had said goodbye to him in the infirmary. "Sweetie." The emphasis, the intonation... It was exactly the way his mother used to call him. Could it just be a coincidence? Or was Lyra hiding something about his past? That overpowering feeling that he knew her from somewhere was gnawing at him from the inside.
Right at that moment, as if feeling a pair of eyes burning into the back of her head, Lyra suddenly turned around.
Vane was caught off guard. His eyes locked with Lyra's emerald-green irises. In that instant, the professor's voice, the murmur of the classroom—everything faded away. A crack formed in Vane's defensive walls; he searched that gaze for both a sense of familiarity and a deep secret.
A momentary flash of surprise, maybe even something that looked like guilt, flickered in Lyra's eyes. But that "human" moment didn't last longer than a second. As if flustered by being caught, the girl quickly averted her gaze and turned back to face the front. Her hands trembled slightly as she gripped her notebook.
I'm drawn to her, yet I know I should hate her, Vane thought. His mind was an absolute battlefield. As Lyra's voice calling him "Sweetie" echoed in his ears, he ruthlessly bound that human desire within him in the cold, heavy chains of his logic.