---
🪷 LYRA 🪷
The main auditorium smelled faintly of waxed floors and polished wood. Students filled the benches, talking in low murmurs, leaning on their arms or whispering to each other.
Sienna walked beside her, leaning slightly closer, muttering and whispering to her every now and then.
Lyra's mind kept replaying the image she had seen. Why had it happened? Why had she seen that, and why from Damon's perspective? It shouldn't have been possible. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck rise at the memory.
Then the doors at the front opened. Sebastian walked in first, tall and imposing, his dark coat sweeping slightly behind him.
The crowd fell silent almost immediately. Behind him, three figures in black cloaks followed, stiff and deliberate in their movements. Lyra's brows squinted, there was something… unnatural about the way they moved.
"Students, we gather today to address a tragic incident concerning one of our own. Now, we're going to try and make this quick and hurt less."
Sebastian raised a hand. The three cloaked figure did the same, moving in unison. Lyra's eyes widened as their cloaks slipped from their shoulders in a practiced motion.
Their eyes glowed red. Something about it felt wrong, everything felt wrong.
Their hands lifted, and she felt the first tug in her mind, almost like someone had grabbed the edges of her thoughts and was violently shaking them.
They echoed the motion silently. Lyra felt her legs weaken as a pressure built in her skull, squeezing and twisting. Panic hit her chest like a physical weight.
She looked around. The students besides her were already staring blankly ahead, eyes glazed.
"No…" she whispered, pushing against the feeling. Her own voice sounded small and desperate in her ears.
"Forget, let it fade…" Their voices sounded almost like a chant, repeating, flowing over her mind like water.
A word slipped into her head, foreign, sharp, resonating differently than the others.
Lyra shivered violently. Something about it felt like a key turning in a lock, a weight pressing her down further.
What was happening...
---
🕷️ KIERAN 🕷️
___
He stood at the side of the auditorium, arms crossed loosely. The chatter of students felt hollow and inconsequential.
The doors at the front opened with a measured push. Sebastian entered first, behind him, three figures in black cloaks followed, their steps synchronized, deliberate and precise.
Kieran's gaze swept across the students. Curious, restless, wary...human instinct still colored their movements.
When they reached the front, their cloaks slipped from their shoulders in one fluid motion. Eyes now glowing red, the three figures raised their hands slowly, deliberately, in sync with Sebastian.
They mirrored Sebastian perfectly. Their hands moved like a tide over the room, and he saw the change sweep across the faces in the auditorium.
Kieran's gaze didn't move from the sea of students. Almost everyone was succumbing perfectly. Everyone...except one.
Her eyes darted around the room, wide and disbelieving, like she was trying to piece together what was happening.
Confusion painted her face, not yielding even slightly to the pull.
Then their eyes met. Fear was unmistakable there, trembling under her gaze. She saw him and he saw her. And in that moment, she was the only one in the room still fully awake and aware.
She didn't understand what she had witnessed fully yet. But he did. And for reasons he wasn't ready to voice, that tugged him more than anything else in the room.
Her gaze flicked down briefly, catching on his again. Whatever it was Sebastian was doing had no effect on her. And he… was going to make sure that if anyone noticed, it would only be him.
He studied her like one might study a flame too small to be threatening yet too stubborn to ignore.
...
The last of the students shuffled out of the auditorium like ghosts, blank expressions and glazed eyes, obedient and pliant.
He watched them leave without a flicker of surprise. The compelling had worked. Almost perfectly.
Lyra's steps were hesitant at first. She lingered behind the crowd, watching. Her hands were clutched in front of her, fingers pressing into each other like she could hold herself together physically if her mind refused.
He noticed immediately when she finally moved. She fell into step behind him, the rhythm of her panic obvious in the uneven cadence of her footsteps.
When they were out in the courtyard, the faint light from the moon fell in pale angles across the stone steps.
Her breaths were harsh and uneven, her bag swinging too loosely from one shoulder. Her hair was mussed from frantic movement, strands falling across her forehead.
"What the hell is going on in this place?" she demanded, voice desperate, trembling. "Why does everything feel like it's… upside down? Why does nothing make sense?"
He stopped and turned around to face her, one hand casually tucked into the pocket of his blazer, the other stood still at his side.
She took a step closer, forcing him to glance down at her. There was terror in her eyes, and he couldn't deny it, she was dangerously close to hysteria.
"Talk to me," she said again, voice rising. "I don't know what's happening to me! I can't—my head, it's all wrong. I'm seeing things, now… now this!" She gestured vaguely to the hallways leading to the auditorium.
"What did you see?"
"Don't use that card on me. Am I going insane? Tell me..please. Why am I like this? What just happened?"
"Exactly what you think you saw."
"What exactly did I see? Something's seriously wrong and you're…you're standing there like it's just another Tuesday! What is wrong with you?" She took another step closer, her voice trembling. "Eloise...her ghost has been taunting me even in my dreams. And I-" She faltered for a second, shaking her head. "And now… the director… the director did something in the auditorium. What did he do to them?"
"Compelled them." What was the point in hiding it when she's catching on, she wasn't normal to begin with. "He made them forget 'she' exists."
"She...Amara? Why would he do that...why didn't it work-"
"You're not normal."
She ran a hand through her hair, tugging at it lightly, clearly frustrated.
"Oh, and I'm just going to accept the fact that I'm as fucked up as this place? Why did he make them forget her? Why the hell didn't he hand it over to the authorities if he couldn't handle it. Why perform a freaking compulsion ritual on everyone."
"Amara's death wasn't natural. And I'm not going to explain why. Forget about trying to make sense of it tonight, you can't."
"Forget? Are you kidding me?"
"If anyone knew you didn't forget… if even one of them realized you remembered, they'd take your head. Literally. There are rules. Rules about what gets remembered and what doesn't. Get some rest, and don't tell anyone a thing."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he had already started walking away.
Her panic probably refused to let her be silent. She ran a step after him, grabbing at the sleeve of his blazer.
"Damon...the high-class student, he was the one who killed Amara."
"I know, and I'm not going to ask how you know that, everything about you is already complicated as it is." And with that, he walked away. Only this time, she didn't try to follow.
He walked across the courtyard, hands tucked into the pockets of his blazer. The stone path led toward the high-class dormitory, the tall building standing dark and quiet at the far end of the campus.
The campus was quieter now. Most students had already returned to their dorms after the auditorium incident, their minds wiped clean and their memories carefully rearranged.
As far as the rest of the school was concerned, nothing had happened.
Amara had never existed. Just another normal night at Ravencrest.
Except for one problem. Kieran exhaled slowly through his nose as he walked.
She wasn't normal, that much was obvious. The compulsion alone should have worked on her. It had worked on hundreds of students before her, year after year, with barely any resistance.
Human minds were soft things. Easy to push and easy to rearrange. Sebastian and the others had erased entire weeks of memory before without anyone even noticing.
But Lyra had stood in that auditorium like someone trying to wake up from a nightmare.
If Sebastian had noticed that, Lyra would already be dead. Sebastian didn't tolerate loose ends.
The high-class dorm was always quiet like this at night. Predatory in a way most humans would never recognize. Because they weren't supposed to come in here.
Ghosts weren't something most humans could see. Even vampires rarely dealt with them. But there were a few people in the world who were… sensitive to that kind of thing.
Psychics? Mediums? Bloodlines that could see what other people couldn't.
Maybe Lyra was one of them, that would explain Eloise, that had to be it.
He didn't want to have any involvement with her. And yet…he had still noticed things he shouldn't have.
The stubborn way she kept standing there instead of running away. The fact that she grabbed his sleeve like she expected him to actually answer her, like he owed her something.
Attraction wasn't something he spent much time thinking about. Humans were food, sometimes entertainment and sometimes a distraction.
But they weren't something he got attached to. Attachment made things messy and she was messy enough already.
Still…
The way Damon had been looking at her earlier that day came back to him. That lazy, predatory stare Damon got when something caught his interest.
Kieran hadn't liked it then. He definitely didn't like it now. Damon already had Amara's blood on his hands. The last thing he needed was another obsession.
The humans in the normal dorms weren't just classmates. They were supply, a controlled food source.
Livestock that lived comfortably, studied normally, and occasionally woke up with two small marks on their neck and no memory of how they got them.
The academy called it coexistence. But the reality was simpler - Predators above. Prey below.
And Lyra had just started pulling at the curtain separating the two. And somehow already entangled in things that should never have touched her life.
Lyra's problems were not his responsibility. If she kept digging, she would get herself killed. Simple, not his concern.
"Trouble," he muttered under his breath. And yet, for some reason he didn't like the idea of that trouble belonging to anyone else.
Because the possessive irritation crawling under his skin right now made absolutely no sense.