We're the Myth

CHAPTER 1: BROKEN ALARM

It was a dark, silent night at the Diamond Campus.

Inside Dormitory 20-B, in a spacious high-rise room glowing faintly under the blue moonlight, three boys lay in their beds.

Everything was still… until-

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

An alarm clock screamed from across the room like a dying robot. One of the boys groaned.

Nicolas sat up halfway, squinting at the noise. Without even thinking, he grabbed a pen from his desk and threw it with the speed of a bullet.

THWACK!

A direct hit. The pen stabbed straight through the alarm clock like a knife through toast. It sparked once… then died instantly. Nicolas fluffed his blanket like nothing had happened and went back to sleep.

Two Hours Later

Sunlight flooded the dorm. Birds chirped outside. But inside? Full-blown panic.

“Gabriel! Open the door! You’ve been in there for five minutes!”

Nicolas Mitsui shouted, pounding hard on the bathroom door.

From the other side, Gabriel D. Quevas snapped back, his voice echoing through the steam.

“You motherfu**** sit your ass somewhere! If one of you had the brains to wake me up or didn’t DESTROY my alarm none of us would be late right now!”

Above, on the floating loft that served as his bedroom, Ethan Asher Guevarra groaned. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the giant clock mounted on the far wall.

His eyes went wide.

“Crap. Crap. CRAP!”

The dorm’s high ceiling made his upper platform feel like its own little stage. His bed and desk sat on the wide, wall-less floor above Nicolas’s space. Below, Nicolas’s bed tucked neatly under the loft with his study table and tall drawer standing beside the staircase.

Ethan didn’t bother with the stairs. With a quick hop, he vaulted clean off the edge of his platform.

His bare feet hit the polished wooden floor with a solid thud, knees bent to absorb the impact. He landed perfectly facing Nicolas’s drawer.

In the same motion, he lunged forward, yanking the drawer open before Nicolas could react.

“Hey! Ash, what the hell?!” Nicolas barked, shoving him aside.But Stephan was already digging through the clothes.

Click!

Right on cue, the bathroom door swung open, steam pouring out. Gabriel stepped out with a towel around his neck, and Stephan slid past him into the bathroom like it had all been choreographed. The door slammed shut behind him before Gabriel even realized what had happened.

Gabriel turned slowly, eyebrows raised. “What?”

Nicolas replied “He took my underwear.”

“You two are seriously unwell,” Gabriel muttered, his face twisting in disgust.

----

After the three of them finished dressing, Gabriel picked up a sleek black device from his desk and tossed it across the room.

The object looked like a high-end wristwatch, smooth black metal, a faint blue line running around its face. But it wasn’t just a watch. It was an AeroSync Vital Band , designed to track their heart rate, and blood pressure alerting them if anything drifted outside a safe range. For students of Diamond Campus, it was as essential as a uniform.

“Don’t forget this,” Gabriel said firmly.

Ethan, already fastening the cuffs of his uniform, reached out and caught it without breaking stride. Nicolas, still bare from the waist up, barely glanced as the band landed neatly in Ethan’s palm.

“I’m heading out first,” Gabriel added.

He wasn’t wearing the top half of his uniform yet, his shirt and jacket were folded over his arm as he walked toward the balcony.

“You’re insane,” Nicolas called after him. “If someone sees you out there, you’re dead.”

Gabriel only gave a small, quick smile. “Everyone’s already in the examination hall. We’re the only ones left on this building.”

They were on the twentieth floor, the morning wind cutting across the open balcony. Gabriel stepped outside, the cold air brushing over his bare back. He set his uniform aside on the railing and stood still, breathing deep.

Then it began.

A subtle shift ran through his shoulders, the muscles along his spine tightening. The skin on his upper back moved slightly, as though something beneath was stretching. He tilted forward, bracing his hands on the railing as the motion continued a slow, deliberate expansion.

From two faint seams just below his shoulder blades, the wings emerged. At first only the base smooth, strong extensions of bone and muscle pushing outward, forcing the skin to part cleanly as if his body had always been built for this. Feathers followed, layered and thick, unfolding in careful order until the full span stretched wide.

The wings were massive, easily twice the width of his outstretched arms. Each feather was soft white with a hint of cream, the edges catching the early sunlight. They flexed once, sending a faint gust of air across the balcony.

Gabriel straightened, rolling his shoulders as the last of the movement settled. The wings looked like they had always belonged there, heavy but perfectly balanced.

Without another word, he stepped onto the railing and jumped.

Nicolas came to the window, watching as Gabriel dropped and then glided away with a few powerful strokes. He pressed his palms together in mock prayer and murmured under his breath,

“Hope you get caught.”

---

By the time Ethan and Nicolas reached the first examination. BSE: Bio-Status Evaluation, where blood work, genetic scans, and endless diagnostics were performed, they spotted Gabriel outside on the training grounds.

He was already in full uniform, sleeves rolled, body low to the ground, knocking out push-ups with sharp, mechanical precision. Beside him stood a bald professor gripping a baseball bat like it was part of the uniform.

Even from a distance, Gabriel noticed them. He lifted his eyes mid push-up, and the professor followed his gaze, giving Ethan and Nicolas a single sharp look, one that said everything without words.

A second later, the two of them were down in the sand beside Gabriel, palms flat, legs straight.

“You’re late by an hour. One full hour!” the professor barked, his voice cutting through the morning air. “If you were on a mission planting a bomb, your insides would already be decorating the walls!”

He paced in front of them, swinging the bat as he talked. “Back in my day-”

That was all the three of them needed to hear before their brains tuned out. The rest of his speech melted into background noise: blah blah blah… back in my day… blah blah… discipline… respect…

Minutes passed. The sand was hot, the sun climbing higher. Gabriel exhaled sharply and muttered just loud enough for Ethan and Nicolas to catch it,

“Just showered and I already smell like a corpse.”

He kept going, but the push-ups were wearing him down. When he finally looked up again, a sharp glint of sunlight bounced off the professor’s shiny bald head. Without thinking, Gabriel grumbled under his breath,

“Damn shiny head…”

Nicolas bit his lip, trying not to laugh. Ethan didn’t even try, he collapsed face-first into the sand, shoulders shaking.

The professor’s head snapped toward them. His eyes narrowed.

“Five. Hundred. More,” he said, voice like steel.