The second semester began…
The corridors of the Obsidian Order smelled the same as they always had: steel, candle wax, and faint traces of sage used to ward off the remnants of dark magic.
But to Lilith, they felt different now. Colder. Sharper. Like the walls themselves were watching her. Like the walls have been hiding centuries of grotesque secrets.
Now, she walked through it not as the girl who was finding herself, but as the woman who had learned what betrayal really felt like.
She paused by the hall of portraits, every hunter who’d ever led the Order stared down from the walls in their black-and-silver armor, eyes painted with reverence and pride. Her grandfather’s and grandmother’s faces hung at the center. Ragnar and Rhayena Rothwell, the couple who’d built the legacy she’d be
