RIVAL’S POV
You ever get that feeling in your gut? The one that creeps up your spine and whispers, something’s off?
I felt it the second I slipped back through the side shaft.
Shadow had left me something.
Not a voice, not a plan. Just a mark. Fresh. Smaller than the last, etched into the iron beam just beneath the old furnace pipe.
A circle. Three slashes through it.
Our code.
Translation?
“Watch your back.”
So yeah, by the time I got back to my dorm, my pulse was already tap-dancing against my ribcage. My boots were silent across the concrete. I didn’t expect to sleep. I just wanted to collapse face-first onto the shitty thin mattress, maybe curse the universe a few times, and try not to think about how I’d just had a conversation with a dead man.
But the second I stepped into
