The air inside Room 204 was suffocating, thick with a dark, crackling energy before I even reached my seat in the back row.
Professor Dante Black stood at the front of the lecture hall, but the polished, unflappable composure he usually wore like armour was noticeably frayed. His dark suit jacket was discarded over the back of his chair, his crisp white sleeves pulled up past his elbows, and his jawline set in an iron-hard, unforgiving line. He had already reduced a timid freshman in the front row to near silence over a minor question about the syllabus before I had even pulled out my notebook.
The moment I slid into my seat, the heavy wooden legs scraping softly against the floor, Dante’s head snapped up.
His icy blue eyes cut through the dim room, locking onto me with a lethal, terrif
