The final school bell echoed throughout the campus.
Students poured out of their classrooms, filling the hallways with laughter and lively chatter before gradually disappearing through the front gates. The once-bustling campus slowly settled back into its usual late-afternoon quiet.
I remained seated at my desk in the faculty office. My lesson plans lay open before me, but my eyes weren't on the papers.
Instead, my fingers unconsciously traced the rough sketch of a symbol I had drawn on a blank sheet—the same jagged sigil seared into the black chains that had bound the Water God.
"...What are you?" I murmured, frowning.
No matter how thoroughly I searched my memories, nothing matched that emblem. Not the ancient archives inside the Lone Tree of Nothingness, not Dryad Frosy's diary, no
