From the moment the foundations of Valerius Academy were laid, its visionaries dreamed of creating a sanctuary where every student stood equal before the law.
Rules were carved into black stone, preserved by centuries of tradition, and reinforced with ancient magic so intricate that breaking them was often more troublesome than obeying them.
Every student, regardless of bloodline, house, or kin, received the same handbook upon arrival.
Behind the academy, where the oldest gardens overlooked the cliffs and the forest stretched endlessly beyond, stood an enormous slab of obsidian engraved with those very same laws in ancient script.
Legend claimed the inscriptions had been carved by the academy’s founder, Valerius himself.
Each stroke had been etched so deeply into the stone that neither time nor magic had ever managed to wear them away.
Students often joked that losing the handbook was forgivable, while forgetting the stone was not.
It was a beautiful sentiment.
Beautifully written.
But the founders understood a truth their successors would spend centuries pretending not to see.
In a world built upon ancient bloodlines and inherited power, equality is a privilege afforded only to those without names worth fearing.
The written laws were absolute, but perhaps only for the ordinary students.
For those who arrived from quiet villages and distant towns with nothing but a family name no professor recognized.
A missed curfew became a disciplinary report.
A duel meant suspension.
An unlocked dormitory door earned a formal warning.
They learned to walk the stone corridors beneath the academy’s watchful gaze, careful not to place a single foot beyond the lines drawn for them.
Running alongside those written laws, however, existed another code.
One never spoken aloud yet understood by every student before the end of their first semester.
Rules did not govern the sovereign.
Every kin arrived with its own aristocracy.
The lycans answered to the Alphas, heirs to the oldest packs whose authority had been settled generations before their births.
The witches sent the descendants of the High Covens, families whose names were inked into grimoires older than entire kingdoms.
The sirens came from the Abyssal Courts, carrying beauty so intoxicating that even seasoned professors measured their words carefully.
The fae arrived from the ancient High Courts, where promises held greater weight than law itself.
And the reapers… The reapers descended from the Veil Keepers, a lineage so old that silence seemed to follow wherever they walked.
Together, they formed the academy’s untouchable circle.
The future rulers.
The future generals.
The future High Priests, Matriarchs, Lords, Alphas, and Kings.
Students who would one day determine the fate of nations before they had even graduated.
Yet even among that circle of inherited power, one family stood apart.
One name existed beyond privilege.
Beyond consequence.
The Laurents.
Their fortune had financed wings of the academy long before most kingdoms drew their current borders.
Their influence reached far beyond lecture halls, extending into governments, noble councils, and institutions that quietly shaped the continent itself.
It was whispered that Valerius Academy did not simply tolerate House Laurent.
It needed House Laurent.
And unfortunately for them, Roman Alexandre Laurent understood this better than anyone.
Maybe that is why he obeyed surprisingly few of the academy’s rules.
The restricted wings never remained restricted for long whenever he appeared.
Curfew became little more than a suggestion.
Guards forgot to file reports.
Professors overlooked transgressions that would have ended another student’s academic career before sunset.
It was not out of ignorance per se, but because they knew exactly whose surname appeared on his enrollment papers.
That was the contradiction upon which Valerius Academy had always survived: Its laws were absolute.
Its exceptions were absolute too.
Perhaps that was why generations of students eventually abandoned the academy’s official motto altogether.
Instead, they gave it another name.
The Campus of Sinners.
For nowhere else in the world gathered so many future rulers, saints, tyrants, prodigies, monsters, and miracles beneath the same roof… and expected them all to behave.
WHISTLE—
A silver-tipped arrow cut through the crisp morning air, flying with lethal velocity straight toward the center of the academy’s secluded western courtyard.
The weapon moved too fast for mortal sight, a blur of deadly intent.
Just when it reached exactly one inch from a crimson pupil, the arrow froze.
The air around the silver tip shimmered, rippling with a heavy, invisible pressure.
For one agonizing heartbeat, the arrow suspended in midair, vibrating under the absolute force of a telekinetic grip that refused to let it move a millimeter further.
With a casual flick of the vampire’s mind, the tension snapped.
The arrow dropped straight down, clattering harmlessly against the cobblestones.
Roman did not even blink.
He remained stretched out on the stone bench, his head propped lazily against his locked hands while staring up at the canopy of ancient oaks.
“Too slow,” he drawled, his voice a smooth friction that carried across the empty courtyard.
“Do it again and put some actual malice into it this time, Jett. I’m starting to think you miss me.”
Across the courtyard, standing near the arched stone colonnade, Jett Winslow let out a harsh, irritated breath.
As the son of a prominent vampire lord, Jett was one of the few who could stand in Roman’s orbit without completely dissolving under his shadow, though today, his patience was wearing dangerously thin.
He had been firing arrows non-stop since dawn simply because Roman’s ego required a challenge.
“I don’t miss you, Laurent. I’m trying to kill you,” Jett grumbled, yanking another heavy arrow from the quiver slung across his back.
He notched the string of his composite bow, the wood groaning under the immense strength of his pull.
The fabric of his shirt strained as the muscles across his broad shoulders shifted and flexed, his sharp, dark brown crew cut catching the morning light.
“One inch is already close enough. If I go any faster, I’m going to permanently ruin that devastatingly expensive face of yours, and I really don’t want to explain to your father why his son has a silver rod sticking out of his skull.”
Roman’s mouth curved into a wicked smirk, the firelight of his crimson eyes flashing in the shadows.
“Then don’t miss. One inch is a coward’s gap, I want it closer. Half an inch. Let me feel the wind off the feathers.”
Jett exhaled a cynical laugh, locking his sight onto the center of Roman’s forehead.
“You have a deeply twisted definition of a hobby.”
“Safety is boring,” Roman murmured, his fingers twitching slightly as his control over the surrounding space reset.
“Fire, Lordling. Let’s see if you’ve actually got the nerve today.”
Jett did not answer with words.
He simply released the string.
SNAP.
The bowstring cracked like thunder, and the second arrow tore through the distance, faster, meaner, and carrying the true, lethal intent Roman had asked for.
It was a shot meant to execute.
But Roman just smiled, his fangs catching the morning light as his mind rose to meet the steel.
This time, the arrow stopped so near his face that the steel tip almost kissed the reflection in his eye.
Half an inch.
Just like he asked.
Roman studied it in silence before clicking his tongue.
“Better.”
With a careless tilt of his chin, the arrow clattered against the cobblestones beside the first.
Roman smoothly swung his legs over the side of the stone bench and stood up, towering and fluid, entirely unbothered by his lack of a shirt in the crisp morning air.
He stretched his arms over his head, his muscles flexing beneath pale skin, before fixing Jett with a challenge.
”Next time,” Roman said, pointing at his eyes with two fingers, then at Jett, “I want a quarter of an inch.
Pack more weight behind the draw, Winslow.
You’re still hesitating at the release.”
Jett lowered his composite bow, exhaling an exasperated breath as he slung the weapon over his shoulder.
“One day,” he muttered, “you’re going to misjudge your luck.”
Roman grinned lazily.
“I don’t rely on luck.”
“You rely on my patience,” Jett grumbled.
“That too,” Roman replied, far too easily, as if it was a compliment.
He picked up a dark blazer from the ground, tossing it over his shoulders.
Jett rolled his eyes.
Some people collected antiques.
Roman collected increasingly creative ways to tempt death.
Slowly, his attention drifting toward the distant academy gates where carriages and entourages had begun to arrive in slow procession.
Ah… right.
Today was First Year’s Arrival.
While the academy’s upper years had already disappeared into lectures hours ago, the newest students were only just beginning their orientation.
Roman and Jett, of course, were nowhere near their assigned classroom.
The first lecture of the term had apparently lost a contest against Roman’s latest suicidal pastime.
“New batch is already spilling in,” Jett commented.
Roman followed his gaze as the wind wandered through the courtyard, teasing the dark strands of his hair into a deliberate sort of untidiness.
“Mm.” That single sound carried more attention than most people’s entire sentences.
“I heard the intake list is ugly this year.”
“Yeah,” Jett glanced sideways.
“It’s a mess of high-profile names. Feels less like an academy orientation and more like a tactical deployment.”
“It’s always a tactical deployment,” Roman murmured, leaning his hips back against the stone balustrade and crossing his arms.
“Every great house sends their heirs here to play nice beneath the gaze of dead visionaries.”
Though, if he were being honest, he could appreciate the lethal efficiency of it.
A central institution was the perfect blind for the true business of the realm, which is forging illicit alliances under the noses of faculty, mapping the vulnerabilities of rival houses, and tracking an enemy’s movements before they even realized they were prey.
By graduation, the student body would be completely carved up.
Half of them would be bound by arranged marriages meant to swallow lesser houses whole, trade agreements sealed in blood, or military pacts designed to overthrow kings.
The rest would simply be lifelong enemies waiting for the right moment to strike.
“Is your sister on one of those transit lines today?” Jett asked, pulling him back to the conversation.
“No,” Roman replied smoothly.
“She arrived late last night. The crowds are too chaotic on arrival day.”
Jett nodded, tracking a group of freshmen down below.
“Fair enough. Good luck to her.” He said.
“Figure she’ll have enough eyes on her anyway. Apparently two Alpha successors enrolled. A High Coven prodigy. One of the eastern fae courts finally sent an heir after nearly twenty years.”
Roman hummed.
“So the political families are nervous again.”
“They’re always nervous.”
“They have reason to be.”
“Right…” Jett’s expression lost some of its humour, his gaze dropping to the cobblestones.
“The last generation didn’t exactly end well.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The weight of things left unsaid hung heavily in the crisp morning air.
The rest of the academy’s factions only knew pieces of the scandal, whispered across dining halls like a ghost story, but the vampire aristocracy had been forced to watch the full, unfiltered display.
The Council’s Enforcement among their own was absolute and merciless.
The boy had been a low-tier vampire from a nameless border house, an exceptional student who had spent four years earning the highest academic honours the academy could bestow.
He had stood on the graduation stage, celebrated by the department, revered by his peers.
But his identity had been exposed right at the pinnacle of his success.
A routine blood-purity audit for his post-graduation military commission had unraveled the tapestry of his lies.
He had not even made it past the academy gates before the Council’s executioners intercepted him.
Eventually, Jett said quietly, “I heard the Council still hasn’t erased the records.”
Roman’s crimson eyes drifted toward the towering academy buildings.
“About the halfbreed?”
Jett nodded once.
“Too many people watched it happen. Hard to scrub a memory when it burns that bright.” He let out a slow, troubled breath as a rare flash of genuine pity broke through his usual aristocratic indifference.
“Poor kid never even made it past the academy gates. It’s brutal, even for our kind.”
Roman did not react, his expression smoothing into a cold, inscrutable mask.
He knew the laws of their kind better than anyone.
To the high-born vampires of the capital, preservation of the blood was a holy war.
A halfbreed was not just a rule-breaker, it was a biological treason.
“Don’t waste your pity on the Council’s brutality, Winslow,” Roman said softly, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet register.
“They don’t leave those records open because they’re proud of the fire. They do it because they’re terrified.”
Jett glanced at him, surprised.
“Terrified of what?”
“Of what happens if one of those children survives long enough to learn its own strength,” Roman murmured, a predatory glint returning to his eyes as he looked out over the sprawling academy.
“A creature born of two worlds, holding the magic of a fae and the senses of a vampire?”
He turned his head slightly, one dark brow arched as his gaze locked onto Jett.
“That’s not a stain, Jett. That’s no abomination. And old men hate nothing more than a power they can’t control.”
The chilling gravity of his words hung in the air for a single heartbeat before Roman let out a lazy, dismissive breath.
The tension vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
He clapped Jett firmly on the shoulder, his usual wicked smirk returning to his lips.
“Come on,” he urged, turning away from the balustrade and heading toward the grand stone archway.
“Let’s go greet the new arrivals. I want to see how many of these future rulers are actually worth our time.”