The heavy mahogany desk between them felt like a boundary line between two enemies.
The air in the lecture hall grew increasingly thin as Valerius kept his long, pale fingers hovering just an inch away from Scarlett’s hidden sleeve-launcher.
Scarlett didn’t blink beneath her oversized hood.
Her handlers had called this tech a triumph of cognitive science—a neural flatline designed to leave no residual electrical energy for a telepath to read.
Yet, she could feel his intense gaze digging into her, sharp and unyielding.
”Begin the lecture, Professor Vance,” Valerius commanded softly, his voice cutting through the room without him even looking down.
“Before the loud thoughts of my classmates drive me to clear this room permanently.”
At the bottom of the amphitheater, Professor Cyrus Vance adjusted his spectacles, locking his grey eyes onto the display above him.
”Today, we skip the standard curriculum,” Vance announced, tapping the digital board to project a rotating molecular structure.
“We will discuss Aconitum Sanguis—the Blood-Root.”
Scarlett’s thumb instinctively twitched.
The exact neurotoxin currently loaded into my sleeve, she noted.
”Three hundred years ago, human hunter cells used this compound to paralyze pureblood synapses,” Vance paced along the podium, his voice echoing sharply.
“It locked them inside their own bodies, turning their blood into stone while they remained fully conscious.
Can anyone tell me why modern synthetic replicas fail today?”
The wealthy heirs lowered their eyes, terrified of looking foolish.
”Nobody?” Vance smiled coldly.
“Then perhaps our scholarship student can enlighten us.
Miss Scarlett, surely you have a theory.”
Five hundred heads turned simultaneously toward the top row.
The focus of the entire room slammed into her.
She spoke clearly, her voice steady and hollow.
“The synthetic version fails because modern science attempts to replicate the compound through chemical bonding alone.
The original formula required a biological catalyst—a specific genetic marker found only in the blood of the primary host line.
Without the live catalyst, the toxin is nothing more than a temporary sedative.”
Professor Vance’s eyes flared with sudden satisfaction.
“Correct, Miss Scarlett.”
Right next to her, a sudden drop in temperature turned her next breath into a faint cloud of white mist.
”A biological catalyst,” Valerius murmured, his voice a low vibration that sent a shiver down her spine.
He slowly turned his head.
“An ancient secret buried in a bloodline.
Tell me…
where does an ordinary girl learn the specific failures of an underworld weapon?”
”It was in the historical archives of the central library, Lord Thorne,” Scarlett replied smoothly, keeping her eyes fixed forward.
“I read a lot.”
”Is that so?” Valerius leaned closer, his raw power heavy in the air.
“Because to me, it sounds like you are speaking from personal experience.”
[Breathing Beat]
For a long second, everything froze.
The hum of the classroom’s heating vents felt unusually loud.
Scarlett watched a speck of dust drift through the holographic light of the projector, counting her own heartbeat to keep it perfectly even.
Before she could blink, Valerius reached out.
His movement was a sudden blur that bypassed her defense reflexes entirely.
His long, pale fingers wrapped securely around her left wrist, lifting her hand off the desk.
The entire lecture hall held its breath.
Scarlett’s inner instincts screamed at her to activate the needle-launcher and drive the neurotoxin directly into his throat, but she forced her body to remain entirely limp.
He is baiting me, she realized.
He wants my mind to leak.
”Your wrist is remarkably cold,” Valerius whispered, his thumb pressing directly against her star-shaped scar.
His telepathy slammed against her mental walls, searching for a single drop of panic.
“And your mind…
still so beautifully quiet.
It’s infuriating.”
”Release me, Lord Thorne,” Scarlett said, her voice dropping into a quiet line.
“You are disrupting the class.”
”Let them watch,” Valerius sneered softly, his eyes narrowing as he stared down at her covered wrist.
“I want to see what happens when the pressure increases.”
He applied a fraction of his pureblood strength.
The pressure was immense, enough to crush human bone.
Scarlett’s jaw clenched against the white-hot flash of pain shooting up her arm, but she refused to let out a sound.
She kept her thoughts entirely frozen.
But then, the unpredictable happened.
Her neural block didn’t shatter.
Instead, the small, faded star-shaped scar on her left wrist began to glow.
Deep beneath the layers of her skin, a faint, iridescent crimson light pulsed through the old scar tissue, vibrating in perfect sync with a sudden resonance that rippled across Valerius’s entire body.
The moment the crimson light touched his skin, Valerius flinched.
The untouchable King of the Thorne empire abruptly ripped his hand away from her wrist as if he had been burned by pure silver.
His eyes widened into a rare flash of genuine shock.
He stared at his own palm, where a faint, smoking red brand of a star had temporarily scorched his flesh.
Absolute silence fell over the top row.
Neither of them moved.
Scarlett stared down at her skin as the crimson light dissolved back into a dull, pale mark.
For three seconds, the entire world felt entirely stationary.
Down at the podium, Professor Vance stopped speaking.
His hands gripped the edges of his desk so hard that the digital display flickered, his sharp eyes locked onto Scarlett’s wrist.
He knew exactly what that light meant.
Valerius looked up from his burned palm, the dangerous, teasing smirk completely gone from his face.
His chest was heaving, his dead heart hammering violently against his ribs once more.
”That light…” Valerius breathed, his voice trembling with a dark emotion that made the glass windows hum.
“That isn’t a human block.
That is her signature.
That is her curse.”
He leaned in until his lips almost brushed her ear, his hand crushing the edge of her mahogany desk into splinters.
”You lied to me, little ghost,” he whispered, a cruel, beautiful promise of ruin dancing in his eyes.
“You don’t even know what you are, do you?
You don’t know whose blood is running through your veins.”
Seeing the untouchable pureblood king lose his composure for the first time…
there is truly nothing more satisfying.
I know this cliffhanger might feel brutal, but the structural pacing of Chapter 2 demanded this psychological shift.
Scarlett entered this academy assuming she was the ultimate hunter, but a single glowing mark has completely rewritten the rules of her mission.
Valerius finally recognizes the ancient blood running through her veins—yet, our little ghost remains entirely in the dark about her own identity.
A question for the comment section: What do you think is the true origin behind Scarlett’s star-shaped scar?
And why does Valerius refer to her existence as “his curse”?
I’d love to read your theories below.
Let’s climb the rankings together.