The transition from the sterile stone classrooms of the Thorne Academy of Cognitive Sciences to the jagged boundaries of the Obsidian Forest was instant and brutal.
The sky above the restricted sector wasn’t blue; it was a bruised, bleeding purple, choked by heavy ash clouds that drifted endlessly from the volcanic core of the training grounds.
Massive, petrified trees made of solid black crystalline stone towered over the students like frozen giants, their sharp, blade-like branches catching the dim light.
The ground beneath Scarlett’s heavy combat boots was covered in a thick layer of fine, black ash that crunched and shifted with every single step, making balancing an active challenge.
”Form up!
Squad boundaries are now active!
Any student found outside their designated coordinate grid after the baseline alarm will be disqualified—or left for dead!” Enforcer Ethan’s booming voice echoed across the perimeter lines as the heavy steel gates slammed shut behind fifty elite students.
The trial had officially begun, and the forest didn’t waste a single second proving why it was deemed a restricted death zone.
Within the first sixty seconds, the air was cut not by simulated combat warnings, but by raw, human agony.
To the left flank, a hidden swarm of Ash-Leeches—flesh-eating nocturnal parasites—burst from the obsidian soil.
They instantly liquefied the kinetic barriers of a second-year elite student.
Screams erupted through the fog as the boy was dragged violently into the black brush, his blood spraying across the crystalline trunks in bright crimson streaks.
Two more high-born elites were down immediately, their limbs cleanly shattered by the violent, shifting roots of the petrified trees that reacted to raw mana signatures.
The danger level wasn’t just high; it was genuinely lethal.
Scarlett stood entirely alone at the edge of the chaotic drop zone, her fingers wrapped tightly around the internal leather grip of her hidden gauntlet blades.
She didn’t have a squad, nor did she want one.
No high-born pureblood wanted to partner with a ‘scholarship rat’ from Sector 4 in a zone where death was an acceptable margin of error.
”Look at her, already abandoned by her own shadow,” Lyra Vane laughed softly from a few yards away, her pale eyes glinting with pure malice as she fitted a glowing, kinetic arrow into her silver recurve bow.
Her twin brother, Julian, stood directly beside her, his hands sparking with that same dangerous, unpredictable blue flame.
“Try not to die in the first ten minutes, human.
If a beast tears you apart before we do, it completely spoils our fun.”
Suddenly, a piercing, unearthly shriek tore through the ash-choked air, vibrating so hard it rattled Scarlett’s teeth.
From the dark crystalline canopy above, a massive Shadow-Stalker—a vault-class beast with razor-sharp skeletal limbs, armored exo-plates, and four glowing crimson eyes—dropped straight behind Julian.
The creature had been driven completely wild by the loud, arrogant scent of his active blue fire.
It rose from the obsidian earth like a multi-limbed nightmare, its massive bone-claws raised to split the boy cleanly in half from the shoulder down.
”Julian!
Behind you!
Kill it!” Lyra screamed, her perfect composure shattering instantly as her bow slipped from her trembling hands in sheer, paralyzing panic.
Julian turned, his blue fire flickering out entirely as raw terror froze his muscles.
The beast’s jagged claw came down like a heavy guillotine.
A blinding flash of silver steel cut through the dim purple light.
Scarlett appeared out of thin air, her body moving with a terrifying, unnatural speed that completely defied human biology.
She didn’t just strike to defend; she executed with mathematical precision.
Bypassing the beast’s heavy neural armor in a microsecond, she drove her gauntlet blade deep into the primary fluid core located directly beneath its jaw.
With a brutal, precise 180-degree twist of her wrist, she tore the nerve center apart.
Black, acidic beast blood erupted from the wound, spraying across Scarlett’s pale face, her lips, and her dark cloak.
The massive creature shuddered violently, its crimson eyes going dark, before it shattered into a cloud of heavy black dust—dead at her feet.
Julian fell backward onto his hands in the black ash, gasping for air like a drowning man, staring up at Scarlett in absolute horror.
Lyra stood frozen beside him, her breath hitched.
The realization hit them both instantly without a single word being spoken: this girl wasn’t ordinary.
She wasn’t a scholarship victim.
She was an apex predator masquerading as prey, calculating vault-class weaknesses faster than a combat supercomputer.
But before Julian could even form a sentence, the temperature in the forest didn’t just drop; it froze entirely into a deadly winter.
The ambient sounds of distant fighting, crying students, and crashing trees vanished in a heartbeat, swallowed by an overwhelming, suffocating pressure that forced the air straight out of Julian’s lungs.
From the thick, falling curtain of volcanic ash, Lord Valerius Thorne walked out.
He wore dark, form-fitting combat armor instead of his Elite Commander Uniform, exposing the flawless, unblemished pale skin of his throat where Scarlett had driven her stylus pen the night before.
There wasn’t even a scar.
His dark, infinite eyes completely bypassed the cowering elites on the floor and locked directly onto Scarlett.
”Fascinating,” Valerius murmured, closing the distance between them in a split second, defying the physics of momentum.
His warm, heavy hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around the back of her neck with a terrifyingly possessive, vice-like grip, pulling her body flush against his armored chest.
Scarlett’s eyes blazed with a dangerous, forbidden silver light.
Instead of pulling away, she used the momentum.
With a swift, brutal motion, she yanked his own ceremonial obsidian dagger straight from his tactical belt and sliced it right across his open palm.
Blood—pure, dark royal pureblood blood—welled from the deep cut.
She didn’t drop the weapon.
Instead, she pressed the blood-stained edge of the blade directly against his perfect throat, drawing a thin line of red on his pale skin.
”I told you to handle me carefully, Lord Thorne,” Scarlett hissed, her voice a low, lethal vibration, her heart beating at a freezing, steady pace against his chest.
“The next time you touch my neck without permission, I won’t just test your healing speed.
I will find out exactly where a pureblood’s core hides.”
Valerius didn’t flinch or pull back.
Instead, a dark, psychotic amusement dilated his pupils until his eyes were entirely pitch-black, swallowing the iris.
”Fierce.
A true executioner,” Valerius whispered, his breath hot, smelling faintly of mint and iron against her lips.
His voice dropped into a chillingly intimate, private register that shattered her reality.
“You think you are hiding in the dark, Scarlett?
I didn’t authorize this entire multi-million dollar combat trial just to watch you play with low-tier beasts.
I authorized it because the star-shaped scar on your right wrist doesn’t belong to the slums of Sector 4.
It belonged to the infamous female rebel who tried to assassinate my grandfather ninety years ago.
The exact same celestial mark.
The exact same cold, dead eyes.”
Scarlett’s heart thudded violently against her ribs, her neural block fracturing under the sheer weight of his words.
He knew.
He wasn’t just obsessed with her rare blood taste; he knew her entire forbidden, erased lineage.
”You are the last remaining ember of the House of Rose,” Valerius growled softly, his bleeding palm wrapping directly over her fingers on the hilt of the dagger, crushing them until the bones groaned.
“And I am going to burn this entire academy to the ground just to keep you locked inside my cage.”
Before Scarlett could reply or drive the blade home, a sudden, violent tremor ripped through the entire Obsidian Forest.
The ground cracked open beneath their boots, creating wide fissures, and from the deep, volcanic chasms of the restricted sector, a massive, ancient crimson light began to pulse like a beating heart.
A low, subterranean roar echoed from the depths of the earth, causing the petrified crystalline trees to vibrate until they shattered into thousands of glass needles.
Instantly, the star-shaped scar on Scarlett’s wrist flared with a blinding, agonizing crimson light.
It burned so incredibly hot through the fabric of her sleeve that she gasped in raw pain, her grip failing as the obsidian dagger slipped from her fingers and fell into the ash.
Valerius looked down at her pulsing, glowing wrist, his expression turning from obsessive amusement to something darker, something almost unhinged with ancient recognition.
”It’s waking up,” Valerius murmured, looking out into the trembling, red-lit dark forest, a terrifying, beautiful smile stretching across his face as he looked back down at her.
“The forest isn’t hunting the students anymore, Scarlett…
the ancient core of this island is reacting directly to your blood.
Let the real bloodbath begin.”
Oh my god, the stakes just broke through the ceiling!
Scarlett literally held a knife to a pureblood king’s throat, but Valerius just dropped the biggest bombshell of the entire book!
He already knows her lineage, and her scar is connected to an ancient assassination plot from 90 years ago?!
And what on earth is awakening inside the forest?!
Drop your comments right now: Who do you think the woman from 90 years ago was to Scarlett?
Can Scarlett survive now that the ancient forest core is actively hunting her?
See you in Chapter 7!