Host survival not guaranteed, I thought, still moving. That’s a new notification.

"Don’t move," she whispered, her breath cold and intimate against my ear, brushing over my skin like dry ice. "You’ll make it worse."

Then she sank her teeth in. The pressure came first, then the two sharp points piercing deep. Her tongue and lips sealed cold and wet against my skin. A freezing sensation spread from the wounds, not just outward, but inward, like something alien was sliding into my veins along with the pull.

My muscles locked. Not from fear. From something in my blood trying to decide what to do.

She drank. Deep, rhythmic pulls that I could feel in my throat, in my chest, in the base of my spine. Each swallow took more than blood. It took warmth. Strength. Something vital.

My hands pushed against her but the strength wasn’t there anymore. It was draining out in real time, pulled through two small points in my neck.

This isn’t just blood, I thought. She’s taking something else.

The system said nothing. No alert. No defense trigger. No notification. For the first time since the life layer, it had nothing to say when something was overpowering me.

Just silence where the text should have been. I understood then why it had told me to run. It had known it couldn’t help with this one.

The bell rang, sharp, violent, cutting through the silence like a blade.

She froze instantly. Not startled. Simply stopped, like something external had reached in and pressed pause on her.

Her mouth stayed latched to my neck for half a second longer, teeth still buried. Then she pulled back slowly. A thin, warm line of my blood stretched between her lips and my neck before breaking.

Her eyes moved to the campus. Not fear. Recognition. Annoyance.

"What are you?" she asked. Like she had tasted something in my blood that she hadn’t expected and was trying to classify it.

I could see her clearly now. I couldn’t move. She leaned close again, lips brushing just beside the open wound.

"Make sure we don’t meet," she whispered.

Not a threat. A fact. Then she was gone. No movement. No blur. No sound. Just absence. The crushing weight lifted. The unnatural cold vanished with her. Only the thick, damp fog remained, settling clammily over my body.

I didn’t move. My body didn’t trust the silence yet. The fog settled. Nothing else came.

I pushed myself up slowly. The world tilted.

My legs held but barely. My balance felt wrong, like my body had been recalibrated by someone who hadn’t used the original settings.

My heartbeat was quieter. Not slower. Just muted. Like it was happening from slightly further away than it should have been.

I touched my neck. Fresh blood was sticky and warm against my fingers, still leaking from the punctures.

What the hell was that, I thought. Not an ability user. Not infected. Something else entirely.

I turned toward the hostel and walked. Not clean steps. Not controlled. Every few strides my foot landed wrong. My vision blurred at the edges, shadows stretching longer than physics allowed.

Halfway there I stopped.

For a moment, just a moment, I thought I could still feel her. Not behind me. Not around me. Inside me somewhere, like she had left something in the blood she had taken. Then it was gone.

I reached my room and pushed the door open. Unlocked. Of course.

Inside the hostel, the air was warmer but stale. I leaned against the door after closing it, letting the solid wood press into my back while my legs threatened to give out.

Vapour was asleep. Mouth slightly open. Completely unbothered by anything that had happened outside. Either good instincts or the specific sleep of someone who had learned not to investigate the sounds of School Central at night.

Good, I thought.

I made it to the bed and sat. The sheets on my bed still carried lingering warmth from earlier, but my own body felt cold and drained as I sat down heavily.

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

The text flickered. Once. Like it was loading something it couldn’t categorize. Then:

[Vitality: Recovering...]

The word closing never came. I lay back. The ceiling felt too far away. My eyes closed before I decided to let them.

***

"Bro. Bro."

Vapour’s voice pulled me back. I opened my eyes to sunlight and his face looking down at me with the specific expression of someone who has been standing there for a while and is genuinely unsure of the result.

"Dude," he said. "I thought you were dead."

"I’m good," I said.

He watched me for a second longer, decided to believe it, and moved away. Good instinct. He didn’t press.

He was more right than he knew. I sat up and looked at the sheets. Dark with blood. A significant amount. The kind of stain that asked questions I didn’t want to answer in this room with this roommate.

I touched my neck. The wounds had sealed completely. Like it hadn’t happened. Like two puncture marks and whatever she had taken from me was just a bad dream that had expressed itself through the bedsheets.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood. My balance held this time. Whatever she had disrupted in me overnight had partially corrected itself.

Second day at School Central.

She had a brother. Brother’s slave. My brother won’t be pleased. Which meant whatever had been feeding on this campus at night wasn’t alone. It had family. It had an arrangement with Azure.

It had apparently been here long enough that every student in every hostel knew to turn off their lights and stay quiet when the predator hours started.

She hunts at night, I thought. Which means she can be hunted during the day.

Only if Azure gave me the name.

"Your girlfriend is here," Vapour said from outside the room.

I looked at the bloodstained sheets. Then at the door.

Azure, I thought. Perfect timing.