The gentle, hypnotic crunch of snowflakes settling against the leaded glass windowpane was the only sound that competed with the monotonous drone of the lecturer’s voice.

Half a year had passed since the brutal finale of the tournament.

Six months of absolute isolation.

Six months of staring at the empty desks where Santiago and Hannah once sat before they reached the First Court.

Now, it was the dead of winter, and this was officially the final class of Evan’s academy career.

Outside, the academy grounds were buried under a thick, suffocating blanket of pristine white snow.

Inside the drafty stone classroom, his classmates shivered, huddled tightly inside heavy woolen cloaks and padded cotton robes.

Evan, however, sat perfectly still.

He was draped in a loose, untamed cloak fashioned from the thick, coarse pelt of a winter wolf, his hands encased in heavy, brownish leather gloves.

He didn’t feel the bite of the frost at all.

Over the last six months, his appearance had shifted drastically.

His dark hair had grown out into a messy, undisciplined mane that now brushed against the nape of his neck.

Along his jawline, sharp and hardened by months of relentless solo training was a very minimal, dark black mustache accompanied by a barely visible, rugged stubble.

But the true transformation lay buried deep beneath his flesh.

Evan was no longer just a fledgling.

He had successfully become an Initial Stage Awakened Vampire.

It was a secret he guarded, he had chosen to tell no one, blending seamlessly into the background as a seemingly stagnant, left-behind student.

Within his soul, the transformation was undeniable.

Now the walls of the aperture were not red colored but rather silver and the Qi inside his aperture was far more nourished and changed into the color Crimson.

He sat in the last chair of "The Affairs Of The Two Realms" class.

Directly beside him sat a boy slightly younger than him, yet possessed of an appearance so insanely beautiful it felt like an insult to nature.

The boy had soft, cascading brown hair, dangerously pale skin, and a jawline so ruthlessly sharp it looked capable of slicing a fresh apple in half.

But it was his eyes, deep, hypnotic pools of striking sapphire blue, that drew every gaze.

They were eyes practically engineered to break the heart of every woman who looked his way, a face that looked as though it had been meticulously sculpted in a divine, celestial fire.

His name was Damien.

And Evan absolutely, thoroughly hated him.

Damien was a curse to sit next to, profoundly cheeky, endlessly arrogant, and entirely too aware of his own unnatural beauty.

Even now, Damien was leaning back, propping his chin on his gloved hand, casting a lazy, teasing smirk toward a group of female students in the front row who were desperately trying not to stare back.

At the front of the room, Teacher Shu Jiu adjusted his heavy iron spectacles, his finger tracing the faded ink of a massive, leather-bound tome.

The book was titled Relations Between the Two Realms of Men, written by the ancient scholar Adam Gabriel.

’Pay attention, those of you who actually wish to survive in a world where the big fish eats the small fish,’ Shu Jiu barked, his voice dry like scraping parchment.

’As Adam Gabriel notes, during the Fifth Cycle of the magical realm, a unified authority existed. Unlike our current era of fragmented sects, there was once a singular leader for the entire realm before the dawn of the Sixth Cycle. He was known simply as the King.’

Shu Jiu turned a heavy page, the paper crisp in the cold air.

’In the final decades of the Fifth Cycle, this King entered the Non-Magical Realm and met with a man named Jack Joseph, a figure designated as a ’President’ in the non-magical realm. There, they entered into negotiations regarding the specific quotas of sacrifices to be drawn from the non-magical realm’s population, among other geopolitical trades. However, a anomaly occurred. For the first time in recorded history, the mortals of the other realm managed to out-maneuver our leadership in the negotiation protocols.’

The teacher paused, looking over the rim of his glasses.

’The magical population, outraged by the King’s perceived weakness and compliance, revolted. A catastrophic civil war erupted between the people and the crown, a bloody conflict that ultimately shattered the monarchy and forced the realm into the Sixth Cycle.’

Evan leaned his head against his wolf-skin cloak, thoroughly bored.

Unlike the ancient records of Earth, where historical things were mostly measured in century, history in this world was mapped entirely in Cycles.

Each cycle lasted exactly 250 years, and without fail, the conclusion of every single cycle brought about a devastating, reality-shattering Immortal Tribulation upon the realm, a cosmic storm that could only be fought and pushed back by the highest ranking Immortal Cultivators of the sects.

Currently, the people of the world were living in the 12th Cycle.

Exactly five years remained until the dawn of the 13th.

Five years before the sky would inevitably break open again.

Evan suppressed a yawn, that made his ears pop.

He just wanted the lecture to end.

The moment the bell rang, his academy sentence was over.

He planned to finally walk directly to the First Court, reveal his awakened aperture, and legally claim his right to join Santiago and Hannah in the First Court.

Six months of playing the weak, forgotten failure was enough.

But then, Teacher Shu Jiu closed the historical tome with a heavy, echoing thud.

The sudden silence in the room caused Damien to stop his cheeky smirking, his sapphire eyes narrowing slightly.

’We will bypass the political treaties of the middle cycles for today,’ Shu Jiu said, his voice dropping into a chilling, hollow register that seemed to make the frost on the windows grow thicker.

’For your final lesson before you either leave these walls or advance to the courts, I must prepare you for the true horrors that wander in the Forest Of The Dead.’

The older man leaned over his podium, his eyes sweeping across the shivering students.

’I will tell you about the Half-Deads.’