[ Blaze's perspective ]
I didn't need to see the sunrise to know she was awake.
Alina followed patterns. Not out of carelessness—out of discipline. Wake at six. Shower. The same perfume. Latte by 7:15. Joey met her at the gates three minutes later. I watched from the roof above the west courtyard, the wind brushing past as she walked below, eyes forward, voice low. Confident. Composed.
She never looked back.
I trailed them all morning—never too close, never too far. A shadow among shadows. I shifted from corridor to corridor, slipping between stairwells and balconies, listening to her laugh at something Joey said, watching the tilt of her head, the way she walked like the world owed her calm.
By the time she entered her first lecture, I'd already timed the intervals of every hallway and mapped the exits. I stayed out of sight until the classroom had filled, then entered without sound. I took the last seat, far right, by the wall. Always unseen. That was the point.
She didn't notice me. Good.
She was seated in her usual spot—second row, by the window—tapping notes onto her tablet with practiced ease. She answered two questions during the lecture. Her tone was precise, eyes unshifting.
She glanced back once. I was just another student. She didn't linger.
We'd spoken once before. Briefly. She probably forgot.
The class moved on, minute by minute, word by word. I didn't hear most of it. My senses were tuned beyond the room—focused on the building, the shift of footsteps outside, the quiet pause that comes before something wrong.
It came at 9:42.
I watched as the two men lunged toward Alina. There was a sickening familiarity in their movement, the way they moved with precision, as if they had done this many times before. But they were about to learn that I wasn't someone they could easily eliminate.
I stepped into the room, my body moving fluidly through the air as I closed the distance in a heartbeat. There was no hesitation. I could hear their feet scraping against the floor as they aimed their knives at Alina, but everything slowed down. I felt the power surge within me—the pulse of my bloodline, the ancient demon blood coursing through my veins.
Without warning, I whispered the words, low and controlled, knowing it would give me the moment I needed.
"Demon blood, activate."
In an instant, the air around me grew heavy, thick with an ominous energy. My hair turned white as the bloodline's power overtook me, enveloping me in a dark, suffocating aura. Shadows clung to me, wrapping around my body like a cloak, and the room seemed to dim as I became a living extension of the darkness itself.
I moved like a predator, slipping through the space between us in a blur. The first attacker lunged with his knife, aiming directly for Alina's side, but I was faster. My hand shot out, and with a precise twist of my fingers, I caught his wrist mid-air. The force was enough to make his body jerk forward. His knife fell to the ground with a clatter, but before he could react, I twisted his arm, throwing him to the side with brutal efficiency. He crumpled against a desk, unable to regain control.
The second attacker wasn't far behind. He thrust his blade towards Alina, but by now, I was in motion again. Shadows spilled from my hands, thickening the air as I grabbed the knife with my bare hand, stopping it mid-flight, the blade barely an inch from Alina's throat. The power surged, and before he could even register what happened, I crushed the weapon in my palm, the metal bending as if it were nothing more than paper.
His eyes widened in disbelief.
"You should have stayed out of this," I muttered, before slamming him into the nearest wall with a brutal force, his body crumpling as he slid to the floor.
The shadows around me faded slightly, but the dark aura still clung to me, swirling like a storm. My hair remained pure white, a symbol of the bloodline I carried, one of power and ancient darkness.
The room had gone deathly silent. Alina, her eyes wide and still in shock, stared at me.
The two attackers on the floor were groaning, trying to push themselves up. But they weren't going anywhere. They had underestimated me, thought they could strike without consequence. Now, they were nothing more than puppets caught in my grip.
The two attackers, now paralyzed by the darkness, fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Their knives lay forgotten, inches away from Alina, the blade glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights. The room was silent, frozen in shock, with only the faint sound of breathing filling the air.
Alina, still in her seat, couldn't process what had just happened. One moment, she was in danger, the next, it was as though the world had bent to some unseen force. Her mind struggled to catch up with the impossibility of it all.
And then, from the shadows, came a voice—soft, haunting, yet somehow familiar.
"I will always come to save you... I promised, didn't I?" The words were barely a whisper, floating in the air like a ghost that had been summoned from the depths.
Alina's voice cracked through the tension, weak but insistent. "Who are you? What's going on?"
The classroom remained eerily silent after I had taken down the attackers. Alina was still sitting in her seat, frozen, eyes wide with confusion and disbelief as she tried to process what had just happened. The two men on the floor were barely conscious, their bodies limp and crumpled like discarded marionettes. I didn't give them a second glance.
Without a word, I turned on my heel, the dark aura still swirling around me like a storm. I reached down, grabbing both attackers by their collars. Their bodies lifted off the ground effortlessly, as though they were nothing more than ragdolls in my grasp.
"You won't be causing any more problems," I muttered to them, my voice dark and cold.
And then, without even looking back at Alina, I activated the power within me. The shadows around me seemed to collapse inward, wrapping around us all in a blanket of darkness. In a split second, the room was consumed, the space bending and distorting as I activated the clan's forbidden technique—one that allowed me to disappear without a trace.
The darkness thickened, and then... silence.
When the shadows receded, I was gone. The attackers were gone with me.
The room was left in stunned stillness. No one knew what had happened. Alina, along with the rest of the class, was left in a daze, unsure of what they had just witnessed. All that remained was the faint trace of my dark aura in the air, lingering like a memory of the impossible.
No one knew who had just saved her. They didn't know I was Blaze. To them, I was still a shadow, an enigma. And for now, that was how I wanted it to stay.
As the darkness faded and the chaos settled, the room remained still, save for the scattered whispers and the faint murmur of confusion. Students exchanged nervous glances, their eyes darting between the two unconscious attackers on the floor and the now quiet, shaken classroom. Alina was still frozen in place, her hand gripping the desk as she tried to make sense of the absurdity of what had just unfolded.
One of the students, a guy from the back of the room, spoke up hesitantly, his voice shaky. "What... just happened? Who were those guys? And... who the hell was that?"
"I don't know," another student replied, still looking at the spot where the dark shadows had swallowed the attackers. "That... person. He was like... some kind of ghost, right? I mean, he just appeared out of nowhere."
A third student, her voice barely above a whisper, added, "He... stopped those knives. I don't even know how he did it. That was unreal. Did you see that? His hair....were white. And the shadows... it was like something out of a nightmare."
"Yeah, I saw that too," said a boy seated near the door. "It was almost like some kind of... I don't know, dark power? I'm not sure what it was, but he wasn't just a regular guy."
"He saved Alina... but who was he?" another girl asked, turning to look at Alina, who was now staring blankly ahead, visibly shaken but still processing the chaos.
"I don't know, but he was incredible," Joey said, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief. "That guy didn't even hesitate. He just... took control. Like he knew exactly what he was doing."
Meanwhile, Blaze, hidden among the shadows in the farthest corner of the classroom, stood perfectly still. He had slipped into the room just before anyone could notice—his presence undetectable, his movements swift and deliberate. The air still smelled faintly of his dark aura, but none of the students knew he was there. They couldn't see him.
His expression remained cold and unreadable as he listened to the murmurs around him, the conversations swirling like fragments of noise. They had no idea what had truly happened, and that was how it needed to stay—for now.