Chapter 171: Academy’s Entrance Final Phase [10]

Chapter 171: Chapter 171: Academy’s Entrance Final Phase [10]

Gianna knew exactly what was standing in front of her.

She had memorised the difference the night everything broke.

That night in the car, after the movie that neither of them watched, after the heat and the clumsy urgency and the way he had looked at her like she was the only solid thing in a world that kept trying to turn him into a tool, he had been hers.

Not as a support or property the guild had purchased.

He had chosen her.

Revien had said her name as if it mattered more than the class screaming in his head.

For a few hours the future had felt simple: take him home, finish what they started, keep him close.

Then the thing behind his eyes had woken up.

She still felt the exact moment the hands on her throat stopped belonging to the boy who ate her favourite meal and started belonging to something that looked at her core the way a starving animal looked at meat.

The way those yellow-ringed eyes had stared straight into hers while it tried to pull her inside itself.

She hadn’t slept properly since.

Every time she closed her eyes, she was back on that bed, powerless, watching the face she trusted wear an expression that didn’t know her name.

And now the same expression was smiling at her across a ruined rooftop while the exam clock bled out its final five minutes.

[00:05:00]

"Why do you think I want to be inside you?" she asked.

She wiped the blood from her nose with the back of her wrist and tried to force even a spark of telekinesis back into her hands.

The markers stayed dark.

Whatever Giselle’s throw and the portal energy had done, her power was still only a ghost of itself.

She could hit but couldn’t lift.

The thing wearing Revien’s face scratched the back of its head like the question genuinely puzzled it.

"That’s not the question anyone usually asks, though. I want you simply because you taste good."

It licked its lips, slow, deliberate.

"Didn’t I fuck well? We were so close that night. Even a ten-percent drain would have rendered you useless for days. You would have been quiet. Peaceful. Mine. Yet fucking Jenna had to screw it up with her little pills and her careful ceilings."

Gianna didn’t want to hear another word.

She moved first.

There was almost no power behind the strike, just footwork, shoulder, and the kind of hate that didn’t need telekinesis to hurt.

The thing smiled as if pleased she had chosen violence.

It raised one hand, fingers spreading the way Giselle’s had when she claimed the air itself.

Nothing happened.

The copied telekinesis simply failed to form.

"Huh?"

To the side, Giselle was already on her feet again, one hand extended, face pale but eyes burning.

She had cancelled the theft of her own technique before it could fully root.

Blood still tracked from the corner of her mouth where the earlier draw had left its mark, but the Empress-line core was awake and furious.

Gianna’s punch landed clean across the jaw.

The impact turned its head.

For a fraction of a second, the yellow in the eyes flickered.

Then the hand she had just hit with snapped up, caught her wrist, and yanked her forward with a strength that no longer felt entirely human.

Lips almost brushed.

A third hand appeared between them and clamped hard over the thing’s mouth.

Rei stood at its shoulder, blood still running freely down her side, expression carved out of pure disgust and something that might have been fear if Rei Lawless ever admitted to the word.

"You’re one horny fucker," Rei said flatly.

"Try it again and I open your throat the old-fashioned way."

The thing’s eyes curved like it was smiling under Rei’s palm.

Then the rooftop became a problem.

It moved without warning: fast, the override climbing in real time behind those yellow rings.

The hand on Gianna’s wrist tightened hard enough to grind bone.

Rei was forced to choose between keeping the mouth sealed and keeping her own footing.

The choice cost her.

A short, vicious headbutt drove Rei’s nose sideways and sent her staggering.

The moment the sealing hand left, the thing laughed, low and delighted, and the chains that had been quiet since the fall exploded outward in every direction at once.

Blue links filled the air like a living net.

Giselle met them with red.

The two colours clashed in a screaming lattice of spatial force that carved fresh trenches through the already ruined roof.

Gianna had no power to contribute.

She could only drop low, drive a shoulder into the thing’s ribs, and try to keep it from focusing long enough for Rei to reform a blood edge or for Giselle to finish whatever counter she was building.

It shrugged her off like she weighed nothing.

"Gia...," it said, almost fondly, while a chain slammed Rei back into a ventilation stack hard enough to buckle the metal.

"You keep choosing the hard way. I offered you peace. I offered you a place inside the only network that will matter when the real gates open. And you still want to play Vanguard with a broken core."

"I’m not broken," Gianna snarled.

"You’re empty."

It turned its head toward her while still fighting the other two, yellow eyes bright with the override’s certainty.

"I can feel the hollow where your telekinesis should be. I can fix that. You would wake up stronger than the portal ever needed you. All you have to do is stop pretending the boy you kissed in a car is still the one driving."

Rei came back screaming blood.

Giselle’s red chains carved a path.

For three seconds the three of them managed to drive the thing to one knee.

The yellow flickered again.

Something that looked almost like Revien surfaced behind the smile, confused, horrified, reaching.

Then the percentage climbed.

The chains went feral.

Rei was slammed flat.

Giselle was forced to give ground in a series of defensive bursts that left her arms shaking.

Gianna took a backhand that spun her across the roof and left her tasting fresh blood.

When she pushed herself up, the thing was already walking toward her again, step by unhurried step, as if the other two had become scenery.

She looked at the timer only once.

[00:03:47]

Three minutes and change before the exam ended and the proctors flooded the grid.