Chapter 113 — The Hunt Is Void

Chapter 113: Chapter 113 — The Hunt Is Void

~ Raven ~

"Raven!"

Raven looked up from the book.

Thalia was already making her way across the section with Tessa behind her and Brielle following at a much more reasonable pace. By the time Thalia reached the table, she barely seemed interested in Raven at all.

She was looking at the floor.

First beside Raven’s chair, then along the front of the alcove and finally toward the shelves enclosing it.

Raven knew exactly what she was searching for.

So the recording had made it to her roommates also.

Of course it had. Half the library had spent the afternoon holding slates in her direction.

"Where is it?" Thalia asked.

Raven closed the book. "Where is what?"

"The boundary." Thalia waved both hands around the empty alcove. "The glowing blue one everyone has apparently seen except us in person. Are you alright? Was somebody playing a joke on you? Because there is an actual recording of you trapped in here."

"I’m fine."

"Raven, you were locked inside a box."

Raven’s fingers remained on the cover of the book.

Only a short while ago, she had been reading about suggestions buried inside people’s minds, about thoughts they could carry around without knowing where they had come from.

She had spent the past few hours learning exactly how dangerous information could become once somebody else had access to it.

She had no intention of making that mistake again.

"I put it up myself."

The three girls stared at her.

Thalia’s hands were still suspended in front of her. Tessa’s eyebrows rose slowly, while Brielle stopped beside the table and looked from Raven to the empty floor.

At the next table, two students who had been doing a poor job of pretending not to listen gave up entirely.

Raven kept her face straight.

"I wanted to read without people constantly coming over."

The silence somehow became worse.

Brielle frowned. "Since when do you know how to draw a keyed boundary strong enough to seal an entire alcove to one pers—"

"They put a caption on the recording," Thalia cut in loudly.

Brielle stopped.

Raven looked at Thalia.

For the briefest moment, Thalia met her eyes before turning toward Tessa as though she had not interrupted anything at all.

"Have you seen it?" she continued. "Because whoever is running the Hale feed apparently thinks they’re very funny, and also I would personally like Bellringer burned to the ground and the remains salted."

"Salted?" Tessa asked.

"Thoroughly."

Brielle looked between the two of them, clearly aware that her question had been abandoned on purpose. She let it go anyway, pulled out the chair opposite Raven and sat down.

Raven had just begun wondering how long that mercy would last when the first academy bell struck.

The sound rolled through the library hard enough to silence every conversation at once. A second bell followed, and the small First Script plates fixed along the walls brightened one after another.

Raven had passed them countless times without giving them much thought. Now pale lines spread across their surfaces before the Headmaster’s voice came through every plate at once, clear enough that Raven could have believed the woman was standing beside her.

"All students are to report to the Central Hall immediately."

For half a heartbeat, nobody moved.

Then chairs scraped back across the floor all around them.

Students abandoned books, gathered slates and started toward the exits while questions immediately replaced the silence.

Raven pushed Cassian’s books together, folded the small piece of paper bearing Marchmont’s name and tucked it securely into her inner pocket before joining her roommates.

Whatever this was, apparently Valerius had decided her afternoon was not complicated enough yet.

~~~~

The Central Hall was already filling by the time they arrived.

The summons had pulled students from everywhere. Some still had training wraps around their hands, others carried books they clearly had not had time to return, and one group near the front looked as though an instructor had marched them straight out of class.

Nobody seemed to know why they had been summoned, which meant everybody had an answer.

"I heard they found another attacker."

"They should close the academy."

"They can’t void the Hunt. We had eleven seals before the feeds went down."

"They absolutely can."

Raven followed the others into Hale’s section and found a place between Thalia and Brielle. The four Wings continued filling around them while rumours moved faster than the students themselves.

Then the Headmaster stepped onto the raised floor.

She did not ask for silence.

She simply began speaking, and the hall found its own.

"The Founders’ Hunt was deliberately compromised."

Whatever conversation remained disappeared.

"The Ward protecting the event was tampered with before the attack began. What happened inside those grounds was not an accident, nor was it the result of a structural failure or anything done by the competitors."

Raven watched the Headmaster rather than the students around her.

"The individuals who entered the Hunt grounds were acting on behalf of an organised group. That group has now been identified as the Moonless Court."

This time the silence did not survive.

The name passed through the Central Hall almost immediately, swallowed and repeated by hundreds of voices.

Raven stayed still.

She had heard it first as a taunt. Then Cassian had used the name as though it were something everyone except Raven already understood. Now the Headmaster had spoken it openly before the entire academy.

At least she could finally stop wondering whether the Moonless Court was something people had invented to frighten first-years.

The Headmaster raised one hand and waited until the noise settled.

"The investigation is ongoing. Every security layer connected to the Founders’ Hunt is under review, including the Ward and the certification process that preceded its activation. Until that investigation is complete, there will be no speculation presented as fact and no interference with those conducting it."

That was all she gave them.

No names. No explanation of how the Ward had been altered. Nothing about the man who had died inside a secure cell or how far the investigation had actually progressed.

Raven listened just as carefully to what the Headmaster left out.

Then the woman continued.

"On the competition itself."

The response was immediate. Students shifted around Raven, and somewhere in Ashbourne’s section somebody muttered something that earned a sharp agreement from several others.

"A House result produced by a compromised event cannot stand. Therefore, the Founders’ Hunt is void."

The hall erupted.

Ashbourne seemed to object first, but Blade was not far behind. Someone near the front shouted about seals recovered before the attack, while another voice insisted their Wing had already been leading. Hale’s older students started arguing among themselves about what voiding the event would do to the annual standings.

Thalia leaned toward Raven. "They may actually riot."

"Over a forest?"

"Over the points," Brielle corrected, keeping her eyes toward the front. "The Hunt matters too much to the House standings."

The Headmaster allowed the protests to continue for several seconds before speaking over them.

"The competition is void. Verified individual achievement is not."

The reaction changed immediately.

"Advancements confirmed during the event remain on record. Documented rescues, combat performance, conduct under attack and any Merit-worthy action verified through the surviving feeds, instructors or Wardens will be credited to the students responsible."

A different kind of murmuring spread through the hall now.

Less angry.

More interested.

"Students will not lose what they earned because someone else broke the Ward."

Raven felt Thalia straighten beside her.

All around them, students were already beginning to calculate what that meant. The House result might have vanished, but individual standings had not.

The Headmaster gave them little time to discuss it.

"There is one further change."

The hall settled again.

"The Renewal Concord."

That got attention faster than the Hunt had.

"The Concord was scheduled for four days after the Founders’ Hunt. Following the attack on Valerius, and after consultation between the Alpha Crown and the vampire authorities, that schedule has been revised."

Raven felt Brielle go still beside her.

"This year’s Renewal Concord will begin one month from today."

For a moment, the Central Hall was completely silent.

Then everyone started talking at once.

"A month?"

"What about qualification?"

"They moved the entire Concord?"

"Are all four Houses still coming?"

"Of course they are. It’s a Renewal year."

The reaction spread harder than the argument over the Hunt. Older students immediately started discussing qualification and selection, while others seemed far more interested in the vampire delegations themselves. Somewhere across Prymont’s section, several voices were already talking about the Cardinal Vampire Heirs.

Thalia turned toward Raven. "A month."

"I heard her."

"They pushed the entire Concord."

Raven glanced around the hall. That seemed to have rattled the upper-years more than the Hunt being voided. Four days had become a month, and judging by the arguments already breaking out around them, that changed far more than a date.

The Headmaster waited until the first wave of reaction passed.

"The revised date was agreed upon by both sides. Following the attack, additional time is required for security preparations and coordination between Valerius, the Alpha Crown and the vampire delegation. Qualification requirements remain unchanged, as do the rules governing participation."

That produced another burst of discussion from the older years.

The Headmaster ignored it.

"Further schedules will be distributed through your Wings. Until then, anyone interfering with the Hunt investigation through false reports, deliberate obstruction or the spread of fabricated information will answer directly to this office."

That ended the address.

She dismissed them.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in leaving.

The Central Hall immediately dissolved into overlapping conversations about the Hunt, Moonless and vampires.

Then a clear note sounded somewhere near Blade’s section.

Ping.

Another answered from Hale.

Within seconds the sound was spreading through the hall until hundreds of the academy badges fixed at the students’ chests began lighting almost at once.

Raven looked down at hers.

The individual records had been processed.

Around her, the hall became even louder.

Students crowded around friends to see updated standings. Someone in Ashbourne shouted loudly enough for three rows to hear him before two of his friends grabbed him in celebration. Elsewhere, a girl stared at her badge with an expression suggesting somebody else’s rise had just cost her dearly.

Then Brielle’s badge chimed.

She looked down.

Her expression changed so quickly Raven almost missed it.

"What?" Thalia asked immediately.

Brielle hesitated before angling the badge enough for them to read the glowing script.

22 — BRIELLE VANCE

Thalia’s mouth fell open.

"Twenty-two."

Brielle tried to straighten the badge as though nothing particularly interesting had happened.

"You’re nearly inside the Top Twenty," Tessa said.

"I can read."

"Brielle."

"It’s a number."

The corner of her mouth was betraying her badly enough that Raven almost smiled.

Thalia noticed too.

"It is absolutely not just a number and you know it."

Raven opened her mouth to congratulate her.

Her own badge pinged.

The words died before they left.

She lowered her eyes as the script across the small academy crest faded, shifted and began rewriting itself.

10 — RAVEN RIVERS

The number dissolved.

7 — RAVEN RIVERS

Raven stared at it.

Seventh.

She had moved three seats.

Before she could even decide what she thought about that, she became aware that the space around her had changed.

Students were turning.

A conversation immediately behind her died halfway through a sentence. Someone farther up Hale’s section said her name, and another voice repeated the number.

Raven lifted her head into the attention.

Her gaze found Celeste almost immediately.

She stood near the edge of Ashbourne’s section with her own badge still glowing against her uniform. Her expression was controlled, but Raven had spent eighteen years learning every version of Celeste Blackthorn’s face.

The jealousy underneath it was barely contained.

Raven held her gaze.

For one satisfying moment, nothing else in the hall mattered.

Then movement beyond Celeste caught Raven’s attention.

Rowan Ashbourne was heading toward the western doors.

Raven’s thoughts shifted so quickly that Celeste disappeared from them altogether.

Rowan.

Raven turned abruptly toward her roommates.

"Can you get me something to eat? Anything. I’ll meet you later."

Thalia blinked. "What?"

"I’ll find you."

"Raven, where are you going?"

Raven was already moving.

Tessa followed her line of sight first. Brielle did the same a moment later, and then Thalia finally spotted Rowan disappearing through the crowd.

Her head snapped back toward Raven.

"Rowan?"

Several students stepped into Raven’s path, forcing her sideways before she found another opening through the dispersing crowd.

"Raven!"

She ignored Thalia and kept going.

Rowan was almost at the western doors now.

Raven picked up her pace.

She had spent enough of the afternoon discovering that every answer in Valerius was apparently hidden behind somebody else.

For once, Rowan Ashbourne might actually be useful.