Sai sat frozen in the back row of Lecture Hall 4-B, a half-eaten chip hovering near his mouth.
Through the shattered remains of the double doors, the boy in the hospital gown—Drex—pointed a trembling finger directly at him.
"FOUND YOU!" Drex shouted, his voice cracking with manic reverence. "I KNEW YOU WERE HERE! THE LEGEND! THE ARCHIVIST! SARIUS!"
The name hit the room like a grenade.
In a normal Academy, the reaction would have been awe. Whispers. Maybe some applause.
But Arkhainon Academy was not normal. And neither were its occupants.
The temperature in the lecture hall plummeted. The air grew heavy, suffocating, and thick with a sudden, rancid smell—sulfur and wet fur trying to hide behind cheap cologne.
Mr. Vance, the history teacher, stopped adjusting his glasses. His hands lowered slowly. Grey scales pushed through his pores, rippling like liquid metal until his face was a mask of jagged iron. His jaw unhinged with a wet click.
"Sarius," Vance hissed. The voice vibrated deep in his chest, bypassing his throat entirely. "The Butcher of the North Gate."
Sai closed his eyes and sighed, finally crushing the potato chip in his hand.
Two years, Sai thought miserably. I spent two years perfectly mimicking a useless slob to blend in with these things. I ate their terrible cafeteria food. I sat through their 'How to Invade Earth 101' lectures masquerading as history. And this kid ruins it in five seconds.
"Kill him," Vance ordered, his eyes turning a solid, milky yellow.
SCHLING.
The entire class stood up in unison.
Disguises tore open. The girl next to Sai—the one who borrowed his eraser last week—grinned, her mouth widening until it reached her ears to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. The boy in the front row shed his skin entirely, stepping out of the human husk as a creature of slick, red muscle and bone spurs.
Drex stood in the doorway, head tilted.
"Why are theey transforming?" he muttered, watching a girl's face split open.
"I don't remember this being a horror genre."
"They aren't humans, you idiot," Sai said, standing up and dusting crumbs off his uniform. "They're Skinwalkers. High-ranking monsters learning human behavior and their history."
Drex's eyes widened. "Wait. The Academy arc... is a Horror arc?"
A student in the second row—a Speed-Type monster—blurred, launching himself at Sai with a hand transformed into a jagged bone-blade aimed at his throat.
Sai remained still. No weapon appeared in his hand. He looked almost bored.
He shifted his weight, sliding six inches to the left.
Zip.
The bone-blade pierced air, right where his heart had been a second ago.
Before the creature could retract its arm, Sai raised two fingers.
Thwack.
He jammed his fingers directly into the creature's widened, milky eyes.
The monster shrieked, its brain overloading from the sudden, localized trauma. It collapsed instantly, convulsing on the floor.
Sai didn't wait to see if it stood up.
He kicked the desk into a charging "student" whose face had opened up like a flower of tentacles, then sprinted toward the door.
"Don't let the combatant escape!" Vance roared. The floor beneath Sai exploded as spikes of grey chitin shot upward.
Sai vaulted over the debris, efficient and unbothered by his weight. He reached the doorway, grabbed the collar of Drex's hospital gown, and yanked the confused boy into the hallway.
"Hey!" Drex yelped, shadows bubbling around his feet as he tried to dig his heels in. "I can fight them! I have [Sovereign's Dominion]! I can devour the whole lot!"
"Not in your state," Sai hissed, dragging him down the corridor. "You're bleeding, your core is unstable, and there are three hundred of them."
"But—"
"Move now. Fight later."
They sprinted down the main hall.
Suddenly, the air pressure dropped. There was no siren, no bell, no audible alarm. It wasn't needed. The hive mind had been activated again.
Every creature in the building shared a single consciousness, and that consciousness had just flagged them as targets.
The psychological weight of the command hit them like a physical wave.
On either side of the corridor, doors flew open in perfect unison.
Teachers, janitors, and students stepped out as one. There was no confusion, no hesitation. Their movements were synchronized, terrifyingly fluid.
Limbs elongated. Uniforms tore as wings and extra arms burst free. The "Humanities" professor didn't even touch the floor; he crawled directly onto the ceiling like a spider, hissing as his multiple eyes locked onto them.
"We're blocked," Drex said, skidding to a halt.
A wall of monsters sealed the hallway, drool dripping onto the polished floor.
Sai didn't slow down. He reached into his snack bag and pulled out a sealed glass vial filled with a glowing pink liquid.
"What is that?" Drex asked. "A buff potion?"
"A sensory nuke," Sai muttered, gripping the neck of the bottle.
Sai threw the vial hard. It smashed against the chest of the lead Gargoyle.
The pink liquid vaporized instantly, creating a dense, sparkling mist.
To a human, it was a faint, sweet scent. But to the Skinwalkers, whose biology was wired to track specific chemical markers, it was catastrophic. The concentrated pheromones flooded their receptors, overriding the Hive Mind's delicate signal with a deafening roar of chemical noise.
SCREEEEE!
The link severed instantly. The monsters screeched, clawing at their own faces and lashing out blindly at the air, their coordination shattered by the overdose.
"Move," Sai commanded.
He ran like a rat, weaving through the disoriented monsters, ducking under flailing claws and stepping over twitching tails. Drex followed, stunned.
They didn't head for the stairs. The stairwells were chokepoints, likely already filled with reinforcements. Sai sprinted straight forward toward the reinforced glass window at the end of the corridor.
"Wait," Drex shouted, realizing the trajectory. "We're on the fourth floor!"
Sai didn't slow down. He didn't even blink.
He tucked his shoulder, covered his face, and threw his entire body weight against the pane.
CRASH.
The glass shattered outward in a shower of diamond fragments.
They plummeted four stories.
BOOM.
They hit the ground with the weight of anvils. The impact didn't break their bones; it broke the courtyard.
Sai landed in a crouch, his boots leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the manicured pavement. He stood up instantly, dusting glass off his shoulder as if he had just hopped off a curb.
Drex landed beside him, his knees buckling slightly—not from the fall, but from the mana exhaustion plaguing his core. He shook it off, looking at the crater his feet had made in the grass with awe.
"Okay," Drex muttered. "Shortcut accepted."
The sun shone. The birds sang. And the massive, iron gates of the Academy slowly sealed shut, wrapped in a barrier of fleshy, pulsating red veins.
Sai stopped, panting. He looked at the gate, then back at the main building, which vibrated as hundreds of monsters shed their disguises to join the hunt.