CHAPTER ONE: The Silence in Her Blood

Nyra Valeth sat at the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling, her gaze fixed on the storm-kissed sky that stretched over the iron fences of Kireth Academy. The wind bit at her skin like it wanted to tear the secrets from her bones, but she didn't flinch. She liked it up here — the height, the danger, the silence. No one asked questions on the rooftop. Especially not about why she was always alone… or why her hands sometimes trembled when she looked at her.

Her name was Caelia.

The girl with the amber eyes, the voice like rain on metal, and the laugh that cracked through Nyra's carefully constructed walls like lightning through stained glass. Every time Caelia passed her in the hallway, Nyra's heart tried to escape her chest. It didn't help that Caelia was a prodigy — one of the few born with fragments of Valemi Da Va Li inside her veins. And Nyra? She had nothing. No sparks, no glyphs, no awakenings. Just a scar on her shoulder she didn't remember getting, and a heart that beat too loud whenever Caelia smiled at her.

The academy was built for war. A sanctuary for misfits — hybrids of demon and god, of angel and beast, of things that once walked in dreams. Kireth trained them, molded them, turned them into weapons for the Divine Hunt. But Nyra was different. A Voidborn, they whispered. A girl with no aura. No lineage. No future.

She was a ghost walking among gods.

That morning, Headmistress Velora had announced the next Hunter Trials — an elite challenge meant only for awakened students. Yet Caelia turned her head, met Nyra's eyes from across the stone courtyard, and gave the softest nod.

Like she knew something was coming.

Nyra's fingers curled tighter around the rusted railing. Deep down, something ancient stirred in her blood. Not power. Not light. But hunger. The kind of hunger that sleeps for centuries… waiting for the perfect moment to wake.