Being born of shadows and living in them had its own advantages.

Any fantasy novel worth its salt would swear to this: shadows are the true keepers of secrets.

They see everything, record everything, and people treat them like nothing—like mere voids, empty spaces where light simply fails to reach.

No one ever asked the darkness for permission to hide their sleazy secrets. Why bother? Shadows were made for swallowing sins, right? Silent, obedient accomplices that made you feel safe enough to do the unforgivable.

No one ever bargains with the dark for silence.

Everyone just assumes shadows exist to serve: to cloak their ugly deeds, swallow their filth, grant them the illusion of safety so they can sin without fear.

And accomplices, yes—they absolutely were. Willing, silent partners in every crime.

But they are no slaves.

They are children. Beloved children of the unseen, nursed in the places light fears to tread. Born where illumination surrenders and darkness claims dominion.

Lightless, really.

Phei knew, with the certainty of blood and bone, that if he was not yet the master of those shadows, he was their favored son. Seventeen years was not enough to father the dark; it was barely enough to be claimed by it.

No—he was the adopted one.

The boy the shadows had claimed when every human in his life had turned away, when the world decided he was better off invisible.

The shadows had chosen him long ago—when the world of light rejected him, when families and Legacies and even his own blood turned their faces away.

They had wrapped around the unwanted boy and whispered: You belong here.

And loving parents—true ones, the kind Phei could scarcely recall—provide.

The shadows had provided abundantly.

Behind closed doors. In willing blackness. Beneath curtains that fell like veils of confession.

Phei had learned to move within them, with them, as them—until his presence became as unnoticeable as breath on glass. People forgot he was there. Stopped guarding their tongues. Let the masks slip.

And in that perfect, practiced invisibility, he had become the silent witness to everything.

He had seen things.

Heard things.

Collected truths so toxic they could burn Paradise to the ground if they ever saw daylight. Witnessed depravity that would torch reputations, shatter marriages, topple empires if it ever saw daylight.

If he had ever once chosen to wield them—if he had stopped shrinking and started striking—he could have ruled half the academy years ago. Could have held every arrogant Legacy by the throat with nothing more than a whispered reminder of what the shadows had shown him.

They believed themselves untouchable. And in the light, they were.

Money erased evidence. Power rewrote history. Influence made witnesses vanish and records disappear like mist under sunrise. They got away with everything.

Daddy's lawyers rewrote reality itself.

Their sins vanished like smoke at dawn—poof—gone before anyone could snap a photo or file a report.

But smoke always leaves traces.

And shadows remember.

Phei's mind drifted through the vault he'd built in his head over the years: a dark library of whispered confessions, glimpsed indiscretions, overheard deals.

Because there was a reason, they still hid some things.

A reason they waited until the room was empty—or so they thought.

A reason they checked corners, closed doors, drew curtains, lowered voices to murmurs.

Because even gods fear the dark.

Because even the untouchable had secrets they couldn't bear to have brushed by daylight that they adore so much than darkness.

And when they were certain—absolutely, arrogantly certain—that the shadows had gulped down their deeds without a trace, Phei had been there.

Watching.

Listening.

Filing away every last sordid detail in the quiet archive of his mind, in hidden folders on his phone, in a mental ledger no one suspected existed.

Who would ever imagine it? The coward. The charity case. The boy who flinched at raised voices and apologized for breathing the same air. Who would dream that the human doormat had been keeping receipts all along—patient, silent, meticulous as a monk illuminating forbidden manuscripts?

No one.

That was the exquisite perfection of it.

They had dismissed him so thoroughly, for so long, that they'd stopped noticing he had eyes that saw, ears that heard, fingers that could tap record without a sound.

They'd performed their worst sins right in front of the furniture.

And the furniture had never forgotten a single line.

Well.

Now they would learn.

Now that the quiet child of shadows had clawed his way back from death and awakened with scales and fire in his blood, they would feel the difference.

The furniture had been paying attention.

Their most faithful accomplice had always been their most dangerous witness.

The rooftop door opened with a screech of rusty hinges.

Phei stepped through and let it swing shut behind him with a heavy, final clang. The late-afternoon sun struck him at once—golden, slanting beams washing across the concrete, warm against his skin, turning the skyline into a postcard of amber and rose.

He walked forward until the light bathed his face completely, the rays burning the exposed strip of forehead where his hair had parted. He lifted a hand, fingers sliding through the dark strands, gathering the lazy locks that fell on either side of his temples and pushing them together into a rough shield.

Better.

His feet carried him to the edge—the same low parapet he'd stood on in another life. The same brink he'd stepped over when continuing to exist had felt sharper than any fall.

Old Phei would never have come this close. Would have stayed back, heart hammering, haunted by the phantom drop, terrified his legs might remember the old betrayal and pitch him forward again.

But old Phei was dead—properly, permanently dead.

This Phei planted himself at the very lip of the roof and felt nothing but the steady concrete under his shoes and the wind combing cool fingers through his hair. His thighs and calves still whimpered from the morning's pathetic fifty push-ups, but there was no vertigo, no seductive whisper from the void below.

Only the calm certainty of a dragon perched high above his domain, surveying what would soon be his.

Funny how dying once could cure you of any fear of doing it again.

Phei reached into his pocket and drew out his phone.

Not the new one. Not the gleaming, exorbitant iPhone 17 Pro Max Melissa had pressed on him—edge-to-edge screen, biometric everything, raw power that felt like wearing someone else's wealth on his hip.

That one stayed in his other pocket, silent and flashy and wrong.

No—this was the old one. The battered iPhone 8 with its loyal home button, its spider-webbed screen, its scuffed case that screamed second-hand neglect. It looked exactly like what a charity case should carry: outdated, cracked, cheap.

Invisible.

Unthreatening.

Perfect camouflage.

Weird, really, his choice. Why cling to this ancient relic when a gleaming, state-of-the-art beast sat heavy in his other pocket?

But the secrets this battered old phone cradled were beyond price.

Years of leverage. Years of silent recordings, stolen photos, damning videos, meticulously saved screenshots. Years of slipping through the shadows, letting the darkness feed him every ugly truth the light pretended didn't exist.

He had dirt on damn near everyone.

Brett Castellano, Anderson Park, Danton, Victoria.

Teachers accepting bribes to inflate grades. Students peddling pills in bathroom stalls. Affairs between married faculty—stolen moments in empty classrooms, frantic hands under desks. Cheating rings, plagiarism mills, outright theft.

The entire rotten, seedy underbelly of Ashford Elite Academy, documented, dated, catalogued, and waiting like a loaded gun.

And that was only the school.

The Paradise secrets were darker still. The things he'd witnessed at Legacy gatherings—adults drunk on power and champagne, forgetting that children had eyes and memories.

Phei exhaled slowly, staring at the spider-webbed screen as if it might speak back.

Maybe it was time to migrate everything to the new phone. Layer on real security—the 17 Pro Max could bury these files so deep even ghosts wouldn't find them.

It was too flashy, though.

Too loud.

Carrying it felt like wearing a neon sign that read "something valuable here."

But it was safe.

And no one would ever touch either device without his say-so. Melissa had seen to that. She'd leaned on Uncle Danny's assistant—blackmail or bribe, maybe both—to keep the purchase off any family ledger.

Knowing Melissa, she had the kind of leverage that turned people into statues: late nights in the office that weren't about overtime, clothing askew, lipstick on collars that didn't belong to wives.

Uncle Danny remained blissfully unaware—of the phone, of the assistant's extracurricular duties, of how many of his own secrets Melissa had quietly collected over the years.

She was a master at secrets. One of the very few things Phei genuinely respected about her.

Whatever. He could transfer the archive later. Right now, bigger prey was running scared.

Phei opened his messages, scrolled to the thread with Brett, and reread the text he'd fired off while climbing the stairs to the roof.

Short. Brutally simple. Impossible to ignore.

Attached: one crystal-clear video screenshot of a very long video. Brett's and Anderson's faces filling the frame.

Phei had dozens more just like it. Different nights. Different parties. Different levels of stupidity.

He pocketed the old phone and turned toward the rooftop door, the setting sun a warm hand on his back, stretching his shadow long and dark across the concrete—like a dragon's wing unfurling toward the entrance.

Given what he'd just sent, Brett was probably sprinting flat-out right now. Shoving through crowded hallways, vaulting stairs two at a time, heart hammering with the sudden, sick realization that the charity kid he'd tormented for years had been holding a guillotine rope all along.

The bully.

Coming to beg.

Phei's smile was small, cold, razor-sharp.

The child of shadows had grown fangs.

And the first to feel them was about to come crashing through that door.

Any second now.

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