Rivea's footsteps echoed faintly, trailing down a narrow corridor she had never seen on any building map.
Her hands were shackled with a Veil Restraint — a special kind of cuff designed for entities with blood affinity and non-linear energy structures. It looked ordinary, but the smell… like damp, rotting metal. Nauseating.
Two Fang Division personnel walked ahead of her. One trailed behind — the one who kept glancing at her like she was a wild animal waiting to explode. The last one, a woman, wore an Execution Class badge. Her eyes were narrow and bored, but her arms looked like they were wrapped in muscle cables strong enough to tear through concrete.
No one spoke. No one told her where they were taking her. And that was funny. Because—They thought she was scared.
Kael and Solen entered through a side elevator. Temporary ID tags hung from their necks like raw meat price tags.
The moment the doors opened, the scent of competition hit them.
Dozens of kids.
Their ages varied — some looked like early teens, others even younger than Solen. A few sat like statues — small bodies, ancient eyes. Others lounged without care. Chewing. Spitting. Laughing. Staring.
A boy in the corner was peeling his nails with a small folding knife. Blood oozed from under the nail, but he kept going with a bored expression.
Solen lifted his chin slightly, eyes scanning. Kael just grinned. "Damn. Looks like a buffet... if the buffet was all child psychopaths."
Not far from them, a little girl with curly hair and silver eyes stood in an oversized military jacket. Her gaze was like dry ice: silent, still — but it burned from within.
They were all 'special'. That much was clear. But not necessarily stable. Kael nudged Solen and whispered: "I give it three days. Half this room disappears."
Solen sighed. "Not all of them are here to be trained. Some... are here to be observed. The ones who don't impress—"
"Get discarded?"
Silence.
Then a nod.
Rivea was led into a basement room. Old concrete, flickering ceiling lights like they were breathing.
On the wall, the V.E.N.T.H. logo was faintly scratched over old bloodstains that hadn't been properly cleaned.
They told her to sit. Left her alone. Door locked. But she wasn't scared. Not even anxious. "They think I failed. Cute." She leaned back, a small smile tugging at her lips. If this was punishment, why did it feel so familiar?
No sound but the AC hum and shallow breaths. The room was too wide to be a waiting area, but too empty to be a hall. White walls. Matte floors. No tables. No chairs. No instructions.
Just kids.
Thrown into a pen like raw meat. Told to sit. Told to wait. Or... told to act?
Kael leaned against a wall, hands in pockets, one foot up. Smile lazy. But his eyes were counting. Who moves first. Who's pretending to sleep. Who's holding something back.
Solen stood upright — a walking threat index in motion. His gaze dissected every breath, every fidget. His eyes landed on a pale-skinned girl in the corner, drawing something on the floor with the tip of her nail.
He murmured, "She's tracking the light reflection pattern. Might be a visual memory specialist."
Kael snorted. "Or OCD. Either way, creepy."
A laugh. Sharp. Small.
From the center of the room, a scrappy boy sat twisting the head of a broken doll. His eyes were flat black — like marbles stuck in a human face. He stared at Kael and Solen. Too long.
"You guys are new, huh?" he said. Kael shrugged. "New-ish. Depends how you define time."
The boy grinned. Missing teeth. "This place eats people alive, y'know?"
Kael raised a brow. "Oh? I hope I taste good. At least season me right."
Two kids in another corner giggled — one, a teen with faint slash marks on his cheek, the other an albino kid in a hoodie way too big for his frame. They weren't laughing at the joke, but at the fearlessness.
Solen scanned the room again. Predators everywhere... and bait pretending not to be.
"This isn't a waiting room," he murmured. Kael tilted his head. "No?"
"This... is a filter. They want to see who moves first. Who exposes themselves as a threat. And who balances the chaos."
Kael looked up at the ceiling. "There's a camera."
"Four."
Kael chuckled. "I guessed two. You win."
"Always."
CRACK!
One kid lunged at the pale girl drawing on the floor. But before anyone could react, her tiny hand jammed a nail into his eye. A scream. Blood. The silence that followed wasn't fear.
It was... expectation. Everyone had been waiting for it to happen. Kael clicked his tongue. "Damn. And they call us children."
Solen studied both attacker and defender. "No hesitation. Reaction speed's off the chart. Might be... conditioning."
Kael leaned closer to him, whispering: "So. We're deep in the predator pit.
What do you wanna be?"
Solen didn't smile. "Me? I'm the catalyst. Let them all break... and I'll take what's left."
"—GHK! I-I GIVE UP—"
Her nail was still buried in the boy's eye when the last breath escaped with a mix of spit and blood. The small child blinked, as if unaware of what he'd just done. But her smile — too wide, too calm — ruined the illusion of innocence. Her black eyes stared blankly... then blinked twice before muttering "Oh. He's dead already? Thought we could still play."
The body beneath her didn't move. Some kids stepped back. One or two turned their faces away. But no one screamed. No one ran. Like they'd seen it before. Like death didn't mean much.
Kael let out a low whistle. "Told you, this ain't preschool." Solen stared at the corpse, face unreadable. "The organization didn't stop it."
"Because... this is part of the test?" Solen gave a thin smirk. "Or a morality filter. You pass if you don't have one."
Before the tension could thicken further, the door slammed open.
Click-click.
High heels echoed — absurdly loud for someone that small.
A little girl walked in, her cotton-candy pink hair bouncing with every step. She wore a frilly white dress, laced and ribboned like a porcelain doll. In her hand a violet parasol, dragging behind her like a royal scepter.
"Haaa~ finally, I've arrived in this wretched place," she announced theatrically.
Her voice was shrill, overly dramatic.
"A filthy pit reeking of blood and loser children… tsk tsk tsk, absolutely unworthy of a princess like me~"
Several boys stood upright in reflex.
One even wiped his mouth like he'd been drooling. Kael half-laughed, half-choked. "...What the actual—"
Solen glanced sideways. "Could be manipulative. Or delusional. Possibly both." The girl strutted into the center of the room, stopping right over the fresh blood.
"Oh? This little one… already expired?"
She crouched, lips curled into a catlike grin.
"Fufufu~ Typical boys. So rough, even in play. Ck."
Without hesitation, she patted the corpse's head twice. Like praising a loyal pet.
"Listen up, everyone!" she shouted, spinning her parasol in the air. "I am Princess Lucienne de Varyss, heir to the Halcyra Innerveil throne, and the only one worthy of worship in this cursed hole! From now on—you are all my subjects!"
A few kids snorted. Others narrowed their eyes. But three boys immediately dropped to their knees like they'd been enchanted.
One of them actually said, "It's an honor to breathe in your presence, Princess…"
Kael turned slowly to Solen. "...So. Has the world gone mad enough yet?" Solen replied flatly, "I had a concussion as a kid. This feels worse."
Kael grinned. "She'll get a lot of attention, for sure. Too bad… she's not my type."
"Oh yeah? And what's your type?"
"Girls with knives for tongues and scars on their hearts." Solen clicked his tongue. "Ew."
Four cameras hung in each corner of the ceiling—Like the lazy eyes of distant gods, too far to touch, too close to ignore.
And not one of them blinked.
"…Two hours," Solen muttered. He leaned against the wall, hands tucked into his pockets. "No sound, no food, no instructions. Just… us."
Kael sat sprawled on the floor, fingers playing with the shadow cast by the cold neon light overhead. "They're waiting to see who snaps first."
"In that case," Lucienne chimed brightly, "shall we give them a little show~?"
She stepped into the center, spun her parasol, and stabbed it into the floor like raising a flag. "Attention, loyal subjects! I hereby declare… auditions for my personal guard!"
Her smile gleamed like cut glass.
"The winner shall become my right hand."
Three kids stood instantly. One of them—the one who'd been silently scratching the wall with a piece of metal—walked forward.
"Guard, huh?" he asked. "Can we kill the others?" Lucienne nodded, casually, as if approving a snack. "Of course. Just… don't make it messy. I dislike blood on my shoes."
And just like that—CRACK!—the first boy lunged at the second. No warning. No hesitation. Just straight-up violence.
Chaos erupted.
Screams. Laughter. One kid started crawling along the ceiling—literally, his body bent like a spider. Another tore open his own arm and pulled a strip of metal from beneath the skin.
"…Holy crap," Kael muttered, standing up, "it's like a birthday party from hell."
Solen calmly observed, jotting mental notes.
"Seven are attacking. Four defensive. Three reactive. Two just watching… The rest... abnormal."
"Abnormal how?"
Solen nodded toward the back-right corner.
One child stood motionless—too motionless. Eyes wide. Arms raised.
Like he was holding back something no one else could see.
"He's talking," Solen whispered. "But not to us. To… something." Kael glanced over. Then smirked. "Maybe he's ordering pizza."
Meanwhile, blood was pooling across the floor. Screams melted into a grotesque symphony. But no one came. No alarms. No rules.
Only the cameras. Slowly blinking. Watching. Waiting.
And amid the carnage, Lucienne sat primly on a metal chair—untouched. Like a girl choosing a dress.
The chaos hadn't stopped. Distant screams, the crack of colliding bones, and Lucienne's soft giggle—like a spoon waltzing in a crystal glass.
Click.
Every light died. For a moment, only breathing filled the room—heavy, fast, panicked.
Until another soft click echoed, and from the ceiling, a black screen began to descend. Large. Too large. Like a cinema screen dropping in the middle of a child-slaughter.
A blue glow flickered to life. And silence fell.
The screen didn't show surveillance, or footage, or any kind of announcement.
It showed a room. Small. Dim. And in the center—stood a girl.
Her black hair was tangled, her clothes torn in several places. Her eyes… Still. Far too still for someone her age.
And across from her—Something. Not a human. A failed experiment. A corpse stitched with intent. Bone and muscle crudely bound by living wires, its head an amorphous mess of teeth-holes and breathing that rasped like a broken ventilator.
The fighting kids froze. One by one, like their bodies had been caught in a net of familiarity.
Kael was the first to move. His left hand curled into a fist. His silver eyes widened—like shattered mirrors flashing at the sight of a ghost from the past.
"…Wait," he breathed. His voice stuck in his throat. "That's her?"
Solen glanced, barely blinking. Even Lucienne stopped giggling, slowly crossing her legs with interest. On the screen, the girl didn't flinch. No trembling. No hesitation.
And when the creature let out a monstrous roar, its voice bouncing off the narrow walls— The girl moved. Not back. Not away.
She charged. No strategy. No warning. No mercy.
Claws burst from her fingers. Her own blood seemed to crawl upward, reversing flow, streaking across her skin in red cracks—like lava waking from slumber.
The camera shook. The screen trembled. Quivered. And just before it all cut to black, one last frame burned into their memory. A small smile. Deliberate. Full of hatred. And—
Hunger.
Click.
The screen went dark. Darkness returned. And every child in that room... knew. They weren't the only ones being watched today.