The sun rose slow and golden over the academy, but beneath its warmth, something stirred in the students' hearts—fear, cloaked as reverence.
Anubis stood on the top of stone steps leading into the school building, alone yet never truly alone. The wind bent around her presence. The shadows hesitated to touch her. Even light seemed careful not to fall too harshly on her runed skin.
She stood still.
Watching and perhaps waiting for something or someone.
Every student who dared glance her way lowered their eyes within seconds. Even the teachers murmured behind shut doors. It wasn't just the whispers about her week-long disappearance—it was the unspoken truth they all sensed but couldn't voice:
She had come back wrong.
Or perhaps, she had come back right... and the rest of the world was simply too small now.
Then the atmosphere shifted.
A ripple passed through the air—not like her wind, but colder. Familiar and somewhat unwelcoming.
Anubis turned her head slightly.
Ramiel stood at the base of the steps, hands in his pockets, dressed in black. His presence wasn't loud, but it wasn't forgettable. The darkness behind his eyes carried his father's legacy—but something more subtle simmered just beneath the surface.
Their gazes met.
And time held its breath.
"Still standing alone," Ramiel said as he approached slowly. "You make it look... deliberate."
"It is," Anubis replied, her voice quiet but sharp.
A few nearby students turned to listen, but she didn't care.
Ramiel came to stand beside her but didn't climb the steps.
"You disappeared. For a week. No word. No shadow. Nothing at all, just—gone."
"I went where none of you could follow," she said.
"And you came back glowing like you swallowed a god."
She smirked faintly. "Not swallowed. I surpassed one."
Silence.
Then Ramiel asked, "Why return? You've clearly outgrown this place."
"I didn't return for them," she said, casting a quick glance at the students below. "I returned for me. To see it. To remember how small it all once was."
"And me?" he asked, voice lower now.
Anubis paused. Then turned to face him fully.
"I haven't decided yet."
Ramiel laughed quietly under his breath. "So that's what I am now? A decision waiting to happen?"
"No," she replied. "You're a risk I haven't measured."
Ramiel met her gaze without blinking. He was supposed to whisper seeds of doubt. Disarm her. Pull her heart toward his. That was the plan. His father's plan.
But standing this close to her…
Seeing the way her eyes didn't burn—but bled galaxies, seeing the stillness in her form, as though she was holding back something the world couldn't name...
He forgot what betrayal was supposed to feel like.
"You've changed," he said.
"You haven't," she answered.
He looked down for a moment, then said, "You know I'm not just some schoolboy, right?"
"I've always known," she replied, her tone almost bored. "You reek of him."
Ramiel froze.
Yama.
She knew.
"You think I didn't see it in your magic?" Anubis continued. "The way the shadows cling to your name? The burn of blood you try to suppress when you lose focus?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper that only he could hear.
"You're his son."
Ramiel's mouth opened, then shut. He didn't lie. He didn't even try.
Instead, he asked, "And what now?"
Anubis stepped closer, so close that the air between them shimmered.
"I'm watching you."
And then she stepped past him, walking toward the classroom corridor, as though none of it—his legacy, his orders, his presence—mattered.
But before she disappeared into the building, she spoke one final time.
"Tell your father," she said without turning back, "that the next time he wants to manipulate me through someone else… he should send someone he's not afraid to lose."
---
Elsewhere – Within Yama's War Room
The shadows on the walls flickered and twitched unnaturally.
Yama stared into a divination flame, watching the entire exchange.
He crushed the glass goblet in his hand, black wine dripping like blood onto the floor.
"She knew."
The mirror flickered again—and this time, it did not show Ramiel.
It showed her, Anubis—standing still in that school hallway, as if she could see him watching.
And for one brief second, she smirked.
"She dares mock me," he hissed.
"No, my Lord," said the voice of one of his cloaked advisors, kneeling. "She challenges you. That's what it seems like."
Yama turned slowly, a cruel grin curling across his face.
"Good," he said. "Then let her be tested. She will wish that she was never alive."
He vanished from his room only to appear somewhere else.
*The Seventh Chamber of Binding*
Deep beneath Yama's obsidian citadel, was a place that hadn't been opened in a century.
Not even the bravest of his generals dared walk its halls. The walls here wept shadow. Screams still echoed, but not from throats—from memory itself.
Yama stood alone in the center, his silhouette reflected in black crystal.
He raised a single hand. The runes around the chamber ignited—not with light, but with absence. As if illumination itself was forbidden.
A thick mist unfurled from the floor, and with it came something.
Something made that was not born.
From the black cocoon in the center of the ritual circle, limbs unfolded—long, sinuous, barely shaped like human arms. Skin like liquid ink. Its head turned with a slow, jerking motion as if recalling how motion worked.
Then its eyes opened.
There were three.
One vertical slit in the center of the forehead. Two more where eyes belonged—but all of them were made of pure void. Endless. Empty.
It knelt before Yama instinctively.
"Arise," Yama commanded. "Let me see what the Womb of Nyr has given me."