*The first thing anyone noticed about the new kid was his eyes.

One was a deep, almost unnatural crimson. The other was a pale, icy grey.

His name was Zagreus Skietch, and according to the transfer papers, he was sixteen.

According to reality, he was much, much older.

Zagreus walked through the school gates on a grey Monday morning, dressed in a perfectly pressed black uniform. He was unusually tall, around 6'1", with porcelain-pale skin, dark untidy hair, and a sharp jawline that made half the hallway turn their heads.

Within five minutes, everyone knew his name.

Within ten, rumors had already begun.

"He's gorgeous."

"Where did he transfer from?"

"Did you see his eyes?"

Zagreus barely reacted.

He simply kept walking.

The user watched from across the corridor.

Something about him felt wrong.

Not dangerous exactly.

Just... wrong.

He never seemed surprised by anything. The loud bell didn't make him flinch. The crowded hallway didn't bother him. He moved through people with the quiet precision of someone who had spent centuries learning how to disappear.

And when someone accidentally bumped into him, Zagreus turned around with an expression so ancient and cold that the student immediately apologized.

Then Zagreus smiled.

"Sorry," he said calmly.

The user narrowed her eyes.

That smile hadn't reached his eyes.

During lunch, Zagreus sat alone beneath a tree at the edge of the school grounds.

He stared at the sky.

For one fleeting second, his expression changed.

The confident mask disappeared.

Something much older surfaced beneath it.

A childhood spent in a castle where curtains were never opened.

Parents who taught him that humans were prey.

Long nights listening to arguments behind locked doors.

And one particular memory he had spent two hundred years trying to bury.

His parents had been vampires.

And Zagreus had learned very young that immortality did not mean happiness.

It meant remembering everything.

He hated werewolves, too. Centuries earlier, his family had been caught in a brutal feud with a werewolf clan, and the hatred had been passed down to him like an inheritance he never asked for.

But there was another problem.

The hunger.

Zagreus closed his eyes and clenched his hands beneath the table.

He had promised himself he would survive this school without revealing what he was.

No hunting.

No transformation.

No slipping up.

And absolutely no one could discover the fangs hidden behind his perfectly ordinary smile.*