Chapter 171 Coming Clean

Chapter 171 Coming Clean


Riven's POV

High up along the vaulted ceilings of the main corridors, the ambient gas lamps flickered violently before shifting into a deep, warning crimson.

The crimson light washed over us, painting the stone walls in the color of fresh blood.

The academy was waking up to a nightmare, and we were running right through the center of it.

"Clear the hall!" Zayden roared, his voice booming with a raw, dominant Alpha authority that brooked absolutely no argument.

I followed right on Zayden’s heels, my arms locked like iron bands around Kathy cradled against my chest.

Kathy was slipping. Even without the entity physically anchored inside her flesh right now, the trauma of the frequency split had left her human system entirely hollowed out.

Her body temperature hadn't risen a single degree. She felt like a statue carved from mountain ice, her long eyelashes dusted with a faint, unnatural frost.

Every few paces, a tiny, involuntary tremor would ripple through her spine, and my heart would violently misfire, terrified that her pulse was about to quit on me entirely.

"Just a little further," I growled under my breath, my boots slamming against the marble staircase leading to the grand administrative tower. "Hold on."

We reached the heavy, reinforced mahogany double doors of the Principal's executive suite at the top of the tower.

I expected to find the hallway guarded by a line of elite vanguard enforcers. Instead, I found a single figure slumped against the wall beside the door frame.

It was Abby.

She looked entirely unraveled. Her pristine gray auxiliary uniform was rumpled and stained with soot, her dark hair falling out of its pins in messy, tangled clumps.

Her hands were pressed over her face, her shoulders shaking with violent, uncontrollable sobs. Her head snapped up.

Her eyes were red, swollen, and filled with a desperate, pathetic kind of ruin. The moment she saw me holding Kathy’s lifeless, pale form, she let out a choked, horrified gasp and dropped straight to her knees on the polished floor.

"Riven... Zayden..." Abby wept, her voice cracking into a high, hysterical pitch. "I'm sorry... oh god, I'm so sorry. I didn't know it would do this. I didn't know what Vespa was really bringing across the line..."

A savage, lethal snarl ripped straight from the back of my throat, my Alpha fangs instinctively baring themselves. My wolf wanted nothing more than to drop Kathy into Zayden’s arms and tear Abby apart right here on the floorboards for what she had done.

"Get up," Zayden barked, stepping between me and Abby, his golden eyes burning with a dangerous, warning heat.

He grabbed Abby roughly by the elbow, hauling her to her feet before she could completely collapse into the floorboards. "Save the tears, Abby. You wanted to play the high-tier game, and now the whole damn school is paying for it. You’re coming inside, and you’re going to tell the old man every single thing you did."

Zayden didn't wait for her response. He turned and slammed his heavy palm against the central rune of the Principal's door.

Principal Wolffur was standing behind his massive oak desk, surrounded by a dozen flickering, floating communication crystals.

He looked every bit the hardened veteran he was—his silver-streaked hair swept back, his dark suit immaculate, his posture rigid as he barked frantic tactical coordinates into a master communication ward.

"I don't care about the perimeter containment!" Wolffur was roaring into the crystal. "Get the third vanguard vanguard unit into the East Wing—"

He cut himself off the moment we barged into the room.

Wolffur’s piercing gray eyes locked onto us. He looked at Zayden’s bleeding temple. He looked at the weeping girl clutched in Zayden's grip. And then, his gaze fell upon me, and unconscious, Kathy wrapped securely in my arms.

"What is the meaning of this, Alphas?" Wolffur demanded, his deep, resonant baritone vibrating with a severe, disciplinary weight.

"Sir, the threat isn't just a random anomaly," Zayden stated, stepping forward to clear the path for me.

I marched past him, completely ignoring protocol, and walked straight to the leather sofa against the mahogany-paneled wall.

I lowered myself down, gently placing Kathy onto the cushions, keeping one of my hands firmly locked around her freezing fingers to continue pumping my warmth into her.

"Look at her, Principal," I said, my voice dead, flat, and laced with a terrifying undercurrent of absolute desperation. "The girl destroying the East Wing right now? That isn't Kathy. Kathy is right here."

Wolffur’s brow furrowed deeply, his sharp eyes darting between the pale, freezing girl on his sofa and the frantic reports still crackling through his communication crystals. "Riven, explain yourself. The visual logs from the East Wing clearly show—"

"It's a shadow double, sir," Zayden interrupted, his voice tight. "The entity inside her split her frequency. It’s an ancient parasite. And we know exactly how it got here."

Zayden shoved Abby forward into the center of the room. She stumbled, nearly falling over the thick Persian rug, before catching herself. She stood trembling before the most powerful Alpha in the academy, her head bowed, her entire body shaking so hard her teeth clicked.

"Talk, Abby," I growled from my spot beside Kathy, my amber eyes drilling a hole into the side of her head. "Tell him everything. Right now."

Abby swallowed hard, a ragged sob tearing from her throat as she finally looked up at the Principal. "It... it was me, sir," she whispered, her voice cracking completely. "I was the one who helped Madame Vespa."

Principal Wolffur’s expression hardened into solid granite. The temperature in the office seemed to drop as his massive, oppressive Alpha aura slowly began to unfurl, filling the room with a suffocating, disciplinary pressure. "You assisted an exiled shadow-walker in a student abduction on academy grounds, Miss Vance?"

"I didn't know what she was going to do!" Abby screamed, her hands flying up to grip her hair in absolute ruin. "When they took Kathy down into the deep drainage tunnels... Vespa brought out a dark grimoire. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

She choked on her own breath, looking at Kathy’s pale face with an expression of pure, unadulterated horror.

"It wasn't a standard wolf spirit," Abby sobbed, the truth finally bursting out into the open room. "It was a rogue demon. A primeval entity from the first era. It needed a vessel that wouldn't fight back."

Silence fell over the executive office, so heavy and absolute that the only sound was the crackle of the dying gas lamps.

Principal Wolffur didn't yell. He didn't roar. He slowly lowered his hands onto the edge of his oak desk, his knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white against the dark wood.

The shock in his gray eyes was absolute. As an elder Alpha who had fought in the final border wars, he knew exactly what a first-era rogue demon meant. It wasn't a disciplinary issue. It was an apocalyptic threat.

"A first-era entity," Wolffur breathed, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying register. He looked back over at me, his gaze scanning the black, raised veins still faintly visible beneath the collar of Kathy’s shirt. "And the explosion in the East Wing..."

"Amaya found the ancient scrolls in the high tower archives before the alarms went off," I explained, my hand squeezing Kathy’s icy fingers tighter. "The scrolls document it perfectly. When the human vessel reaches its physical limit and begins to fail, the entity has the kinetic capability to fracture the host's frequency. It clones her physical form to create an indestructible shadow projection on the surface while the true host is left to freeze to death from the inside out."

I stood up, my amber eyes burning with a fierce, unyielding fire as I stared directly into the eyes of the Principal.

"Your vanguard enforcers are out there fighting a ghost, sir. We need someone powerful to stop it else she will die, and the demon will inherit her physical form permanently."

Wolffur stood frozen for a single, agonizing heartbeat, processing the sheer, catastrophic scale of the deception. Then, the veteran soldier inside him took full control.

He lunged across his desk, his heavy palm slamming violently down onto a massive, crimson rune embedded in the center of the wood.

The sirens outside instantly changed pitch. The deep, rhythmic roars transformed into a sharp, continuous, deafening shriek that echoed across the entire mountain peak.

"Attention all vanguard units," Wolffur’s voice boomed through the master administrative ward, echoing across every corridor, classroom, and courtyard on the campus grounds. "This is a Class-Zero catastrophic biological lockdown. Issue a terminal seal on the East Wing. Drop the iron grilles across all sectors immediately.Do not engage the anomaly with lethal force. Repeat, do not use lethal force. Contain and isolate only."

Outside the windows, the heavy, mechanized thud of massive iron security barriers dropping into place shook the foundations of the tower.

The academy was officially sealed from the inside out. No one was getting in, and absolutely nothing was getting out.

Wolffur cut the broadcast, his hands trembling slightly as he let out a heavy, ragged breath.

Slowly, the Principal turned his head back toward the sofa. He looked at the fragile girl who had unknowingly become the epicenter of a war between primeval gods and modern Alphas.

His stern, administrative face softened, just for a fraction of a second, replaced by a deep, patriarchal solemnity.

He looked up, meeting my desperate, bloodshot amber eyes with an absolute seriousness.

"I'm putting a call right now to her mother," Wolffur said.