Chapter 25 Kristen & Leo
KRISTEN
I didn’t expect to be summoned before noon. My first thought when the administrative assistant called my name was that I’d screwed up something in the schedule, that maybe I’d missed an assignment or misread a code, and they wanted to wave a disciplinary flag in my face. Instead, the escort walked me down a corridor lined with translucent glass and buzzing displays that no human eye could decipher without training, all the while telling me not to worry, that this was normal. Her voice was too casual for the situation. Her eyes were kind. But the way she didn’t look at mine told me everything I needed to know: this was somewhat unusual. I was worried.
By the time I reached the heavy wood door marked Dean Horowitz, my stomach was a coil of nerves, tight and elastic and threatening to snap. I stood just outside the frame and breathed quietly, counting to ten in a loop until my heart simmered down a fraction. I hadn’t been sitting long in the cafeteria, just trying to eat while my mood teetered between hopeful and exhausted, when the call had come through. I told myself it was about the party announcement I’d blundered into. Maybe they wanted clarification. Maybe they wanted to revoke my enrollment. Anything felt possible on a day like this.
I straightened my shoulders, smoothed the front of my shirt, and stepped inside.
The dean’s office was larger than it needed to be, all clean lines and quiet authority. Horowitz himself sat behind a broad desk, eyes already on me before I reached the threshold. His expression was neutral, perhaps slightly curious, like he’d been expecting me for a while. The detective machine was by a side table, silent and sleek, tubes and panels humming softly as though it were breathing.
“Miss Lockwood,” he said, voice measured. “Please have a seat.”
I obeyed, folding my hands in my lap and doing my best to appear composed while every nerve ended in static. Anxiety was a living thing in my chest, lacing itself into every thought.
“This won’t take long,” Dean Horowitz began, and I wasn’t sure if that was meant to comfort or warn. “Today we determine what sigil you carry.”
My breath stalled for a second, then released slow and uneven. This was the moment. The thing every student here dreaded and dreamed about in equal measure. I’d replayed it in my head a hundred times, each scenario a variation of unknown outcome. My legs felt oddly light as I listened to the explanation of the machine: a combination of blood sample and psychological markers that mapped onto the classification schema, revealing which sigil a student possessed, if any.
He produced a small vial, sterile and clinical, and gestured toward it. “Just a drop of blood. Then we proceed with a few questions. Nothing intrusive, just necessary insight.”
I nodded, trying not to look like I wanted to bolt for the door. The technician near the machine held a tiny lance, quick and efficient. The pinch on my fingertip was sharp, familiar, and then the vial sealed. I’d seen worse in gym class when I was younger, but this felt different. This felt like an unveiling.
While the machine worked, Horowitz didn’t rush into silence. He asked me questions. Nothing irrelevant. Nothing trivial. Mostly about my childhood, the environment I grew up in, what I feared most, what made me angry. At first I answered with surface honesty, shy of nuance. Then he probed deeper, and I found myself unraveling the parts I didn’t even know were threads, telling him what it felt like to be different, to wonder if I belonged anywhere at all, to feel visible and invisible at the same time.
He listened without judgment. That made the questions heavier.
All the while the machine hummed, a gentle background pulse that felt strangely like a heartbeat. I watched its lights blink, patterns forming and dissolving like static thoughts, and for a while I forgot that every heartbeat was a measurement, a possibility I couldn’t yet define.
Finally, it beeped.
The sound was soft but firm enough to cut through every quiet fear I’d been sitting in since stepping into the office. Horowitz looked at the display for a long moment, then down at me, and a small, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
“Miss Lockwood,” he said, voice warm in a way that made me think the result was good news, “congratulations. You’re an Ares.”
Relief was a wave that crashed straight through my chest. Ares. Middle ground. Balanced. Not exotic. Not terrifying. Not a Leo. Not a Kyro. Just stable. Just… manageable. I exhaled without realizing I’d been holding my breath, muscles unwinding in slow gratitude. The heaviness that had lodged itself under my ribs eased. For the first time in days, I felt something like possibility instead of dread.
“Thank you,” I said honestly. That was all I could muster then — gratitude that didn’t have to be packaged as humor or anger or denial.
“You’re free to go,” he added, stepping back with that practiced ease of someone delivering routine news. “Good luck with your projects this term.”
I nodded, already halfway out the door, mind shifting from fear to logistics — party planning, music lists, guest numbers, decorations. How the hell did you even throw a party in a place like Phoenix? I had no idea, but I had energy now. Actual energy.
The walk back across campus was lighter than it had been in weeks. Ares. I said it under my breath like a mantra, tasting the word in my mouth. Middle tier meant neither predator nor prey, a place to stand and breathe and interact without immediate threat. At least that was what I told myself as I passed groups of students moving in easy patterns I still wasn’t sure how to decode.
My brain drifted into party logistics almost at once: space near the courtyard, those string lights back in the dorm common room, that playlist Anna had shared with me, a mix of familiar songs and new bangers. I pictured tables, people laughing, music low enough for conversation but high enough to make the night feel alive. Ares. A safe classification. Nothing monstrous. Nothing impossible. I felt pragmatic about it. Organized. Capable. Not invisible today.
I didn’t notice the way faculty members watched me from behind shaded glasses and tablet screens, heads tilting just a hair when I passed. It wasn’t until I’d crossed two courtyards and half the campus that a slow, disquieting thought settled in the back of my mind: maybe some people’s interest in me wasn’t casual.
But I brushed it off. Ares meant safe. That’s what I clung to.
LEO
I didn’t knock. No point pretending I didn’t have the right. I pushed the door open and walked into Horowitz’s office like I’d done a dozen times before. He looked up from the mess of reports on his desk, papers he probably hadn’t been reading. No surprise on his face. Just that tight, professional shift in posture that meant he’d been expecting me eventually.
The lights were low, just one lamp burning near the wall, and everything smelled like old wood and old money. I didn’t sit. I just stood in the doorway long enough to be annoying, then crossed to the front of his desk and stopped.
Horowitz set his pen down, slow and deliberate. “Good evening.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said. My voice was even, but it had an edge to it I didn’t bother hiding. “About her.”
He didn’t blink. “About Miss Lockwood,” he said, and it was the kind of correction meant to remind me of decorum. Like that mattered.
I stared at him for a long second, then gave a nod he didn’t need. “Thanks for lying.”
My tone didn’t hold gratitude. It wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t here for thanks or closure. I was here because we had an agreement, and I wanted to make sure he remembered the stakes.
Horowitz didn’t flinch. “We agreed it was necessary.”
We had. That didn’t mean I had to like it.
“She can’t know what she really is,” I said. I wasn’t asking for his opinion. I wasn’t testing him. I just needed to say it out loud, to make it real again. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
He nodded, his mouth pressed in a grim line. “We can’t afford the fallout.”
“No,” I said, jaw tightening. “We can’t.”
The silence sat between us like smoke. Thick. Lingering. Familiar.
He reached into a drawer. I already knew what he was going for.
When he set the detector unit on the desk, I didn’t need an explanation. I recognized the model. Sleek. Obsolete in some regions, but still accurate if you knew how to read it. He slid it across the surface without ceremony.
“She was the last one tested,” he said. “The real results are still on it.”
I didn’t thank him. I just picked it up.
The dried blood at the edge of the input port caught my thumb. Still faintly red. Still hers.
I stared at it for a second longer than I meant to, then powered the unit on. The screen flickered once. Twice. Then held steady.
One word.
No noise. No flashing lights. No dramatic confirmation.
Just four letters. Block text.
KYRO
My jaw locked tight.
There it was.
Not speculation. Not myth. Not rumor.
The one thing none of us had seen in centuries. The one thing the world wasn’t ready for.
And she had no idea.