Chapter 166 Help From Another

Chapter 166 Help From Another


Riven's POV

I stepped into the high-vaulted corridor of the main administrative block, but my mind was still down in that damp, suffocating alleyway with Abby.

My knuckles were raw, the skin split across my right hand where I had shattered the brickwork beside her head.

Every instinct behind my ribs was screaming at me to bypass the afternoon line logs entirely, to drop into the deep cellars with Zayden, tear open the overflow grate, and drag Madame Vespa out of the ancient drainage lines by her throat.

I let out a long, ragged breath, my boots dragging heavily against the polished marble floorboards as I headed toward the western stairwell.

The corridor was thinning out, the high-tier students hurrying toward the tactical courtyards before the third-bell lockdown.

The pale, watery afternoon light cut through the stained-glass windows, throwing long, distorted patches of crimson and violet across the stone masonry.

"Riven."

The sharp, clear voice cut through the heavy static in my head like a silver blade.

I stopped dead, my hand freezing an inch from the iron railing of the stairwell. I didn't need to turn around to recognize the precise, calculating frequency of the girl stepping out from the shadow of the archival arches. It was Amaya.

She walked with the slow, deliberate grace of a primary-line tracking specialist, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe, flawless knot at the base of her skull.

Her blue eyes weren't wide with the chaotic panic that had ruined the students in Halloway’s lecture; they were narrow, cool, and fixed on my face with an intense, predatory focus that instantly made my wolf bare its teeth behind my sternum.

She cornered me right at the threshold of the landing, her tall frame blocking the narrow turn into the stairwell.

"I heard everything about Kathy," Amaya said, her tone level, entirely devoid of the typical lower-tier gossip.

She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning her shoulder lightly against the stone casing of the archway. "The entire wing is locked down under administrative seal. They’re calling it an erratic manifestation, but the ward logs on the third floor don't match a standard wolf awakening. Not even close."

I let out a heavy, exhausted sigh, my fingers clenching into a fist inside my jacket pocket.

My alpha energy spiked for a fraction of a second, a sharp warning growl radiating outward from my chest to tell her to clear my line.

"Not now, Amaya," I muttered, my voice rough and clipped as I tried to step past her shoulder. "I don't have the time to break down the incident report with you, please."

I took a single step toward the stairs. She didn't move an inch.

"I knew it wasn't her that night," Amaya said clearly, the words dropping into the quiet corridor with the weight of a lead weight.

I froze.

The cold air in the stairwell seemed to instantly turn to ice in my throat. The image from the grimoire—the jagged, hand-drawn charcoal sketch of the formless shadow that could split its physical manifestation to take numerous identical identities—flashed through my mind with the force of a physical blow.

I turned around slowly, my boots making a heavy, deliberate scraping sound against the marble floor.

My eyes locked onto hers, my jaw setting into a rigid, dangerous line as my wolf slammed against the front of my ribs, demanding every single piece of data her brain was holding.

"What did you just say?" I rasped, my voice dropping into a low, lethal register.

Amaya looked at the raw, bleeding skin of my knuckles, then lifted her gaze back to my eyes, her expression completely unbothered by the alpha pressure I was throwing off.

"You heard me, Riven," she said softly, her amber pupils tracking the slight vibration in my posture. "The night I went to Kathy's dorm. The night you and Zayden were supposedly keeping her locked down inside the alpha suite because her core was too unstable."

How did she know—

She took a slow, measured step away from the archway, closing the distance between us until she was standing directly in my personal wire, her voice dropping into a confidential, razor-sharp whisper.

"I wanted to see for myself," Amaya explained, her eyes narrowing as she recalled the sequence. "I was sure the dorm was locked from the outside, I was sure no one was inside. But Kathy came out.”

Amaya paused, her chest rising in a calm, steady breath as she looked straight into my soul.

“I was absolutely sure the girl who came out wasn't Kathy," she said, her voice dead steady. "The physical mass was identical. But the frequency structure was dead. It didn't have the standard human drag that Kathy’s bloodline always throws off. I had to play along because whatever was standing before me that night was not a wolf nor a human."

A cold, greasy sweat broke out across the back of my neck. My mind went completely frantic, the pieces of the puzzle spinning out of control.

Amaya hadn't just seen a shadow-glamor; she had
witnessed the entity’s secondary vehicle operating in broad daylight while the true Kathy was asleep under our blankets.

Amaya stepped even closer, her boots clicking softly against the stone as she looked up at me. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her lips stretching into a small, calculating smile that carried a terrifying amount of certainty.

"You know me too well, Riven," she murmured, her tone laced with a quiet, dangerous confidence. "I don't miss even the tiniest detail. I know exactly how Kathy disappeared from the library two weeks ago."

I stayed completely pinned to the floorboards, the breath entirely trapped in my lungs. I was completely, utterly speechless.

"I have no business with Kathy but I just needed to find out more, " Amaya said, her eyes drilling into mine as she delivered the final fracture to my certainty. "But that wasn't Kathy, Riven. It was something else entirely. And whatever it is, it’s currently mapping out more plans."

The silence that followed her words was deafening, the heavy chime of the afternoon bell echoing through the high windows like a countdown to an execution.

I stared down at her, my hands shaking inside my pockets, my mind completely blank.

Amaya’s smile softened just a fraction, her eyes locked onto the panic hidden behind my gaze.

"I can help you.”