Chapter 166: 166-Strange theories
The blood mirrors exploded with activity that night in the whole of Veris academy.
For hours, its magical surface flickered like a restless constellation, messages blooming and vanishing in rapid succession.
Rumors, questions, arguments, and wild theories chasing one another across the glowing glass.
Each new post flashed crimson, then dissolved beneath the next, leaving afterimages trembling across the mirrors like embers under water.
The entire campus seemed to pulse with a new energy as though the academy itself had awakened and was listening to every chain of new news.
Everywhere students gathered, voices overlapped in excited knots immediately. Conversations spilled from crowded tables, curled around staircases, and drifted beneath the vaulted ceilings, mingling with the faint metallic scent of blood and the cold draft slipping through the ancient stone.
Their laughter rose too loudly and their whispers carried too urgently as if everyone sensed that something had shifted and feared that silence might let it slip away.
The first trending topic was the student council strange behaviour since theur return. The second was Maisa and how favoured she was now more than ever.
Word had already spread about the strange new housing arrangement and the decision to move her into the Whiteblood Tower along with the student council.
"The Whiteblood Tower?" a blackblood student asked, staring at the latest message. "They’re really letting her live there?"
"Apparently," her friend replied. "The princess is sharing her tower now."
"Sharing?" someone nearby scoffed. "That sounds less like sharing and more like a royal decree."
The tower; the grand, untouchable tower that had always belonged exclusively to the princess and the blood lord, Kayden Krauss was now going to have more students in it.
Its white stone walls rose above the academy like a frozen flame, its narrow windows catching the moon’s silver light while the rest of the campus lay in shadow.
Under that beautiful glow, the tower looked less like a home than a blade driven into the night and now, it was going to house more than just Varitreya.
That alone was enough to keep the students talking, their curiosity sharpened by the uneasy thrill of knowing they were witnessing something forbidden or at least something that had never happened before.
"But why Maisa?" a blueblood student wondered. "What makes her so important?"
"Maybe the Palace knows something we don’t," another student said.
"Or maybe everyone is making a big deal out of nothing," a crimsonblood student muttered.
"Then why move her into the tower?" the first student challenged.
No one had an answer because they were all in the dark about the new initiatives but it wasn’t the only thing exciting them.
Another wave of excitement swept through the academy when news spread that Taratoya and Katrina had returned.
After spending months at the borders alongside the Queen Consort, helping suppress the werewolves threatening the vampire territory, the two had finally returned to Veris Academy.
To the students, Taratoya and Katrina weren’t simply upperclassmen, they were legends.
Their names had been whispered through dormitories and classrooms for months, carried from one hushed conversation to the next.
Now they were actually back, walking the same corridors where their reputations had grown larger than life. The news struck some students with open admiration, others with envy, and a few with the breathless disbelief of people who had spent months imagining heroes and suddenly found them standing within reach.
The blood mirror chats filled with messages celebrating their return.
[They’re really back! Aaaaaah!]
[I saw Katrina near the eastern hall!]
[Taratoya looks even stronger than before!]
"Did you hear what happened at the border?" One blueblood asked, "Someone said they fought an entire werewolf squad... just the two of them!"
"Nobody knows if that last part is true," a student said, leaning over a table crowded with classmates.
"It doesn’t matter," another replied. "It sounds amazing."
"You’re all exaggerating," a mixedblood student said.
A blackblood student turned toward him. "You weren’t there. How would you know?"
"Neither were you."
"Exactly. So let us enjoy the stories."
The pureblood opened his mouth, then shrugged and slid his chair closer to the table instead of walking away.
The scrape of wood against stone vanished beneath the surrounding laughter. Nobody seemed capable of containing their excitement. Even those who pretended to doubt the stories kept leaning closer, hungry for every detail.
But then another name began appearing repeatedly across the blood mirror, Zazen.
A blackblood and a former classmate of Taratoya, Zazen had dropped out of Veris Academy a year ago. Now she was back and according to the latest rumors, she wasn’t simply visiting as she was re-enrolling.
That revelation sparked an entirely new collection of questions across the campus.
[Why had she returned after leaving for a full year?]
[Why had she returned now when whole place was so chaotic?]
[What had she been doing for the past year and what did her return have to do with Taratoya?]
"Maybe they planned it together," someone suggested. "Maybe like Varitreya and Addessa, they are dating and have decided to make it official.
"Then why did Zazen leave in the first place?" another student asked.
"Maybe she was forced to leave because Taratoya left the school to enlist?" Another student jumped to speculate.
"Or someone else pulled the strings!"
"By whom?"
The conversation fell silent for a moment. The glow of the blood mirror washed over their faces, turning every expression pale and uncertain.
Somewhere within its glass, a message about Zazen flickered, vanished, and returned with one word changed. No one mentioned it, but several students leaned closer, their earlier excitement tightening into something more dangerous.
No one seemed to know why Zazen had dropped out before or why she was back now. Which, of course, only made everyone more interested.
"Guys, what about the infection that nearly killed students during the break?"
A student called forward the curse that had been whispered since students started falling ill and were taken away for treatment by Regina and her team.
The strange illness that had swept through the students during the school break had left the academy with more questions than answers. Students had fallen violently ill, some had nearly died.
The infirmary corridors had once been thick with the bitter scent of medicine and the low, frightened murmur of healers. Yet somehow, during the blood moon, the sickness had vanished. Red light had poured through the infirmary windows, staining the white sheets and glass vials the color of fresh wounds.
"Yes, why isn’t anyone talking about that?"