That night, Kayan didn't sleep.
Not because he couldn't. Because he chose not to. Sleep meant closing his mind, and closing his mind meant stopping the loop — that single sentence replaying a hundred times:
I knew your father.
In the small room assigned to him in the Academy's east wing — one window, one bed, and a silence that had weight — he sat on the floor with his back against the wall.
He thought the way he always did. Not in words. In images.
The image of his father was blank. Literally. Every time he tried to picture him — no features, no voice, not even a shadow. As if the memory had been cut from its root before it could grow.
Can a person be forgotten that completely?
Or did someone need him forgotten?
At midnight, three knocks came at his door.
Quiet. Evenly spaced. Not a question — an announcement.
He opened it.
A girl. About his age. Short black hair. Eyes the green of a night sea — not the beautiful kind of green, but the kind that hides depth underneath.
Ria.
He'd seen her in class. She sat in the middle row, and when Salar asked about fear — she hadn't scrambled for an answer like the others. She simply looked at him and said, flatly: Nothing. And Salar had accepted it without comment.
She spoke now in the same flat tone, like reading a report:
"Room 14 makes a strange sound every midnight. Complaining to administration is useless. Did it bother you?"
Kayan looked at her.
"There is no room 14 in this building."
She paused.
"The rooms end at 13."
Her expression didn't shift. Then:
"Then why do I hear it?"
He didn't answer.
After a moment, she extended her hand. A small piece of bread, wrapped in paper.
"Dinner here is served once. Miss it and you miss it. I saw you didn't eat."
Before he could speak, she turned and walked away.
Kayan closed the door. Looked at the bread in his hand.
Why?
He didn't know. But he ate.
In the morning, before the first training session, he found a folded paper on his desk.
No sender's name. Only one sentence, written in small, precise handwriting:
"The First Ghoul wasn't imprisoned because he was dangerous. He was imprisoned because he was about to remember."
He gripped the paper until it crumpled in his fist.
About to remember — what?
He looked up. The classroom was filling. Salar hadn't arrived yet.
He scanned the room. Ria sat in her usual seat. She wasn't looking at him.
But — he was certain of it — her lips moved for just a moment when his eyes found her.
Forming one silent word:
"Don't ask."
Kayan sat down. Folded the paper into his pocket.
For the first time in his life, he felt something he had no name for then.
But we know it.
The feeling that the story you thought you were living was never the real story.
And that the actual first chapter hadn't started yet.