Chapter 1

The cold air from the air conditioner feels like a knife.

I sat in the last row of the parents' meeting at St. Relic Private School, my flannel jacket still smelling of slaughterhouse blood. It wasn't clean. I'd finished my night shift at four in the morning and hadn't even had time to go back to my apartment to change before driving my beat-up pickup truck straight here.

The noble parents in the front row were elegantly dressed and had beautiful hair.

The perfume smells cloyingly strong.

I lit a cigarette, and the woman next to me glared at me, covering her nose with a handkerchief. I stubbed it out. The cigarette butt was still smoking, like the breath I was holding in my throat.

On the stage, the instructor, Isabella, dressed in a well-tailored Chanel-style suit, gave Mrs. Victoria in the first row a fawning smile. The woman's portly son occupied two seats, clutching the latest gaming console.

"Next, let's share a very interesting diary entry."

Isabella raised her voice.

She held up a diary with a bear pattern on it.

That belongs to Emilia.

My fingers gripped the chair armrests tightly. The wood creaked softly.

"Emilia, come up here." Isabella beckoned, her smile scathing. "Read the story you wrote to everyone."

My daughter stood up from the third row. She was wearing a faded school uniform skirt, her hair tied in a ponytail, and she walked to the podium with her head down and her shoulders slightly hunched.

"Speak louder, don't be shy."

Isabella shoved the diary into her hand.

Emilia turned to that page, her voice barely audible:

"My father is the Grand Duke of the Night. He wears a dark red trench coat and protects the city under the moonlight. He is very powerful; even the bad guys are afraid of him—"

The classroom was silent for two seconds.

Then came a burst of shrill laughter.

Victoria's chubby son laughed the loudest, his whole body shaking like jelly. The ladies in the front row covered their mouths with handkerchiefs, their eyes filled with disdain. One woman wearing a pearl necklace even took out her phone to take pictures.

"Duke of the Night!"

Isabella repeated it exaggeratedly.

"My God, this idea is truly—"

She paused, then glanced at me. Her eyes looked at me as if I were some kind of laughable good-for-nothing.

"Oh, right, Emilia's father is here too. He's the one in the back row—" she drawled, "the gentleman who works the night shift at the slaughterhouse. No wonder the child is so sensitive to 'dark red,' probably the color of pig's blood splattered on his work clothes?"

The laughter grew louder.

Like a flock of crows pecking at carrion.

I watched my daughter's retreating figure. Her shoulders were trembling. The diary in her hands was shaking so badly that she couldn't turn the pages.

"Kids, they always love to daydream."

Lady Victoria picked up her teacup without even lifting her eyelids.

"But this kind of slum-like fantasy really doesn't fit into the Holy Relic Academy. The ingrained poverty can't be washed away. Like…" She paused, her gaze sweeping over me, "like the smell of blood on some people."

"That's right."

Isabella picked up the conversation.

She reached out and snatched the diary from Emilia's hand. The movement was as rough as tearing a rag.

"This kind of inferior notebook should also be—"

Sizzle.

She tore it open with force.

The diary was torn in two. Shredded pieces of paper fell like snowflakes onto the podium and scattered all over the floor. The bear pattern broke in the middle, turning into two shattered smiley faces.

Emilia was stunned.

She stood on the podium, mouth agape, tears streaming down her face as they fell to the floor.

"Squat down and pick it up."

Isabella kicked the fragments with the tip of her shoe.

"Isn't it a precious treasure?"

Emilia crouched down and began picking up the pieces. Her fingers trembled, and her fingernails were full of residue from transparent tape. She tried to piece the torn paper back together, but she couldn't.

"Why are you crying?"

The chubby son shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Go back and have your dad draw you a new book using pig's blood!"

The whole class burst into laughter again.

I watched my daughter kneel on the floor, picking up the scraps of paper one by one. That diary was bought last month for her birthday; I worked three extra days to save up the money. She writes an entry every night before bed, and then reads it to me.

Laughter echoed in my ears.

These ants.

The human knightly order I tore apart a thousand years ago was of a higher bloodline than everyone in this classroom combined. The "Silence Agreement" taught me to be indifferent, to play the subservient fool, and to keep quiet and work in the blood pools of the slaughterhouse.

But now—

I sighed.

The old wooden chair creaked dully.

I slowly stood up.

There were no unnecessary movements.

But in that instant, something that had been sealed for thousands of years leaked out.

The temperature dropped sharply.

Frost began to condense on the normally temperature-controlled air conditioning vents. Thin ice crystals visibly formed on the surface of the hot black tea in Victoria's hand. Fine ice crystal patterns spread across the windowpane.

The laughter stopped abruptly.

The classroom was as quiet as a graveyard.

Everyone froze in their seats, their exaggerated smiles frozen in place, like puppets whose pause button had been pressed. The chubby son's mouth hung open as the game console slipped from his hands and crashed to the ground with a sharp crack.

The screen is broken.

My leather shoes stepped on the floor.

Each step felt like walking on ice, producing a faint cracking sound.

Isabella's face turned deathly pale. She tried to back away, but her legs were too weak to support her weight, and she plopped down on the edge of the podium. Her fingers gripped the corner of the table so tightly that her fingernails turned blue.