Chapter Text
"This is not a drill.
Stay in your classroom.
Do not open the door—
no matter who is asking.”
The clock in the science wing ticked too loudly.
It always did.
A steady, hollow click… click… click… that drilled into the sterile white walls, bounced off glass beakers and stainless-steel countertops, and was only partially swallowed by the low, constant hum of the fluorescent tubes overhead. Most students filtered the sound out within minutes. Albedo never did.
He rarely tuned anything out.
“Observe the reaction carefully,” the teacher intoned from the front of the lab, voice flat with practiced boredom. “Timing is everything. Add the catalyst even thirty seconds too early and you’ll destabilize the entire equilibrium—”
A soft bubble rose in Albedo’s test tube. He tilted it with clinical precision, watching the liquid shift from crystal-clear to a hesitant, cloudy blue. Slower than the expected kinetics. Impure reagent? Temperature variance? Or perhaps the reagent itself had been… tampered with.
Tick.
His gaze flicked to the wall clock without moving his head.
2:15 PM.
Two minutes remaining until the class is over.
He adjusted the tube’s angle by two degrees, cataloging viscosity, refraction, the faint resistance in the solution’s flow. Around him, the usual ecosystem of Academic Block A hummed along: whispered side conversations, the scrape of chairs, a stifled laugh from the back row. Predictable variables. Comfortingly mundane.
Controlled.
Meanwhile, several floors above in Academic Block A’s isolated upper-level classroom—designated for advanced independent study—Xiao sat slumped in the back row, headphones clamped over his ears even though the teacher had long since given up enforcing the no-electronics rule with him. The room was dim, curtains half-drawn against the afternoon glare, and only a handful of students occupied the scattered desks. Most preferred the livelier humanities wing or the bustling main library. Xiao liked the emptiness. It let him breathe.
His golden eyes were half-lidded, staring at the blank notebook in front of him without really seeing it. The lecture on historical feudal systems had blurred into white noise hours ago. Instead, his mind drifted to the faint, persistent itch at the edge of his senses—the feeling of being watched that never quite left, no matter how many times he changed seats or skipped group activities. Today it was stronger. A low hum beneath the skin.
Tick.
The teacher droned on from the front, voice a distant monotone. His eyes slid to the clock on the wall.
2:16 PM.
One minute remaining. He exhaled slowly, shoulders tense beneath his uniform jacket. The isolation suited him. People complicated things. Their voices overlapped, their intentions twisted like knotted strings. Better to stay apart. Safer.
In Academic Block B’s main lecture hall, the atmosphere was anything but quiet. Scaramouche leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, a sharp smirk playing on his lips as he interrupted the literature teacher for the third time that period. The room was filled with the rustle of papers and the occasional stifled laugh from the back rows. Sunlight filtered through tall windows, casting long shadows across the polished wooden floors
“—and yet you expect us to swallow this romanticized drivel about fate and destiny?” Scaramouche’s voice cut through the air like a blade, indigo eyes narrowed with practiced disdain. “It’s all just pretty packaging for control. ‘The red thread of fate’? Please. It’s a chain with better marketing. People tie themselves to each other and call it inevitable when really they’re just too cowardly to cut loose.”
The teacher, an older woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a patient but thinning tolerance, sighed and adjusted her notes. “Mr. Scaramouche, this is a discussion on classical mythology and its influence on modern narrative, not a platform for your personal nihilism. If you have a constructive point—”
“Oh, I have plenty of constructive points,” he interrupted again, leaning forward now, elbows on the desk. His modified uniform—tie loosened like a noose, shirt untucked at one side—marked him as the perpetual problem student. “For starters, why do we keep teaching this garbage as if it has any bearing on reality? In the real world, connections are liabilities. They get you killed. Or worse, they make you predictable.”
A few students snickered. Others shifted uncomfortably. Someone behind him whispered, “He’s going to get suspended again—”
Scaramouche thrived on it—the discomfort, the attention, the way it kept everyone at arm’s length. Vulnerability was a weakness he refused to entertain. He had learned early that trust was a luxury the school’s environment didn’t afford. Everyone here was playing some angle, chasing grades, recommendations, or whatever invisible ladder the administration dangled. He preferred to yank the ladder away before they could climb.
Tick.
The second hand jerked forward once.
2:17 PM.
Click.
At that exact moment, the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the intercom crackled to life across every classroom, every hallway, every corner of Teyvat High.
A harsh burst of static tore through the speakers, loud enough to make several students flinch and one girl in the back drop her pen. The science teacher in Albedo’s lab paused mid-sentence, brow furrowing. “That’s not—”
Another crackle. Then a distorted voice, dragged through broken filters and warped wiring, spoke with mechanical calm:
“—ck—down—initiated.”
The words stuttered unnaturally, syllables fracturing like corrupted audio.
“Do not—leave—your classrooms.”
The fluorescent lights flickered again—harsher, longer—casting stuttering shadows across rows of desks. Students exchanged uneasy glances. Whispers bloomed.
“Is this a drill?”
“No one told us about any drill—”
“Remain—where you are—"
The voice cut off with a wet click, as though someone had yanked the plug mid-breath.
Silence crashed down, thick and unnatural. The kind of silence that made the clock’s ticking feel suddenly deafening.
Then—
A scream.
It tore through the corridors like torn flesh—raw, animal, far too close. Every head in every classroom snapped toward the doors. The science teacher dropped her marker; it clattered loudly on the tile.
“What in the—”
The alarm detonated.
A piercing, mechanical wail exploded through the building, drowning thought and speech alike. Red emergency lights slammed on, bathing every room in pulsing, blood-colored strobe. Students shot to their feet in a chaotic wave.
“What’s happening?!”
“Is this real?!”
A series of heavy metallic clunks echoed in near-perfect unison, like bones snapping into place. Several students lunged forward, yanking desperately at the door handles.
“It won’t open!”
“Why is it locked?!”
“Everyone stay calm!” the teacher shouted, voice already cracking with strain. “This must be a security protocol—some kind of precaution—”
BANG.
Something massive slammed into the corridor door from the outside. The entire frame shuddered. The class froze mid-panic.
Another BANG—louder, angrier. Then a wet, dragging scrape, like fabric and flesh being pulled across tile.
Then silence.
Albedo had not moved from his stool.
His experiment sat forgotten on the bench, the cloudy blue liquid slowly settling. His teal eyes were narrowed, not in fear, but in razor-sharp analysis. The timing was too perfect. The announcement. The simultaneous locking of doors across multiple blocks. The precision of the alarm trigger.
This was not a drill.
In Block B, Scaramouche was already standing, ignoring the teacher’s barked order to sit down. He crossed to the door in three unhurried strides and tested the handle with clinical detachment. Locked, as expected. The red emergency lights strobed across his sharp features, carving deep shadows beneath his indigo eyes and turning his faint smirk into something almost feral.
“Pathetic,” he muttered under his breath.
“Get away from the door!” a classmate hissed.
Scaramouche tilted his head, listening past the siren. Beyond the alarm, past the rising panic in the room, he heard them:
Footsteps. Getting closer.
In the upper levels, Xiao was already on his feet. He didn’t remember standing up. The chair had scraped back violently behind him. His entire body was coiled, every sense straining toward the frosted glass panel in the classroom door.
The teacher was saying something—orders, reassurances, nonsense. None of it registered.
There—
A shadow flickered past the glass. Too fast. Too low.
Then a student slammed into the door from the hallway, palms slapping hard against the reinforced pane.
“OPEN IT—!”
The voice cracked with raw terror. “PLEASE—OPEN THE DOOR—!”
Chaos erupted inside the classroom. Students shouted, some pounding on the glass from their side, others backing away in horror.
“It’s locked!”
“We can’t—!”
The student’s hands left bloody prints on the glass. Wet. Fresh. Their face was a mask of pure animal panic, eyes wide and glassy.
“They’re— they’re right behind—!”
The words died in a choked gurgle.
Their body jerked violently—once, twice—like a puppet with its strings savagely yanked. A strangled, wet sound tore from their throat.
Then they were ripped backward, dragged out of sight with terrifying speed.
A thick, glistening streak of red smeared down the glass in their wake.
The room plunged into stunned silence. Even the siren seemed momentarily distant, muffled, unreal.
Someone screamed. Another student began sobbing uncontrollably. The teacher staggered back against the whiteboard, face ashen, mouth opening and closing without sound.
The intercom crackled again, louder, clearer, the distortion dialed back.
“There is an intruder on campus.”
A deliberate pause. Soft static hiss.
Then, with what could almost be amusement:
“Remain in your classrooms… for your own safety.”
The lights flickered once more—longer this time, plunging the hallway outside into near-total darkness.
Xiao’s grip tightened on the door handle. His breathing remained controlled, but inside, the paranoia he had tried to suppress roared to life. Whatever had just begun, it was already painting the halls in blood.
The ordinary day had fractured.
Click.
The clock advanced.
2:18 PM.
And somewhere deep inside Teyvat High—perhaps in the maintenance tunnels, perhaps in the Old Building, perhaps inside the walls themselves—something began to move with purpose.