He left through the side door, and I stood alone in the empty lecture hall, surrounded by centuries of accumulated knowledge pressed into stone and wood. The lamps guttered, sending shadows crawling up the walls.

I’d thought this course would be tedious. An administrative requirement, a political gesture toward inter-clan cooperation that would ultimately mean very little.

Now, replaying the last hour in my mind, I realized I’d been completely wrong.

This wasn’t going to be tedious at all.

It was going to be war.

Rafael

I made it halfway across the courtyard before the adrenaline started to fade and the reality of what just happened hit me like cold water.

I’d argued with Lucien D’Armand. In front of sixty students. On the first day of class.

My clan was going to kill me.

The fog curled around my ankles as I walked, thick and silver in the lamplight. November at Noctis Academy meant perpetual autumn, the kind of cold that settled into your bones and reminded you that winter was coming whether you were ready or not.

I should have been more careful. Should have played the political game, nodded along with Lucien’s sanitized version of history, waited until we’d established some kind of working relationship before lobbing intellectual grenades into the middle of his carefully constructed lecture.

But god, the way he’d stood there. So certain. So absolutely convinced that his clan’s version of events was objective truth rather than convenient mythology.

It had made something hot and sharp twist in my chest. Made me want to tear apart every assumption he’d built his worldview on, force him to see that the foundations were sand, not stone.

Maybe that made me reckless. Probably it made me reckless.

I climbed the stairs to the faculty wing, my footsteps echoing off stone walls that had stood for three hundred years. How many other professors had walked these halls, teaching their own versions of history, each one certain they had the truth?

My office was a disaster, as always. Books piled on every surface, papers scattered across my desk, notes pinned to the walls in a system that made sense only to me. I’d never understood Lucien’s obsessive need for order, his perfectly aligned pages and color-coded citations.

Then again, I’d never understood most things about Lucien D’Armand.

I dropped into my chair and stared at the ceiling, replaying the lecture in my mind. The way his jaw had tightened when I interrupted him. The ice in his voice when he said “revisionist speculation.” That moment when I’d said “history is written by survivors” and something had flickered across his face too fast to read.

He’d been angry. That much was clear.

But had there been something else underneath? A hint of uncertainty? Interest?

I was probably imagining it. Lucien didn’t do uncertainty. He dealt in facts, evidence, carefully footnoted arguments that left no room for doubt.

The problem was that facts could be selective. Evidence could be incomplete. And the most dangerous lies were always the ones that looked like truth.

My phone buzzed. A text from my cousin Helena: “Heard about the lecture. What were you thinking?”

I typed back: “That students deserve better than propaganda.”

Her response came immediately: “You know the elders are going to hear about this.”

“Let them.”

But even as I sent it, I felt a twist of unease. The elders. The Council. All those ancient vampires who’d built their power on maintaining the very narratives I’d just spent an hour attacking.

Dean Hale wanted to see us tomorrow. That couldn’t be good.

I stood and walked to the window, looking out over the academy grounds. Somewhere out there, Lucien was probably in his own office, organizing his notes and preparing arguments for why I should be removed from the course. Building his case with the same meticulous care he brought to everything.

The strange thing was, I almost wanted to see those arguments. Wanted to match my thinking against his, test my positions against someone who wouldn’t simply concede or dismiss me.

Most people at the academy either agreed with me or wrote me off as a troublemaker. Lucien did neither. He engaged. He pushed back. He made me defend every claim, justify every interpretation.

It was exhausting.

It was also, possibly, the most intellectually stimulating thing that had happened to me in years.

I pulled out my own copy of Katarina Voss’s book, my great-grandmother’s work. She’d compiled it over decades, traveling to remote vampire communities and collecting stories that had never been written down. Stories about the Separation that didn’t match the official history. Stories about vampires who’d been killed for refusing to choose sides, about power grabs disguised as philosophical differences, about the systematic erasure of alternative voices.

The book had been controversial when it was published fifty years ago. Many scholars, including several D’Armands, had dismissed it as unreliable. Oral history, they’d said, was too subjective, too prone to distortion and bias.

As if written history wasn’t.

I flipped to chapter seven, the section I’d assigned for next week. The testimonies there were raw, painful. They didn’t fit neatly into academic arguments or theoretical frameworks. They were messy, but real.

Lucien would hate them.

Or would he?

There had been that moment near the end of class when he’d suggested presenting both perspectives and letting students evaluate the evidence themselves. I’d been so surprised I’d almost forgotten to respond. That kind of intellectual openness wasn’t what I’d expected from a D’Armand.

Maybe I’d misjudged him. Maybe beneath all that rigid formality and obsessive organization, there was someone actually interested in truth rather than just defending his clan’s version of it.

Or maybe I was being naive. Three hundred years of clan rivalry didn’t evaporate because of one contentious lecture.

My phone buzzed again. Another text from Helena: “Seriously, Raf. Be careful. The elders are already unhappy about this course. Don’t give them more ammunition.”

I didn’t respond. What was I supposed to say? That I’d try to be more diplomatic? That I’d swallow my objections and let Lucien D’Armand teach a one-sided version of vampire history while I sat there nodding?

I couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that.

Even if it meant war.