Drage's legs moved forward, or at least he thought they did.

He had no control.

No say.

It was as if someone had pressed a remote control into the hands of an invisible puppeteer, and he was a marionette strung up by invisible threads.

The forest around him seemed unnaturally quiet, as if it had been holding its breath, watching him stumble forward with deliberate precision. Every snapping twig, every rustle of leaves, every distant hoot of an owl was a countdown to his inevitable discovery.

His mind raced, though that, too, seemed pointless. Thinking felt like shouting underwater. Images came and went, flashes of his life before this, of nobility dinners and gilded hallways, of faces he barely remembered because they didn't matter, of his ambitions, of his pride, but none of it had any weight.

It was meaningless now. He was nothing more than an unwilling participant in a game whose rules he didn't understand. And worse, he was being drawn closer to the center of that game: Sebastian Nekros and his utterly terrifying group.

He didn't even know why.

Why him? Why had he been chosen? He was just the son of a low-ranked noble, barely relevant in the grand scheme of this academy's chaos.

And yet here he was, marching forward of his own volition, even though he wasn't in control.

Even though his instincts screamed at him to run, to hide, to throw himself into the nearest swamp or thorn bush and hope the world would swallow him.

But his legs obeyed someone else's will.

Every step was measured.

Every movement deliberate.

Every shift of his weight calculated to be quiet, stealthy, invisible.

And the closer he got, the slower his body moved.

It was unnerving. Agonizing. Torture. He felt each step drag on for an eternity. The trees seemed to lean closer, as though spying on him, judging him, mocking him silently for being such an easy target.

Each snapped branch under his foot felt like a gunshot in his skull. Every rustle of leaves sounded like a scream announcing his arrival to the world. And still, his body moved, inching closer to the camp.

A twitch of movement in his peripheral vision made him flinch, but his body ignored the panic. It obeyed some invisible will. The forest air was damp, clinging to his skin, making each breath feel thick and heavy.

He wanted to choke.

He wanted to yell.

He wanted to kick his own legs into reverse and run screaming into the darkness. But he couldn't. He could only watch helplessly as the world moved without him.

Then it came.

A pressure. Cold, sharp, and final.

A blade pressed against the side of his neck. A touch so precise it was almost elegant. Not the kind of touch that warms you. Not the kind of touch that teases you playfully. No, this was the touch of pure danger, the kind that turns your blood to ice and makes your legs forget their function.

He froze.

The world contracted.

His ears strained to hear anything, his chest heaved despite the lack of will to move, and his heart thumped in a way that made the inside of his skull feel like it was being hollowed out. He couldn't breathe. Or rather, he could breathe, but each intake of air felt like it was mocking him, reminding him that he was alive while utterly powerless.

Slowly, painstakingly, he turned his head.

Two red eyes.

Two glowing, piercing, unnervingly calm red eyes that bore into his soul like surgical lasers. They didn't just look at him. They assessed him, dissected him, examined every inch of his essence and found it lacking.

His stomach flipped. His legs trembled. He felt a shiver that wasn't from cold, and it traveled straight down his spine, leaving him exposed, naked, and entirely at the mercy of whatever force was behind those eyes.

Page Dea.

The infamous assassin.

The stories hadn't done her justice. She was terrifying. Not just in strength, not just in skill, but in presence. The kind of presence that could make a mountain quake, a river pause mid-flow, and a man so small as Drage wish he had been swallowed by the earth.

She didn't flinch, didn't speak louder than a whisper, didn't even move much. Her calm was worse than rage. It was patience. Patience that could wait centuries if it had to, just to watch a single fool squirm.

If Darge knew that this woman was a yuri writer, and a famous one at that, he would have probably collapsed at the spot, mouth foaming or something.

"What are you doing…?" she said.

Her voice was low, controlled, almost melodic. But the sharpness beneath it cut through Drage's courage like a blade through silk.

"And who are you, D…Drage?"

The emphasis on his name, slow, deliberate, almost teasing, sent ice through his veins.

He tried to answer.

He opened his mouth.

Words tried to form.

Nothing came out.

His throat was tight.

His tongue heavy.

His vocal cords ignored him. It was like his own body was punishing him for existing in the presence of someone so effortlessly terrifying.

Page's blade didn't move.

She didn't even breathe visibly.

But the weight of her attention was enough to make him feel every one of his failures at once.

Every flaw, every mistake, every misstep he'd ever made—they were all here, all compressed into the simple act of her looking at him.

And still, despite the fear, there was a ridiculous, almost cartoonish part of his mind screaming: Why me?

Why him? Why was he the one caught? Why him, of all people, who had done nothing to warrant attention except maybe be alive and walking in the same forest as this monster of a human and his friends?

He couldn't think.

He couldn't move.

He could only feel the cold press of steel against his skin, the impossibly calm weight of Page's gaze, and the creeping realization that he was utterly, completely, hopelessly trapped.

Step by step, she guided him backward.

Not violently.

Not aggressively.

But firmly.

Like a gardener leading a particularly stupid, twitchy plant into place. Each step was deliberate. Each inch of movement a testament to her control and his lack thereof.

Drage's mind screamed again. He wanted to fight. He wanted to resist. He wanted to twist, to turn, to scream.

But the body that moved? It didn't care.

She kept him under that invisible leash, guiding him effortlessly through the forest, her red eyes never leaving him. His muscles strained as though they remembered their purpose, but they obeyed anyway. Every instinct he had wanted to fire, to leap, to run, to scream, and yet he went where she wanted him to go.

Finally, when they emerged from the trees. Drage's stomach twisted in knots. His eyes widened. His heart thumped painfully in his chest. And there it was: the camp.

Sebastian's group.

Nora, Annalise, Kent. Sebastian, Liam, Lillith, Xavier. Alive, dangerous, and laughing as though the world was theirs to command. And now, in the midst of it all, he was being thrown in their path like some poor offering to a very chaotic god.

Page released him with a swift, almost imperceptible motion. He stumbled forward, crashing to the ground in front of them.

His chest heaved, his head spun, his thoughts scrambled in every direction at once.

The cool night air of the forest felt like needles against his face.

The reality of his situation finally caught up with him: he was alive, barely, at the mercy of a woman who could probably kill him without blinking, and he was in the presence of the most unpredictable, dangerous, insane, and ridiculously charismatic group of people he had ever seen.

And he was helpless.

His legs shook.

His hands trembled.

His mind felt like it had been scrambled by lightning and then dunked in ice water. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He wanted to claw at the dirt and wish it would open and swallow him whole. But he couldn't.

He was just a puppet.

And there they were, staring down at him, waiting.

And Drage realized, with a sickening certainty, that his life had officially become a living nightmare.

---

Drage's legs moved again, though he wasn't the one moving them. He stumbled forward, landing awkwardly in front of Sebastian, who tilted his head, eyeing him like a curious predator. Nora snorted, Annalise raised an eyebrow, and Kent blinked, still half-collapsed on the ground.

"Who's the newbie?" Sebastian asked casually, smirking.

Drage tried to speak. His voice failed. The being controlling him clearly didn't care about introductions.

Sebastian chuckled, stepping closer. "Ah, I see. Quiet type. I like that."

Drage shrank instinctively, his mind screaming for him to run, fight, or vanish. Instead, he remained there, utterly powerless, as the chaotic, dangerous, and somehow charming group studied him.

The forest was silent. His fate, entirely out of his hands, had just walked into the camp.

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