Saint Vellaire Academy wasn’t just a school — it was an ecosystem. A world built on prestige, whispered power, and the kind of money that didn’t need to prove itself. The gates were iron, the halls marble, and the uniforms tailored to fit better than half the students’ morals.

You could tell who came from old money by the way they walked — unhurried, chin up, like the world was something meant to accommodate them. Their days were carefully choreographed: morning classes, brunches at the courtyard café, tennis in the afternoons, parties in the evenings. They drove cars they weren’t legally old enough to own, talked about hedge funds like gossip, and spent their weekends at country clubs pretending to be adults.

At the center of it all was William Astor.

He wasn’t just tall — he commanded space. 6'4"ft, lean muscle from hours on the ice and in the gym. His voice was low, smooth, the kind that made teachers pause mid-sentence and girls glance up from their notebooks. There was something deliberate in the way he carried himself — that lazy, confident grin that said he’d already won whatever game you thought you were playing.

Girls whispered about him in locker rooms and corridors, scribbling his initials in the corners of their planners. Some liked his charm; others liked his last name. Astran carried weight — his family had been old money for generations, the kind that owned estates with their own postal codes.

William was part of the elite, yes — but he was also apart from it.

He played ice hockey, a sport too rough for the manicured hands of his peers. His teammates weren’t the kind that wore Saint Vellaire blazers off-campus. They were scholarship kids, athletes from cities that didn’t show up on the alumni donor maps. They trained hard, joked harder, and didn’t care who his father was. Around them, William could drop the façade, breathe differently. They didn’t care that he came from a family that hosted diplomats. On the ice, no one bowed to old money.

But off the rink — he was back in that gilded cage.

His inner circle — Celeste Duval, Theo Harrington, Luca Valen, and Madeline Royce — lived as though life itself was an inheritance. They spent their days skipping lectures, lounging in the garden courtyard, and tearing people apart with words sweetened by smiles. Their parties were exclusive, their reputations even more so.

And somewhere between their laughter and their cruelty, they forgot that not everyone at Saint Vellaire could afford to play their games.

A year ago, there was a girl. Aria Lin — a scholarship student, quiet, observant, too bright for her own good. She was the kind of person Saint Vellaire noticed just long enough to destroy. She got bullied, they called it jokes between students. Harmless.

But people still whispered. About how Aria had been seen crying after a party. About the people she’d been with that night. About the silence that followed.

Now, as the new term begins — Saint Vellaire College’s grand opening ceremony — the elite are back on their thrones. The banners hang gold and white, the orchestra plays softly, and the marble floors shine like mirrors.

William Astor stands among them, expression unreadable, posture perfect. Around him, the same faces — the same arrogance, the same ghosts pretending nothing ever happened.

His Elite friends are around him near the podium, after all they were the ones to welcome the newbies.