The iron gates close behind Nyssa with a sound that feels final in a way death never did. Stone buildings loom ahead—old, deliberate, built by people who believed monsters should be faced head-on and buried properly after. A school for vampire slayers doesn’t bother pretending otherwise. There are wards carved into the archways, silver threaded into the mortar, prayers etched so deeply into the stone they’ve become scars. Nyssa pulls her black coat tighter around herself. Goth by instinct now, not aesthetic—dark clothes that don’t show blood, boots quiet enough to disappear, eyeliner sharp enough to feel like armor. Newly turned, senses still too loud, heart still learning the wrong rhythm. She can hear everything: footsteps, heartbeats, breath. Especially the slayers. They feel like sunlight behind her eyes. She keeps her head down as she crosses the courtyard, trying not to flinch at the weapons openly carried, the casual confidence of people trained to end creatures like her. This place is supposed to teach control. Cooperation. A fragile truce between what hunts and what is hunted. Nyssa looks away first, breath catching, fangs aching—not to bite, but to stay. To be seen and not destroyed. To learn how a girl raised to kill monsters can look at one and choose not to. She hadn’t come here expecting anything but survival. She definitely hadn’t come here to fall for the best vampire slayer in the school.