At Hampden University, where ivy strangled stone and golden leaves whispered secrets in ancient dialects, Henry Winter had always been a creature apart.

There was a girl in the medical college. Hampden was a patchwork of minds—philosophers, poets, mathematicians drunk on the language of numbers⎯but medicine?⎯that was another kingdom entirely, students of that faculty lived differently: in the rhythm of biology, blood, and anatomy, they carried sharpness in their voices, steel in their spines, they studied how to hold death in their palms without blinking.

He was a man of Latin verses and forgotten gods, of rare manuscripts and cloistered libraries. His world was cloaked in classical silence, untouched by the trivialities of modern youth—their flashing screens, their digital worship. He existed in sepia. He existed in stillness.

And so, it startled him when Bunny Corcoran—loud, careless Bunny—became ensnared by something, or someone, beyond their tight academic circle.

A girl.

Not a Classics student, not a Literature major. No—a medical student.

A creature carved not of marble like Camilla, but of something alive, luminous. Something elemental. Bunny, the fool, had become infatuated—and not subtly. His phone, once cluttered with memes and clumsy pictures of beer foam, now overflowed with videos of her. He followed her Telegram channel religiously, like a monk fingering a rosary of her updates.

Her voice—God, that voice—was like silver bells in a dark cathedral. A siren song layered with intellect, danger, and velvet beauty. Camilla faded like a dream at dawn, all women did, he wanted to see her cry. Laugh. Rage. Break, wanted to own the mosaic of her moods, Henry wanted to be the scalpel that cut her open and the balm that sealed her shut, slowly, like ivy over cathedral stone, Henry Winter began to creep into her life, not with noise, with silence.

Until Bunny wouldn’t shut up about her.

Her name was never mentioned—only she. As if speaking it would summon her. “She posted again,” Bunny would whisper with reverence, eyes glued to his phone. “Christ, would you look at that neck. That voice. That skin.” Henry, with his usual distance, ignored it. At first.

But Bunny changed. His obsession crept into every corner of their world⎯Telegram videos, blurry photos of her walking down the pale hospital corridor, recordings of her giving tutorials with a voice that was music dipped in intellect.

A cold, melodic thing, honey on a scalpel, she was beautiful, yes. But not in the way Camilla was⎯a soft pastoral dream

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No. This girl was designed. A being of contrast.

Porcelain skin, but shadowed eyes. Dark curls the color of ink soaked in moonlight. Fingers that moved with surgical precision, nails gleaming like polished obsidian.

Her aura was distant, yet magnetic⎯like a blade beneath silk, Henry clicked once.Then again.Then every hour.And she never once tried to catch attention—yet she owned it. Especially his.

Bunny tried to reach her, of course. Sent gifts. DMs. Left notes like a tragic schoolboy.And Henry?.

He watched her watch.It wasn’t jealousy that gripped him. It was the audacity of it all⎯she could command a man like Bunny without lifting a finger, she could live untouched in a world obsessed with her.