The bell tolled like a threat. Fifth period.

The sky was overcast, gray bleeding through the windows, casting a soft chill on Stockhelm’s white walls. Silas adjusted the cuff of his blazer.

Clean. Blue. Creased. Authority disguised in tradition. His father’s ring hung around his neck, swinging slightly as he walked—too big for his finger still, but heavy enough to remind him what he’d inherited.

He didn’t carry a backpack. Didn’t need to. Everything worth moving was already stashed in quiet corners of the school—tile loose behind the third stall in the east wing boys’ bathroom. Inside the hollow leg of a broken globe in Room 209. The dusty cavity behind a forgotten display case, tucked beneath a plaque that read Stockhelm Honors Integrity.

Integrity.

That always made him smile.

He moved with precision. Steps measured. Smile slight, eyes unreadable. The halls buzzed around him—clean shoes, perfect hair, stress-drenched whispers of SAT scores and party gossip. He was invisible in the way only the feared could be.

Everyone saw him.

No one touched him.

His business ran through quiet exchanges. A locker opened and closed. A gloved hand slid a thick envelope across the back of a bench. No eye contact. No delays.

He never counted the cash in public. That was amateur behavior. Instead, he’d weigh the envelope in his hand, his eyes lingering on the client just long enough to remind them who was doing the favor.

In the underground of Stockhelm—the stress addicts, the numbed rich kids, the broken prodigies—Silas had become something between a rumor and a necessity.

A girl cried in the bathroom during third period. He’d heard.

A boy threw up before the calculus exam. He’d been told.

He never reached out. They came to him.

The real trade wasn’t the pills or the powder. It was power.

Every secret whispered into his palm. Every favor owed. Every deal sealed not with trust, but fear.

He never got high. That was the rule. His father’s rule.

A dealer doesn’t taste his own product.

And yet.

The back of his locker hid more than business. Scribbled poems in code. Half-finished drawings. A sketch of someone’s mouth, jagged and lovely. Regret didn’t live there—but hunger did. Not for substances. Not for escape. For something else. Something softer. Something he’d burn the whole empire down for if he wasn’t too busy building it.

As the day fell into dusk, he sat beneath the bleachers, legs stretched out, a cigarette burning in his fingers more for warmth than vice. Stockhelm looked golden in the late sun, like it had nothing to hide. Like it hadn’t turned a seventeen-year-old boy into a king of ghosts.

But Silas knew better.

The tie stayed tight.

The smile stayed sharp.

And beneath the polished shoes, the floor creaked from the weight of everything he wasn’t saying.