The week between the tournament and the Celestial Springs trip was supposed to be a break.

It wasn’t.

Classes continued. Lectures droned on. Professors assigned reading and essays and problem sets that Lucian completed in his sleep, thanks to the system humming quietly in the background. His normal friends—Leo, Jenna, Tara—treated him the same as always, which meant Leo made bad jokes, Jenna filmed everything, and Tara asked questions he couldn’t answer.

But something had changed.

Not in him. In his vision.

Ever since the tournament, ever since he’d stopped holding back—just a little, just enough—his perception had sharpened. The world looked the same, but the people in it looked different. Like someone had turned a dial and added a layer he’d never noticed before.

He noticed it first on Tuesday.

He was walking across the quad, a textbook under his arm, when a girl stepped out of the humanities building. She was pretty in a pale, delicate way—dark hair, grey eyes, skin that seemed to avoid sunlight even on a cloudy day. She wore a long-sleeved shirt despite the mild weather, and her hands were tucked into her pockets.

Lucian’s eyes caught on her ears.

They were slightly pointed. Not elf-pointed, not dramatic—just a subtle curve at the tip, like someone had taken a normal ear and pinched it. Most people wouldn’t notice. Most people didn’t have his perception.

He did.

He kept walking, didn’t stare, didn’t react. But his system flickered, just once, and a line of text appeared in the corner of his vision.

Dhampir. Half-vampire. Maternal lineage. Suppressed hunger.

Lucian blinked. The text vanished.

He didn’t look back.

---

The library was quiet on Wednesday afternoon.

Lucian sat at a table near the back, a stack of books in front of him that he wasn’t reading. His paper on ancient philosophy wasn’t going to write itself, but he couldn’t focus. His mind kept drifting to the girl with the pointed ears, to the system’s casual identification, to the question he couldn’t shake.

How many of them are here?

The library door opened. A boy walked in—tall, lanky, with messy brown hair and a backpack slung over one shoulder. He looked like every other stressed student on campus. Dark circles under his eyes. A coffee cup in his hand. Headphones around his neck.

He walked past Lucian’s table.

Lucian’s eyes caught on his face. Something flickered there—a distortion, like heat rising off asphalt. The boy’s features blurred for a fraction of a second, then settled.

Feline eyes. Amber. Vertical pupils.

Fangs tucked behind his upper lip, barely visible.

Beastkin. Feline subtype. Partial glamour.

The boy sat down at a table across the room, pulled out a laptop, and started typing. He didn’t look at Lucian. Didn’t notice he’d been seen.

Lucian looked back at his books.

Two, he thought. In two days.

---

He started paying attention after that.

Not staring—that would draw attention. Just watching. Observing. Noticing the small things that didn’t quite fit.

The girl in his philosophy class who never ate lunch. The boy in the cafeteria who flinched at loud noises. The woman at the campus bookstore who moved too smoothly, like her joints didn’t work the way they should.

Dhampirs. Half-demons. Beastkin hybrids. A few he couldn’t even identify—lines in the system that read Unknown or Mixed Lineage or Error: Suppressed.

They were everywhere.

Not in large numbers—just scattered, hidden, living their lives. They attended classes, took exams, joined clubs, dated, argued, laughed. They looked normal. Acted normal. Most of them had probably been here for years, and Lucian had never noticed.

Now he couldn’t stop noticing.

---

He found himself in the library again on Thursday evening, doing research for a paper he didn’t care about. The stacks were quiet, the fluorescent lights humming. A few students sat at tables, heads buried in books.

Lucian walked past an aisle and stopped.

A boy stood at the shelf, scanning titles. He looked ordinary—short, stocky, with a round face and glasses. His skin had a faint grey tint, barely visible in the dim light. His fingers were thicker than they should be, the nails darker.

Half-demon. Distant lineage. No active abilities.

The boy turned, saw Lucian watching, and froze.

Lucian looked away first. He picked up a random book, flipped through it, and walked on.

Behind him, the boy’s shoulders relaxed.

---

The next day, Lucian sat on a bench near the student union, watching the crowd flow past.

He saw a girl with scales on her wrists, hidden under a sweater. A boy whose shadow moved independently of his body. A couple holding hands—one with faint horns beneath her hair, the other with teeth just slightly too sharp.

All of them hiding. All of them pretending.

Just like him.

His phone buzzed. Cora’s name flashed on the screen.

"You coming to dinner, or are you going to brood on that bench all night?"

Lucian typed back: "On my way."

He stood, pocketed his phone, and walked toward the dining hall.

Behind him, the crowd flowed on. Dhampirs and half-demons and beastkin hybrids, all of them living their lives, all of them keeping secrets.

The Veil is deeper than I thought, Lucian realized. It’s not just monsters and hunters. It’s people. Real people. Living normal lives.

He didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse.

But he knew one thing: he wouldn’t out them. Wouldn’t expose them. Wouldn’t make their lives harder than they already were.

They were hiding for a reason.

So was he.

---

The dining hall was loud, the way it always was. Leo was already at their usual table, waving him over. Jenna was filming her food. Tara was reading something on her phone.

Lucian sat down, picked up his fork, and ate.

Normal. Mundane. Safe.

He didn’t mention the dhampir. Didn’t mention the beastkin. Didn’t mention the half-demon boy in the library.

Some secrets weren’t his to tell.

But as he looked around the crowded dining hall—at his friends laughing, at the students chatting, at the hidden world beneath the surface—he wondered how many of them were hiding the same way he was.

And he wondered if the Veil was really a wall... or just a mask everyone had agreed to wear.