Location: College Dorm – Late Afternoon
The door creaked open.
Leo and Ash looked up mid-chip munch.
There he was—baseball cap pulled low, black mask snug over his face. Oversized black T-shirt, modified pants stitched for ease of movement, and those same quiet, all-terrain shoes. A bag slung across one shoulder. Two flat canvases tucked under one arm.
Nox stepped inside, nodded once, placed the canvases on the counter, dropped the bag by his bedroom door, and turned back toward the exit "for both of you ".
Click. Door shut.
Silence.
Ash blinked. "Did… Did Silent Nox just—give us art?"
Leo leaned forward, already unwrapping one. His brows lifted. "Holy hell. These are good."
One was a sun-washed Ferris wheel with two silhouetted figures. The other was a sketchier painting—dreamlike—two boys on a rooftop, one holding a guitar, the other pointing up.
Ash grinned. "See? He's totally soft. He just doesn't want us to know."
"He left before we could say thank you," Leo said, turning the painting slightly in the light. "Classic."
Ash popped another chip. "You know, I've decided. He's shy. Like a goth cryptid who expresses emotion through art theft and silence."
Leo laughed, leaning back. "Let him have his mystery. I like him any way."
The movie resumed. Chips crunched. Life continued like Nox had never been gone.
Location: Nox's Underground Hideout – Evening
The hum of servers echoed softly. Screens glowed in a halo of surveillance footage, security breach maps, and software overlays.
Nox sat cross-legged in front of his terminal, black gloves clicking over the keyboard. A blueprint of the university firewall cracked open line by line as he rewrote backdoors and ghosted access points. The system welcomed him like an old friend.
He checked the CCTV loops: campus gates, lecture halls, maintenance corridors, and the student database updates since his absence.
His eyes scanned timestamps, sorting innocuous footage from anything remotely irregular.
Everything looked clean.
Which usually meant something was hiding.
He updated his own academic records—schedule aligned, identity shadowed, nothing traceable. A few scripts ran silently in the background, feeding him internal memos from the Dean's office and first-day orientation protocols.
New year, new threats.
And Nox intended to see them coming before they even formed.
Location: Dorm Rooftop – Midnight
Ash was asleep on the couch. Leo had pulled a hoodie on and wandered up to the roof again. The stars looked the same as they did all summer, but something in him knew they wouldn't stay that way.
Down below, beneath ten stories of quiet, Nox was already rebuilding the fortress.
Above, Leo closed his eyes and let the wind run through his hair.
Neither of them spoke of the storm they knew was coming.
But both of them felt it.
End of Chapter 45