ƮᏲɘ Ƈɘʟɘ§ʈɩɑᏝ ƘηɩɠᏲʈ

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The Celestial Knight

Welcome to Valemnia, where a war between its citizens and demons have been ongoing for more than hundreds of years. It's the world wherein people blessed with different 'magical' abilities are united to combat the dark force that tries to endlessly take control. But never once were they truly defeated. The struggle between the two opposing forces continues.

Now, welcome to Celeste Academy, a prestigious institution built for training its students to become valiant knights to defend the world. How would you want to meet the circle of the top twelve students who are considered to be the most powerful of their generation?

For Valeriana Kerrigan, it's hell. Because there's only one problem.

She's the only human.

-*-

"There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you."

― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Prologue

Boston, Massachusetts

2 years earlier

The night was how it should be. Other than having to do more work than Janus had originally intended to, and having some coffee dumped on his favorite shirt by one of his colleagues, the day had gone by without a hitch.

He had just come back from yet another one of his 'out-of-the-office' assignments, as he liked to call it, only to find his table in an unorganized state-as usual. Thus, he chose to start clearing up his table before getting to the mountain pile of workload awaiting him. He was just beginning to sort through some meager papers when his co-worker came in and handed him an envelope.

"Came for you a while ago." Said the man.

He nodded in appreciation and reached for the item, examining it on both sides. In exception for his name written in elegant strokes, there wasn't anything else.

A mysterious letter from an anonymous sender, now this was interesting. If only it wasn't too cliché, he would've been feeling excited. These kinds of letters were very common in his line of job, at least, for him.

Janus removed the glasses sitting atop his nose, letting it lean on its square frames beside his elbow as he firmly pinched the sides of the envelop. There was nothing uncommon about it, really. He raised his glasses and cleaned the lenses before putting it back on.

He took the letter opener idly waiting for the chance to be used once again from his pencil holder and cut through the closed flaps. Calmly, he took out the letter it came with and read the contents.

'Found you.'

He then frowned, feeling a rush of unknown fear that made his toes curl. It left a bitter taste in his mouth and wrinkles between his brows.

What was this?

He stood up and called over to the man who gave him the letter, "Daniel," his voice echoed.

Dull, brown eyes looked his way and blackened lips curled up in distaste. "What?" Daniel answered grumpily, annoyance flashing in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, where did this come from?"

Daniel's eyes flashed. "No one." He answered, before finally going back to focus on his current task.

Janus's eyes found their way to the recently published newspaper.

'DECAPITATED MAN FOUND AT WORCESTER.' It said.

He had inspected the scene himself, given his line of profession, and what he saw was a familiar pattern of killing he had learned to recognize. He had never before seen such a grotesque way of murder, at least . . . not since he last came to live in Boston.

Several photos were taken. The crime scenes were flooded with the victims' blood-messages written in crimson.

Worcester was the first murder site; the message was 'I'. The police were baffled by it, wondering what in the world it had meant. The autopsy report said that a foreign substance was most likely the cause of the person's death--black and somewhat viscous-like in consistency. The body was then defiled afterwards for no reason plausible. There seemed to have been no weapons used, and no solid trace or evidence left behind to leave a decent clue.

But Janus had one.

After two days, Framingham came next with, 'Have'. The victim was found to have been . . . dried up. It seemed as though there were no specific targets, but it had been too early to say so. There were no similarities between the first and second victim--at least, not anything that could be noticed so easily.

And once again, after two days, Newton had 'Finally' as a message to deliver.

He took the gruesome photos and pieced them together.

'I have finally--'

A chill ran down his back as he shakily took the letter given to him by his co-worker and placed it beside the photos.

'I have finally found you.'

Knight | Celeste Academy Series BK #1Where stories live. Discover now