Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell
Evelyn Gray's footsteps pounded against the stone sidewalks of Asteria City, trembling with urgency. She gasped for breath as the bone-chilling morning wind whipped past her. The watch on her wrist read 7:28 a.m. In just two more minutes, the iron gates of Asteria Academy—the prestigious elite school she had managed to enter through an almost impossible scholarship—would slam shut.
"Don't be late on your first day, Evelyn! Don't give them a reason to revoke your scholarship!" she muttered to herself.
She patted her cold cheeks.
To her, this academy was a golden ticket out of the poverty that had chained her entire life. Working part-time until late every night while barely keeping her grades afloat had never been easy, but the chance to set foot inside this magnificent and prestigious academy was a dream she had finally achieved.
Or so she believed.
Asteria Academy stood proudly behind towering moss-covered stone walls. Its elegant yet intimidating Gothic architecture dominated the landscape, as though the building had been designed to isolate its inhabitants from the outside world. Above the massive iron gates, the academy's crest glowed faintly beneath the pale morning sunlight.
Evelyn quickened her pace, sprinting across the suddenly deserted central courtyard. But her distracted eyes failed to notice the silhouette of someone stepping out from behind one of the corridor's stone pillars.
BAM!
The collision was unavoidable.
Evelyn felt as though she had crashed into a stone wall wrapped in silk. She was thrown backward while the contents of her worn backpack scattered tragically across the polished marble floor—dog-eared notebooks, a wooden pencil rolling away, and a cheap loaf of sliced bread in a plastic wrapper that served as her emergency breakfast.
"Ow..." Evelyn winced as she landed on the floor, rubbing her throbbing forehead. "I'm so sorry! I really didn't mean to!"
She immediately knelt to gather her belongings, her fingers scrambling to collect the scattered papers. Before she could reach her battered physics notebook, a remarkably clean hand with long, elegant fingers picked it up first.
"Are you all right?"
The voice was exceptionally gentle, warm like a freshly brewed cup of tea on a chilly morning, yet carried a depth capable of stopping anyone's heartbeat.
Evelyn looked up.
Standing before her was a young man with golden-blond hair, dressed in an impeccably neat Student Council uniform without a single wrinkle out of place. A crimson armband bearing the words Student Council President rested on his left arm. His clear golden eyes looked at Evelyn with such sincere kindness that he resembled the perfect golden-retriever boyfriend who had stepped straight out of a bestselling romance manga.
His name was Lucien Vance.
The academy's beloved Student Council President.
"A-Ah... y-yes! I'm fine," Evelyn stammered, her cheeks flushing slightly. For an ordinary girl raised in a cramped alleyway, standing this close to someone so ridiculously handsome was definitely hazardous to her heart.
Lucien extended the notebook toward her.
The instant their fingers brushed as she took it, his hand froze.
The gentle touch against Evelyn's wrist caused his entire body to tense.
Lucien's golden eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Within a fraction of a second, his pupils dilated, revealing an emotion he had not experienced in centuries—a bewildering mixture of profound astonishment, restrained hunger, and overwhelming dominance.
This scent...
There was no trace of a demonic contract.
No stench of a soul twisted and rotting in darkness.
The essence flowing from Evelyn's skin was something that had not graced these corridors for hundreds of years:
a completely pure human soul.
Untainted.
Unbound.
And perfectly ripe.
Beneath the appearance of ordinary school uniforms, the breathing of the supernatural beings hidden among the students passing through the corridors suddenly came to a halt. An eerie silence settled over the courtyard. An invisible aura rippled violently; several students holding coffee cups began trembling unconsciously, their knees nearly buckling beneath the overwhelming presence of an energy that was both irresistibly alluring and deeply intimidating.
Evelyn frowned, unsettled by the sudden intensity in Lucien's gaze. "Um... Mr. Student Council President? My wrist..."
Lucien didn't let go. Instead, he leaned even closer. The warm smile that had once graced his lips slowly changed—curling into something deeper, more dangerous, hiding a threat that could not be seen.
He bent slightly, letting his warm breath brush against the edge of Evelyn's ear. In a whisper that only the two of them could hear, he said,
"So we finally meet... my future wife."
Evelyn froze.
Her heart pounded wildly, not from being charmed, but from the sheer shock and absurdity of what she'd just heard.
Future wife?! It's my first day at school, I'm only five minutes late, and the student council president is hitting on me with a line straight out of a cheesy '90s romance comic?!
"Huh?" Evelyn awkwardly pulled her hand away, laughing stiffly as she scratched the back of her neck. "W-What? Is that some new kind of pickup line, Senpai? That's... really funny, haha... But honestly, I'm still broke and I have absolutely no plans to get married young. Besides, my grades are completely average!"
She hurriedly grabbed her bag, hugged it tightly against her chest, bowed several times in panic, and dashed toward the classroom corridor without looking back. She was far too busy dying of embarrassment to notice what was happening behind her.
The moment Evelyn disappeared around the corner, the gentle aura surrounding Lucien vanished completely.
The temperature across the courtyard plummeted to near freezing. The fresh morning air became suffocatingly heavy, carrying the faint scent of sulfur. The sweet smile on Lucien's face disappeared without a trace, replaced by a cold gaze filled with absolute dominance—one capable of crushing a mortal soul with a single glance.
Behind the stone pillars and within the corridor's shadows, more than a dozen students who had been pretending to read or chat suddenly dropped to their knees. Their bodies trembled violently as their heads lowered until they nearly touched the cold marble floor, none of them daring to look directly at the Student Council President.
They were high-ranking demons and pureblood monsters hiding within this academy.
And the figure standing before them was far more than an exemplary student.
He was the Demon King—the ruler of darkness disguised as a human.
Lucien lifted his own wrist, inhaling the lingering scent of Evelyn's touch. A thin, dangerously possessive smile slowly returned to his lips.
"A pure soul... the only human in this place who has never been bound by a contract," Lucien murmured softly. His voice echoed with quiet obsession. "How could a little lamb wander into a den of wolves without realizing it?"
A black-haired student with blood-red eyes crawled out from the shadows and knelt behind Lucien.
"Your Majesty... that girl. Her scent is causing the monsters imprisoned beneath the academy to lose control. Shall we... help her descend into the darkness?"
Lucien slowly turned around. His eyes blazed with a brilliant, deadly gold.
"Anyone who dares to touch her—even if it's only to take a single strand of her hair..." His voice remained calm, yet it shook the very foundations beneath their feet. "...I will erase their existence until not even a single worm in Hell remembers their name."
The young demon shuddered and bowed even lower.
"We understand, Your Majesty."
"Order every member of the Student Council and every corridor prefect," Lucien continued as he elegantly buttoned his uniform jacket. "Watch her every move. Don't let the Fallen Angel, the Curse Hunter, or those useless teachers reach her first."
Lucien gazed toward the corridor where Evelyn had disappeared.
He knew without a doubt that the game within this school had just become infinitely more entertaining.
"She's finally here," Lucien whispered to himself with a slow breath filled with anticipation. "Welcome to our school, Evelyn Gray."
Meanwhile, inside her new classroom, Evelyn was busy wiping the sweat from her forehead when an intense chill suddenly ran down her spine. She sneezed once, shook her head, and thought to herself,
Weird... why does it feel like dozens of eyes are calculating exactly how many pounds of meat I'm worth? Ah, it's probably just my imagination because I skipped breakfast.
