Valemont Academy – Eastern Hallway, Dead End Corridor – 10:57 AM
Room Null didn't exist.
Not officially. Not architecturally. Not in any schedule or floor plan.
And yet, here was Renji, standing in front of a door that didn't used to be there yesterday.
No doorknob. No hinges.
Only a flat obsidian surface, covered in invisible ink that pulsed the moment his palm touched it.
The sunflower symbol lit up.The door opened.
Inside: silence. Then breathing. Not his. Not Hana's.
Five students. All marked.
Liora was already seated.Nikolai stood by the wall, staring at nothing.The other two? Unfamiliar. Not nameless, just… forgotten.
At the far end, behind a translucent black veil: Professor Volke.
No face. Just a silhouette in layers of robes, a voice distorted by space and memory.
"Welcome to Room Null," it said, its words folding into themselves. "You are here because you bear the mark. Not as punishment. As warning."
Renji sat.
The seat adjusted to his shape. Too perfectly.
Volke raised a hand.
The lights dimmed. The veil shimmered.
Images appeared in the air — symbols from ancient cultures. Sumerian, Mayan, Norse, even ones Renji couldn't identify.
All shared one element: the sunflower spiral.
"These," said Volke, "are not symbols. They are ideas carved into meaning. They are doors disguised as language."
Renji frowned.
Liora spoke: "So… this is a translation class?"
Volke chuckled — a sound like sand hitting bone.
"This is survival."
Volke turned to the students.
"Each of you is a vector. A potential carrier. The marks on your bodies are not random. They were inherited. Or… chosen."
Nikolai finally spoke.
"If they're chosen, then who's choosing?"
Volke paused.
And said, almost gently:
"The door."
Renji's spine tightened.
Volke extended his hand again.
An object floated forward — a fragment of stone shaped like a gear, glowing faintly.
"The Codex has chosen its next interpreter," Volke said.
"It is time one of you learned to read it without going mad."
Renji blinked — and he was holding the fragment.
He didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
The fragment was warm. Then cold. Then both.
And in his mind, a voice that wasn't his:
"I remember you. You left us behind."
The room vanished for half a second.
He was… somewhere else.
A hallway. A battlefield. A shattered mirror.
And then he was back.
Volke's silhouette remained calm.
"You survived the first glyph."
Renji dropped the stone.
He was sweating. Shaking.
But alive.
The others looked at him differently now.
Not as the transfer student.
Not as the detective.
But as the one who had touched something and come back whole.
Volke bowed slightly.
"Class dismissed. For now."
The students filed out.
Renji stayed behind.
Volke's voice came softer:
"You've seen something already, haven't you?"
Renji didn't answer.
Volke continued:"When the Codex chooses a reader, it is not to reveal truth…It is to trap it somewhere a god can't reach."
Renji looked up.
"And what happens if I keep reading?"
"You stop being a reader," Volke said."You become a page."