Lieutenant Esposito continued to talk for what seemed like a century. He rambled on about the history of the Cold Soldiers, their successes, their greatness, and how they had given hope to the world after the Cooling Down. He particularly focused on the ten years following the landing of the Alien Artifact in 2005.

  "The Age of Chaos," they called it in history books. Ten tragic years in which temperatures dropped year after year. People were dying of cold even in Africa, let alone in Italy. And as if that weren't enough, the first Glacials had appeared.

  But then came the first Bearers. People who, instead of mutating like beasts, had developed Cold Powers, which were contained in the Cold Veins, a new organ exclusive to Bearers where the energy capable of controlling and creating ice was contained.

  After exactly 10 years, the emission of nanospores ended, and in 2025, Nea-Polis was born from the ruins of what had once been the corresponding metropolis. Along with Nea-Polis, built by the Bearers, the Vesuvius Academy was also established, a temple of strength and dedication where Bearers could cultivate their Cold Powers.

  Nea-Polis was a beacon of hope, but rigid hierarchies rapidly developed within it. The Bearers positioned themselves as the ruling class, while ordinary people struggled to find a place in this new society.

  But while the Lieutenant showed slide after slide, everyone's eyes kept returning to the KryoScanner display that had remained on with that notification.

  ζ – Zeta.

  No one looked directly at Brando. They avoided him like you avoid a homeless person on the street, pretending he didn't exist. A few braver ones allowed themselves to cast disgusted glances when they thought he wouldn't notice. As if he were a leper.

  The puppy in his backpack moved, probably looking for a more comfortable position. Brando felt it trembling slightly. At least it didn't judge him for that letter still glowing on the display.

  When the bell finally rang, Esposito closed the projector with a sharp click.

  "Lesson over," he said, as if he couldn't wait to get rid of them. "You may go."

  The students rose abruptly and left the classroom one after another. Brando gathered his things and was about to leave too.

  "Casadei." The Lieutenant's voice reached him as he was about to exit. "You stay here."

  The door closed with a dull thud behind the last student. The sound echoed in the classroom as Esposito stopped in front of the first row of desks, studying Brando like you study an equation that doesn't add up.

  "You know," he finally said in a controlled voice, observing the KryoScanner display that still glowed. "When I read your name on the list of accepted students, I thought it was a joke. An orphan, with no history and nothing. And then I discover that you're even a fucking Zeta."

  He turned toward Brando, and in his eyes was something beyond contempt. It was the look of someone about to crush an insect and who can't wait to hear the crack beneath the sole. The birthmark on his cheek pulsed once, slowly.

  "A Zeta rank. I thought it was just an urban legend, something told to children to make them study harder."

  Esposito spat the words as if they were poison. He moved laterally, circling around Brando.

  "The Vesuvius Academy is not a rehabilitation center for desperate cases. And above all, it's not an orphanage. It's the place where the defenders of Nea-Polis are forged." He stopped with his eyes fixed on him. "In here, a Zeta is less than nothing. It's a waste of space, time, and resources."

  The puppy in the backpack trembled. Esposito paid no attention to it whatsoever, as if that creature and its carrier had already been erased from his reality.

  "Your presence here is an insult to every Cold Soldier who has shed blood on these stones. An insult to every student who has earned their place through generations." His voice had practically lowered to a growl. "An insult to everything we represent."

  "I'm not here to insult anyone," Brando replied, tired of these incessant diatribes. "I'm here to learn, like everyone else."

  "Like everyone else?" Esposito raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think your place is here, among the children of the great houses?"

  "The Cold Veins chose me," Brando said, and something in the tone of his voice made Esposito stiffen. "Exactly as they chose them."

  Esposito stopped walking. He turned toward Brando and studied him for a moment, as if seeing him truly for the first time.

  "You know something, Casadei?" he said in a calm voice. "Sometimes the Cold Veins make mistakes. Like when they create those monsters we keep in the enclosures." The birthmark on his cheek was pulsing faster now. "And when that happens, we know how to remedy it."

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  "Yeah," Brando raised his gaze, meeting the Lieutenant's. "But maybe it's not the Cold Veins that make mistakes. Maybe it's your way of thinking."

  There was no warning.

  Esposito's punch arrived like a freight train. Straight to the stomach, with a force that had nothing human about it. Brando felt his ribs bend like dry twigs. The air abandoned his lungs in a single blow, and the entire world narrowed to a point of pure pain.

  His body flew backward like a rag doll, crashing against the desks with a crack that resonated throughout the classroom. The backpack slid away, and the puppy curled up inside it in terrified silence.

  Shit. Shit. SHIT.

  The taste of blood filled his mouth. Even just breathing hurt. It wasn't like the brawls in Rione or like the punches taken on the street. Esposito knew exactly how much to hurt without killing.

  A Cold Soldier of his level could have reduced a concrete wall to dust with a punch. But Esposito had held back, and this was perhaps the worst part: he had measured his strength like an adult slapping a child. And he stood there, immobile like a mountain of contempt. For him, Brando was less than nothing. A mosquito to squash during a coffee break.

  At that moment, gravity seemed tripled for Brando. Raising even a finger was like lifting a boulder. He could only feel the stone beneath his hands, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and that figure waiting to see if he would remain on the ground like a good beaten puppy.

  But Brando's fingers scratched the volcanic stone. It wasn't a gesture of pain or supplication. It was the movement of a wounded animal that refuses to die in a corner.

  One knee on the ground. Then the other. Blood dripped from his split lip, dropping onto the black floor like dark oil. It hurt like hell, but for him, it was like an old friend who visited all too often.

  The overturned desks were scattered around him like the remains of a battlefield. In the classroom that grew darker minute by minute, his figure stood out against the blue image of the KryoScanner that remained bright. And he stood up.

  He didn't falter. He didn't stagger. He did nothing but stand, straight as a pole and with his eyes fixed on Esposito. And then, the silence in the classroom became so heavy that you could have cut it with a knife.

  Like a stray dog that gets up after being kicked but continues to stare at you. Not to attack. Not to defend itself. Just to let you know that you can break all its bones if you want, but you can't break its will.

  Esposito had seen every kind of shit in his career. He had seen teenagers cry like babies, others act tough and then piss themselves, still others beg on their knees.

  But this was different. This was wrong.

  Brando's eyes were like black holes in a face dirty with blood. There was no trace left of the seventeen-year-old boy who had entered that classroom that morning. In his place was something primitive, something that reeked of dark alleys and nights spent sleeping on the ground.

  It was the look of someone who had learned to eat from the trash without shame and who had become expert at making himself invisible to avoid being killed. The only certainty those eyes would transmit to you was that you could break every single bone in his body, you could reduce him to a bloody pile of shit, but you would never, ever be able to bend him.

  The gaze of a stray dog that had stopped looking for caresses, that had befriended pain. The kind of look that would be able to follow you in your sleep and could make you wake up sweating at three in the morning.

  Esposito felt something move in his gut, a primordial discomfort that had no name. He was staring into the void and discovering that the void was staring back. And for the first time in his fucking career, Lieutenant Esposito felt the instinctive need to take a step back. Because that wasn't the look of a student who had taken a punch, it was the look of someone who had already lost everything, and precisely because of this had nothing more to lose.

  "One month," he said, and his voice had returned under control, almost professional. But in his tone was something cautionary that wasn't there before.

  "Thirty days," he repeated. "You have thirty days to understand that this place isn't for you and leave of your own free will."

  And he headed toward the door with long strides. "And remember, Casadei, there are ways to break even those who don't bend."

  Exactly. That wasn't pity, it was something more insidious and poisonous. The kind of shit that prefers to see you die slowly rather than get its hands dirty. Esposito could easily have delivered a much stronger blow and killed him on the spot, but that wasn't his goal. His goal was to break his will, to see a proud individual like Brando reduced to a wagging little animal in the disgusting search for food. Esposito had understood that that, today, would not happen.

  So why not simply make his life hell? If he couldn't break him now, he would do it within a few days or weeks. It would be an extremely better dish to savor than banally rendering him a vegetable.

  The threat hung in the air like a bad smell. It was no longer the direct violence of before. It was the promise of slow, daily torture. The kind of shit that wears you down day after day until you surrender.

  The door closed behind him in a way too gentle for someone who had practically threatened to destroy your life, and silence returned to fill the classroom. Brando remained still for a few more seconds, letting the pain find its place. He didn't touch his split lip and didn't massage his screaming ribs. Those gestures were for people who weren't used to taking hits.

  He only moved when he heard the puppy whimper in the fallen backpack. He picked it up slowly, as if every movement was a silent fuck you to the world: I'm still here, you pieces of shit.

  It was time for him to leave the classroom too. And in the corridor, the light painted shadows on the volcanic stone walls. Bianca was standing at the far end of the corridor like an ice statue. Her eyes fixed on him with the same inscrutable intensity as before, neither judging nor understanding.

  For a moment, their gazes crossed through the distance without nods or gestures. Then she turned and disappeared into the shadow, silent as she had arrived.

  Brando remained alone in the corridor that was growing dark. The puppy in his backpack emitted a little whimper, as if to tell him that at least it was still there, that at least that little one wouldn't leave him alone.

  Night was falling on his first day at the Academy. And in the growing darkness, that ζ of the KryoScanner continued to shine behind him, no longer as a condemnation but as a reminder: sometimes being last just means you have more assholes to prove wrong.