Sunday – Brooklyn University Dormitory, Midnight
Vivienne Smith had learned to detect ripples long before the waves arrived.
As the fourth-year President of Brooklyn University, her nights were rarely hers. Yet tonight, the silence around her dorm was unbroken—except for the low hum of air cycling through the polished vents, and the faint clink of ice in her half-melted glass of elderflower tonic.
She reclined on her charcoal velvet chaise, robe slipping from one shoulder. The city's golden grid flickered through tall windows behind her, but her gaze remained fixed on the screen in her lap.
Not policy.
Not budget.
Not alumni interference.
Ethan Vale.
The third-year anomaly. No scandals, no affiliations, no campus tags. But he'd started appearing. Quietly. Consistently. In rooms that mattered. And not because someone let him in.
He walked in. Like he was supposed to be there.
Vivienne tapped her tablet once more, rereading the plain yet baffling student record. His academic marks were flawless—but it wasn't the marks that kept her up. It was the void around them. As if he lived between the lines of the system and thrived on its blind spots.
No one had ever been this untraceable—by choice.
A quiet ping echoed from her phone on the windowsill.
Encrypted thread. Reserved for council and elite admin. Only the upper few saw these things before they hit public whispers.
> Marco Valentino
Private Villa Gathering | Next Sunday — Midnight
Confirmed RSVP: Ethan Vale
Subject: Clarification of Mutual Standing
Vivienne's brow twitched. Slowly, she walked over and lifted the phone, rereading the words twice.
Ethan had accepted.
She tapped her nail against the glass in thought.
Marco didn't host "gatherings." He threw strategic storms—political carnivals where alliances formed over wine and the scent of ocean wind. The kind of night where people either rose in status or were quietly erased from relevance.
Ethan Vale had no reason to go. No title. No obligation. No social campaign.
And yet, something inside her whispered: he did have a reason.
She didn't know what it was.
That annoyed her more than anything.
She stared out toward the city skyline, her reflection a fractured blend of poise and uncertainty. The questions churned behind her eyes like the tide rising against a breakwater.
Why now?
What game is he playing?
And why can't I see the board?
She hadn't heard about the earlier meeting at The Hub. She didn't know what Ethan had said to Rayan, or how Leona looked at him over Birch coffee.
But she didn't need to.
Because deep down, Vivienne Smith—President of the most powerful student body in the state—felt it:
Something was shifting.
And Ethan Vale was the epicenter.