Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 9.1 - The Unfound Ghost

The other mirrored it—cooler, quieter. A moon held in reverse.

Subtle. Decorative. Almost meaningless.

He didn't touch them.

Just watched.

And then the metaphor surfaced—not dramatic, not profound. Just... obvious. As if it had always been there.

The sun and the moon.

Of course.

One constant. One wild. One pulling light toward them. The other calculating its distance.

Aiden almost smiled. Not fully. Just enough for the thought to settle.

Just like me and Aria.

She burns—loud, impulsive, all instinct and heat.

I reflect—still, surgical, always three steps ahead.

She forces doors open. I study the locks.

She makes noise. I make decisions.

Maybe we were never part of the pattern the system knew how to protect.

Maybe our legacy wasn't lost—

Maybe it was erased.

His breath caught—barely.

Not fear. Not wonder.

Just a calibration—

like his neurons had silently agreed to something they hadn't yet processed.

And suddenly, it made sense.

They were admitted under the legacy program—yet no Founder family claimed them.

Nothing to tie them to the Twelve.

And the system said nothing.

No error. No correction.

Which meant it wasn't confused.

It was hiding something.

And yet... they had the key.

Not metaphorical.

Not symbolic.

The Golden Key—real, physical, and unlike anything else in Avalon.

It didn't glow. It didn't open.

But it pulsed once. Quietly.

As if waiting.

Aiden didn't know how to activate it.

But the fact that it existed at all meant one thing—

They were never supposed to be ordinary.

Not with names that appeared nowhere in the archives.

Not with a key that shouldn't exist,

yet seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the island itself.

They hadn't earned it.

They hadn't asked for it.

But Avalon had still let them in.

Which meant one thing—

Somewhere, beneath the structure and precision and silence,

the system recognized them.

Even if it wasn't ready to admit it.

But someone else might.

Cassian Dantes

He didn't move through Avalon.

Avalon recalibrated around him—like it remembered him first.

Aiden had dismissed it at first—just another elite with a hidden file and a stronger legacy. Avalon was full of them. Students with redacted histories, concealed admissions, names that opened doors no one else could even see. He assumed Cassian was the same. Sharp. Connected. Unreachable.

But that wasn't it.

Cassian didn't walk like someone protected by a name.

He walked like someone who didn't need one.

There were no affiliations. No Veritas trail before the Link. No House declaration. He didn't speak in council meetings—he ended them. He didn't chase power. It seemed to yield to him before anyone else noticed it was in the room.

He wasn't loud. He wasn't visible.

But every time something broke protocol, Cassian was there—already watching.

That was the part Aiden couldn't ignore.

He'd seen students with power.

But never one the system itself seemed to accommodate.

He wasn't a ghost. Ghosts haunt.

Cassian adjusted the walls before anyone knew they'd shifted.

Whatever he was, he moved like someone Avalon remembered.

And Aiden needed to understand why.

But then came the Prestige Link.

No announcement. No prompt. No request.

One moment, Aria had no affiliations. The next, she was linked. Bound by a system that shouldn't have allowed it.

And buried in the metadata trail—barely there, almost overwritten—was a single word.

Zeroth.

Aiden had run the term a hundred times.

Just that one word.

Outside the Twelve.

Outside everything.

And now, the Golden Key. The hidden arcs. The fact that they even existed inside Avalon without any record of who let them in.

This wasn't a coincidence.

It was a pattern.

And if the system wasn't ready to explain it—

then he'd find the one person it couldn't control.

Not because Cassian had answers.

But because the system never looked away from him.

Cassian Dantes didn't follow Avalon's rules.

He walked through them like he'd seen the code.

And Aiden Lancaster was done waiting for permission.

He turned back toward the dark, quiet suite—

Aria still asleep, the key still waiting.

He didn't need the system's permission.

Just a direction.

And now, he had one.

Cassian Dantes.

The thought crystallized—undeniable, consuming.

Next: Project: NOVALA – They call it a construct, NOVALA call it a mirror