Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 9.5 - The Ghost Tier

The Sovereign Gallery wasn't open to the general tiers. It was a sanctum above every major arena—a quiet, glass-encased tier reserved exclusively for Sovereign-ranked students and Legacy adjudicators. It had no announcements, no seating charts, no cameras. Just presence. Those who were meant to be seen... were already there.

His presence wasn't loud.

It was inevitable.

Aiden didn't move. He just watched.

And for a second—only a second—Cassian turned his head slightly, as if registering a shift in gravity.

Not at him.

Through him.

As if he already knew what Aiden was going to ask.

As if the answer had already been given.

Then the lights shifted. A flare broke across the dueling floor.

And Cassian was gone.

He stood there long after the lights recalibrated.

Cassian Dantes had vanished, clean as a system wipe—like he'd never been there at all. But Aiden knew better. The presence still lingered in the space like a residue. Like gravity hadn't quite adjusted yet. People left footprints. He left pressure.

Aiden's pulse hadn't settled.

It wasn't fear. Not even fascination. It was that tightening, electric clarity you only felt when something unexplainable brushed too close. He didn't have words for it. Just the certainty that Cassian Dantes wasn't a glitch in the system—he was something it had absorbed and forgotten how to define.

Luc's words circled back, unasked but inescapable.

Not spoken—just present.

You and your sister.

Not a compliment. Not a warning. Just the system assigning them a role they hadn't written for themselves.

Variables.

The word felt sharper now. Less curious. More calculated.

Aiden hated the word now. Not because he didn't understand it—but because he did. Something inserted into the equation that didn't belong. That couldn't be solved through standard functions.

He knew Cassian was watching.

Not like Veritas—cold, trackable, impersonal. Cassian's gaze cut beneath all that. It wasn't surveillance. It was prediction. Like he'd already traced Aiden's questions before they ever took shape. A presence that didn't observe—it anticipated.

Not instinct.

Not luck.

Pattern.

Cassian probably knew everything.

About their legacy—possibly erased from records, but not from the system.

About the deeper strata of AVNX—the ones hidden even from initiates.

He didn't move like someone discovering Avalon.

He moved like someone who had already made peace with its ghosts.

He didn't follow the rules—he selected them.

Not with defiance, but fluency.

As if the system itself bent to accommodate him, not the other way around.