Couldn't intervene but witnessed anyway.
"It must have been torture," I whisper.
"It was," my father confirms, no attempt to soften the truth. "Watching you face trials we couldn't protect you from. Seeing you grow strong in ways we wished you'd never had to."
"But you did grow strong," my mother adds, pride replacing the grief that understanding brings. "Stronger than we imagined. Stronger than Eleanor anticipated. Strong enough to do what we couldn't—end his corruption from within."
The reference to Eleanor—to the brother I didn't know I had—carries weight that will require future conversations to fully address.
But not today.
Today is for beginnings rather than endings.
For hope rather than grief.
And my father—Headmaster Graveshadow,who is apparently alive—finally lets the emotion he's been containing show on features that carry familiarity I never knew I was missing.
And I realize, in the space between heartbeats that have found new rhythm, that this is what they built.
This Academy.
This haven.
The place where beings from every paranormal plane can come to learn and grow and develop at paces that support who they're becoming.
They built it for people like me.
For people who carry wickedness that was planted rather than chosen, trauma that was inflicted rather than deserved, seeds of darkness that grew because someone watered them with cruelty rather than care.
And now I get to be part of it.
Not as victim.
Not as survivor.
But as one of seven students who will eventually become the pillars that hold this vision steady—the Paranormal Elites of Wicked Academy, guardians of a dream that my parents nurtured through centuries of patience and pain.
The assembly can wait.
The classes can wait.
Everything can wait while I stand in this doorway with my bond mate's hand in mine and my parents' tears mixing with my own and the beginning of this rebirth taking its first tentative breaths.
Power can seem different for anyone.
A gift to some, a curse to others, a responsibility that carries weight regardless of how you choose to perceive it.
Just like the definition of wickedness.
Evil to those who fear it. Freedom to those who embrace it. Transformation to those who understand that wickedness—true wickedness—isn't what we do to one another.
It's what was done to us.
The seeds planted without our consent. The trauma watered by hands that should have nurtured ratherthan destroyed. The darkness that grew because no one showed us how to cultivate light instead.
But no matter the challenges and uncertainties that come with such responsibility…the trials that await or the lessons that remain unlearned…one can truly not appreciate its impact without purpose.
And I have found mine.
