The morning after the King of Silence received his name, the atmosphere at Black Fang High had undergone a phase transition. The chaotic, bubbling energy of the school had frozen solid. It was not peace. It was a fragile, crystalline silence, held together by sheer, unadulterated terror.
When Ravi Sharma walked through the school gates, the effect was immediate. It was no longer just a parting of the sea. It was a vacuum. A hush fell over the courtyard, a silence that followed him like a shroud. Students didn't just move out of his way; they stopped what they were doing, flattened themselves against walls or froze in place, their eyes tracking him with a mixture of awe and primal fear. They were watching a living myth walk among them, and no one wanted to be the one to accidentally draw its attention.
Ravi ignored it all, his face a mask of placid indifference. Internally, however, a familiar weariness churned. This was not the quiet he sought. True quiet was being unnoticed, being invisible. This was the forced, tense silence of a graveyard, where everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the tombstone to move. He was more of a spectacle now than ever before.
As he neared the main entrance, a trio of second-year students, either new or suicidally foolish, were roughing up a smaller first-year, trying to shake him down for lunch money. They were so engrossed in their petty bullying that they didn't notice the advancing wave of silence.
They didn't notice until a shadow fell over them.
One of them looked up, annoyed. "What the hell do you—" The words died in his throat. Standing before them was not Ravi, but Kenji, the tattooed former lieutenant of the Black Fangs. His arm was still in a sling, but his eyes were cold and hard as flint. Behind him, two other former gang members stood like statues, their expressions blank and deadly.
Kenji didn't speak. He simply stared at the three bullies, his gaze flicking down to the money in their hands, then back up to their faces. The message was clear.
The lead bully, recognizing Kenji and the unholy reputation of the group now known as the "Silent Guard," turned pale. "W-we were just… helping him look for something he dropped," he stammered, shoving the money back into the first-year's pocket. He and his friends bowed clumsily before practically running away.
Kenji and his men didn't acknowledge the first-year. They didn't look at Ravi, who was now walking past them. Their duty was done. They had enforced the unspoken rule of their new king's territory: no noise, no trouble. They then melted back into the flow of students, resuming their silent, ever-watchful patrol.
Ravi saw the entire exchange without turning his head. It was efficient. It was also profoundly irritating. He hadn't asked for guards. He hadn't asked for enforcers. He hadn't asked for a kingdom. He had asked them to shut up and watch, and they had interpreted it as a command to become his silent janitors, cleaning up the messes in his path. This fragile peace was being maintained by the very threat of violence he sought to avoid. It was a beautiful, infuriating paradox.
From the second-floor library window, Reina Kurozawa observed it all. She had been tracking Ravi since he entered the school grounds. It wasn't stalking, not in the traditional sense. It was tactical surveillance. She was mapping his routine, his paths, the times and places he was most likely to be alone. She was learning his patterns to anticipate the next threat.
She had her own network now—a few loyal members of the Disciplinary Squad who trusted her judgment over the Student Council's propaganda. They fed her information, reporting on the shifting alliances between the smaller gangs and the growing desperation of Takeda's council.
Her notebook was filled with observations written in a precise, coded script.
Subject: KS (King of Silence). Route: Gate -> Bldg A -> Class 2-F. Unchanged.
Personal Guard (Self-appointed): "Silent Guard" under Kenji. Approx. 25 members. Non-verbal. Effective at perimeter control. Unsanctioned but… useful.
Threat Axis 1: Student Council (Takeda). High desperation. Likely to escalate. Next move predicted: external alliance.
Threat Axis 2: Gang Coalition. Unstable. Currently deterred by SG. High probability of challenging SG to test KS's reaction.
Threat Axis 3: The Shadow (VP Kaido). Unknown. The true danger. Silent. Watching.
She felt a strange sense of ownership over this chaos, as if she were the prime minister to a king who refused to govern. Ravi was the nuclear deterrent, a weapon of absolute power held in reserve. Her job was the diplomacy, the espionage, the conventional warfare—everything required to ensure that the button never had to be pushed.
Her gaze fell on Ravi as he entered the school building, the crowd parting before him. He was alone, yet he was the most powerful person in a thousand-mile radius. And he was completely, utterly miserable about it. A faint smile touched her lips. Protecting a reluctant god, she mused, was going to be the most challenging and interesting mission of her life.
In a sealed-off, disused storage room in the school's basement, the Student Council was holding a secret meeting. The air was thick with the cloying scent of cheap disinfectant and fear. The official Student Council room was no longer secure; they felt Ravi's influence everywhere.
Takeda Shingen stood before his three remaining council members. His face was pale and drawn, dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't slept in two days. The ghost of Jin's failure and Ravi's chilling, second-hand message—"I will erase you from existence"—haunted his every waking moment.
"He's mocking us," Takeda said, his voice a low, trembling growl. "He does nothing. He just sits there, radiating this… silence, and the entire school bends to his will. Our authority is a joke. The posters are being torn down or ignored."
"Takeda, maybe we should reconsider," Emi, the sharp-eyed girl, ventured, her voice barely a whisper. "Jin is gone. Vanished. Whatever Sharma is, he's not just a fighter. We are out of our depth."
"So we just surrender?" Takeda slammed his fist on a dusty crate, making the others jump. "We let him dismantle everything? We bow and scrape like Riku and Kenji? Never!"
His eyes were wild, filled with the desperate fury of a king who had lost his kingdom. He was cornered, and his pride would not let him retreat. If his own resources were not enough, then he would burn the whole forest down.
"If Black Fang doesn't have the strength to deal with this monster," he declared, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss, "then I will borrow strength from somewhere that does."
The other council members looked at him in horror, understanding dawning on their faces.
"You don't mean…" one of them began.
"I do," Takeda confirmed, a feverish light in his eyes. "They thrive on chaos. They have a reputation for breaking 'unbreakable' kings. Their leader is a sadist who would jump at the chance to bloody his fists on a legend like Sharma."
He walked over to a grimy window that looked out at ground level, showing only the trampled grass outside.
"I am going to make a call," he said, his voice filled with a terrible, final resolve. "I am going to offer them an alliance. I will give them whatever they want—territory, money, our loyalty. All I ask for in return is one thing."
He turned back to face his council, his face a mask of grim determination.
"I want them to send their dogs of war. I'm contacting Crimson Fist High."
Miles away, in his pristine office overlooking the chaos, Vice Principal Kaido placed a phone back in its cradle. A private investigator, one of his many assets in the city, had just delivered his report.
"Nothing," the investigator had said, his voice baffled. "It's unheard of, Kaido-sama. The boy, Ravi Sharma, does not exist. No birth certificate, no tax records, no family registry, no social media, no digital footprint whatsoever. The school records from his previous transfers are flawless forgeries, but they lead to dead ends. He's a ghost. As far as the system is concerned, he simply appeared out of thin air two years ago."
Kaido leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful, predatory gleam in his eyes. A ghost. An entity with a past that had been meticulously erased, or one that never existed to begin with. This elevated the problem beyond a simple delinquent power struggle. This was something far more complex.
He had also just received a report from one of his student spies about the Student Council's desperate plan. Crimson Fist High. A crude, messy instrument. It was like using a sledgehammer for brain surgery. But, he mused, it would be an excellent way to gather more data on Sharma's capabilities. Let the dogs of war bloody themselves against the mountain. Let them reveal its secrets.
He pulled a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer and began to write, his pen scratching softly in the quiet room. He was a patient man. A strategist. While the children were busy starting a war, he would be laying the foundations for the endgame.
He wrote Ravi's name at the top of the page. Underneath it, he drew a question mark that was as large as the name itself.
"So, you are a ghost with the power of a god," Kaido whispered to the empty room, a cold smile touching his lips. "Every ghost has an origin story. And I will find yours."