Mother Ceres wanted order.
She did not punish sex — even when it resulted in pregnancy. Pietà, despite protecting all mothers, was frightening in its logic: hell inside paradise.
The true hell was denying that logic.
Everyone knew the price — nothing was free.
Not even feelings.
Everything was shaped in lead and hatred, concrete of the soul.
Theo and Ceres had no solution.
When something has no solution, all that remains is to intensify the merciless system — replicate, mirror, multiply it to the limit.
When we never talk about love with anyone, we think we know what it is.
But when someone tries to tell us what love is, we realize we know nothing.
Was it love?
If it was, it had the same foundations: construction, care, remembrance.
A love of lead, concrete, and steel — blood was the alloy holding everything together.
Theo and Ceres looked at each other, hating and loving the same game.
Mother Ceres had coded them.
They were lost, and there was no way out.
Only surrender to Mother.
Only death would separate them.
Or perhaps not even that.
On the other side of the school, Kan crossed paths with Gris in the narrow corridors. The girl, newly arrived from the other school, raised her eyes with disdain, almost challenging him.
— What is it? — Kan teased, without losing his smile. — Your little feud is in the infirmary.
— Spare me! — Gris replied, her voice firm, but without fear.
Kan shrugged and continued, looking her in the eyes:
— Ceres is going to break you completely. You're strong, yes, but did you see what she did to Theo?
Gris sighed, crossing her arms.
— Theo is an idiot bewitched by her. If he wanted to, he could break her neck right now!
— True — Kan laughed — but she has control over him, and he has her loyalty. You don't even have allies here, understand? Sometimes strength isn't everything.
Gris stared at him suspiciously. Kan noticed and continued:
— You're just as arrogant as she is. I don't like Ceres either, but whatever. Everyone stays in their own corner. Fuck the rest.
The words were a silent piece of advice, like someone marking territory. Gris remained silent, absorbing every detail.
— What do you suggest? — she finally asked.
Kan extended his hand.
— That we become allies. We don't have to like each other, but alliances save lives. You lead the girls, I lead the boys. Simple.
Gris looked at his hand, calculated the risk, and shook it firmly.
— If you betray me, I'll rip your eyes out!
— Ooh, scary! — Kan joked, laughing. — You bluff almost as much as Ceres, but you've got teeth.
They went their separate ways. Gris maintained her characteristic apathy, cold and calculating, observing the school with eagle eyes. Her rivalry with Ceres, present since the first day, had never faded; now it intensified with her arrival. They were both like distorted mirrors: bestial behavior, arrogance, intensity. Every movement, every gesture, was a silent test of strength and patience. Neither yielded, neither revealed herself. The battle of glances, presences, and decisions began long before words — and no one knew who would blink first.
Kan knew the game. He knew the rules, the hierarchies, the small pacts that held the school together. He needed Gris — cold, disciplined, strategic. Together, they could shape the classes, align forces, contain rebellions, and establish functional order. On paper, it was the perfect plan.
But there was something neither Kan nor Gris could replicate: Theo and Ceres.
They did not follow rules; they created their own. They were saints and monsters in the same body, chaos and faith coexisting. In every fight, every scandal, every exchanged glance in the corridors, they made the structure tremble — and Mother Ceres did not intervene.
It was as though She watched in silence, approving the imbalance that produced energy, belief, and obedience.
Kan and Gris could win positions, allies, and recognition. But they could never surpass the invisible force that bound Theo and Ceres together.
It was not victory.
It was fascination.
Everyone knew why: Theo and Ceres had the heart of the school. Even wounded, hated, challenged, they were remembered — symbols of something greater than any title.
It was animalistic, reckless, irrational chemistry. The symbiosis between them was like fire and steel: destructive, but impossible to extinguish.
Kan could win battles. Gris could engineer victories.
But Theo and Ceres were the myth.
And against a myth, no strategy works.
Mother Ceres did not merely worship her own logic.
She fed on it, like a goddess consuming the reasoning of her children to maintain the balance of the world she had created.
But logic alone was too cold to sustain the fire of faith.
She needed something beyond it: the soul.
That was why it was not enough for her children to obey.
They needed to be symbolic, inspiring, admired — not through submission, but through devotion.
Mother Ceres's ideology was not made only of steel, but of political virtue.
Each of her children had to reflect an ideal: the purity of strength, the order of sacrifice, the beauty of discipline.
Theo and Ceres were the imperfect mirror of that ideal — and precisely because of that, the favorites.
Mother Ceres saw in them what no code could translate: the deviation that validates the rule, the error that proves perfection.
They bled, made mistakes, loved, hated... but kept moving forward, without denying the system, even when they challenged it.
And that made them sacred.
Gris and Kan could build alliances, plan victories, and control the masses.
But Theo and Ceres embodied what Mother Ceres valued most:
the living contradiction between instinct and reason, between the body that destroys and the soul that obeys.
She did not want only soldiers.
She wanted disciples of the spirit — children who would burn with faith, even without believing in anything.
So while the school revolved around its new alliances and rivalries, Mother Ceres watched silently, from inside the cameras, the lights, the loudspeakers.
The sound of the sirens was her breathing.
Theo's gaze and Ceres's hatred, her oldest prayer.
Central Courtyard — Ceres College
In the central courtyard, the wind carried dry leaves and a metallic chill that came from the fences and the flags waving from their poles. Students passed in hurried groups, but Ana and Daime remained there, motionless, as though time hesitated to pass through them. They wore Mother Ceres's dark-gray uniform — beige shirt underneath, worn combat boots, jacket half-open as though discreetly challenging the regulations. They were disciplined, but there was a youthful carelessness to them, a constant irony toward order.
Daime sat on the iron railing, spinning his ID badge between his fingers. The school emblem reflected the weak light of dusk. Ana remained standing, arms crossed, looking toward the medical building — where Dark was still recovering.
— Theo is strong — she said, her voice low, almost a lament — but for how long? You saw what he did to Dark.
Daime let out a short laugh without joy.
— If the school is calm now, it's only because hell hasn't opened its doors yet. When Dark gets out of there, the school will freeze.
Ana looked at him disapprovingly.
— You talk as though you want that.
— Maybe I do — he replied, still playing with the badge. — Mother Ceres doesn't raise docile children. She wants to see who survives discomfort.
He paused. His smile became darker.
— I can be as strong as Theo, but I'll never be a leader. I laugh at everything. It's my way of not going insane.
Ana looked away.
— You laugh... but you're afraid.
— We all are — Daime said, standing up. — Even her.
A group of students crossed the courtyard, laughing loudly. Among them was Gris, newly transferred. Ana followed her figure with her eyes, her face tense.
— Gris is back. And Ceres is still reigning. They hate each other. And I... I hate them both.
Daime adjusted his jacket and looked toward the cloudy sky.
— That's what Mother wants — he said, his voice grave. — Chaos.
She takes students from every school and switches them around, just to see who can remain standing. She hates comfortable children.
The wind blew hard, carrying the smell of metal and wet earth. The two remained silent, looking toward the gray horizon, while the distant bell marked the end of the afternoon.
Then, almost at the same time, without looking at each other, they repeated the motto engraved at the entrance to the main tower:
— The world is constantly at war; peace is merely an accident.
The sound of the bell ceased.
Only the wind continued to blow, as though the school itself were breathing before the next storm.
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