The night doesn’t care who you were.

It doesn’t care who stood at the front of the room.

It doesn’t care who held the microphone.

It doesn’t care how many heads nodded when you spoke.

The night only remembers who made it out alive.

Academius, you think respect is something you can drive into someone with volume and posture.

You confuse fear with discipline, silence with order.

You think if people stay quiet long enough, they’ll stop resisting altogether.

They didn’t stop resisting. They learned who you were.

You didn’t lose your classroom because the world changed. You lost it because people got tired of being threatened and called it education.

Your lessons are just you handing out consequences and pretending they’re wisdom.

You don’t correct behavior. You punish defiance.

You like structure because it puts you above everyone else. Because rules feel strong when they’re wrapped around someone else’s throat. But out here, under broken lights, with nowhere to hide behind authority, your voice doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Out here, no one has to listen.

Propaganda knows that.

Don’t you?

You never cared about order. You understand chaos too well for that. You let it grind people down until they’re exhausted, then you offer them peace if they stop fighting back.

You don’t yell.

You don’t rush.

You wait until surrender feels easier than resistance.

Because you’re not after respect. You want control.

You call it belief because belief sounds clean. Sounds chosen.

But I’ve seen the look in your eyes.

You don’t care if they understand you. You care that they break.

You leave your mark so they remember exactly who did it.

You and Academius aren’t the same.

One of you tries to control the room. The other controls what happens after the room collapses.

But you both live off the same thing.

Fear.

Fear that keeps people seated.

Fear that keeps people kneeling.

Fear that convinces them there’s no other option.

That works in classrooms and crowds.

It doesn’t work in the dark.

Because the dark is where fear gets hunted.

This ain’t a lecture hall. There’s no bell coming to save you when things go bad.

This isn’t a pulpit. There’s no congregation to soak up the damage when your words stop landing.

There’s just space closing and nowhere left to run.

You think this is about who imposes their will harder.

It’s not.

This is about what happens when control meets something that doesn’t respond to it.

When rules stop mattering.

When words stop working.

When symbols don’t scare anyone anymore.

I don’t need you to believe anything or learn a thing.

That part’s over.

Now it’s just you alone in the dark, waiting for something to answer.

But nothing’s coming.

No rescue.

No bell.

No voice loud enough to matter.

You built it all on fear, and fear doesn’t hold up out here.

Not in this ring. Not in this kind of dark.

Because out here?

Rules crack.

Voices fail.

Bodies drop.

And the night?

The night doesn’t care how loud you screamed.

The night only remembers who made it out alive.

And I am the Night.