For one solid week, the heavy black door of Room 901 remained shut. The students in Sector 9 whispered that the "F-Rank Cripple" had likely died of shame inside his expensive tomb. They had no idea of the grueling, obsessive work happening behind the soundproof walls.
Sephorae slept four hours a night. The rest of the time, he worked.
His room had transformed from a dojo into a sterile laboratory. The desk was covered in open manuals with complex diagrams of facial musculature and cybernetic theory. He poured over books titled Advanced Facial Prosthetics and Mechanized Limb Integration: The Nico Goldstein Method, absorbing the information with the same desperate intensity the demonic arm used to absorb mana.
The first three days were a nightmare of trial and error. He wasn't an artist, and sculpting a new face over sensitive scar tissue was agony. The adhesive burned, and removing failed attempts often tore the fragile skin underneath, causing fresh bleeding. He would stare at his ruined reflection for hours, applying layers of silicone, molding chin structures and cheekbones that were sharper and more defined than his original face ever was.
He wasn't just hiding the scars; he was constructing perfection. If he couldn't be the plain boy he was, he would be the idealized statue the Vespera family always wanted, only colder.
By day four, he had managed a workable base layer. The synthetic skin matched his pale tone perfectly, covering the ridges of scar tissue smoothly.
Next came the hair. He applied the potent chemicals to his plain black hair, bleaching it raw before applying the deep, vibrant violet dye. The fumes stung his damaged eyes, but he didn't blink. When he washed it out, the dark purple strands fell across his forehead, a stark contrast to the pale mask he was building on his skin.
Day five and six were spent refining the details and studying the arm manuals. He realized he couldn't build a full mechanical prosthetic yet—the engineering was too advanced for a week of study—but he learned enough to construct a sleek, segmented metal plating system to cover the gross, fleshy reality of the Demonic Arm. It wouldn't function as a machine yet, but it would look like expensive magi-tech rather than a mutated curse.
On the morning of the seventh day, Sephorae stood before the mirror.
The person staring back was unrecognizable. The plain boy with black hair was dead. The scarred victim was buried under layers of expensive silicone.
Standing there was a strikingly beautiful, terrifying stranger. His skin was flawless porcelain. His hair was a sharp shock of violet. He inserted the polarized yellow contacts, hiding the damage to his eyes and giving his stare an intense, predatory quality.
He dressed slowly. First, the form-fitting black underlayers. Then, he encased the demonic arm in the temporary metal plating he had jury-rigged, hiding the purple flesh under polished chrome. Finally, he threw on the heavy silver trench coat he had ordered.
It was perfect. It was a lie constructed of money, pain, and silicone, but it was flawless.
Sephorae Vespera looked at his reflection, his yellow eyes cold and unfeeling. He was ready to leave his room. He was ready to let the academy see the face of an F-Rank who couldn't feel at all a cold uncaring shell of himself maybe not even himself.