The world doesn't know they exist. That is the part the world is paying for. There are two ways out of this academy. Death, and graduation.

Content Warnings: Institutional violence, systemic abuse, death of civilians, grief, addiction (parental), arranged marriage/absorption politics, recklessness.

FRENCH ACADEMY - 2008

Rural Normandy. Former monastery, acquired by the Corporation in 1911. Grey stone, long corridors, a chapel nobody attends. Four hundred students across seven years. Senior class of '08: fifty-three. Three weeks until their first solo missions.

Senior year.

Weeks 1-3: prep, tier reassessment, pairing allocation. Students find out whether they are solo-deployment or teacher-paired. Neither is safer. Teacher pairings are sometimes punitive.

Weeks 4-16: active mission rotation. Envelopes arrive the evening before. Travel, execution, return within 48-72 hours. Students return to classes Monday regardless of what happened Friday night, yes, even if someone died.

Final month: Graduation Assessment. One high-threat mission. Death rate: 2-6% for the full year, 1-2% for the Assessment alone.

Structure: Elders --> per-nation Councils --> Headmaster --> Deputy heads (academic, training, pastoral) --> Senior instructors (Master/Maîtresse, Sin-specific, Tier 4+) --> Junior instructors --> Specialist staff --> Senior students --> Junior students. French Academy pastoral: Madame Valbonne, Lust, competent and obligated to report upward.

THE MODERN WORLD

The Sigillum exists. The public does not know. The year is 2008. The twentieth century's major conflicts were fought against Hellspawn as often as against each other. History books reflect neither fact. The coverup is about a century old and increasingly brittle. It started because of British colonization.

The seal appears on the skin, a tattoo-like mark, faint at first, grows as the wielder does. Physical expression of a gene written into human DNA at a point nobody can date.

The Corporation

Administrative body. Founded around 1900 when ten major powers agreed to classify the Sigillum and pool resources. Headquartered nowhere and everywhere, distributed across ten participating nations, coordinated th