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Marvel Comics' new X-Men era begins today with a back-up story in the Blood Hunt #1 Free Comic Book Day Special. In the second story of this free anthology, writer Gail Simone and artist David Marquez show a world after the fall of the popular Krakoan era, ahead of the linewide relaunch dubbed 'From The Ashes.'

The story sets the stage for many new things coming, including a surprise re-alignment of the famed Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters - the founding base for the X-Men, and something that had been largely abandoned for the past few years.

Spoilers ahead for the Blood Hunt Free Comic Book Day Special #1.

In the opening page of the X-MEn story in the FCBD special, we see Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters being rebuild, modified, and maligned - including a barbed-whire solid wall making it even more removed from the world.

"We had a castle. Towers and everything," reads a narration from Jubilee, while watching the transformation of the iconic X-Men school.

The new inhabitants of Xavier's school if a mysterious group lead by a Doctor Corina Ellis, a commanding figure aided by a person named Phillip - a pale-skinned, bald person with mobility issues and telepathy - but not the Xavier we know, the bald telepath best known for using a wheelchair.

Among Ellis' upgrades to Xavier's beyond the giant wall is gutting Xavier's office, asking for her staff to "have this mahogany coffin of an office completely gutted" and to be made to look "like an Ikea catalog by Friday."

And in the subterranean floors of Xavier's, formerly best known for its Danger Room, Ellis keeps mutants captive. One is Theresa Cassidy (aka Siryn), and the other is an unnamed, unseen prisoner hidden behind a massive round door labeled 'Inmate X'.

Simone and Marquez continue this story in the relaunch of Uncanny X-Men, coming this August.

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