Characters top to bottom: Conrad Wade, Kasumi Akai-Amsel, and Oralee Callaway
"That strength is in that gift of yours so hone it well. You'll need it soon."
— Miu to Kasumi, pre-story
Cerberus High: Hearts Forever Engraved is the third book in the main Cerberus High series created by Paige O'Neal-Beedles. Cerberus High II was meant to be the final book of the main series but the author was unsatisfied with how the book came out and decided to make a Trilogy as the grand finale. However, the author ceased production midway and only published the first five chapters in an e-book. The first part is a retelling of Cerberus High II with added character backstories and extra scenes. The second and third parts would've focused on the happenings of supporting characters Conrad Wade and Oralee Callaway post-Cerberus High I.
Parts of the unfinished Trilogy:
- Part 1: Götterdämmerung
- Part 2: Shining Hope
- Part 3: Conrad Gaiden
This book contains examples of:
- Alternate Continuity: Part 1 is explained as an alternate script Red Star wrote rather than it being a completely different universe.
- Costume Evolution: On the cover, Conrad and Oralee are sporting different outfits to illustrate their parts taking place in the future.
- Elemental Embodiment: The Elemental Embodiments are a group of seven that embody the elements of the multiverse. They are forever immortalized in their prime in the Ultimate Forever-Still Space as empty shells until the multiverse is in peril which isn't destined to happen until long after their original bodies have died. It is then that these empty shells will be given life and fight as soldiers of the multiverse. These embodiments are:
- An Ice Person: Blanc Isolde
- Casting a Shadow: Kazuki Akai
- Green Thumb: Lyric Angelopoulos
- Light 'em Up: Oralee Callaway
- Making a Splash: Ganymede
- Playing with Fire: Ember Hertz
- Pure Energy: Miu (the embodiment of aether)
- Expository Hairstyle Change: As an eighteen-year-old, Oralee’s hair is cut short.
- Freaky Is Cool: In this version of CHII, Nagisa knows all about canid breeds and talks about them with the kind of over-enthusiasm that creeps Ascelin out.
- Interquel: Parts 2 and 3 take place in 1999, four years after the events of the CHI while being 16 years before CHII.
- Prized Possession Giveaway: After Nagisa tells Kasumi of his terminal illness, Kasumi gives him her precious feather to alleviate some of the pain in his final moments. Nagisa returns it to her the night when they are sleeping in the school’s headmaster’s office.
- The Protagonist: Kasumi of part 1, Oralee of part 2, and Conrad of part 3.
- Offing the Offspring: In Chapter 4, Nagisa recalls in his backstory how his father brought his mother out to sea under the pretence of a joyful boating trip while he was still in utero. Nagisa's father murders his mother in the rental boat and puts her mutilated body in the water. Despite dying too, Nagisa is born as a result of a coffin birth with the darkness of the sea assisting in his Overnight Age-Up.
- Overnight Age-Up: Nagisa was able to grow from a newborn to a teen quickly with the darkness of the sea that he and his mother were dumped in assisting in his growth.
- She's All Grown Up: Part 2: Shinning Hope would have seen Oralee as its main character who had grown up from a bratty fifteen-year-old to a beautiful and sophisticated eighteen-year-old.
- Trilogy: This book was meant to have three parts within it, all telling different stories pertaining to the main Cerberus High universe's timeline.
- Visions of Another Self: During her induction into the Elemental Embodiments in 1995, Oralee’s cloak shoots off of her body and morphs into the future version of herself from 1999.
- Younger Than He Looks: Nagisa is revealed to have been born in 2012, making him 3 years old during the events of Cerberus High II.
