Behind The Masks

In the town of Riverfrost, Vincent Academy was less of a school and more of a ghost story carved into stone. To the casual observer—the tourists who snapped photos of its towering gothic spires or the local shopkeepers who relied on its business—it was simply an elite institution, a place for the ambitious to sharpen their minds. Its ancient halls had been updated with the hum of modern technology, blending two centuries of history with the cold efficiency of the present.

But beneath the “good university” reputation and the brochure-perfect architecture, there was a persistent chill that had nothing to do with the Riverfrost winters.

Roman, Lyra, Raven, and Elliot arrived with the same mundane anxieties as the generations of students before them. They expected the standard trials of higher education: the caffeine-fueled late nights, the crushing weight of exams, and the frantic scramble to find their place in the world. They thought they knew what Vincent Academy was. They were wrong.

The problem was that they had asked the wrong people.

While the general student body spent their years worrying about GPAs and social circles, a different kind of history was repeating itself. Every few years, a specific group would find themselves caught in the gears of the school’s deeper mysteries—events that didn’t just change their perspectives, but twisted their very sense of reality.

For those who knew the truth, the legends weren’t just folklore used to decorate the school’s history books. When pushed, the elders of Riverfrost wouldn’t offer a comforting smile or a debunking of the myths. Instead, they would offer a single, chilling warning:

“Not all of it is fiction.”

Outside, the Riverfrost winter was beginning to bite, but inside the Alchemy Aroma Cafe, the air was thick with the scent of burnt espresso and old paper.

Raven and Elliot had claimed a corner booth ten minutes ago, their table already buried under a mountain of library books and scattered printouts. They weren’t the type to take rumors at face value; they had spent years digging through every obscure source and local archive they could find.

The bell above the door jingled, letting in a gust of freezing air as Lyra and Roman arrived. Lyra navigated the cramped tables with practiced ease, balancing four steaming cups.

“What have you found so far?” Lyra asked, sliding the coffees onto the table and tucking a stray brown curl behind her ear.

“Nothing about the actual ’myths,’” Elliot sighed, taking a long, grateful sip of his drink. He looked exhausted, his eyes scanning the dry historical texts. “Just the official history. It’s all sanitized—statements from alumni talking about ‘the tradition of excellence’ and nothing else.”

“We found these, though,” Raven interjected. She didn’t look up from her book. Her neon-yellow highlighter moved with surgical precision, slashed across a specific paragraph. “Look at the pattern. These aren’t official statements. They’re notes left in the margins, or letters tucked into old yearbooks by different groups of students, years apart.”

Roman leaned over her shoulder, squinting at the page. “What are you seeing, Raven?”

“Look at the phrasing,” she said, sliding two different books toward the center of the table. “Look at the dates. Different students, different majors, but they all wrote the exact same sentence.”

The other three leaned in. There, highlighted in jagged yellow, were the words: Not all the myths of this place are fiction.

“Wow,” Lyra whispered, the gravity of the repetition finally sinking in. “They’re identical. Or close enough to be a warning.”

Elliot leaned back, the leather of the booth creaking. He tried for a casual shrug, though his eyes remained on the books. “We’ve all been here for a couple of years now. If something ‘weird’ was going to happen, it probably would have happened by now. Maybe we missed our window.”

“You have a point,” Lyra noted, though she sounded like she was trying to convince herself. She tossed her empty cup into the trash can with a definitive thud. “It’s probably nothing. Or like Elliot said—the moment passed us by.”

Raven didn’t argue. She silently packed the books into her bag, the weight of the knowledge feeling heavier than the paper itself.

“Let’s head back to the dorms,” Raven said, throwing the bag over her shoulder as they stood to leave. “We have rehearsal for When The Curtain Falls in the morning. We can’t be zombies for rehearsal.”

They walked out into the falling snow, their breath blooming in white clouds. They chatted about mundane things—hobbies, theater, and the new trick Roman had taught his dog, Juliette. The strange quotes were momentarily forgotten, pushed into the back of their minds to make room for the lives of normal students.

But as the group split up and the girls settled into their dorm for the night, the silence of the room felt heavy. Raven and Lyra lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. They had told themselves it was just a myth. They had laid the conversation to rest.

But as sleep finally took them, a cold, restless feeling lingered in the air—the feeling of a curtain about to rise on a play they hadn’t auditioned for.