The Nightvale Academy

Elara's POV

The acceptance letter had said to arrive before six.

It was half past nine.

In my defense, the train had been delayed. Then the connecting bus had taken a wrong turn somewhere between civilization and the middle of absolute nowhere. And then — then — the cab driver had looked at the address I showed him, looked at me, and said "you sure?" in a tone that should have been a warning.

He was right. He was so right. I should have listened to that man.

But honestly, even if I had arrived at six, on time, perfectly composed, bags neatly packed, map already memorized and color coded — I don't think anything could have prepared me for the moment I turned the corner past the tree line and saw Nightvale Academy for the first time.

I stopped walking entirely.

My mouth opened.

I'm fairly certain it stayed open for an embarrassingly long time.

Okay, I thought. Okay. Okay okay okay.

The gates alone were taller than anything that had any right to exist at the entrance of a school. Black iron, curling into shapes I couldn't quite make sense of in the dark — vines or letters or something that looked almost like creatures mid-flight if you caught them at the right angle. Stone pillars on either side, lanterns burning a soft gold, casting everything in this warm impossible glow that made the whole scene look less like real life and more like the opening panel of a manhwa I had read approximately forty seven times.

I had read a lot of manhwa.

None of them had prepared me for this.

Beyond the gates the path stretched ahead, lined with old stone lampposts and trees so tall I had to crane my neck just to see where they ended. Their branches reached toward each other overhead like they were trying to hold hands, tangling into a canopy that filtered the moonlight into silver pieces scattered across the ground.

Silver pieces on the ground.

I was going to cry. I was genuinely going to stand here with my overpacked bags and cry at a walkway.

Get it together Elara, I told myself very sternly.

I did not get it together.

I pushed through the gate — which swung open at my touch like it had been waiting specifically for me, which was either very welcoming or mildly ominous and I chose welcoming — and started walking.

Or, more accurately, I started staring and walking simultaneously, which are two activities that do not go as well together as people seem to think.

The main building revealed itself slowly, piece by piece, the way dramatic reveals always do in the stories I loved. Massive stone walls that had clearly existed for several centuries and felt absolutely no need to apologize for it. Towers rising at the corners and disappearing into the night sky like they had simply decided the sky was where they belonged. Rows and rows of amber-lit windows climbing upward as if the building had started growing and never quite decided where to stop.

I live here now, I thought, neck craned back, mouth still slightly open, suitcase rolling behind me at a angle that suggested at least one wheel had given up somewhere around the third bus. I am going to live HERE.

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it — small and disbelieving, the kind that happens when something is simply too much for a normal reaction. I pressed my hand over my mouth and kept walking, or kept staring really, the walking was becoming increasingly optional, my feet moving on autopilot while my brain completely abandoned its responsibilities and dedicated itself entirely to processing the architecture—

I walked into something solid.

Not a wall. Not a lamppost. Something that had warmth and jacket fabric and did not move even slightly upon impact, which meant I was the only one who stumbled, which I did — spectacularly — my bag swinging off my shoulder, my suitcase rolling sideways and tipping over with a crash that echoed off the stone path, and my map launching itself out of my hand and into the night air like it had been waiting for an excuse to escape.

I grabbed the nearest stable thing to stop myself from going down completely.

The nearest stable thing was the person I had just walked into.

I straightened up very quickly. Let go. Took a step back.

And looked up at the boy I had just crashed into with the full force of my complete inattention.

He was looking down at me with an expression that I could only describe as unreadable, which I found immediately frustrating because I was generally quite good at reading expressions. Dark eyes. Unhurried. Completely, almost unnervingly, unbothered — like people walked into him regularly and he had simply made peace with it.

"I—" I started.

"Map," he said.

I blinked.

He reached out and plucked my map from the air beside me where it had been floating on some small merciful current of wind, and held it out.

I took it. "Thank you. I wasn't — I mean I was looking, I just — the building is very — " I gestured vaguely upward at the academy in what I hoped was a self explanatory way.

He glanced up at the building. Then back at me. Said nothing.

"It's tall," I said, as if he needed me to clarify this.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Just the possibility of one, there and gone before I could be sure I'd seen it at all.

Then he stepped around me and continued walking up the path — the direction I had come from — hands in his jacket pockets, unhurried, like the entire interaction had been a minor footnote in his evening.

I stood on the path holding my rescued map and watched him go and thought, with great dignity: well.

I picked up my tipped suitcase, settled my bag back on my shoulder, and turned to face the academy.

Right, I told myself firmly. No more staring while walking. Eyes on the path. You are a composed, mature individual and that was simply a minor—

The suitcase wheel fell off.

I stared at it on the cobblestones.

It stared back.

I picked it up, put it in my bag, and dragged the now three-wheeled suitcase the rest of the way up the path by sheer force of will and the kind of grim determination that only comes from having no other options.

The grounds were mostly quiet at this hour. Students had long since arrived, settled in, become comfortable in the way people do when they haven't spent three hours on the wrong bus. From somewhere to my left I could hear voices — distant and overlapping, the kind of warm noise that bleeds through windows when people are inside being alive together. A burst of laughter from what looked like the canteen building, bright and sudden. Somewhere further away someone was playing music, low enough that I caught only fragments of it drifting on the night air.

I pulled out my campus map — printed, because I absolutely did not trust myself to navigate something this enormous from a phone screen, a decision I was increasingly regretting since the map was now crumpled from its brief flight — and tried to find my bearings.

Veil Sect dormitory. East wing. Past the central courtyard, left at the—

Something moved in my peripheral vision.

I looked up from the map.

Nothing. Just the path stretching ahead and the lampposts throwing pools of gold onto the stone and the trees standing very still on either side.

I looked back at my map.

Left at the stone archway, then follow the—

A sound. Behind me.

I turned around sharply.

Empty path.

I stood very still for a moment, listening. The distant laughter continued from the canteen. The music drifted. Everything was perfectly normal and completely fine and I was a mature, composed person who had read enough fantasy to know that things that went bump in the night were not real and—

Something dropped from a tree directly above me and landed on the path two feet away with a thud that sent my soul approximately six feet out of my body.

I did not scream.

I made a sound. A very short, very dignified sound that was absolutely not a scream, and stumbled backward, and my bag swung off my shoulder and hit the ground, and I stood there with my hand pressed to my chest staring at the thing on the path which turned out to be—

A book.

Just a book.

An old, battered book lying completely innocuously on the path like it had simply decided that gravity applied to it now.

I stared at it.

It stared back — if books can stare, which I had previously believed they couldn't, but I was reconsidering a lot of things tonight.

A book, I told myself firmly. It is just a book. It fell from somewhere. This is a school, there are books everywhere, this is completely—

The lamppost beside me flickered.

Went out.

Then the next one down the path.

Then the next.

One by one, like something was walking toward me in the dark and the lights were simply giving up as it passed, the lampposts went dark down the entire length of the path ahead until I was standing in a stretch of complete blackness with only the distant glow of the lampposts behind me and the massive dark shape of the academy ahead.

I did not move.

I am a rational person, I told myself. I read fantasy. I have watched every horror movie ever made. I know exactly how these things work. The girl who goes toward the scary thing always survives because she is the main character and I am absolutely the main character of my own life and—

Something whispered my name.

Elara.

Low. Close. Like it came from directly beside my ear.

I moved.

I moved very quickly and very decisively in the direction of the academy, my bags bouncing against me, my map completely forgotten, my earlier composure absolutely nowhere to be found and not even trying to be. The darkness pressed in from both sides and I was acutely aware of every sound — my own footsteps too loud on the stone, the rustle of leaves, the suitcase scraping on three wheels in a rhythm that probably sounded deranged, another whisper that seemed to follow—

She's running.

Shhh—

A muffled sound. Like someone trying very hard not to laugh.

I stopped.

Stood completely still in the dark.

The suitcase scraped to a halt beside me.

The muffled sound happened again. From somewhere in the trees to my right. And then from the left too — a different voice, slightly higher, definitely also trying not to laugh and failing comprehensively.

I turned very slowly toward the trees on my right.

"...hello?" I said.

Silence.

Then — unmistakably — a giggle. Quickly smothered. Then another from the left. And then the lamppost directly above me flickered back on, and I looked up, and there — sitting in the branches of the tree beside the path with the most unrepentant expression I had ever seen on a human face — was a boy, maybe a year or two older than me, with a small remote control device in his hand and absolutely zero remorse in his eyes.

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Then he broke into a grin. "Welcome to Nightvale."

From the trees on the other side, two more students materialized — a girl and another boy, both older, both wearing the specific expression of people who had done this exact thing many times before and found it just as satisfying every single time. The girl was already laughing properly now, not even trying to hide it. The boy beside her looked deeply pleased with himself.

"The lights," I said, looking back at the one with the remote. "The lights were you."

"Motion sensor override," he said cheerfully, hopping down from the branch and landing with easy grace. "The book was Darren's idea." He nodded at the other boy who raised a hand in acknowledgment without a single trace of apology.

"And the — the whispering?"

The girl held up a small speaker device, still grinning. "Bluetooth. Works beautifully in the dark."

I looked at the three of them. At their completely unashamed faces. At the little remote and the little speaker and the book still lying on the path behind me like it had no idea it had just been a prop in psychological warfare.

"You," I said with great dignity, "are horrible people."

This, for reasons I did not fully appreciate, made all three of them laugh harder.

"It's tradition," the first boy said, spreading his hands like this was a completely reasonable explanation for everything. "Anyone who shows up after nine gets the welcome. You're actually the third one tonight."

"The other two cried," Darren offered helpfully.

"I didn't cry," I said immediately.

"You made a noise—"

"That was not crying, that was a completely normal human stress response to an unexpected auditory stimulus in a low visibility environment, which is actually the intelligent reaction, so—"

"She's funny," the girl said to the first boy, like I wasn't standing right there. "I like her."

I opened my mouth — I wasn't entirely sure whether to be offended or oddly flattered, both felt reasonable — when I became aware, in the particular way you become aware of these things, that someone else was standing on the path.

I hadn't heard footsteps. Hadn't heard any approach at all. He was simply — there. Standing further up the path toward the academy, hands in the pockets of his jacket, watching the scene with an expression that was perfectly unreadable.

I recognized him immediately. The boy from earlier. The one I had walked into.

The three seniors saw him at approximately the same moment I did.

Something shifted. The laughter didn't stop exactly — it just became quieter. More careful. The first boy straightened slightly in a way that I don't think he was fully aware of.

The boy on the path said nothing. Just looked at the three of them with that same unreadable expression.

"We were just—" the girl started.

"I know what you were doing," he said. His voice was calm. Unhurried. The kind of calm that doesn't need to raise itself to be heard. "It's late."

It wasn't a threat. It wasn't even particularly stern. It was just a statement of fact, delivered in a tone that somehow made the three seniors collect themselves with suspicious efficiency — the girl pocketing her speaker, Darren picking up his book from the path, the first boy clicking his remote once so all the lampposts came back on in a neat row down the path.

"New student," the first boy said to me, with that same unrepentant grin but slightly more subdued now. "Genuinely — welcome to Nightvale. You'll love it here."

And then the three of them melted back into the academy grounds with the ease of people who knew every shortcut, leaving me standing on the relighted path with my bags and my crumpled map and three functional lampposts and this boy I had already managed to crash into once tonight.

I turned to look at him.

He was looking at me with that expression I still couldn't read.

"Thank you," I said. And then, because apparently I had no control over my mouth after nine pm: "That's twice now. That you've — I mean. Not that I needed — I was handling it. The prank. I had completely figured it out."

"You were running," he said.

"I was walking. Quickly. In a purposeful direction."

The almost-smile again. There and gone.

"You're lost," he said.

"I'm not lost," I said, and looked down at my map which was crumpled in my hand with north facing completely the wrong direction. "I'm just — temporarily unoriented. There's a difference."

He looked at the map. Then at me.

"Veil Sect," he said.

I looked up. "How did you—"

"This way."

He turned and started walking up the path toward the academy without waiting to see if I would follow, which I found slightly presumptuous. I followed immediately because I was in fact completely lost and had no better options and also my suitcase only had three wheels and I was not above accepting help.

He walked like someone who had done this path a thousand times. Unhurried. Certain. He didn't look back to check I was keeping up and somehow that was less rude than it sounds — it was more like he simply knew I was there.

"I'm Elara," I said, to his back. "By the way."

"I know," he said.

I stared at the back of his head. "You — what do you mean you know?"

He said nothing. Just kept walking.

You KNOW? I thought at him very loudly. What does that mean? How do you know? Why do you know? We have known each other for a combined total of four minutes during which I walked into you and then fled from a Bluetooth speaker, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU KNOW—

He took me through the courtyard — which was every bit as breathtaking as I had imagined, open sky and stars and the soft sound of a fountain that I deeply wanted to stop and stare at but also deeply did not want to walk into anything again — and then through an archway on the east side and down a quieter path alongside one of the older stone buildings until a doorway appeared with VEIL carved into the stone above it in letters that had been there for a very long time.

I stopped under it and looked up.

Veil Sect. My sect. Where I apparently belonged according to an evaluation I still didn't fully understand.

I looked back down and he had already stepped aside, hands still in his pockets, watching me with that expression.

"Thank you," I said, for the third time, which felt excessive but also accurate. "Really. And — sorry, I still don't know your name?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"Get some sleep," he said. "Orientation is early."

He turned and walked back up the path the way we had come. Unhurried. Certain. Without looking back.

I stood under the carved letters and watched him until the path curved and the dark took him and I was left holding my three-wheeled suitcase and my crumpled map and absolutely zero answers.

I looked down at my suitcase. Then back at the empty path. Then at the door in front of me.

I pushed it open.

Warmth rushed out immediately — the smell of old books and something faintly floral, soft lamplight, the distant sound of people still awake somewhere deeper inside. I stepped in and let the door swing shut behind me and stood in the entrance of Veil Sect feeling the particular specific exhaustion of someone who has had an extremely long day that has somehow also managed to be the most interesting day of their life so far.

On the wall beside the entrance, a noticeboard held various notices and welcome sheets and a printed list of names.

My name was at the top. Elara Voss. Room 7.

Underneath it, in handwriting that was slightly different from the printed text — older somehow, though the paper was not — were four words that had not been there when the list was printed, that I was quite certain should not be there, that made something go very still and very quiet in my chest.

We have been waiting.

I stared at it for a long moment.

Then I looked around the empty entrance hall.

Then back at the words.

Then I picked up my three-wheeled suitcase and went to find Room 7, because I was exhausted and whatever that was, it could absolutely wait until morning.

It could not, as it would turn out, wait until morning.

But that was tomorrow's problem.

End of Chapter One