Mystic Academy 📖 [EXCERPT]

If there was one thing Aislinn knew for certain, it was that letters don’t arrive in glowing envelopes... at least, not in the normal world.

Aislinn Enid—Ash for short—was a sixteen-year-old girl whose life used to be absolutely ordinary. Ordinary in the sense that everything was simple.

Life was simple. Life was normal. Ash dealt with normal teenage problems, lived in a normal apartment, and harbored a normal amount of dread for school night deadlines. But as all stories go—or at least, as hers did—that normalcy shattered just after midnight.

Ash was in her bedroom, rubbing the bridge of her nose as her eyes throbbed from the harsh glare of her laptop. She had just finished a three-page essay on the difference between fiction and non-fiction for her literature class. And for some reason beyond human comprehension, her teacher deemed that three pages required fifteen separate citations and fifteen book references. At that point, she was entirely convinced she had spent more time hunting down obscure sources than actually writing the words. But, fortunately, it was done. Finally.

Exhausted, Ash was about to collapse into bed without even bothering to change into pajamas. And then...

She saw it.

There, on her windowsill, sat an envelope that shimmered faintly in the dark, as though it held moonlight captive within its folds.

"What the... That wasn’t there a minute ago," Ash thought, then froze.

The elegant, looping gold ink traced something that made her heart skip. Her full name—Aislinn Enid—practically jumped out at her. The calligraphy was far too elegant, too fancy, for anyone who knew her.

With her dark blue eyes reflecting the dim light of her room, Ash stared at the letter for a long time, half convinced that it would vanish if she blinked even once or twice.

Her immediate thought?

This is a scam. A very elaborate, sparkly scam.

Driven by a mix of disbelief and curiosity, Ash walked across the room. Her hand hovered over the windowsill before her fingers finally brushed the paper. A faint, rhythmic vibration pulsed against her skin. The paper was thick, heavily textured, and strangely warm, as if it had been resting right beside an open hearth.

Ash flipped it over, noting the distinct absence of a return address. There was no wax seal, just the heavy volume of the packed envelope, and a single royal indigo stamp in the upper corner featuring a crescent moon cradling a stylized, watchful eye. A logo of a secret organization? Or something else entirely? She wasn’t sure.

Carefully, she worked the edge open. Inside, written in that same physical, embossed gold script, was a single line:

You’ve been forgotten.

. . .

Instantly, Ash let out a dry, nervous laugh. “Right. Good joke.”

But the laughter died in her throat as the gold ink flared, and a sharp tingle raced up her fingertips.

Ash checked the words again. Twice. Thrice. She frantically leaned out the open window, scanning the alleyway below. It was impossible. She lived on the third floor. No one could have slipped this onto her ledge and vanished into thin air. Was it one of her parents' jokes? It couldn't be, right?

She stared back down at the word forgotten, and a cold knot tied itself in her stomach. Because, despite Ash's denial, a cruel truth was catching up to her...

Actually... For the past few weeks, chunks of Ash's life had been fading. Her memories before age twelve were like watercolors left out in a torrential downpour: blurred, bleeding together, and impossible to piece back together. That wasn’t the worst part, though.

The world around her was slipping. Classmates and teachers forgot her name. Ash's own parents looked startled when she walked into the kitchen, as if they had momentarily forgotten she lived there.

Ash had forced herself to believe it was normal. People get distracted. People forget things. But holding this piece of paper, the lie fell apart...

Is that what the letter meant? These moments of forgetting… did they actually mean something?

Ash felt uneasy. Her breath caught as she thought about it.

Suddenly, the air in her bedroom thickened, pressing against her chest like a held breath. The ambient light of the city outside flickered out. The room tilted violently, spinning on an invisible axis. Panic flared in her chest as she tried to step back, but her feet felt glued to the floorboards. Then from somewhere impossibly distant, the faint, melodic chiming of bells echoed through the air.

The parchment in her hand erupted into a sparkle of brilliance, burning warm like a candle flame, but leaving no pain. In seconds, it dissolved like fragile ash, scattering into a cloud of glowing silver dust that swept past her face and drifted out into the night sky. It wove a glowing trail through the darkness.

Ash's body, then, went entirely numb. The world shifted with a sickening lurch, and just like that...

The floor vanished beneath her...

And everything... turned dark…

When Ash's eyes snapped open, the familiar walls of her apartment were gone. She wasn’t home.

“Mom? Dad?” she called out, but the words caught in her throat.

Ash was on her hands and knees, pressing against a floor made of highly polished, freezing obsidian. Massive walls of chiseled stone and embedded crystal stretched upward toward a soaring ceiling. High above, a sprawling tapestry of painted constellations shifted and swirled in real-time, as though a piece of the living cosmos had been trapped behind glass.

And suddenly, she scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering against her ribs, and realized she wasn’t alone. Before her were dozens of teenagers scattered across the grand hall. Ash blinked, rubbing her eyes, certain she was hallucinating. To her left, a boy was nervously flattening a pair of soft, distinct fox ears against his head. To her right, a girl’s hair literally flowed like a continuous, cascading waterfall. Nearby, a tall figure stood perfectly still, though his shadow danced and detached itself from his boots entirely.

Ash pinched her forearm hard, but the sharp sting brought no awakening. This wasn’t a sleep-deprivation dream.

Before the panic could completely take over, a figure stepped out from the shadows at the front of the hall. It was a woman who moved with an impossible, liquid grace, her heavy cloak trailing behind her in perfect rhythm with her steps. Her hair cascaded in long, metallic waves of pure silver, but it was her eyes that held everyone captive. They were a striking, unnatural violet, gleaming like polished amethysts.

“Welcome, all,” she announced. Her voice carried the exact, bell-like chime Ash had heard right before collapsing, echoing flawlessly off the stone walls. “Rest assured, my dear ones, you are not lost. It is no accident that you have safely arrived at the Mystic Academy of the Forgotten.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over the crowd. Some nervous. Some wary. Some still.

“You are here to find what was taken,” she continued softly. “To uncover your true nature. Your purpose. Your strength. You are here to find and rekindle your true self.”

Ash's mind raced, bouncing between every fantasy book and anime trope she’d ever consumed, trying desperately to find a logical anchor for the madness. And then, before her brain’s filter could stop her, the sheer absurdity of the situation pushed a vocal thought right past her lips...

“...True self?”

The words rang out, entirely too loud in the sudden silence of the hall, causing a collective chill to travel down her spine as the crowd instantly snapped to focus on her. Ash instinctively took a half-step back, wishing the obsidian floor would open up and swallow her whole.

But... The silver-haired woman didn’t look angry. Instead, her lips curved into a knowing, enigmatic smile. Those bright amethyst eyes locked onto hers, glinting with a spark of recognition, as if she had been waiting for her specific voice all night.

“Yes... your true self,” the woman replied, her voice dropping to a resonant, personal tone. “That is precisely why you are here. Welcome to Mystic Academy... Aislinn Enid.”