PROLOGUE
I needed to see Dr. Klien before it was too late.
Danger closed in — silent and suffocating, its icy chains tightening around my chest. The fear that once whispered at the edges of my mind had grown claws, scratching and tearing. My soul felt hollow, unmoored. Something terrible was coming — something that would devour me and shake the world around me.
It hadn’t been long since my parents decided I should attend one of the city’s most prestigious schools. I had always been a top student — trophies stacked like tiny towers, awards piling higher every year. They wanted my talent to bloom in a place worthy of it. That day, my father drove me there himself.
The school rose ahead like a castle carved from shadow. Its towers were jagged, black against the night sky, and its gates tangled with thick, curling vines — as if the earth itself clung to its secrets. Even from the car, I could feel its weight: heavy, watchful, alive.
We drove along a narrow lane flanked by dead trees. Their twisted branches clawed at the sky, skeletal fingers reaching for something unseen. The air grew sharper with each turn, smelling faintly of rot and old rain.
Then it appeared — a cat, completely black, its eyes glinting like molten rubies in the dark. It stepped into our path, unblinking, unafraid, staring directly at me. Its gaze was endless, hollow… knowing.
A man emerged from the mist near the gate. He didn’t walk — he simply was there, still and silent.
“Is he… a robot?” I whispered.
The man turned his head with mechanical precision. “I am human,” he said, voice low and deliberate, each word too exact. “Human… like you.”
A shiver ran down my spine. There was something wrong — something too perfect in his tone. My father nodded politely, unaware, but I felt icy fingers tracing the length of my bones.
We passed a small church at the heart of the campus. Its gates were sealed, draped in cobwebs. Mildew streaked the walls, and green fungus seemed to breathe in the cold wind. Above, a murder of crows wheeled through the sky, their eyes glowing like embers of some ancient fire.
“Dad,” I forced a laugh, my voice trembling, “isn’t this school… a little spooky? It feels like something from a nightmare.”
His expression tightened. He looked away, then back at me. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, jaw clenching before he forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“If you think this school is a place for monsters, maybe it’s you who’s imagining them.”
“I— I didn’t mean that,” I stammered, shrinking under his gaze.
Inside the main office, the air was unnaturally still — thick and heavy. The admission process passed in silence, and we returned home. But unease had already settled in my chest like a stone.
That night, as I lay in bed, I heard it — slow, deliberate footsteps above me. My heart froze. There was no upper floor.
I ran to my mother.
“You’re just tired,” she said softly, finality in her tone. “Go back to sleep.”
I tried, but sleep abandoned me. Outside, a cat cried — the same mournful, almost-human wail I had heard at the school. It cut through the night, curling around my thoughts like smoke, and I felt its gaze even with the door shut.
The next morning, my father brought news of my admission — confirmed within twenty-four hours. He was overjoyed. I forced a smile, though something inside me quailed.
Two days before I was to join, the nightmare came.
The black cat appeared again, eyes burning faint red. Footsteps echoed. Then a little girl — six or seven, no more — stood before me. Her face was smeared with crimson, but her eyes… her eyes pierced straight into me.
She took a trembling step forward and whispered,
“Don’t go to that school. Don’t go to that school. I was like you — bright, full of life — and it took my soul. Don’t go there… don’t.”
Her body crumbled into ash and scattered on the wind. I woke screaming, chest heaving, heart pounding like a drum of warning.
I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
The next morning, I went to tell my parents I couldn’t go. But they were proud — radiant with joy. I couldn’t shatter their happiness.
So I forced myself to forget — the cat, the crows, the girl. I steeled myself to be brave.
But that night, when the wind brushed against my window, I thought I heard it again — that low, broken cry.
A sound that wasn’t entirely feline — as if something human was trying to claw its way through its throat.
And I knew something waited at Ashenmere Academy.
Something ancient.
Something hungry.
Something evil.
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Sometimes, the places we long for the most are the ones that were waiting for us all along — not to welcome us, but to awaken something we were never meant to find.
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(End of PROLOGUE — “The School of Shadows”)
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© 2026 Afia R. All Rights Reserved.
This work is original fiction. No part of this publication may be
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