Elara Vance pov
The sound of my own heartbeat was a rhythmic, wet thud against my ribs. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was Leo's voice. There was no mistaking that melodic, slightly raspy undertone. I had only been on this cursed campus for three hours, and already the invisible hands of the academy were moving me across the board like a sacrificial pawn. I didn't care about the game, though. I only cared about the boy who had disappeared into the fog of this place months ago.
I threw my weight against the heavy oak doors of the Dean's office. They swung open with a groan that sounded far too much like a death rattle. Inside, the air was unnaturally still, smelling of old parchment and something metallic—ozone, or perhaps blood.
Sitting behind a desk of polished obsidian was a man who looked to be in his late twenties. He was lean, dressed in a sharp crimson suit that seemed to drink the light in the room. His eyes were the most jarring part—sharp, precise, and hauntingly familiar. They were the eyes I had looked into across the breakfast table for eighteen years.
"Leo?" My voice cracked, the word catching on the lump of grief in my throat. I took a tentative step forward, my boots echoing on the marble floor.
The man smirked, but the expression didn't reach those familiar eyes. "No, sweetheart. I'm afraid you're mistaken."
When he spoke, the illusion shattered. It wasn't Leo's voice. It was a harrowing, gravelly rasp—the voice of a man who had smoked for sixty years and buried a thousand secrets.
My face crumpled, the hope that had flared in my chest dying out into a cold, bitter ash. This wasn't my brother. I could feel it in the way the air refused to circulate around him.
My palms went slick with sweat. "Who are you?" I demanded, my voice trembling as I instinctively retreated toward the door.
"No need to be afraid, Elara," he said, rising slowly. His build was an exact match for Leo's—the same broad shoulders, the same slight tilt of the head. "I am Eric. Dean Eric, to you."
Chills raced down my spine, a cold finger tracing the length of my vertebrae. "Why do you look like him?"
"Oh, little Elara," he chuckled, and the sound was like dry leaves skittering over a gravestone. "Missing him already? You've always been the sentimental one. Leo spoke of it often."
At the mention of his name, my grief curdled into a hot, blinding rage. My vision blurred red at the edges. The audacity of this creature to wear my brother's skin as a costume was too much to bear. "Where is he? What did you do to him?"
"You need answers, Elara," Eric smirked, rounding the desk with a predatory grace. "But it's a tragic shame that I am under no obligation to provide them."
The "shame" in his voice was dripping with mockery. That was the final thread. My anger spiked off the charts, bypassing logic. With a guttural scream, I lunged at him, fingers outstretched to tear that smug look off his face. I reached for his collar, intending to slam him against the obsidian desk, but my hands met no resistance. I tumbled forward, passing straight through his chest as if he were made of smoke.
I hit the floor hard, scrambling to turn around. My eyes went wide. The figure of "Dean Eric" flickered. Static hissed through the air, and the image of the man in the red suit began to distort, cracks appearing in the air like shattered glass.
It was a fucking hologram.
"Why are you using his face!" I screamed into the empty room, my voice bouncing off the high ceilings. "Show yourself!"
The hologram shifted violently. The tall, masculine frame collapsed and reshaped itself into the shimmering, translucent figure of a woman. She looked weary, her features blurred by the interference of the projection.
"Elara... don't trust... anyone..." The figure spoke, but the audio was breaking up, a digital stutter that made her warning sound like a haunting.
I froze. This wasn't the Dean. This wasn't the sixty-year-old hag hiding behind a young man's mask. This was something else.
"Who are you? How do you know me? What happened to Leo?" The questions poured out of me like a dam breaking. I rushed toward her, but she let out a soft, distorted chuckle.
"So many questions, kid. You didn't even bother to ask who I am before you started making demands," she replied, her image stabilizing for just a second. Her eyes were sad—piercingly so.
I snapped my jaw shut, forced to take a breath. "Who are you?"
"I'm nobody. Just a ghost in the machine," she whispered as the light began to fade. "Find Leo, Elara. Before the syllabus finishes you."
The hologram hissed and vanished. The office plummeted into darkness, the heavy silence returning like a physical weight. My breathing was the only sound—ragged and panicked.
Thud.
I jumped, spinning around. A single, battered leather shoe lay on the floor near the door. My mind flashed back to the task Julian Blackwood had set for me. The assignment. The time limit.
"Fuck," I hissed under my breath.
I snatched the shoe off the floor and threw open the office doors, expecting the quiet hallway I had left behind. Instead, I was met with a wall of chaos. The corridor was no longer a hallway; it was a mosh pit of violence. Students were screaming, sprinting, and shoving. The air was thick with the smell of copper. Blood was splattered across the portraits of former deans, and the sound of trampling feet was deafening.
"Get away, bitch!" A hulking guy with a neck thicker than my thigh shoved me aside. I hit the wall with a sickening crunch, the wind knocked out of me.
Panic flared. I turned to retreat back into the Dean's office, to the safety of the dark room, but when I looked back, there was only a solid, seamless stone wall. The office was gone.
The reality of the "Syllabus" hit me then. This wasn't a school; it was a meat grinder.
I turned and dove into the crowd, clutching the shoe to my chest like a holy relic. I tripped over a fallen body, my knees hitting the floor with jarring force. Someone's boot caught me in the jaw. I felt a sharp crack and the immediate, metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. I spat out a tooth, my eyes blurring with tears of pain and frustration.
Leo wouldn't give up, I told myself. He survived this. I have to find him.
I pushed myself up, using the wall for leverage. I took three steps before I felt a cold, sharp intrusion in my side. I stopped. The world seemed to tilt. I looked down and saw the hilt of a thin blade protruding from my stomach. The white fabric of my shirt was turning a deep, blooming crimson.
I hadn't even seen who did it.
"I shouldn't have come here," I muttered, my voice barely a whisper. My face went pale, the strength draining from my limbs as if a plug had been pulled.
The Great Hall sat at the end of the corridor, maybe a hundred meters away. It looked like a mile. The crowd was thinning as people reached their destinations or crawled into corners to die.
I wasn't going to die in a hallway.
I clutched the shoe tighter, the leather slick with my own blood now. Each step was an exercise in agony, a white-hot poker twisting in my gut. I dragged my left leg, my vision tunneling until all I could see was the heavy archway of the hall.
I stumbled through the threshold, my breath coming in shallow, hitching gasps. The hall was eerily quiet compared to the carnage outside. In the center of the room sat Julian Blackwood, perched on his high-backed chair like a king watching a play.
I looked at the massive hourglass beside him. The last grain of sand had just fallen. It sat motionless in the bottom bulb.
I had failed.
My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the cold stone floor, the shoe skittering a few inches away from my outstretched hand. The defeat was heavier than the blood loss. Julian's words from earlier echoed in my mind, mocking me.
"You'll find out exactly how leo Vance felt when he realized the doors only lock from the outside."
Was this it? Was this how Leo's journey ended? In the dark, cold and alone, realizing the trap had sprung? My hands went ice-cold, the peripheral of my vision turning black. I could feel my life force leaking out onto the floor, a dark halo surrounding me.
A pair of polished black boots appeared in my line of sight. I forced my heavy eyelids upward. Julian was standing over me, his face devoid of pity. He looked down at my mangled form, a slow, cruel grin spreading across his lips.
"You failed, Elara Vance."
His voice was the last thing I heard before the darkness rushed in to claim me, and my eyes shut completely.