It's nestled in a valley on the northeastern edge of campus, all seven stories of Victorian Gothic architecture rising out of the mist like something from a fever dream. Flying buttresses claw at the grey sky. Gargoyles crouch on every corner, their stone eyes following me as I walk up the path. The windows are tall and narrow and dark, and I swear one of them blinks.
"Charming," I mutter to myself, clutching my notebook against my chest like a shield. "Very welcoming. Not at all like walking into my own funeral."
The inner courtyard is worse. It's a graveyard an actual graveyard, headstones and mausoleums and everything, because apparently the Mors fraternity thought it would be fun to bury their dead in the middle of their living space. The stones are old, weathered, names worn away by centuries of rain. Some of them have fresh flowers. Some of them are cracked open, and I decide very firmly not to think about why.
I'm here for Professor Parker's Elemental Studies assignment: attend a Mors demonstration, observe the sensory experience of death magic, write two pages about temperature shifts and ambient energy. Simple. Academic. The kind of thing that shouldn't make my palms sweat and my heart pound against my ribs like it's trying to escape.
But the cracked sphere in my bag has been pulsing since I stepped onto Mors territory, and I can feel something in the air here, something heavy and cold and patient, like the house itself is holding its breath.
I really, really don't want to go inside.
I go inside anyway.
The demonstration hall is on the second floor, a cavernous room with vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows that filter the afternoon light into shades of grey and silver. Rows of wooden benches face a raised platform at the front, and there's a smell in the air that reminds me of old books and candle wax and something else underneath, something metallic and ancient that I can't quite name.
About a dozen students are already seated, a mix of disciplines here for the same assignment, notebooks open, pens ready. I find a spot near the back, away from the Mors students in their silver and white who cluster near the front like they own the place. Which, technically, they do.
Professor Thorne stands on the platform, arranging what looks like a collection of bones on a velvet cloth. He's younger than I expected — maybe forty, with salt-and-pepper hair and the kind of gaunt, angular face that would look at home in a Renaissance painting of martyred saints. His Stylus Mortis rests on the table beside him, bone-white with silver inlay that catches the dim light.
"Welcome," he says, and his voice is surprisingly warm for a man who teaches students how to commune with the dead. "Today's demonstration will cover fundamental shadow manipulation — the building blocks of Mors magic. You'll observe, take notes, and resist the urge to panic." A thin smile. "Death magic can be unsettling for the uninitiated. If you feel faint, there's a bucket by the door."
A few nervous laughs. I don't laugh. I'm too busy noticing that my notebook has started trembling in my hands.
And I'm too busy noticing Callum Bolingbroke.
He's standing against the far wall, arms crossed, watching the room with the kind of detached attention that makes you feel like a specimen under glass. Silver blazer, white shirt, platinum hair catching the light from the stained glass windows like he planned it that way. He probably did. Everything about Callum Bolingbroke looks planned — from the perfect press of his collar to the careful neutrality of his expression, like emotion is something that happens to other people.
His eyes find me almost immediately. Hold for a moment. Then slide away, dismissive, like I'm not worth the effort of acknowledging.
I hate that it stings. I hate even more that I noticed the exact shade of blue his eyes turn in this light—pale as frost, pale as morning sky, pale as something dead.
Focus, I tell myself.You're here to take notes. Not to catalogue the eye colors of people who want you gone.
The demonstration starts simply enough.
Thorne calls up a student—a Mors junior with sharp cheekbones and an eager expression—and walks him through the basics of shadow manipulation. The student raises his Stylus Mortis, speaks words in a language I don't recognize, and the shadows in the corner of the room begin to move.
It's subtle at first. A darkening, like someone dimmed the lights. Then the shadows peel away from the wall, stretching and curling like smoke, responding to the motion of the student's wand. They flow across the floor in lazy spirals, pool around his feet, climb up his legs like affectionate cats.
I write in my notebook:Cold at the edges. Pressure behind the eyes. Smell like old libraries and turned earth. Temperaturedrop — maybe five degrees? Hard to tell if physical or psychological.
The demonstration continues. More students volunteer, each one manipulating the shadows in different ways — forming shapes, creating barriers, snuffing out candles from across the room. Thorne narrates each technique with the dry enthusiasm of someone who's taught this class a thousand times. The other observers scribble notes, occasionally gasping at a particularly impressive display.
I keep writing. Keep breathing. Keep ignoring the way the sphere in my bag is pulsing faster, warmer, like a second heartbeat pressed against my hip.
And then everything goes wrong.
The student is showing off. I can tell by the way he flourishes his wand, the way he grins at his friends in the front row, the way he pulls more shadow than the previous demonstrations required. He's drawing darkness from every corner of the room, weaving it into a spiraling column that stretches toward the ceiling, and Thorne is frowning, starting to say something—
The shadow tears loose.
One moment it's a controlled spiral. The next it's a wild thing, a thrashing mass of darkness that rips away from the student's wand and surges across the room like a wave. The student stumbles backward, face gone white. Someone screams. Thorne is shouting something, raising his own wand, but the shadow isn't listening to him.
It's coming toward me.
Not randomly—not the chaotic scatter of a spell gone wrong. It's moving with purpose, withhunger, cutting through the air like itknows exactly where it wants to go. Like it can feel me the same way I can feel it, that cold heavy presence that's been pressing against my chest since I walked into this building.
I don't think. I throw up my hands.
