The rusted gate groaned open, spitting flakes of silver paint. Six of us. Six mistakes Silverthorn Prep hadn’t bothered filtering out. Rain slicked the manicured lawns, reflecting the gothic spires like broken glass. We weren’t supposed to *be* here. Not really. Scholarship cases. Problem children. The leftovers.
Leo, all sharp angles and simmering rage, shoved past me, nearly knocking the battered duffel from my grip. He didn’t bother looking back. Just kept walking, jaw tight, toward the looming stone building. He’d been expelled from three schools already. Everyone said he had a problem with authority. I figured authority had a problem with *him*.
“Seriously?” Maya called, her voice brittle. She adjusted the strap of her violin case, her gaze sweeping over the grounds like she expected to find a hidden trap. “This place feels…wrong.”
“Feels like a movie set,” Ben mumbled, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his worn hoodie. He was perpetually sketching, always seeing the world as lines and shadows. “A really depressing one.”
Across the muddy drive, Chloe was already arguing with a woman in a severe grey suit. Chloe didn’t *argue*; she dismantled people with a cool, precise logic. The woman’s face was a study in barely-contained frustration.
“You sure about this, Kai?” Liam asked, his voice a low hum. He was the quiet one, the observer. He ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair, avoiding eye contact. “Silverthorn isn’t exactly known for welcoming strays.”
I shrugged, tightening my grip on the duffel. “What choice do we have?”
The interior was worse. Long hallways smelled of dust and regret. Portraits of stern-faced benefactors glared down from the walls. We found ourselves in a cavernous hall, the air thick with the scent of beeswax and old paper.
“Welcome,” a voice cut through the silence. Old Man Hemlock, the headmaster, emerged from the shadows. He was all angles and bone, his eyes like chips of ice. “You are… the exceptions.”
“Exceptions to what?” Leo challenged, already bristling.
Hemlock didn’t even glance at him. “To the usual standard. Silverthorn accepts those who…feel things a way similar characters are seldom exposed.”
Maya’s eyebrows rose. “What does that even *mean*?”
“You will find out.” Hemlock turned, his long coat billowing behind him. “Follow me. Orientation begins now.”
That first night, the dreams started. Vivid, fragmented images, not my own. A woman’s face, etched with sorrow. A hidden room, filled with strange artifacts. A man’s voice, whispering secrets in a language I didn’t understand.
The next morning, I found Maya sketching furiously in the library, her hand barely keeping pace with the images flooding her mind.
“I dreamt about a fire,” she said, not looking up. “A huge fire, destroying something important. And music. A violin. It sounded…haunted.”
“I saw a garden,” Liam offered, his voice barely above a whisper. He was staring out the window, his face pale. “But the flowers were all black. And they were…dying. Even as I watched.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having visions too,” Leo scoffed, but I noticed his hand tremble slightly as he tossed a worn baseball against the wall.
“It’s not just dreams,” I said, pulling out my sketchbook. It was filled with images I hadn’t consciously drawn—complex symbols, intricate patterns, faces I didn’t recognize. “I’m drawing things I haven’t seen.”
“This place is messing with our heads,” Chloe stated, her voice as sharp as glass. She hadn’t admitted to anything, but I saw the way she kept glancing around, her eyes scanning every corner.
Ben, who’d been silent until then, finally spoke. “It’s like…Silverthorn is amplifying something already inside us.”
“And what’s *inside* us?” Leo challenged, his voice tight with barely-contained frustration.
“I think we’re about to find out.”
