Aiden slouched in the back row, arms folded tight across his chest, one leg hooked around the desk in front of him. The overhead lights buzzed with that flickering stutter that always made his left eye twitch. Outside, the sun was already tipping low, its burnt-orange glare bleeding through the narrow windows.
The clock on the wall read 3:56 PM. Detention had barely started.
He leaned back further, half balancing on two chair legs, and sighed through his nose.
Mom's going to kill me this time. No question about it and not the kind of "grounded for a week" kill, either. This was death by angry silence and revoked internet privileges, or maybe even permanent character deletion.
Third time in detention this semester. And this time it wasn't even his fault.
Across the room, Micah was scribbling something into a ruled notebook with mechanical precision. His handwriting looked like a computer font, he had three pens lined up beside him like weapons: blue, black, and red. One was already uncapped.
"Tapping," Aiden said quietly.
Micah didn't look up. "It helps me think."
"It's helping me plot your downfall."
One desk over, Trey had taken to launching a rubber band at the ceiling tiles. His aim was terrible. The band slapped the ceiling, rebounded, and landed in Juno's open sketchbook.
She didn't flinch. Just flicked it back at him without looking up.
Juno was perched cross-legged on her desk, sharp eyeliner and chipped black nail polish, one earbud in and a pencil shading something spindly and violent-looking. Aiden leaned a little to the left to catch the sketch—yep, a skull with insect legs. Pretty standard for her.
Valerie sat near the window, back straight, eyes locked on a spot outside like she could will herself out of the room. Her arms were crossed so tightly it looked like her own personal anti-social armor.
She hadn't looked at Aiden once.
The classroom smelled like old whiteboard markers and someone's leftover gym shoes. The fan in the corner made a soft ticking sound every time it passed the wall, like it had a broken blade. Every minute, the second hand on the clock jerked forward like it hated its job.
"Can't believe you dragged us into this," Trey muttered suddenly, loud enough to break the silence.
Aiden didn't turn around. "Pretty sure someone else set the fire."
"You shouted 'Fireball!' like a lunatic," Trey said. "And then there was literal fire. You expect people not to connect the dots?"
Aiden snorted. "Yeah. The part where we were in a different building should've been a clue."
"I'm just saying," Trey went on, tossing the rubber band again, "if the school had an arsonist, I'd bet on the scrawny dude who talks to dragons in his free time."
"Incorrect," Micah said flatly. "He is the dragon."
Juno glanced up from her drawing. "You guys missed the real crime. The arsonist burned up the room where the spirit week items were kept. That's worth at least twenty years in fantasy jail."
Aiden ran a hand through his hair and let it flop across his desk. "Why is it always me?"
"Because you're cursed?" Juno offered.
"Because you talk too much?" Trey added.
He ignored both of them. "Every time something goes wrong, I'm conveniently within five feet of the problem."
Micah nodded without looking up. "That's called proximity-based profiling."
"It's just plain bad luck."
He went quiet after that. Just long enough for the hum of the lights to crawl back in. Outside the window, clouds moved in over the horizon like slow gray waves.
It was just lunch. Just a normal game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Aiden closed his eyes for a second, remembering it. The cafeteria was loud. They'd claimed their usual table by the vending machines. He was playing Kal'zorin Flameborn, Sorcerer of the Red Hollow, a.k.a. his best self.
The group was pinned in a stone corridor, with goblin priests on both sides. Micah's rogue had botched a stealth roll so badly it triggered a magical alarm.
Aiden rolled the dice.
Natural twenty.
Of course, he'd shouted it. "I cast FIREBALL!" echoed across the hall like a battle cry.
Fifteen minutes later, smoke started leaking out of the art wing. Fire alarms. Screaming. Evacuation.
And then the pointing started.
He hadn't even been in the art wing. But when the teachers needed a name, his was the one that came up. Aiden Cross, problem child, D&D nerd. The obvious choice.
Now he was here. Again.
He sat back up, rubbing his eyes.
"Just once," he muttered, "I wish things were like the game. Where the dice always rolled in my favor."
Juno raised an eyebrow. "You'd be dead in five minutes."
"No, seriously. I get critical hits. I survive boss fights I have no business winning. People want me on their team. In the game, I'm a freaking legend."
"That will never happen, sadly," Val said suddenly.
Aiden turned toward her voice. It was the first thing she'd said all afternoon.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "Just wish it would."
No one replied.
The room fell still.
The lights flickered.
Then, for a split second, they stopped buzzing.
The lights came back on. But slower this time. Like the room was waking up from anesthesia.
Aiden sat still, unsure if anyone else had noticed.
Trey looked up first. "What the hell was that?"
Micah adjusted his glasses. "Power fluctuation?"
"There isn't a storm, though," Juno said. She unplugged one earbud, eyes narrowed.
Val glanced at the ceiling. Her arms were still crossed, but her shoulders had tensed.
Something buzzed again, but this time it wasn't the lights.
It was deeper.
Lower.
Like pressure building in his skull.
Aiden blinked and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The classroom hadn't changed. The floor was still grimy. The desks were still carved with half-erased messages like "J.T. SUX" and "K.D WAZ HERE."
The fan was still ticking like clockwork.
But the air had changed.
It wasn't cool anymore.
It felt… static.
Heavy.
Like the moment before a thunderclap, except the sky was indoors.
Ms. Vega walked in a beat too late, carrying a stack of folders and a paper cup of iced coffee.
She didn't look at them. Just went straight to the front desk, set her things down, and finally noticed the silence.
She looked up, paused, and frowned.
The center of the room—dead center, right between Aiden and Micah's desks—was glowing.
Not bright. Just a slow, pulsing shimmer, like sunlight through heatwaves.
"What the hell…" she murmured.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
The shimmer expanded.
A circle of faint symbols began to appear, spinning clockwise in the air. They looked like they were drawn in chalk and suspended in nothing, runes Aiden didn't recognize. Symbols from nothing he'd seen in any D&D manual. They glowed a pale blue, traced in tight arcs and jagged marks that sparked as they rotated.
[You are within the Summoning Range.]
Ms. Vega moved first.
"Back up," she said, quickly and clearly, stepping in front of the group. "Everyone, move to the wall. Now."
Trey took a step back. "What the—? Is that a hologram?"
"No talking. Back up. Now."
Juno grabbed her sketchbook and slid off the desk. Micah didn't say anything, but followed her lead. Val hadn't taken her eyes off the glow since it started.
Aiden stood up, slowly. He could feel his pulse in his neck now.
"What is that?" he asked.
Ms. Vega turned her head just enough to see him. "I don't know. But you're all getting behind me."
Then the noise started.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't even exactly sound.
It was more like—pressure.
A low, rising vibration that moved through the floor and up his legs like an elevator with no brakes. The symbols in the circle began spinning faster. Sparks popped and flared from the edges, bouncing off nothing.
"Micah," Juno said, voice tight, "you seeing this too?"
"I'm not hallucinating," he whispered. "That's real. That is very real."
The humming became a tone. Then a ring.
Then everything went white.
Aiden didn't feel the moment it hit. There wasn't pain, just heat. All-encompassing, like falling into a bonfire but without the flames.
His body went weightless.
Then—
Stone.
Cold, damp, stone slammed against his side as he hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
Aiden rolled onto his back, gasping.
Everything was black. No windows. No lights. Just darkness.
His nose wrinkled.
The place smelled like ash, rot, and something worse.
He sat up slowly, eyes straining in the dark.
Somewhere ahead of him, faint runes pulsed along the floor. Not the ones from the classroom. These were deeper. Cruder. Carved directly into the stone.
He reached out, hand trembling, and touched one.
It was warm.
The glow intensified, just enough for him to see the walls.
Carved stone. Moss creeping through the cracks. A long hallway stretching in both directions. And bones.
Bones everywhere.
Piled at the far end of the room. Some bleached. Some fresh.
Aiden didn't scream.
He just closed his eyes, counted to five, and said:
"…Mom's definitely gonna kill me."