The great oak door swung shut behind her, the sound not a click, but a deep, resonant thud.
It was the sound of a tomb sealing, of a final word spoken.
The oppressive drumming of the rain was gone, replaced by a silence that was somehow heavier, more profound. It was a cathedral quiet, the kind that absorbed sound and gave nothing back.
Elena stood in the enormous entryway, her violin case feeling impossibly heavy in her hand.
The air tasted of dust and old stone and something else, something metallic and faintly sweet, like old blood.
The severe woman the Headmistress, Elena presumed, regarded her with an unnerving stillness.
Her eyes, the color of slate, scanned Elena from head to toe, a silent, clinical assessment.
"Your reputation precedes you, Miss Vance. We expect great things from your music. Redwood is a place for singular talents to find their voice."
Her words were sharp and precise, cutting through the silence without disturbing it. The phrase find their voice hung in the air, feeling less like an encouragement and more like a diagnosis.
The Headmistress held out a hand.
In her palm lay a key.
It wasn't a modern key of brass or steel.
This one was old, made of dark, heavy iron. It was long and skeletal, the head of it an intricate knot of what looked like withered branches, and its teeth were jagged, uneven, like a broken promise. It looked less like a key to a room and more like a key to a cage.
"Your room is in the East Wing," the Headmistress said, her fingers closing over Elara's as she passed the key.
The iron was cold, a deep, biting cold that seemed to sink right into her skin, a cold that felt like it had been waiting for her touch.
"We had to reopen it this year due to unprecedented enrollment. You'll have a great deal of privacy."
The words were meant to be reassuring, but they weren't. Privacy. Here, it sounded like isolation.
The Headmistress led the way, her posture ramrod straight. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors, two distinct sounds in the vast emptiness, the sharp, confident click of the Headmistress's heels, and the soft, hesitant scuff of Elena's own shoes.
They passed portraits of men and women with pale, serious faces, their painted eyes seeming to follow Elena's every move.
The air grew colder as they walked, the grand, imposing architecture of the main hall giving way to a narrower, darker corridor.
It was clear this part of the academy had been left to slumber for a long time.
A fine layer of dust coated the wainscoting, and the air thickened with the scent of undisturbed decay and sleeping secrets.
They stopped before a door at the very end of the hall. The number was gone, the paint flaked away, leaving only a faint impression on the dark wood.
This was a place that time had tried to erase. The Headmistress gestured toward the lock with a pointed finger. "Here you are."
Elena's hand trembled as she lifted the iron key. It felt wrong in her palm, an artifact from a history that didn't belong to her. She pushed it into the lock. It scraped, resisted, and then turned with a low, grating groan, a sound like bones grinding together. The latch clicked open with a sound like a breath being held for too long, she then pushed the door inward.
The room was a sketch of a memory, rendered in shades of gray.
Dust motes danced like frantic sprites in the single beam of weak light filtering through a tall, grimy window.
A narrow bed with an iron frame was pushed against one wall, a simple wooden desk against the other. The furniture was skeletal, barely there. An empty wardrobe stood with its door slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness gaping from within. The room was cold, a damp chill that clung to the very air. But it was the far wall that held Elena's gaze, that made the breath catch in her throat.
Against it stood a tall, oval mirror in a tarnished silver frame. But the glass itself was hidden, completely covered by a thick, cream-colored cloth, tied down with a length of faded rope. It looked like a shrouded corpse, something that had been deliberately blinded.
"The building is old," the Headmistress said from the doorway, her voice pulling Elara from her trance.
"Things fall into disrepair. We'll have someone see to that."
She didn't specify what "that" was.
The mirror?
The dust?
The suffocating silence?
Her tone was dismissive, as if the shrouded object was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
But Elena knew it wasn't.
She couldn't look away from it. A part of her, buried deep beneath the fog of her amnesia, screamed at her not to touch it. Not to even think about what lay beneath the cloth. It was an instinct, primal and absolute. You are not ready to see yourself.
The Headmistress was gone.
Elena hadn't heard her leave, but the space in the doorway was now empty. She was alone. Alone with the dust, the shadows, and the blind mirror. She took a step into the room, then another, the floorboards groaning faintly beneath her weight. She placed her violin case on the bed, her movements slow and deliberate.
She walked to the window and looked out.
There was no view, only a stone wall thick with dead ivy. This room didn't look out. It looked in.
Her eyes drifted back to the mirror. Her fingers twitched with a strange, horrifying impulse to pull the cloth away, to see what face stared back at her from the dark glass.
But the warning in her soul was louder. She would not touch it. Not today.
She turned away from the mirror, her back to it, and in that moment, she felt it.
A cold spot in the room.
A sudden, intense drop in temperature, as if something was standing right behind her, its presence leaching all the warmth from the air.
Her skin prickled.
She didn't dare turn around.
She just stood there, frozen, listening to the silence of the room, a silence that felt like it was listening back.