The streets of the suburbs were damp, slick with the remnants of a heavy midnight rainfall that had left the air smelling of wet asphalt and iron. Pedestrians marched through the gray morning, their umbrellas tucked under their arms like weapons as they navigated the puddles. It was a mundane scene—people carrying out their daily rituals of survival—but at the far end of the street, the rhythm of the neighborhood faltered.
There stood a house. It wasn't too big, nor was it too small; it was the kind of home meant for a family of four and a golden retriever. Now, it was a hollow shell, a limestone ghost rotting from the inside out.
As the morning crowd passed by, the whispers grew, fluttering like the wings of nervous birds.
"Is there anyone even living in there anymore?" one woman asked, clutching her coat tighter as she glanced at the overgrown lawn and the peeling white paint of the porch.
"Yes," her companion replied in a hushed tone. "It's rumored an orphan lives there. Ever since the disappearance of her brother a year ago, the doors have stayed locked. It's like a tomb."
"I heard the poor girl hasn't seen the sun since the funeral service—the one where there wasn't even a body to bury," a third chimed in, shivering.
Suddenly, the screech of a dry window hinge sliced through the air. The women started, their eyes snapping upward. The heavy wooden frame of the second-story window had been shoved open. For a fleeting second, a silhouette appeared—a girl with skin as pale as parchment and eyes that looked like they had been hollowed out by grief.
The pedestrians hurried their pace, heads down, fleeing the sight of the tragedy they so loved to gossip about.
ELARA VANCE POV
I watched them flee. I watched the way they looked at my house as if grief were a contagious disease they might catch if they lingered too long. I didn't blame them. I looked like a wreck. My hair was a tangled, matted nest of knots, my eyes were perpetually puffy and rimmed with red, and my clothes... I couldn't remember the last time I'd put on something that didn't smell like stale whiskey and old paper.
I leaned my forehead against the cool wood of the window frame, my breath fogging the glass. My legs felt heavy, like lead, as I turned away from the window and toward the shrine.
That's what Leo's room had become. A shrine.
Everything was exactly where he'd left it one year ago. His bed was neatly made, his textbooks stacked in perfect chronological order on his desk. Leo was a book maniac—the kind of person who found more life in a dusty library than in the real world. I was the opposite. I was the one who preferred the cold click of a lock picking under my tools, the one who found trouble while he found metaphors.
"Where are you, Leo?" I whispered, the words catching in my dry throat.
The police had stopped calling months ago. They used words like 'cold case' and 'presumed deceased .' They looked at me with pity, suggesting I sell the house and move on. But there was a lingering feeling settled deep in my marrow—a low-frequency vibration that told me they were wrong.
Leo wasn't dead. If he were dead, the world would feel emptier. Instead, it felt heavy, like it was waiting for something.
I reached for the bottle of whiskey on his nightstand. It had been his favorite brand—ironic for a boy who spent his life in books—and now it was my only companion. I poured a glass, the amber liquid stinging my throat as I swallowed. I drank until the edges of the room blurred, until the silence of the house didn't feel quite so deafening.
I turned to set the glass down on the small side table—the spot where I sat every single evening to talk to a brother who wasn't there.
My heart skipped a beat. My hand froze in mid-air.
There, sitting exactly in the center of the dusty wood, was a blackened coin.
It hadn't been there ten minutes ago. I was sure of it. I had dusted that table only an hour prior in a fit of manic grief. The coin was dark, absorbing the little light that filtered through the clouds. It looked old, embossed with an intricate crest I didn't recognize—a serpent coiled around a quill.
Before I could touch it, the sharp chimme of my phone shattered the silence.
I nearly dropped my glass. My hands shook as I fished the device out of my back pocket. I didn't recognize the number.
Unknown: Need answers?
I felt as if I had grown an extra head. A cold sweat broke out across my collarbone, and my palms felt clammy. I looked around the room, my eyes darting to the shadows in the corner, the open closet, the space beneath the bed.
Someone was watching.
I opened my mouth to scream, but the sound died in my throat as a white object flicked through the open window. It was a piece of paper, folded into the sharp, aerodynamic shape of a jet. It glided through the air with impossible precision, dropping just a few inches from my bare feet.
I scrambled back, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I waited, staring at the paper as if it might explode. When nothing happened, I crept toward the window and peered out.
The street was packed as usual pedestrians walking andJust the damp asphalt and the gray sky.
No mysterious figure
I picked up the paper, my fingers trembling so violently I could barely unfold it. As the creases smoothed out, a single name stared back at me in sharp, black ink:
THE BLACKWOOD UNIVERSITY
My breath hitched. But it wasn't the name that broke me. It was the mark at the bottom of the page. Underneath the university's name was a stylized, jagged letter "L" with a distinct upward flick at the end.
I didn't need to think. I didn't need to guess. I dashed out of the room, my feet thudding against the hallway carpet as I burst into my own bedroom. I tore open my nightstand drawer, pulling out the last birthday card Leo had ever given me.
I held the two papers side by side.
The signatures matched perfectly. The ink on the jet was fresh, still smelling faintly of charcoal, but the hand that wrote it was unmistakable.
Leo was alive. And he was at Blackwood.
I looked back at the black coin on the table. It wasn't just a piece of metal anymore. It was an invitation to a place of no return.
Terror and hope battled in my chest, a violent collision that left me gasping for air. I had spent two years staring at a closed door. Now, someone had just handed me the key—and I had the feeling that once I used it, I would never be able to come home again.