EMPIRE HIGH: SCHOOL OF SHADOWS

There was no light in the void.

Only sensation.

Seraphina felt herself falling—not through air, but through memory.

Her mind was being peeled apart. Not violently. Carefully. As if someone were cataloging her.

She saw her seventh birthday.

Her mother's whisper: "Never show them what you can do until you know what they are."

The first time she bled black.

The moment she touched the Vault's sigil in her dreams for the first time.

Elijah was falling too. She could feel him. They were tethered. But they had not landed in the same space.

She hit the ground with a thud that rattled her spine.

The floor was... warm. Soft. Velvet?

She sat up.

She was in a bedroom. Not her own. It was too old, too ornate. Candles floated above, flickering without flames.

Books lined every wall—ancient tomes with no titles. There was a desk covered in parchment, all of it written in the same flowing script.

And in the corner...

A woman sat, watching her.

Her hair was black with silver streaks. Her skin the color of dusk. Her eyes—gray.

Seraphina's breath caught.

"Mom?"

The woman didn't move. "No. But close."

"Are you... Evelyn?"

The woman nodded. "Or what's left of her. A shadow of a shadow. The last memory of a girl who tried to change fate—and became part of the Vault to do it."

Sera stepped forward slowly. "You're real. You're alive."

"Alive?" Evelyn laughed. "No. This place... it's made of echoes. I am what the Vault allowed to remain."

Sera touched her mark. It burned.

"You survived."

"Barely. I sealed myself into the heart of the curse to keep it from spreading."

"Then help me stop it."

Evelyn stood. "You can't stop a curse that feeds on choice. You can only offer it something stronger than grief."

"Like what?"

"Memory."

The room trembled.

She snapped her fingers—and the walls fell away.

Sera stood in a courtyard now. But not the school's.

A city street. Rain-soaked. A child stood alone by a bus stop, clutching a soaked backpack.

"That's me," she whispered.

Evelyn appeared beside her. "First time you lied to protect someone else. You took the fall for a friend. You bore the punishment. That choice marked you."

Another scene unfolded.

Sera—older now—standing in front of her mom, yelling. Crying. "Just tell me what I am!"

Evelyn wept.

"I loved you too much to curse you," the memory whispered. "But I left the door open so you could choose."

The light dimmed.

She was back in the Vault.

Alone.

Or so she thought.

Elijah lay nearby, unconscious. She crawled to him. His breath was shallow.

The bond between them flickered like a dying flame.

"Wake up," she begged. "Please."

She pressed her hand to his chest—and her sigil pulsed.

It released light this time.

Bright. Burning.

The Vault screamed.

A crack formed in the floor.

Then another.

The bones lining the walls trembled.

A voice thundered—not Evelyn's.

Not the Vault's.

"Choose."

Sera looked at the cracks. They led in two directions.

One was light. A path back. A path to safety.

The other was shadow. But within it—Elijah's tether.

If she took the light, she could escape.

But he would remain.

The curse would break—for her.

Not for him.

Tears burned her eyes.

She looked at his sleeping face. Remembered the silence he filled with presence. The truths he told without words.

"I'm not leaving you."

She dragged him toward the shadowed path.

The Vault shrieked.

"You were the one who could've escaped."

Sera laughed bitterly. "Then you chose wrong."

The shadows swallowed them.

They woke in the infirmary.

Nyra was there. So was Headmaster Thorn. And Professor Vellum.

No one spoke.

Elijah opened his eyes. "I remember everything."

Sera nodded. "Me too."

The Headmaster exhaled. "Then the Vault has changed. You passed through it—and returned. Together."

Nyra was crying. "No one has ever come back with the thread intact."

Vellum touched the mark on Sera's palm. "It's not a curse anymore."

She looked down.

Her sigil had transformed.

It was now half light. Half dark.

Perfectly balanced.

And Elijah's matched.

But something was still wrong.

Later that night, while sitting alone in the library, Sera noticed a book had appeared on the forbidden shelf.

She approached.

The cover was blank.

Inside, only one page bore writing:

"One of you made the right choice. One of you lied. The curse isn't broken. It's evolving."

A single drop of blood fell onto the page.

It wasn't hers.