As Mr. Collins' voice drones on at a low hum against the flickering fluorescent lights of World Civilization II, I zone in and out, catching snippets of his lecture. He's currently deep into a lecture on ancient Druidic societies, but his words all blur together, stretched thin by the monotony of it. I begin to stare at the chalkboard, and my mind slips sideways into thoughts of what I am missing from that nightmare.
I signed up to take care of patients, not to recite the burial rites of druid priests. Pretty sure none of my future patients are going to ask me for that between morphine doses.
Daydreaming has always been my escape hatch. No matter where I am, I find myself escaping the classroom, bus, or dinner table, and my imagination creeps in like fog. I can easily drift into scenes like daring escapes, secret identities, and emissaries from forgotten kingdoms. Sometimes, I swear I've lived those lives before.
My dad used to hate it. "Keep your head out of the clouds," he'd say, like imagination was a disease. But Mom was different. She encouraged it. Said my best designs came from the worlds I built in my head. She was right. My sketches are modern silhouettes wrapped in echoes of the past.
Freshman year, I designed my spring formal dress to look like something a forest nymph might wear if she lived in Manhattan. Hunter green halter gown, keyhole bodice, slits up both legs, gossamer trim that shimmered like dew. It had a small train that whispered secrets when I walked. People still talk about it. For a moment, I was the next big thing.
But daydreaming wasn't just for fun. It was survival. My parents' marriage collapsed under the weight of their silence. When my father cheated, Mom finally ended it. That was four years ago. Since then, I've lived in two worlds: the one I walk through and the one I imagine.
The Pagan Academy was Mom's idea. She enrolled me when I was ten. Said it would help me "connect with my roots." I've been studying ancient civilizations ever since—Mayan, Greek, Druidic, and Babylonian. It's not Hogwarts, despite what Shelby likes to joke. No wands. No flying brooms. Just long hours, dusty scrolls, and the occasional herb-induced rash.
Still, I love the herbalism classes. There's something satisfying about mixing old-world remedies with modern intuition. I once brewed a sleeping potion based on a centuries-old recipe. I tweaked it—added a few things, left a few out. The result? I slept for seven days straight.
Mom nearly had a heart attack. My teachers were furious. But I woke up feeling incredible—rested, clear, like I'd been rebooted. I called it Snow White Glamour. The name needs work. I never used it again, just in case.
There's only one rule at the academy: no casting outside school grounds unless supervised. We're not of age yet, not trained enough to control the power. But Mom signed a waiver allowing me to practice alone. She's busy. Always has been.
The strangest part of the academy isn't the spells or the rituals—it's the thing no one dares talk about. The Umbra Ascension.
Even here, where fire bends to breath and stone rises at a whisper, the Ascension sits apart. We treat it like a bruise hidden beneath a sleeve: you don't press on it, you don't acknowledge it, and you pretend it isn't there.
But every century, it blooms.
It starts with the vanishing.
At first, you notice it in your own halls. A student disappears in the middle of morning drills. Another vanishes while fetching her cloak. Sometimes they're gone right out of their beds, blankets still warm, shoes tucked neatly beneath. Mortal. Demi-god. Pureblood. It doesn't matter. The gods don't ask. They take.
But it isn't just here. Not just us.
The restricted scrolls whisper the truth—college students vanish all over the world. Not just witches and warlocks, not just demi-gods bred for magic. Promising young athletes mid-sprint, scholars bent over books, pureblood heirs walking between marble courtyards. They vanish from dorm rooms and libraries, from sports fields and late-night cafes. A basketball player in Serbia. A violinist in Italy. A swimmer in the United States. All gone, plucked from their lives without a trace.
The outside world explains it away—tragic accidents, abductions, mysterious disappearances. Their names scroll across news tickers, families tape their faces to telephone poles, and vigils burn until the wax drowns the flame. But no one connects the dots. No one wants to. Only we at the academy, and those who read too far into the forbidden scrolls, see the truth. Every hundred years, the disappearances spike like clockwork. Always young. Always promising. Always the same.
The gods don't care if you are mortal, demigod, or pureblood. To them, you are a piece on their board. And when the cycle comes, they sweep the world for the brightest, the fastest, and the strongest. They don't just steal from us. They steal from everywhere.
The Umbra Ascension.
That's what the scrolls call them. A contest of champions for the gods' amusement, a culling disguised as spectacle. On parchment, they are painted as grand, glorious trials. But read long enough, and the awe curdles into horror.
Poseidon's trial is always first. They call it the storm without shore. Survivors describe black-sand islands tilting like dice across a restless sea. Waves rise taller than cathedrals, pulling athletes and spellcasters alike into water that has no bottom. Olympians in swim lanes have drowned there beside witches who tried to bind the tide with words. The sea doesn't want you to win—it wants to see what you'll sacrifice to stay afloat.
Then Ares takes them. His war arena stretches so wide the horizon bends. Soldiers pulled from battlefields fight beside mortal boxers, demigod wrestlers, and pureblood heirs wielding blades of light. At first, they war against each other. Then the arena itself joins in. Sand hardens into glass that cuts through boots. Drums pound until hearts sync with their rhythm. Weapons rain like meteors from above. The survivors are not always the strongest or the bravest. Often, they're the ones who know when not to strike.
By then, half the names are gone.
Hades waits next. His labyrinth of shadows is not built of walls but of memories. Doors appear labeled HOME, and voices call with the laughter of mothers long buried and lovers long lost. A med student from Cairo runs to the sound of her brother's voice. A demigod from Athens chases his father's shadow. None of it is real. The labyrinth is designed to hollow you out until nothing is left but what the gods demand. Very few emerge whole. Some never emerge at all.
Between these horrors, the Fates weave puzzles into the Games. They're quieter, crueler. Maps that change beneath your fingers. Ropes braided from river current. Riddles that speak in tongues you almost understand. Failure doesn't kill, not at first. But each mistake shortens your path. And in the Games, time is as lethal as a blade.
By the equinox, the tally cords strung around each competitor's neck gleam with brands. Some glow softly, earned through clean victories. Others smolder hot, scars from choices made in desperation—closing a door on a friend, stepping on a hand that begged for help. The cords keep the tally. The brands keep the shame.
And then, at the solstice, comes the truth the academy never utters. Survival does not mean freedom.
The winners are not crowned. They are claimed.
Guardians. That's what Olympus calls them. Survivors branded not with honor but with ownership. Oaths carved beneath the skin. Divine brands burned into their hearts. They do not go home. They do not live free. They serve. Some gods keep their guardians loyal with promises; others do so out of fear; and others do it by twisting their very souls into weapons. Every god builds a cadre, an army of champions pulled from the Games.
This is the true purpose of the Umbra Ascension. Not to entertain. Not to glorify. To harvest. To cull. The goal is to enslave people before a threat can arise.
Mortals are pawns. Demi-gods are unpredictable, possessing too much power to ignore and too many flaws to trust. Purebloods are vanity entries, sent to remind us that Olympus never cedes its throne.
We at the academy like to pretend it only happens to us. That the disappearances elsewhere are coincidences. But the scrolls say otherwise. They say every university, and college campus across the world, is a hunting ground. It is believed that the gods cast their nets wide and draw in anyone who is bright enough to catch their eye.
That's why there are no memorials here. No shrines. No plaques. The academy keeps quiet because silence is safer. But I've seen the way teachers' hands tremble when a student doesn't show up to class. I've seen empty beds left undisturbed, as if tidying them would admit the truth.
And I've heard the whispers. That three witches are always taken, no matter where they are found. One to give life. One to take it. One to decide when it ends.
I never thought I'd be one of them. I told myself I wasn't the fastest, wasn't the brightest, and wasn't chosen material. But when the lights flicker, when the air goes heavy, when a name is whispered and no one answers, I wonder.
It's not just us. It's the whole world.
And the gods always choose.