The week bled slowly into another, days measured in the ringing of bells, clatter of cutlery, and the steady march of lectures that seemed designed less to teach than to grind every student into silence. Amber learned to move with the rhythm of Grimrose Academy—always at the edge of noise, never quite part of it.
The morning began gray, the sky already heavy with rain though the hour was barely past dawn. In the dining hall, amber light flickered from the chandeliers, catching the steam rising off porridge bowls. Dhani waved her over with a quick lift of the hand, her long braid spilling across her shoulder like ink.
"Here," Dhani said warmly as Amber slid onto the bench. "I saved you a seat before those greedy boys claimed the whole row." Her accent curled gently at the edges of her words, like silk folded on itself.
Amber nodded, grateful. "Thank you," she murmured, her vowels clipped, precise, betraying the careful upbringing she never escaped.
"You barely eat," Dhani teased, pushing her bread across the table. "Are you planning to starve before exams arrive?"
Amber's lips twitched into something almost like a smile. "Exams may starve me faster."
Dhani laughed, shaking her head. "Always so grave, Amber Ashford. One day, I shall make you laugh properly, not just with your eyes."
Amber looked down, unsure how to answer, and busied herself with buttering her bread. Yet the warmth lingered, soft as a candle's flame, against the usual chill of mornings.
____
Later, after classes bled together in a blur of chalk dust and recitations, Amber found herself in one of the portrait halls. She liked this stretch of corridor for reasons she could not explain. Perhaps it was the hush that lived between the stone arches, or perhaps the way the painted eyes seemed both to watch and to ignore.
"Why does this place always seem so mysterious yet infatuating at the same time? Can't something in this academy be normal. Even these portraits seem to judge me every second inside out. Guhhhh!!!!"
She stopped before a tall portrait of a woman with a crimson sash. The woman's painted gaze seemed to weigh her. Amber tilted her head, whispering to herself, "Were you as trapped as we are?"
She heard a soft footstep from behind. She turned to see who it was and there he was walking in all his glory - Jonas Whitlock. His stride quiet, his books pressed against his chest. He slowed when he reached her, and his dark eyes lingered not on the portrait, but on her.
"Strange weather for clear thoughts, isn't it?" he said, his voice low, as though he, too, feared the portraits might overhear.
Amber startled, but gathered her words carefully. "I think Grimrose prefers its storms."
For a heartbeat, something unreadable flickered across his expression—a smirk, or a shadow. Then he gave a small nod and continued walking.
Amber stood very still, her pulse uneven, before finally turning back to the painted woman. But the words she had chosen replayed again and again, as though they meant more than she intended.
---
That night, sleep seems to be running away from Amber. The wind rattled at the dormitory windows, and her candle had long since guttered, leaving only the thick dark of her room. Amber turned over restlessly, her mind clattering with half-thoughts: Jonas's voice, Dhani's laughter, her parents' warnings.
Finally, she swung her legs out of bed, pressing her bare feet to the cold floor. Her feet reaching for her slippers, she intake air in her lungs through her nostrils as she wore her slippers. She doesn't know where she is heading to in the cold night but her mind wants an escape of the thoughts creeping in her mind.
"You're foolish, Ashford," she whispered to herself, pulling her shawl tight. "Creeping like a thief in a house of shadows."
The corridors stretched out before her, each one identical in stone and lamp, yet she knew them now by instinct—the staircase that groaned on the fourth step, the arch that funneled every draft.
A faint sound broke the silence. Notes of a piano, halting and unsteady, drifting through the halls like a ghost trying to remember its song. Amber's breath caught. She followed.
Down one staircase, then another. Past doors that hummed with silence, until at last the music swelled enough to lead her to a heavy oak door. The sound trembled on the other side, one hand fumbling at chords, the other pressing keys too sharply.
She pushed the door open just enough to slip inside.
The piano stood in the center of the room, lid propped open, sheet music scattered across its stand. But the bench was empty, rocking slightly as though just abandoned. Amber's breath hitched. The melody had stopped at the instant she entered.
She stepped closer. The pages of music fluttered in a draft, as though some invisible hand still lingered. On the last sheet, a single bar of notes had been violently crossed through, the ink darker, fresher than the rest.
Amber whispered to the empty room, "Who's there?"
Her words dissolved into silence.
She lingered only a moment more before retreating, the weight of unseen eyes pressing her back out into the corridor.
---
On her way back, another sound stopped her: voices, muffled and hushed, leaking from a partially open door along the west wing. She pressed herself to the wall, heart pounding.
"…she grows curious," came Mrs. Whitmore's clipped tones.
Another voice replied—female, low, urgent—but Amber could not place it.
"…then keep her gaze elsewhere," Whitmore continued, words sharp as steel. "The truth must sleep, or all is undone."
Amber froze, the chill sliding down her spine.
She stepped backward carefully, desperate not to creak the floorboards, and forced herself away before their conversation turned to her name.
---
Back in her room, she stood long at the window, the rain streaking the panes into silver threads. Her pale reflection gazed back at her, wide-eyed, uncertain.
"Great… just great I went out of my room to stop those useless thoughts from creeping into my mind but now my brain is even more disturbed by the haunting thoughts" she murmured to the glass, frustrated.
Lightning split the sky, white and merciless, illuminating her face against the dark. For an instant, she thought she saw another reflection behind her—tall, indistinct, impossible. But when she spun around, the room was empty.
She drew the curtains tight and sat on the edge of her bed, heart
hammering, the silence of the academy pressing in as heavily as the storm outside.