The walk to Alice’s dorm after the fight was a silent process of shame and pain. Niles rubbed his lips with his sleeve, while Leon favoured his right leg, a deep bruise already blossoming on his left leg.
Alice led the way, her posture rigid. She checked every shadowy corridor intersection before hurrying them across, her ears seemed to tuned to frequencies they couldn’t hear.
Her room was in one of the oldest wings of the girls' dormitory, a tower-like annex that felt separate from the whole school. The room itself was a reflection of its occupant: spartan, orderly, but with hints of a hidden life. A neatly made bed, a simple wooden desk, and a small black bookshelf were all standard issue. But on the walls, pinned with a fencer’s precision, were detailed anatomical drawings of muscle groups, complex fencing footwork diagrams, and a few faded, beautiful prints of historical swordswomen.
It was the sanctuary of a disciplined artist.
“Sit,” Alice commanded, her voice regaining some of its usual softness, and now layered with a nurse’s authority. She retrieved a small, first-aid kit box from under her bed—the kind an athlete would use and maintain.
They sat on the edge of her bed, the two boys were still avoiding each other’s gaze. The adrenaline had faded, only leaving the dull pain of injuries and the sharp sting of foolishness inside them.
Alice worked efficiently, cleaning the cut on Niles’s lip with an antiseptic wipe. “Hold it there,” she instructed him, pressing a small gauze pad to it. She then turned to Leon, handing him a cold pack for muscle injuries. “For your left leg, you’re lucky that it’s just a deep bruise.”
Leon took it with a quiet nod of thanks, his eyes fixed on the floor. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
“Well, you boys can’t go back to your rooms tonight,” Alice stated, breaking the quiet. She said it not as a suggestion, but as a simple, sad fact.
Niles and Leon both looked up at her.
“What? Why?” Niles asked, his expression confused.
“Curfew was ten minutes ago. The prefects usually do their rounds at ten-thirty. If they see you two like this—bruised, disheveled, smelling of sweat and antiseptic—the questions will be more than we can answer.” She looked between them, her gaze very serious. “You two will stay here. Tonight.”
“Crap… I forgot I was supposed to be on duty tonight!” Leon shouted, his tone frustrated.
”Too bad, Leon.” Alice sighed, her expression slightly soften. “You’ll have to make an excuse for Professor Crawford.”
Alice’s statement hung in the air, terrifying and unthinkable. Breaking the curfew was one thing; but a boy being in the girls' dormitories after hours was a major infraction, not to mention two boys hiding in a girl’s room was an expulsion-level event at any normal school. At Blackwood, the consequences felt ominously undefined.
“Alice, we can’t ask you to do that,” Leon said, his voice tight with the strain of conflicting duties—the rule of law versus the law of survival.
“No, I’m just telling you to,” she replied, her tone leaving no room for argument. “This room… it’s mine. I have no roommates. They stopped assigning them to me after…” She trailed off, a shadow passing over her face. “Let’s just say, it’s one of the few perks of being an ‘anomaly.’ No one checks on me, usually.”
The way she said it sent chills through Niles. It wasn’t a privilege; it was a form of cold isolation.
They had little choice. The alternative—wandering around the halls and facing the prefects—was unimaginable. Alice took out a spare blanket and a thin mattress pad from her closet, creating a makeshift bed on the floor. The space was cramped, but it was safe. For now.
“One of you can take the spare bed,” she stated, pointing to the empty bed opposite to hers.
An immediate, unspoken standoff occurred. Neither boy would willingly share a bed, and neither would claim it over the other in a show of weakness.
“I’ll take the floor,” Niles said flatly, the words ending the silent negotiation.
Leon gave a curt nod, his pride too bruised to argue.41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX0CeOv9BQP
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Settled in the dim light of Alice's single desk lamp, the darkness pressing in from the window, the last of their hostility bled away, replaced by a shared, weary vulnerability.
Leon was silent for a very long moment, the cold pack pressed to his leg. He looked at Alice, a silent question in his eyes. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
“My elder brother, Lance, was a student here,” Leon said, the name dropping like a stone in the quiet room. “He was the head prefect, a model student. But he started noticing strange things, the inconsistencies in the school records. Student files that ended not with ‘graduated’ or ‘transferred’, but with a single, typed word: ‘Absolved.’”
“Absolved?” Niles repeated, his eyes meeting Leon's. “Absolved of what?”
“Niles, we don’t know,” Alice whispered softly.
“Lance tried to find out,” Leon continued, his voice hollow. “He started digging into the school’s archives, the same ones that don’t exist. He asked the wrong people the wrong questions.” His jaw tightened.
“He came home for winter break… and he was completely different. Quiet, haunted. He told me to keep my head down, to follow the rules without question, to never, ever draw that kind of attention. A month later, the school said Lance was dead due to a tragic fall from the east wing bell tower. My parents believed it, but I never did.”41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaqrRpHczoS
The room felt several degrees colder.41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDFu13upaCG
Leon’s voice cracked, slightly trembling, “I found his research journal hidden in a floorboard in our old treehouse. The last entry just said, ‘The portrait watches. The stone listens. They already know I know.’” He looked at Niles, his gaze raw. “That’s why I follow the rules. Not because I believe in them., but because I know what would happen when you don’t.”41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr2OcqZyOR3
“My story is a less dramatic one,” Alice said, drawing her knees to her chest. “I’m just… good at fencing. Really good. Last year, a ‘recruiter’ from a national team visited my old school. He wanted me to train with them. It was all but guaranteed. The day after he visited, I was… encouraged to apply for a transfer to Blackwood Academy. My parents received a very persuasive, very generous financial aid package. They said it was an opportunity I should not refuse.” 41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5cAyiTQrrh
She looked at Niles, her eyes glistening in the lamplight. “They don’t bring you here to polish you, Niles. They bring you here to keep you. To keep your particular… talent… contained within these walls.”41Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkUMcQGNgZ8
The pieces were finally clicking into a horrifying picture. Blackwood Academy wasn’t a school for the gifted. It was a gilded cage for the peculiar, the too-bright, the too-different. A place where curiosity was not just discouraged but surgically removed, and where the rules, as Leon said, were for containment.
The three of them sat in the silent, secret room, bound together now not by chance, but by a shared truth. They were all pieces that didn’t fit, and they had just realised they were trapped inside the same puzzle. And the puzzle was watching them back, constantly.
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and then Add to home screen.