All Chapters of Ashwyck Academy for the Damned: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Isadora:Yesterday was like a fever dream, or a living nightmare, just a blur of shadows and voices that I couldn't sort though. My body was weak, my head was foggy. I was in and out of concoiusness, but I knew the guys had been there, sometimes all of them, sometimes just one. But they never left me alone. Not once all night. I don't know whether to thank them, or be weary.I finally had enough strength to get out of bed this morning. The air tastes of storm.Ashwyck’s towers knife the sky, their slate roofs slick with last night’s rain, and the bells toll like a warning no one else seems to hear. I pull my cloak tighter, but the chill isn’t from the weather. It’s the way the shadows lean closer when I walk, the way I feel watched even when the courtyard is empty.The boys are still near. I can sense them the way I sense my own pulse.A brush of cold—Silas’s signature—slides along the back of my neck. I catch a smear of movement in the corner of my eye, the silhouette of a man half-m

Kai:I have scoured the Academy’s library for three nights straight, and the place is beginning to taste of failure.Dust bites the back of my throat. Ancient leather spines leer from the shelves, titles half–eaten by time. I’ve pulled every index, every brittle scroll, every forbidden ledger that might breathe a hint of what Isadora Gravelle really is—and every time I end up staring at blank answers.The sun sank hours ago. The tall windows bleed only moonlight now, silver and cold, pooling on the marble floor like spilt mercury.I should quit. I should.Instead, an idea slithers through me like a spark: the Scriptorium.Not the public archives. Her scriptorium. The private alcoves only a handful of professors and Isadora herself ever haunt—sealed, whispered about, older than the Academy itself. If the truth hides anywhere, it waits there.The corridors beyond midnight are a cathedral of hush. My footsteps fall without sound; glamour bends the shadows around me until I’m more rumor t

Isadora:Darkness hunts me long before I close my eyes.I feel it as soon as I lie down—like a slow tide, like smoke curling beneath the door. It prowls the edges of my thoughts, velvet-soft and razor-sharp, and for a moment I wonder if sleep is just another trap waiting to spring. But exhaustion is a predator of its own, and it drags me under before I can fight.The dream is instant.Black sky. No stars.The ground beneath me is glassed with ash, shimmering like a frozen lake. I stand barefoot and the heat is alive, searing through the soles of my feet, but I don’t move. The air tastes of iron and something older—something that has been waiting for me.A hiss, like a thousand whispers braided together.Isadora…The voice vibrates inside my bones. I spin, and the world answers with fire. Pillars of it—white at the core, copper at the edges—burst from the ground, drawing sigils in the air. Each mark hovers, molten and trembling, then brands itself across the dark like a living constell

Rhett:Night tastes as heavy and cold as steel. The kind that bites the lungs and coats the tongue in metal.I prowl the outer grounds of Ashwyck Academy, boots sinking into damp earth, every sense stretched thin. The wards hum faintly along the perimeter—usually a steady, comforting throb of magic—but tonight their rhythm skips. Weak. Erratic.Something has touched them.I inhale, letting the forest bleed into me. Wet pine. Old stone. And underneath it, a rank heat that doesn’t belong. Demon musk—smoke and sulfur, slick as rot.A growl curls in my chest.The moon is a dull orb behind storm clouds, the kind of sky that promises rain but withholds it like a threat. Perfect hunting weather. The thick, heavy air holds all the scents suspended within, leaving all the creatures lurking around nowhere to hide for me, the Alpha predator. I roll my shoulders, welcoming the restless energy snapping through muscle and bone. My wolf stirs, claws against the cage of my skin.Easy, I warn it, thou

Rhett:Night slicks the stones of the courtyard like spilled ink. I cross it fast, every sense straining. The wards hum, faint and thin, the way a dying heart might. Shadows slide along the cloisters, too quick to be mine.The Headmistress waits for no one, but I don’t knock. Her door swings open on a hiss of old hinges.Voss’s office smells of rain-soaked parchment and dying roses. Candles gutter as I enter, their flames bowing as if they recognize the power inside me.She sits behind a desk carved from obsidian, white hair coiled tight, a single streak of silver catching the dim light. Her eyes—eerily-bright, ancient—lift to mine.“Rhett,” she says, low and measured. “You look like a storm come to beg the sky to let it brew.”“I’m not begging.” My voice is rough, still edged from patrol. “The wards are failing. Something’s moving in the dark. It’s after her.”Her fingers pause on a ledger, then resume, slow strokes of a quill. “Her,” she repeats. “Isadora, you mean.”“Yes.” The word