Page 9

ASH

Technology dies first.

The GPS screen cracks down the middle. Numbers bleed into pixels. My phone shows no signal—not low bars, nothing. Like we’ve driven off the edge of the world.

The driver—Jason—slams his palm against the screen, once, twice, each impact sharper than the last. A vein pulses at his temple.

“Always happens here,” he mutters, fingers fumbling for an old-fashioned compass that instantly spins wildly, as if drunk on magnetic confusion. “We’re close.”

“Close to what, exactly?” The question emerges sharper than intended.

Instead of answering he glances at me in the rearview mirror.

“How much further?” The words scrape my dry throat.

Jason’s hands shake on the wheel. Sweat through his shirt despite the cold. He’s seen things. Things that don’t leave you unchanged.

“Should be another twenty minutes to the drop-off point.” His voice cracks on the last word. “Academy’s beyond that, but they don’t let vehicles approach directly.”

His knuckles bulge white beneath skin stretched too tight across bone as he grips the steering wheel. Fear radiates from him in waves—his pulse hammering at his throat, his pupils become black holes against shrinking irises.

I’ve watched men face firefights with steadier hands.

“Security protocols or something more interesting?” I keep my voice casual, probing.

“More interesting.” His laugh is bitter.

“You’ve made this trip before?” I question.

“Five times.” His eyes catch mine in the mirror—darting contact, there and gone. “Last driver made six. There was no seventh trip.”

“Listen,” Jason’s voice drops to something between a prayer and a plea.

“When you get out, follow the path exactly. Don’t wander.

Don’t pick any flowers, especially the red ones.

Don’t eat or drink anything offered unless you want them to trap you there.

If you hear singing, plug your ears and run. If you see dancing lights, look away.”

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. “Interesting additions to standard navigation protocol.”

“Official channels don’t believe half of what happens out here. The Academy plays nice with your government because it has to, but they’re not...” words fail him, his mouth working around shapes it can’t form, “...they’re not like us.”

“And the unofficial channels?”

His laugh shatters like glass. “The kind that keep me alive and awake at night. The kind that were here before us and will be here after us. The kind that doesn’t die easily and doesn’t forget anything.”

The vehicle slams into something unseen. My teeth rattle. Jason curses—words that sound like prayers in another language—as he wrestles the SUV onto the narrow shoulder.

The engine coughs once, twice, then dies with a whimper.

“Shit.” He twists the key again. Nothing but silence. His shoulders collapse. “We’ll have to stop here. It’s close enough.”

“Close enough isn’t the drop point.” The words come automatically while my senses catalog our surroundings with desperate, frantic pressure.

Jason barks a laugh that sounds more like a sob.

“Yeah, well, our options are limited to here or wherever this thing decides to die completely.” He pats the dashboard with oddly affectionate resignation.

“Fourth transmission this year. I keep telling them to stop using anything manufactured after 1985 for these runs, but no one listens to the driver.”

“You’re the expert on... whatever this is?” I gesture toward the increasingly impossible forest.

“Expert?” His laugh is more genuine this time.

“Lady, I’m just the idiot who answered a classified ad for specialty courier because it paid triple my old trucking gig.

” He yanks open the glove compartment, pulling out a battered flask and taking a swig before offering it to me.

“My résumé said nothing about haunted forests or trees that follow you with their branches.”

I shake my head at the offered flask. “They don’t brief you either?”

“Oh, they brief you. Just nothing useful.” He does a startlingly accurate impression of a bureaucratic monotone, “Adhere to designated coordinates. Maintain schedule integrity. Avoid conversational engagement regarding destination specifics.” His normal voice returns.

“Nothing about what to do when the GPS starts showing locations that don’t exist or when you see things dancing between the trees that definitely aren’t deer. Not deer I tell you!”

The slam of a car door shocks me enough to follow him out into the warm twilight air.

Jason pulls my bags from the trunk, his movements jerky. His boots never stray more than an arm’s length from the vehicle. “Path starts there,” he points to what looks like a deer trail vanishing between ancient trees. “About two miles. You can’t miss it.”

“Can’t miss what?” My voice emerges hollow and unfamiliar.

“The boundary. You’ll know when you cross it.” He shoves a flashlight into my hand. His fingers are ice-cold, trembling. “They’ll be expecting you.”

“The Academy staff?”

A muscle jumps in his jaw. “The ones you’re supposed to meet, sure. But nothing happens there that they all don’t know about. Eyes everywhere. In the walls, in the trees, in the shadows.” His eyes flicker to the forest and back, haunted by something he won’t name.

He hesitates, glancing at the darkening forest, then back to me.

“My grandma was from Connemara,” he says abruptly.

“Used to tell me stories about the Good Folk. Said if you ever had to deal with them, always carry salt in your left pocket and iron in your right.” He pulls something from his jacket—a small leather pouch and a railroad spike—and holds them out.

“Probably bullshit, but it’s kept me alive for five trips. ”

The iron spike sears my palm, flesh blistering. I bite my tongue to keep from dropping it

“Thoughtful. Though I’ve always been more of a steel girl myself.” The truth helps mask my reaction—steel doesn’t burn like iron does.

“Steel might not cut it where you’re going,” he says, studying my face with sudden intensity.

“Good thing I don’t plan on needing it.” I pocket both items despite the iron’s continued burn against my palm.

“Don’t thank me.” His expression turns grim. “Just... come back human.”

“That’s the plan.” I pause, meeting his haunted eyes. “What makes you think I might not?”

He doesn’t wait for a response, climbs back into his vehicle and starts it back up. I glance back once to see the SUV’s taillights fleeing, tires spitting gravel in desperation. Jason’s fear no longer seems irrational.

I shoulder my duffel, the familiar weight suddenly insignificant against the pressure building in my chest. SIG burns against my hip.

Metal getting hotter by the minute. Soon I won’t be able to draw it without screaming.

I shift it once, twice, a third time, before accepting the ceramic knife in my boot as my only trustworthy weapon.

The path barely exists—a suggestion rather than a reality, marked by stones that pulse with faint blue light.

Eyes watch from everywhere—between trees, behind leaves, under roots—but the weight of their attention doesn’t bother me.

“Get it together, Morgan,” I whisper, but the name tastes wrong on my tongue, hollow and borrowed. “Focus on the objective. Find the artifacts. Report their locations.”

The path curves ahead, and what lies beyond steals the breath from my lungs.

Colors bleed between trees—violent purples and midnight blues my eyes shouldn’t process. Scents assault me with spices that have no human names. Sound stretches and compresses as my watch flickers to 8:17 PM and freezes.

The boundary lies ahead—invisible but screaming against every sense. The pendant turns ice-cold, then burning hot. Something inside me fights back. And wins.

Every fragment of training demands retreat, reassessment, and report. This isn’t within mission parameters.

This defies explanation.

The Academy shouldn’t exist—towers spiraling in impossible directions, the entire structure undulating like a dreaming beast. It lives, aware in ways that feel like recognition. And impossibly, it knows me too.

The path widens beneath my feet, stones glowing brighter as if responding to my presence. It winds toward gates tall enough to admit giants, standing open in what feels like expectation.

No— in welcome.

As I approach, movement flickers in peripheral vision—shapes that evaporate when directly observed. Not threatening, though. Curious. Waiting.

A figure guards the gates—skin blue-gray as twilight, eyes bottomless black pools. Ancient beyond measure. “State your purpose here, mortal.” The voice vibrates through my bones.

I suppress a shudder as I produce Graves’ documents. “Professor Ashlyn Morgan. I’m expected.”

The guard studies them without touching the papers, then raises those fathomless eyes to my face. Black eyes strip me down to atoms. They peel back layers of self until I feel exposed down to whatever lies hidden beneath.

“Expected... yes. Though not quite as you appear.”

My instinct screams to look away, to run, to fight—anything but endure this soul-stripping scrutiny. The silver chain digs into my throat. Fighting something rising in my chest. Losing. Sweat breaks across my forehead despite the chill.

This isn’t just fear, it’s primal recognition of something so far beyond human that my mind struggles to process its existence.

“Meaning?” The challenge emerges despite my intimidation.

My hand moves without conscious direction to the birthmark behind my ear—the mark that changes shape with moon phases. Under my fingertips, it pulses once, hot and alive as a second heart.

The guard’s stone face cracks. Just for a second. Surprise. Recognition. Fear.

“Proceed,” they finally say, stepping aside with liquid grace that defies their apparent stone-like nature. “Your quarters await in the Eastern Tower. Try not to lose yourself before morning.”

“I’ll do my best.” The dry understatement masks the unease crawling up my spine.

As I pass through massive gates, finality settles over me like a cloak—heavy, permanent, transformative. The gates swing closed with a sound like history ending.

Inside, the Academy grounds explode into impossibility—a courtyard larger than the walls containing it, paths that rearrange when not observed. Flowers close like shy children when I look directly at them.

My logical mind struggles against reality that refuses its rules.

I scan for threats—old habits from a life that suddenly feels borrowed.

Corners that aren’t quite right angles, shadows that move against light sources, high points that change elevation. My mind maps exit routes that probably lead to different places each time, defensive positions that might not exist tomorrow, choke points that could widen without warning.

I am not in West Virginia anymore. I am not in any place human maps acknowledge.

And nothing— nothing —in my training has prepared me for this.

Movement snaps my attention to a shadowed archway across the courtyard—a tall figure standing unnaturally still, watching. Male, as far as I can discern. His posture radiates predatory assessment—a hunter recognizing unexpected prey.

Our eyes lock across the courtyard. Electric shock runs from my spine to my skull. Something recognizes him. Something I’ve kept buried.

The birthmark behind my ear flares with answering heat, pulsing in time with a rhythm I’ve never felt before but somehow know.

Without understanding why, I sense this observer differs from the curious presences in the forest. More dangerous. More significant.

Just… More .

Before I can untangle this impossible knowledge, he steps backward into shadow and disappears—there one heartbeat, gone the next in a way that defies human limitation.

“Professor Morgan?”

I spin, fingers already reaching for the knife that suddenly feels inadequate.

A young woman—no, not a woman, something wearing a woman’s shape—stands closer than anyone should have approached without my awareness. Pointed ears peak through copper hair, vertical pupils expand in amber eyes, teeth too sharp flash in a smile too wide.

“You’re... different than we anticipated.”

“Different how?” Information gathering through direct challenge—a reflex I can’t suppress.

“Most humans announce themselves much more loudly. You move like...” she trails off, studying me with those unsettling amber eyes.

“Like what?”

“Like you belong here.” Her smile widens, revealing more of those too-sharp teeth. “How curious. Welcome to Velasca Academy. We’ve been expecting you.”

Behind her, the impossible castle pulses against an impossible sky, surrounded by impossible beings.

And deep inside me, something awakens that has slept my entire life—something wild and ancient and hungry.

Something that finally knows its true name.