Cars idled along the cliff road, brakes sighing, parents fussing with luggage. Above them, half-lost in mist, The Ashwyke School clung to the cliff top like a watchman.

“Bags to the left, students to the right,” called a woman in a high-vis waistcoat, ushering first-years toward the stone archway where the funicular waited.

Maddie King hugged her sketchbook tight. The lights by the funicular flickered, too bright, then dim, and she caught herself shading a flame into the corner of the page.

Beside her, a girl in tidy shoes frowned at a folded timetable. “This says departures every six minutes, not seven. They should correct that.”

A boy behind them grinned. “Stage a protest, yeah? Day one, overthrow the timetable.”

“I’m Abigail. Abbie,” the girl said crisply.

“Leo,” he shot back. “Short for Leonidas, obviously.”

“It’s Leonardo Harrison,” Abbie corrected, glancing at her sheet.

Leo’s grin faltered, then returned brighter. “Kidding. Mostly.”

A boy in an oversized coat parroted the conductor’s safety spiel in the man’s exact voice. “Stand clear of the doors at all times.” His ears reddened as people turned. “Jayden,” he murmured, as though filing his own name back into place.

A sleek black car pulled up last. Serena James-Smythe stepped out in a kingfisher-blue coat, posture perfect, smile practised. Other students straightened as if she carried her own spotlight.

The funicular clattered open, and they squeezed inside. Windows fogged, cables groaned, and the car lurched upward. The world shrank below: toy cars on winding roads, the river a dark ribbon beneath a stone bridge, the abbey ruins huddled in the trees.

Maddie sketched the cliff line as the lamps buzzed overhead. Jay repeated the conductor’s welcome in rhythm, word-perfect. Leo wiped a circle in the misted glass. “Castle of Doom,” he declared.

“It’s a Victorian manor,” Abbie corrected again. “And there’s no such thing as…”

The carriage shuddered into the upper station. Doors folded back onto a courtyard of dripping stone and crouched gargoyles. Ivy spread across the walls, and over the archway, a crest was carved: an ash tree, a torch, and a serpent curled at the roots.

The mist clung thicker at the top of the cliff. As the students stepped off the funicular, the courtyard stretched wide and grey around them, its cobbles slick with rain. The Hall loomed above, a patchwork of wings and towers that seemed less built than accumulated over centuries. Gargoyles hunched on the gutters, jaws dripping water from the morning drizzle.

“Welcome to The Ashwyke School!” cried a teacher with a clipboard, her voice too bright for the courtyard. “Through the archway, please.”

The crowd shuffled toward the gates, their chatter muffled by the stone walls. Maddie slowed just beneath the arch. The crest carved into the lintel drew her eye: an ash tree at its centre, an torch burning to one side, and at the roots, a serpent coiled thin as thread.

She pulled out her sketchbook, hand moving before thought. By the time she blinked, the serpent’s head looked… tilted, almost watching her. Beneath the crest, half-hidden by ivy, a date was chiselled into the stone: 1847. She copied it into the corner of the page without knowing why. It felt like the kind of thing that ought to be remembered. She closed the book quickly.

“Labore Hereditas Servatur,” Abbie said under her breath, tracing the Latin with her finger. “Work preserves legacy. Or maybe… labour guards legacy.”

“Guards legacy?” Leo scoffed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “What’s it going to do, wrestle us into doing homework?”

He laughed at his own line, but it didn’t carry far. The courtyard swallowed sound.

Jay tilted his head back, lips moving as if repeating words he hadn’t actually spoken. Then, in perfect cadence, he murmured, “By labour, the legacy is preserved.” Maddie glanced at him, unsettled. He seemed not to notice.

Ahead, Serena James-Smythe walked with a prefect already glued to her side, explaining which governors sat on the school board. Serena smiled, her expression attentive but unreadable, as if the school itself had taught her the rules.

The group funnelled into a queue outside a glass-panelled entrance hall, a practical addition bolted to the Hall’s oldest face, its condensation-fogged panes an awkward apology for modernity. Inside, light glowed soft and golden. Maddie’s stomach flipped; it was too clean, too deliberate, the wrong texture entirely against the stone.

“Through here, all new students sign in at the registration desk,” the teacher called.

Maddie opened her sketchbook again, trying to lose the weight pressing between her ribs. Her pencil traced the crest she’d just seen, but when she shaded the torch, the flame bent sideways, as if a draft had caught it.

“Your flame’s drunk,” Leo said over her shoulder.

She snapped the book shut. “It’s not.”

Abbie had already positioned herself near the front, muttering about efficiency. “If they’d planned better, we wouldn’t bottleneck like this. The funicular capacity is seventy-two. The entrance hall only handles…”

“No one cares, Abbie,” Leo said, though his voice was lighter this time.

Jay echoed her phrasing softly, “Funicular capacity: seventy-two,” as though cataloguing it. He smiled when she glared at him, not unkindly.

The glass doors opened with a push and a sigh of warm air. The students shuffled forward.

For a moment, Maddie lingered in the courtyard, eyes lifted to the Hall’s highest tower. The mist around it thinned, just enough for her to glimpse a weathervane creaking, pointing nowhere. She could have sworn, for the smallest instant, that a shadow leaned against the glass up there, watching.

“Maddie?” Jay’s voice tugged her back. “We’re moving.”

She closed her sketchbook and followed the line inside, through the glass, away from the gargoyles and the dripping ivy.

The courtyard doors swung shut behind them. The mist stayed outside. The Hall waited ahead.

The entrance hall hummed with the low noise of organised chaos. Two long trestle tables had been pushed together at the centre, staffed by prefects with printed registers and a clunky computer monitor angled toward them, its fan whirring audibly. Cardboard name envelopes were stacked in alphabetical rows. A fern dangled from the ceiling, its leaves brushing the shoulders of the taller students as they shuffled past. The floor was polished pale stone, so smooth Maddie thought her shoes might skid.

“State your surname,” a prefect droned, not looking up from the register. “Collect your envelope. Move to the left.”

Maddie approached slowly. Her reflection swam in the dark monitor screen: her face twice, once real, once faint behind. She said “King” too quietly.

“Speak up.”

“King,” she said again. The prefect ran a biro down the list, ticked a box, and held out an envelope. Maddie’s fingers fumbled at the seal. Leo reached past her.

“Like this.” He slid a thumb under the flap, and the envelope gave cleanly. Inside: a folded card. Maddison King — Rowan Dormitory.

Her stomach uncoiled. She nodded quickly, muttering thanks.

Beside her, Abbie frowned at her own envelope before she’d even opened it. “The alphabetical ordering skips a section between J and L. There are no K surnames on the visible stack. Why are the Ks filed with…” She opened the flap, inspected the card, and gave a curt nod. Abigail Kahn — Rowan Dormitory.

“Rowan,” she said firmly, as though daring the prefect to contradict her.

Jay slid up next. He read the prefect’s rote instruction back to the student ahead in perfect imitation, same flat cadence, same biro-click at the end, then flinched when people turned. He collected his envelope quietly and unfolded the card. Jayden Osei — Rowan Dormitory.

He smiled uncertainly, glancing to see if anyone had heard.

“Creepy,” muttered Leo, stepping up next. He said his surname before the prefect could ask, grabbed the envelope before it was fully extended, and grinned when he read the card. Leonardo Harrison — Rowan Dormitory.

“Rowan, huh? Rowan’s… rowdy. Good omen.”

“Rowan is just a tree,” Abbie corrected.

“Row-another detention,” Leo said, grinning wider at her scowl.

A hush rippled nearby. A prefect straightened as Serena approached, consulting the register with slightly more care than she had for anyone else. “James-Smythe,” the prefect said, with a small pause between the halves, and held out an envelope. Serena opened it without hurrying. Serena James-Smythe — Yew Dormitory.

Of course it did. Yew was for the polished, the ones who never misplaced their blazers. Serena smiled, the prefect smiled back, and the register seemed to nod along with them.

A bell chimed. The glass doors at the far end swung open, revealing a wide corridor of stone and oak. Gone was the low whirr of the monitor; here, the air smelled of chalk and candle wax. The transition jolted Maddie, like stepping from one century to another.

A teacher called names, grouping students by dormitory. “Rowan Dormitory, follow me.” Maddie, Abbie, Jay, and Leo found themselves drifting together for the first time, though no one spoke.

Rowan students clustered at one side, a loose mix of nerves and excitement. On the opposite side, Serena stood among Yew students, already folded into their circle as though she had always belonged there. Her laugh rang bright but brief, then her gaze flicked across the room. It caught the Rowan group for a second. Maddie couldn’t tell if it was curiosity or dismissal.

The teacher gestured them forward. Shoes whispered against the runner as they moved. Maddie hugged her sketchbook to her chest. She didn’t know these three beside her, not really, but the card had said their names together. Rowan.

The old corridor waited, portraits leaning in, sconces crackling with uneven flames. A carved crest above the door showed the serpent with one fewer coil than in the courtyard.

Abbie noticed first, her brow furrowing. “That’s not…”

“Maybe snakes shrink in the wash,” Leo muttered.

Jay’s lips shaped the words Abbie had left unfinished, as if he’d caught them midair.

The doors swung wide, wood heavy, iron hinges groaning. The Great Hall beyond glimmered with banners and echo. The line of students shuffled forward. Serena walked in a different current, her Yew peers orbiting her.

Maddie slipped through with Rowan, the sketchbook tight in her grip. She had the oddest sense that the Hall was watching, like a stage waiting for its cast to remember their lines.

Three floors above, Serena stood at the window of the Yew dormitory. The room was empty, her new dorm-mates had gone to supper, and she was alone for the first time since the car. She pulled off one glove and pressed her fingertips to the cold glass.

Her reflection looked back at her, perfect and composed, chin lifted, expression pleasant. She held it for a moment the way a person holds their breath. Then she let it drop.

Just for a second, just for the window. Her face went slack. Not unhappy more like a stage after the audience has left. The smile muscle unknotted. Her shoulders dropped half an inch. She pressed her forehead to the glass and closed her eyes.

She had rehearsed tonight’s dinner conversation four times in the car. She had three prepared responses for the most likely questions from her father’s colleagues. She had reminded herself twice not to tap her fingers on the table, not to correct anyone’s Latin, not to look at the crest on the wall for too long.

She had done all of this before even stepping out of the car.

She lifted her head. Smoothed her expression back into place. Checked the collar of her blazer in the glass.

Below, somewhere in the Hall’s lower corridors, voices bounced up through the stone strange and bright and ordinary, the sound of people not performing anything at all.

She tugged the glove back on and went to find her new dormitory prefect.

The Great Hall’s doors creaked open, and the first-years spilled inside in a river of noise that faltered as soon as they looked up.

The ceiling soared higher than the funicular had climbed, timber beams lost in shadow. Portraits lined the walls from flagstone to rafters: solemn faces in gilded frames, oil paint cracked like old skin. Banners dropped between them, blue and crimson, bearing the ash tree crest stitched in thread that shimmered strangely when the lights hissed.

Maddie stopped dead on the threshold. Her pencil hand twitched to catch the light on the banners, the sharp angles of the crest. When the lights nearest her flared, the serpent stitched at the roots seemed to wriggle. She blinked and it was still again.

“Move along, Rowan Dormitory,” called the teacher.

Abbie frowned at the banners as she walked under them. “The motto’s written differently on this one,” she murmured. She jotted invisible letters on her palm with her finger: Labore Hereditas Servatur. “Here it’s pluralised. ‘Legacies,’ not ‘legacy.’ Why would they…”

“Because they were running out of thread,” Leo muttered, dropping into a seat. He tugged his tie loose as if it were strangling him.

Abbie shot him a look sharp enough to cut parchment.

At the far side of the Hall, Serena took her place in the neat line of Yew students. Her back was straight, her chin perfectly lifted, her smile precise. A prefect leaned close, whispering something, and Serena nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The Headmistress strode to the dais at the Hall’s centre. Her gown whispered against the floorboards; her hair was coiled like an exclamation mark. When she raised her hands, the chatter dropped into silence.

“Welcome,” she said, her voice carrying without strain. “You are now part of The Ashwyke School. A place of learning, of tradition, and of service. Here, we preserve what is worthy, and we carry it forward. Labore Hereditas Servatur. By labour, the legacy is preserved.”

Jay’s lips moved as she spoke. His voice, low but exact, echoed her words half a breath behind, syllable for syllable. The boy beside him shuffled away, spooked.

Maddie heard the Headmistress say preserved, but on Jay’s tongue it sounded different: Guarded. She opened her sketchbook under the table and drew the crest again. The lamp flame leaned to the side, crooked, as if straining toward the portraits above.

“Each of you belong to a dormitory family,” the Headmistress continued. “Rowan, Yew, Hawthorn, Oak. Together you will learn not just your lessons, but the value of tradition.”

Leo leaned toward Maddie and whispered, “Translation: don’t get caught.”

She stifled a laugh, though it came out sharp. The Hall’s echoes made every sound bigger than it should have been.

A lamp guttered at the far end. For a moment, the flame bent sideways, flickering across the portrait of a young man with a half-smile. His painted eyes seemed to glance away just as Maddie looked.

And then, clearer than the Headmistress, clearer than the scrape of chairs, something breathed against the high beams:

“…not him…”

Maddie’s pencil jerked a line across her page. She lifted her head.

Jay’s lips moved again, silent this time, shaping the words exactly.

No one else flinched. Abbie was still muttering about Latin grammar. Leo had found a way to balance his chair on two legs. Serena’s smile glowed beneath the prefect’s gaze.

The whisper was theirs alone.

When the Headmistress finally released them, Maddie was last out of her row. She turned back, just once, just for a second, and looked at the portrait the lamplight had flickered across. The young man with the half-smile. His painted eyes had been angled toward the windows a moment ago, she was almost certain of it.

They were facing her now.

She walked quickly through the doors and didn’t look back again.

Assembly broke apart in scraping chairs and released voices. Students flowed toward the dormitory stairs. Maddie let herself be carried by the current, sketchbook pressed to her chest.

Jay had slipped sideways.

She noticed it before anyone else: the way he angled out of the stream of Rowan students, not toward the stairwell but toward the portrait gallery that ran alongside the Great Hall. Not lost. Deliberate.

Maddie touched Abbie’s arm. Abbie noticed. They followed. Leo, instinctively, followed too.

The gallery was quieter, lamps burning lower here. Jay stood halfway along, very still, head tilted.

Below a clerestory window at the corridor’s far end, a groundskeeper moved in the courtyard below, raking wet leaves. His voice carried up faintly, not meant for anyone, the mutter of someone working through a job they’ve done a hundred times.

The words were indistinct from where Maddie stood.

Not from where Jay stood.

He didn’t move. He just listened, the way he always listened completely, as though his whole body had become an ear.

“What’s he doing?” Leo whispered.

“Listening,” Maddie said.

Then Jay turned. His face was careful, the look he wore when he was holding something he didn’t want to drop. “The groundskeeper,” he said quietly. “While he was raking. He was looking at that one.” He indicated a portrait three frames from the end: a young man in formal dress, oil paint dark with age, the expression serious and a little uncertain.

“And?” Abbie asked.

Jay’s eyes moved between them. “He said: the wrong boy in the frame.”

No one spoke.

“Exactly those words?” Abbie’s voice was careful.

“Exactly,” Jay said. He always said exactly when he meant it.

Maddie turned to the portrait. The young man stared back: smooth face, paint thickened with time. A small brass plaque below read: Alistair, aged sixteen. She opened her sketchbook.

“We should get to the dorm,” Leo said. He didn’t move. His eyes stayed on the portrait.

Jay had already repositioned himself, standing three steps from the painting, lips still moving silently around the words that had floated up from the courtyard.

The wrong boy in the frame.

The lamp nearest the portrait hissed and bent its flame, almost horizontally, toward the canvas, then steadied again.

Maddie caught it in pencil before it straightened. The flame leaning like a compass finding north.

The Rowan dormitory was three flights up, tucked beneath the sloped roof, where the beams creaked with every step. The attic corridor smelled faintly of polish and damp, an odd mix of order and decay.

“Room three-oh-seven,” the teacher announced, ushering them in. “Settle quickly. Lights out at nine.” The door clicked shut, leaving the four of them alone with their suitcases and the hum of silence.

The dorm was divided into three sections: a small common area in the middle, with a desk, two armchairs, and a single window that stared across the courtyard at the high tower and two sleeping alcoves on either side. The boys’ room lay to the left, the girls’ to the right, separated by half-walls and old oak beams that didn’t quite reach the ceiling. Rain streaked the window. The lamp on the desk flickered and hummed.

Maddie dropped her rucksack on the lower bunk nearest the window in the girls’ alcove. She flipped open her sketchbook before she even unpacked, pencil already sketching the crest she’d seen on the banners. The serpent curled obediently, but the lamp’s glow wouldn’t sit still, it slanted left, as though the page itself had tilted.

Abbie unzipped her suitcase with precision. She stacked her books by subject, aligned the spines, and sighed every time Leo bounced the top bunk in the boys’ room.

“You’ll break it,” she warned, raising her voice.

“It’s quality craftsmanship,” Leo said, grinning as the frame squealed under him.

Abbie ignored him, sorting coloured pens into a case. The bunk creaked louder. She scowled.

Jay plopped down in the common room, coat still half on, and leaned back against his suitcase. “Want to hear a story?” he asked.

“No,” Abbie said flatly.

“Yes,” Maddie said at the same time. She glanced up, curious.

Leo waved a hand from the other side of the room. “Go on, Shakespeare.”

Jay cleared his throat. “Heard it from some older boys. They say Ashwyke’s walls remember. That if you press your ear to the stone at night, you’ll hear voices. Not ghosts echoes. Of what was said before.”

“Echoes aren’t people,” Abbie muttered.

“They aren’t supposed to say your name,” Jay replied softly.

The lamp hissed. Maddie’s pencil snapped, graphite leaving a dark streak across the page. She hadn’t drawn it, but now the light in her sketch leaned so far it looked ready to fall sideways, almost touching the serpent’s head.

Leo leaned forward. “That’s… weird.” He masked it with a laugh, but the sound was too loud in the small space.

A wind rattled the windowpane. For a moment Maddie thought it had slipped through the glass. She swore she felt it brush her cheek.

“…not him…”

It was barely more than a breath, but it threaded between the rafters. Maddie froze, pencil poised. Jay tilted his head, his lips shaping the words silently, just as he had in the Great Hall.

Abbie slammed her book shut. “Drafts,” she said sharply.

“Yeah,” Leo agreed, though his eyes flicked toward the lamp. “Drafts.”

The lamp steadied. The window stopped rattling. But Maddie’s page still showed the light bent sideways, caught in a wind no one else, had felt.