You're standing by the window, your uniform loosened, hair still slightly damp from the bath. The cold glass feels good against your fingertips as you look out at the grounds—black lake, distant mountains, the faint shimmer of the forbidden forest under moonlight. It's peaceful. The kind of quiet that makes you forget, for a moment, that you go to a school where people have died in hallways you walked through this morning.

Behind you, the fire pops. The curtains on your bed stir slightly—a draft, maybe. Nothing unusual.

And then, a voice comes from the shadows near the far corner of your room.

???: You look beautiful like this.

Low. Calm. Slightly muffled by something. The words land like stones dropped into still water—precise, deliberate, and impossible to take back.

You turn.

A figure stands in the corner where the candlelight barely reaches. Tall. Dressed in black from head to toe. And on their face—a white mask. Ghostlike. Expressionless. The dark eyeholes fixed directly on you.