Orientation of the Damned

Fog clung to Adaeze's boots as she followed the line of new students through the winding courtyard of Edevane Academy. A low bell echoed across the grounds, deep, hollow, mournful. She felt it in her bones. The other students walked silently, eyes wide, lips pressed thin. No one dared speak. Even the air around them seemed to hush in reverence.

At the front of the procession, a tall figure in flowing grey robes led the group through an archway of weathered stone etched with runes that shimmered faintly under the overcast sky. The runes pulsed, almost alive. Adaeze glanced back, heart pounding. She had a strange sense that if she turned around and ran, the gate would vanish behind her.

Instead, she pressed on.

They entered a hall lit with hanging brass lanterns that flickered like candlelight despite the clear absence of flame. The stone walls breathed cold, centuries-old air, heavy with the scent of parchment and something metallic, like rust, or dried blood. The hall was cathedral-tall, cloaked in shadows that no lantern could chase away. At the end stood a dais, and on it, twelve chairs.

All empty.

The robed figure turned, revealing a porcelain mask with no features. Its voice, when it came, was a whisper from everywhere and nowhere.

"Welcome, Scholars. You have entered the threshold of knowing. Before you lies the path of greatness, or ruin."

Adaeze felt the hair on her neck rise. That voice wasn't just speaking. It was reaching. Crawling into her ears and curling behind her eyes.

The masked figure gestured to the chairs. "The Twelve who founded this academy no longer speak. But their echoes remain. Edevane Academy is not like your world. Here, we do not teach you what to think, we strip you until you remember what you were before thought."

A low murmur trembled through the crowd. Someone at the back retched quietly.

"Each of you has been chosen. Not because you are the best. Not because you are the brightest. But because you are... necessary."

Adaeze's stomach tightened.

"You will not see your professors in the daylight. You will not know your true syllabus until it is time. There are no clocks here. Learn to listen to the walls. They shift when they are displeased. And you…." the masked figure paused, facing Adaeze, though the mask had no eyes, "you especially must learn quickly."

A whisper fluttered through the room. Adaeze caught her name, spoken from lips she couldn't see.

"Let orientation begin."

The lanterns extinguished. Complete darkness.

Then, a door creaked open somewhere behind the dais.

"Single file," the voice intoned. "There will be trials."

They were herded into a narrower corridor, the stone pressing in tighter, the shadows deeper. Adaeze tried to count the steps beneath her feet, to remember the turns, but the space defied logic. Right became left. Up sloped down. Her skin itched with the sensation of being watched, yet no one was there.

Suddenly, the floor beneath her glowed, a symbol etched in red light: a circle intersected with twelve lines. The Circle of Twelve.

"Stop," the voice whispered. "Scholar Nwosu. Step forward."

Adaeze froze. Her hands trembled as she moved. The others parted like frightened birds.

A new room opened, this one circular and lined with mirrors. In each reflection, Adaeze did not see herself, but a version of her twisted, altered, older, younger, burned, frozen, wreathed in smoke.

"The Mirror of Potential," the voice said. "To begin your education, you must meet who you could become."

Adaeze tried not to cry out as one of the reflections moved independently, pressing its hands against the glass, its mouth open in a silent scream. The mirrors began to spin around her, faster and faster until they became a vortex of faces, futures, fates.

"Choose," the voice commanded.

"Choose what?" Adaeze whispered.

"Your reflection. The path you will take."

One image stilled: her, holding a book bound in human skin, her eyes white-hot with power.

Another: her lying in a coffin, lips sewn shut, surrounded by the masked figures.

A third: her leading others, students? ghosts? through a burning hallway.

Adaeze's heart raced. She lifted her hand.

And chose none.

Silence.

The mirrors shattered.

A gasp echoed from the watching crowd.

The voice returned. "Rare. Dangerous. Foolish. You reject fate?"

"I choose myself," Adaeze said, voice shaking. "Not your prophecy. Not your curse."

The room went silent. Then the door opened again.

One by one, the other students entered different chambers. Screams and whispers echoed behind each door. Some returned pale and shaking. Others didn't return at all.

When orientation ended, only seventy of the original hundred students emerged into the courtyard. The rest were... gone.

No one spoke of them.

Back in her assigned dormitory, Room 237, Adaeze collapsed onto her bed. Her roommate, Clara, sat cross-legged on the other bed, face pale.

"During my orientation, they made me watch my own funeral," Clara whispered. "They buried me under the bell tower. My parents were there. But they didn't cry."

Adaeze said nothing. She couldn't.

Outside, the bell rang again.

Just this time, it didn't stop.