THE SCHOOL IS CHANGING

People are changing at the Academy. Not in the way someone changes when the love of their life breaks up with them, or when they fail their final exams and have to restructure their entire education plan to make up for it, for those are normal ways to change. Learning when students are feeding you lies, such that you can safely blow them off when they're trying to cajole favours from you; this, too, is a normal way to change. Learning how to handle your weapons, to disarm an enemy or stab a sword through their heart or call down fire and brimstone upon them -- normal, normal, normal.

No, the changes here are different, deeper, basal and wrong. Eyes which flicker pink-pearl iridescent, only to show up their normal blue in photographs. Words whispered from a familiar lover's lips which somehow sound bone-chillingly dangerous. A club announcement pinned on the corkboard, printed in black ink which smells like blood, which disappears at the least convenient times.

"Come to the Midnight Ball," it says. "Down the steps and down the cellar, two bricks to the right. Come to the Midnight Ball," it says, "and save the last dance for me."

The staff haven't heard of it -- even the matron mother herself denies any knowledge. The usual suspects have been questioned, the pranksters and the clever men, and they deny any hand in these strange events. The majority of the Academy, who see no hint of these changes, have decided it's nothing but a story, a clever tale to scare new students. As fake as any of the wonders at the school.

But there are some people, those strange few students and members of the faculty, who know it's no fiction.

And if things keep changing, they could be the school's only hope.