Chapter 1

Freya POV

The rain hadn't stopped for three days.

I sat in my desk chair with my legs tucked under me, hunched over the keyboard of my laptop like some kind of caffeinated gremlin. The laptop rested on the wooden surface of my desk, which was currently buried under a chaotic landscape of coffee mugs, scattered notes, and at least three different notebooks I'd started and abandoned.

Outside my window, Oakhaven looked like it had been dunked in a bucket of gray paint—all washed-out houses and dripping trees, the kind of small town where nothing ever happened except maybe a particularly dramatic bake sale at the community center.

Perfect writing weather, honestly.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, adding another thousand words to what I was absolutely convinced would be my debut novel. A sweeping romance. Star-crossed lovers. The whole nine yards.

I'd been on a roll ever since my parents left for Italy two weeks ago, and my brother Ethan moved in with his girlfriend. For the first time in my eighteen years of existence, I had the house completely to myself.

Just me, my laptop, and delusions of literary grandeur.

"Maybe this is it," I muttered to the empty room, reading over my last paragraph. The heroine had just realized she was in love with the brooding stranger who'd saved her from—okay, I hadn't figured out what he'd saved her from yet, but I'd work it out. "Maybe this summer I'll actually finish a first draft. Become the next Jane Austen. Win the Pulitzer. Retire at twenty-five."

The laptop screen flickered.

I frowned, my hands stilling on the keyboard. The battery icon showed full charge, but the words I'd just typed were doing something weird—sort of shimmering, like heat waves rising off summer asphalt. Then they started to disappear, letter by letter, as if someone was hitting backspace in reverse.

"Oh, come on," I groaned, reaching for the power cord to check the connection. "Don't do this to me. I just saved—"

Lightning split the gray sky outside, so bright I saw spots even through the rain-streaked window. Thunder followed immediately, rattling the glass in its frame.

When my vision cleared, my entire document was gone.

In its place, an envelope rotated slowly on the screen.

Not a digital image of an envelope. An actual, three-dimensional envelope, rendered in such perfect detail I could see the grain of the parchment, the way the deep red wax seal caught the dim gray light filtering through the rain, the elegant loops of calligraphy that spelled out my name.

Freya Granger

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Blinked again.

The envelope was still there, spinning lazily against the white background of my document.

"Okay," I said slowly, leaning back in my chair and staring at the screen. "This is either a very elaborate computer virus, or I've finally lost it from too much social isolation."

I reached out and tapped the screen with one finger, half-expecting my hand to pass right through some kind of holographic projection.

The envelope felt solid under my fingertip. Warm. Real.

And then, because apparently my brain had completely abandoned ship, I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled.

The envelope slid out of the screen like I was retrieving something from a mailbox, the parchment crackling faintly under my grip.

I screamed. Obviously. Who wouldn't?

My hands jerked open in pure reflex and the envelope tumbled from my grasp, falling onto the cluttered desk with a soft thump that sent one of my coffee mugs teetering dangerously close to the edge. I shoved my chair backward so hard it hit the bed behind me, my heart trying to jackhammer its way out of my chest.

"Okay," I gasped, pressing both hands to my face. "Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is totally fine. I'm just... I'm hallucinating. Stress hallucination. That's a thing, right? From too much coffee and not enough human interaction."

I stared at the envelope on my desk, nestled between my phone and a half-eaten granola bar wrapper, looking completely innocent and normal except for the minor detail that it had materialized out of my computer screen.

I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten, focusing on my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. When I opened my eyes, the hallucination would be gone. It had to be gone. Because envelopes did not just materialize out of computer screens. That wasn't how reality worked.

I opened my eyes.

The envelope on the desk was gone.

Instead, it was floating in the air directly in front of my face, hovering at eye level about two feet away from my chair.

I yelped and jerked backward, my shoulder blades hitting the bedframe. The envelope bobbed gently in midair, rotating slowly as if displayed in an invisible shop window, completely defying every law of physics I'd learned in AP class. The wax seal glinted dully in the gray afternoon light.

My breathing was coming too fast. Little spots danced at the edges of my vision.

"I'm dreaming," I whispered, my voice shaking. "That's it. I fell asleep at my desk, and this is a dream. A weird, vivid, slightly terrifying dream, but still a dream."

The logical part of my brain—the part that had gotten me through AP Physics and convinced me that ghosts weren't real when I was seven—grabbed onto this explanation like a lifeline.

Of course it was a dream. In what universe could you pull physical objects out of a computer screen? In what universe did envelopes float?

This was just my subconscious processing my anxiety about college applications, about the fact that I'd spent the last two weeks talking to exactly zero people in person.

"Right," I said, more firmly, slowly pushing myself up from where I'd pressed against the bed. "Dream. Which means..." I reached out cautiously and plucked the envelope from the air. It settled into my palm, solid and warm and impossibly real. "Which means I might as well see what my weird brain came up with. It'll be gone when I wake up anyway."

I broke the seal with trembling fingers. The wax crumbled away like ash, and I pulled out a sheet of parchment that matched the envelope. The handwriting was the same elegant calligraphy, and as I started to read, I felt my eyebrows climbing toward my hairline.

[Dear Miss Freya Granger,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Moordale Academy. In light of your special status as identified in The Dawn Revelation prophecy, the Academy has arranged for the Arcane Foundation to cover your tuition in full.

Please gather this letter, the enclosed ID card, and any necessary luggage. Your designated personal guardian will arrive to escort you to the Academy.

We wish you success in your studies.

Headmaster Cornelius Blackthorn

Moordale Academy]

I read it twice. Then a third time, my eyes catching on phrases like "prophecy" and "personal guardian" and "Moordale Academy."

"Moordale Academy," I muttered. "Prophecy. Personal guardian." I snorted, shaking my head. "Wow, my subconscious really went full fantasy novel with this one, huh? Shouldn't it be a romance novel?!"

A black ID card slipped out from behind the letter, landing on my desk with a soft click. It was sleek and minimalist, with a gold border and silver lettering that read Freya Granger and MA-001-2024.

I picked it up, turning it over in my hands. When I tilted it, the surface shimmered with a faint blue glow that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

Lightning flashed outside suddenly.

Not the distant kind. Close. So close the entire room lit up white for a split second, and thunder cracked so loud I felt it in my chest. The windows rattled violently in their frames.

I jerked my head toward the window, my pulse spiking all over again.

Through the rain-streaked glass, I saw it.

A mass of flames. Hurtling through the downpour directly toward my window.