Episode 2:Class Clown and Cryptic Howls
627 Words
Episode 2: Class Clowns and Cryptic Howls**
Kai woke up to find a floating eyeball hovering six inches from his nose.
“Morning,” it said in a chipper tone before zipping into the hallway.
He sat up, heart pounding. “That wasn’t a dream?”
Nox poked his head through the ceiling. “Nope. Welcome to Nightmoor, where the weird is just the warm-up.”
After an awkward ghost-guided shower and a breakfast of spectral pancakes (they tasted like memories of syrup), Kai made his way to his first class: *Nocturnal Sociology 101.*
The professor was a banshee named Miss Wailen. She wore thick-rimmed glasses and carried a chalkboard that screamed when written on. The room smelled faintly of mothballs and existential dread.
“Today,” Miss Wailen screeched gently, “we begin with a discussion of ghost labor strikes in the Afterlife Union and why banshees are banned from karaoke.”
Kai scribbled notes as best he could, though the chalkboard kept trying to eat his pen.
“Velden!” the banshee called suddenly. “You’re new. Explain the social contract between living roommates and noncorporeal entities.”
“Um…” Kai stood. “Don’t… sit through each other?”
The class laughed. A vampire two rows back snapped his fingers. “Not bad, newbie.”
After class, Kai wandered into the academy’s courtyard, a crescent-shaped garden filled with night-blooming flowers and statues that whispered advice if you asked politely. He heard a low, familiar growl echo from the forest nearby.
His heart jumped.
Her.
He followed the sound past twisted trees and whispering leaves until he came to a moonlit clearing. There she was again—barefoot, wild-haired, leaning against a rock like a wolf waiting to strike.
“You again,” she said, amber eyes narrowing.
Kai raised his hands. “I swear I’m not stalking you.”
“You walk too loud to be a stalker.”
She stepped forward. “Name’s Lira. You’re the transfer kid.”
“Kai,” he said, still mesmerized by how her shadow moved like it was alive.
“You smell... weird,” she muttered, sniffing.
“Probably ghost shampoo.”
A corner of her mouth twitched into something dangerously close to a smile. “You’re not like the others.”
“Because I have a heartbeat?”
“No,” she said, stepping closer. “Because you’re not afraid.”
Kai didn’t reply. Not because he wasn’t scared—he was—but because something in her voice made his skin tingle and his pulse pound.
“I heard you howl,” he said.
“I wasn’t howling,” Lira replied. “I was singing.”
She turned and walked back into the trees.
Back at the dorms, Nox was phasing in and out of a beanbag chair, humming show tunes.
“So, meet anyone furry?” he asked casually.
Kai hesitated.
“She said she was singing,” he muttered.
Nox froze mid-phase. “Oof. You met Lira, huh?”
“You know her?”
“She’s a legend. Best runner in Lunar Athletics, once tore the arm off a scarecrow that insulted her cousin.”
“Was the cousin also a scarecrow?”
“No. A gremlin. Long story.”
Kai collapsed onto his bed. “I don’t get it. I barely know her and I already—”
“Feel like you’ve seen her before?” Nox said.
Kai sat up.
“Yeah,” the ghost said. “That happens in Nightmoor. It means you’re in for something big… or horrible… or both.”
Outside the window, a single long howl echoed across the hills.
Kai looked up at the moon and whispered, “What did I just get myself into?”
- Writer
