The Haunting Of Blackwood Academy

Chapter Three: Shadows and Secrets

The storm broke just after dawn.

It didn’t arrive with thunder it slid in with mist, thick and low, curling over the academy grounds like fingers through silk. The usual sounds of morning the ringing bell, the shuffle of students, the faint grumble of spellbound staircases were swallowed by fog. Blackwood Academy felt muted. Suspended.

Raven woke with the taste of metal on her tongue.

Her dreams had been scattered fragments: her mother’s eyes behind a veil of flame, the iron feather key dripping ink, Cassian standing at the edge of a chasm whispering her name only, when he turned, his face had been gone.

She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Luna was already awake, braiding tiny bones into her braid like charms, as if preparing for battle.

“You’ve got the haunted look,” Luna said. “Either you dreamed of the Morivyn again or you remembered it’s Thursday and Professor Tamsin teaches hexes.”

“Both,” Raven muttered.

Luna tossed her a clean uniform. “Good. You’ll need your wits today. I heard the enchanted mirrors in the east stairwell cracked last night. All of them. At the exact same time.”

“That’s not normal?”

“It is,” Luna said. “But only when a prophecy kicks in.”

Raven dressed quickly, slipping the key into a hidden pocket. She hadn’t told Luna about everything Cassian had said especially not about the prison hidden beneath the school. Not yet.

They stepped out into the corridor, only to find students whispering in clusters. Raven caught snippets.

“…locked herself in the chapel, said something was in the glass…”

“…he tried to shadow-step and came out inside a wall,lost both eyebrows…”

“…the blood door opened. The blood door.”

At the main hall, Cassian stood leaning against the archway, arms crossed, as if he’d been waiting.

His eyes met Raven’s.

He said nothing.

But then he turned and walked away down the hall.

Raven followed without a word.

Luna sighed behind her. “Of course. Cryptic boys and cursed hallways. My favorite breakfast.”

They followed him deep into the northern wing, where the walls were darker and tapestries moved subtly even without wind. Finally, Cassian stopped in front of an old iron door and pressed his bleeding palm to the lock.

The metal hissed and clicked.

It opened into a narrow staircase spiraling downward.

“Where are we going?” Raven asked.

Cassian glanced over his shoulder. “To the Archives.”

Luna squinted. “I thought those were sealed.”

“They are,” he said. “To everyone else.”

The descent felt longer than it should have been. The air grew cooler. The torches lit themselves as they passed, flaring up with green flame, and Raven’s mark began to throb again faint but steady.

At the bottom was a single door etched with the Blackthorn crest: a raven encircling an eye.

Cassian pushed it open.

Inside, the Archives were nothing like the main library. There were no neat shelves, no polite catalog system. The room was circular, cavernous, its walls carved with runes and filled with floating grimoires that flitted like birds.

A glowing orb hovered in the center, anchored by chains of silver and bone.

“The Academy was built on three levels,” Cassian said. “Learning. Sealing. Sacrifice.”

Raven raised a brow. “And this?”

“This is memory. Magic doesn’t forget. And neither does this place.”

He gestured to the orb. “Place your hand on it. Think of your mother.”

Raven hesitated then obeyed.

The moment her skin touched the orb, it pulsed with light.

A voice filled the room not hers. A memory.

“If they find her, they’ll use her. If they can’t, they’ll bury her like they buried me.”

A face formed in the light,her mother, eyes wild, robes torn, standing before a crumbling gate wrapped in chains.

“Raven, if you’re seeing this, it means the Morivyn has started to wake. And it means… I failed.”

Raven’s breath caught.

“But you don’t have to. You’re not just the key, you’re the answer. And the door. And the lock. You were born not to open it… but to end it.”

The light vanished.

Silence.

Raven stepped back, heart racing.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

Cassian looked at her grimly. “You will. But we’re out of time. The cracks are spreading. The Morivyn isn’t sealed anymore.”

He turned to the wall behind him and pressed three fingers to a rune. A hidden compartment clicked open, revealing a map,ancient, frayed, and pulsing with red ink.

The school.

But beneath it… something darker. A mirror layout. Another Blackwood, buried deep.

A prison.

Raven touched the edge of the map, her voice low. “What’s down there?”

Cassian met her gaze.

“The real academy.”

Raven stared at the map, the lines shifting subtly beneath her fingers like they were alive,responding to her touch, maybe even recognizing her.

“What do you mean the real academy?” she asked slowly.

Cassian tapped a point deep beneath the surface layout. “Blackwood was never built just to teach magic. It was built to contain something. The original founders weren’t just scholars,they were wardens.”

Luna stepped closer, peering over Raven’s shoulder. “Wardens of what?”

Cassian’s expression darkened. “The Sealed One. The first form of the Morivyn. Before it was a whisper. Before it was fragmented.”

Raven’s fingers tightened on the edge of the map. “My mother tried to seal it again. That’s what she meant.”

“She didn’t fail,” Cassian said. “She bought us time. Time that’s running out.”

Luna frowned. “Why now? Why is it waking again after all these years?”

Cassian hesitated, then looked straight at Raven. “Because the Morivyn doesn’t just feed on magic. It feeds on memory, bloodlines, prophecy. Your arrival,the blood you carry,shook the foundation. It sensed you.”

“And it remembers me,” Raven murmured. “Even if I don’t remember it.”

Cassian nodded once. “Some doors are closed until the right key returns.”

The map pulsed again, and Raven noticed something new,thin red veins creeping upward from the lowest level. Cracks. Fractures in the magic.

“What happens if those reach the surface?”

Cassian’s jaw clenched. “The academy becomes its mouth. And all of us,its first feast.”

Luna swallowed. “Well. That’s lovely.”

Raven stepped back from the map, her heart thudding. “So what now? You’re showing me this because you think I can stop it?”

“No,” Cassian said. “Because you have to.”

He turned toward a row of locked drawers embedded in the stone wall, each labeled with an ancient sigil. He opened one and retrieved a narrow silver case.

Inside was a blade.

It wasn’t ornate,no jewels, no elaborate handle. It was smooth, dark, and etched with runes that shimmered the same color as Raven’s fingertip mark.

“This was forged with blood from the original sealing,” Cassian said. “It can cut through illusion, shadow, even the Morivyn’s veil. But only someone born of the Blackthorn line can wield it without burning.”

He held it out to her.

Raven stared at it.

Everything in her screamed to run. But something deeper,quieter,whispered to take it.

So she did.

The blade hummed in her hand. Warm. Familiar. Like a voice long forgotten returning to her bones.

Cassian watched her carefully. “There’s a door in the lower sanctum. It’s marked with your family crest. When the time comes, you’ll have to pass through it.”

“What’s behind it?” Raven asked.

“Truth,” he said. “And consequence.”

Luna groaned. “Seriously, can you answer anything without sounding like a cursed poetry book?”

Cassian gave her a rare, fleeting smirk. “No.”

Raven slid the blade into her coat, the weight of it grounding her.

She looked at the map again, at the fractures crawling upward. At the forgotten levels hidden beneath their feet.

Something was waiting down there.

But now,so was she.

“Then we go down,” Raven said. “Before it comes up.”

Cassian nodded. “We’ll need allies. And spells. And wards that haven’t been used in centuries.”

Luna brightened. “So… an adventure. With curses and undead secrets and potentially lots of explosions?”

Raven turned, eyes sharp, resolve settling like stone in her chest.

“No,” she said. “A war.”

The orb behind them pulsed once in agreement.

And far below, in the deepest part of the academy, something laughed.

The laugh echoed like cracking ice beneath their feet. Faint, cold, and jagged.

Raven went still, her grip tightening on the blade tucked in her coat. The map beneath her hand pulsed again,veins of red ink twitching like nerves beneath skin. The laugh faded, but the feeling it left behind lingered, like something had heard her declaration… and was amused.

Luna shivered. “Tell me that wasn’t just in my head.”

“It wasn’t,” Cassian said grimly. “The Archives echo with what's sleeping below. And that” he nodded toward the stone under their feet “was its heartbeat.”

Raven turned toward him. “You said we need allies. Who?”

“Not professors,” he said. “Most of them know something, but they’re bound by old oaths, blood seals. They’ll act only when the council permits it,and by then, it’ll be too late.”

“Students?” Raven asked.

Cassian nodded. “Some. The ones with bloodlines tied to the old magics. Families like yours.”

Luna crossed her arms. “That narrows it down to maybe a dozen kids and half of them think a binding spell is a dating tactic.”

“We don’t need all of them,” Cassian said. “Just the ones who’ll follow you.”

“Follow me?” Raven raised an eyebrow.

“You’re the last Blackthorn,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, that means something here. To the academy. To the old magic. To the Morivyn.”

The words struck her like iron on glass. The last Blackthorn.

There was no denying it anymore,she wasn’t here by accident. Her mother hadn’t just disappeared.

She’d passed something on.

You were born not to open the gate… but to end it.

“I’ll talk to them,” Raven said quietly.

Cassian nodded once. “Good. I’ll prepare the sanctum.”

He turned and vanished into the shadows of the Archives, his long coat trailing behind him like smoke.

Raven stood in silence, the low glow of the map casting her face in eerie amber light.

Luna nudged her gently. “You okay?”

“No,” Raven admitted. “But I’m done pretending this is just about me.”

She turned away from the map, eyes sharper than before.

“This school hides everything behind locked doors, forgotten names, and dead languages. But I’m done waiting for answers to come to me.”

Luna smiled. “Now that’s the Raven I signed up for.”

They climbed the winding stairs back toward the surface, the spell-lit torches dimming as they passed, leaving the Archives behind them in a gloom that breathed with unseen mouths.

By the time they reached the upper halls, the fog had thickened. The stone walls wept with condensation, and spells that usually floated gently through the air now sparked with static, nervous energy.

Something was stirring in the foundations of the academy,and the school itself knew it.

Raven and Luna passed the Grand Lecture Hall, where Professor Morrow stood at the podium, her back to them. The students sat strangely silent, faces pale, watching as ink spilled slowly from the corners of the blackboard like tears.

The whispers were growing louder.

In the corners of the mirrors.

In the eyes of the portraits.

In the cracks of the stone.

At lunch, someone screamed when a spoon bent itself into a perfect spiral without being touched.

At dinner, a painting of a founder fell from the wall and shattered,bleeding ink across the marble floor.

And all the while, Raven could feel it…

The academy wasn’t just haunted.

It was waking up.

That night, as they returned to their dorm, Mortimer greeted them with a single croak from his perch.

“Three have marked you,” he rasped. “Two with keys. One with hunger.”

Raven stared at him. “What do you mean?”

But the raven only closed his eyes and tucked his head beneath his wing.

Outside the window, the mist had turned red.

Not glowing.

Not magic.

Blood-red.

The veil between Blackwood and whatever lay beneath had grown thinner.

And beneath the school, in the dark, something began to rise… and remember her name.

That night, sleep didn’t come.

Raven lay awake, staring at the ceiling where the moonlight through the high window no longer cast clean silver beams, but shapes,shapes that twisted and curved like sigils, symbols she somehow knew but didn’t remember learning.

The red mist outside had crept higher, licking the edge of the window like flame without heat. Mortimer hadn’t moved in hours. Luna had drawn five different warding circles around the bed, each one more chaotic than the last, and was now fast asleep with a dagger clutched in one hand and a dream charm glowing beneath her pillow.

But Raven couldn’t sleep.

The whispers had changed. They weren’t scattered or fragmented anymore.

They were chanting.

Soft and low, echoing from somewhere beneath her.

She sat up and pressed her feet to the cold floor. The moment her toes touched stone, the branded key on her finger burned hot. She flinched but didn’t pull back.

The key wasn’t warning her anymore.

It was guiding her.

She rose, moved silently through the dorm, and slipped into the hallway. The lights were dim, but not from disrepair. The sconces were pulling away from the walls, flickering nervously, like even enchanted flame feared what moved beneath.

She passed portraits with eyes that followed her more intently than ever before. One of them,a founder with a stern mouth and empty sockets,smiled when she passed. She didn’t stop.

The floor beneath her feet vibrated gently.

Like a heartbeat.

Like before.

It led her to the south tower. A part of the school rarely used, mostly silent save for the crows that perched high along the outer ledges. The staircase spiraled tighter the higher she climbed, until she reached the topmost landing,sealed by an archway carved in the same sigils she'd seen on the ceiling.

Her mark pulsed.

The door opened without touch.

Inside was a circular room filled with nothing but dust and silence. And at the center,an altar.

Stone. Black veined. Covered in vines of dry crimson moss.

On the wall above it was the Blackthorn crest.

Beneath it… a mirror.

Raven approached slowly.

The mirror wasn’t dusty. It gleamed like water,though it didn’t reflect the room behind her.

Instead, it showed a memory.

Her mother. Standing in this very room. Face pale, lips cracked, eyes glowing faintly gold. She looked frightened.

She was holding a book.

Raven leaned closer.

In the mirror, her mother looked up.

And spoke.

“You were never meant to be safe. You were meant to finish it.”

Raven’s breath caught.

Behind her reflection, shapes began to form in the mirror’s silver surface,ghostly outlines of chains breaking, of runes bleeding ink, of a door opening somewhere far below.

The mirror cracked.

A single fracture from top to bottom.

A deep, echoing sound boomed through the walls of the tower,a bell.

Not the school bell.

Not a warning.

Not a call.

It was a toll.

A summoning.

Raven turned and ran.

She didn’t stop until she was back in the dorm, heart thundering, breath ragged.

Luna sat up instantly. “What happened?”

Raven didn’t answer right away.

She pulled the iron feather key from her coat and placed it between them.

Then she whispered:

“They’re calling me.”

Luna’s face paled. “Who?”

Raven looked toward the window, where the mist now coiled like smoke fingers against the glass, and answered:

“Whatever’s beneath Blackwood.”

And far, far below, past stone and spell and silence,

the chains on a forgotten door began to tremble.

The trembling started as a faint shiver,deep beneath the academy, below the sealed archives, under wards so old even the professors had forgotten their purpose.

But Raven felt it.

In her bones.

In her blood.

In the old scar hidden beneath the keymark on her finger.

Something had heard her in the mirror chamber. Something ancient. Something hungry.

Luna stood barefoot now, having thrown on her oversized cloak of protection, black feathers sewn into the hem. The iron key lay glowing faintly between them on the floor like a heartbeat carved into metal.

“You’re telling me the mirror talked to you?” she asked, voice low and tense.

“It showed me my mother,” Raven replied, pacing. “And then… not just her. The past. Symbols. Blood. I don’t think it was just a reflection,it was a memory seal. A prophecy echo.”

Luna blew out a breath. “Gods. Of course it was.”

She leaned down and scooped up the key. The moment her fingers brushed it, she yelped and dropped it again.

“Hot,” she hissed. “Too hot. That thing is waking up.”

Raven stopped pacing. “Not it. Me.”

Luna stared at her. “What?”

“It’s not just about what the Morivyn wants,” Raven said. “It’s about what I’m supposed to become.”

A knock rattled the door. Not polite. Not hesitant. Just three sharp knocks. No fourth.

They both froze.

“No one knocks like that,” Luna whispered. “That’s not human etiquette. That’s ritual summoning knocking.”

Raven moved toward the door and opened it slowly.

Cassian stood there.

But he wasn’t alone.

Beside him stood two other students Raven didn’t recognize well one tall, silver-haired with opal eyes and the other shorter, darker, with markings along her jaw that pulsed with spelllight. Both looked pale, uneasy.

Cassian’s voice was calm, but the tightness in his jaw betrayed urgency. “The seals on the southern warding wall broke fifteen minutes ago. We need to go. Now.”

Raven blinked. “What do you mean broke?”

“They didn’t shatter. They… peeled. From the inside.”

Behind him, the silver-haired boy,Auron, Raven remembered vaguely,swallowed. “We were down in the Dust Archives when we felt it. Magic pulling outward like it was escaping something.”

“Or someone,” added the girl. “Whatever’s beneath is reaching up.”

Luna stepped between them. “You brought a full coven without telling us?”

Cassian gave her a look. “You think this is a one-witch job?”

Raven grabbed her coat and the dagger. “Where are we going?”

“The sanctum,” Cassian said. “There’s a door that only a Blackthorn can open. The others won’t be able to follow… unless you let them.”

The words struck her like a bell,clear, cold, final.

She looked at Luna, who was already wrapping her charm bracelets around her wrists. “You coming?”

Luna rolled her eyes. “Please. I was born for creepy corridors and existential dread.”

They followed the others through the night halls of Blackwood. This time, the academy didn’t try to shift. It didn’t close corridors or spin stairwells. It wanted them to go down.

The entrance to the sanctum was a black arch hidden behind the tapestry of the Founder’s Trial Hall. Raven had walked past it twice in the last week,never knowing it was there.

The moment she stepped through, the key burned again.

A whisper curled into her ear from nowhere.

“Blackthorn returns. The chain remembers.”

Stairs descended into pitch black.

Torches lit one by one as they moved,blue fire, unnatural, flickering sideways.

No one spoke.

No one needed to.

They all felt it.

At the bottom, an enormous chamber opened before them,half cathedral, half tomb. Pillars of blackstone rose high, each carved with names. Symbols. Histories no longer taught.

And there, at the far wall, was the door.

Ten feet tall. Silver veins running through obsidian. No handle.

Just a keyhole shaped exactly like the iron feather Raven now held.

Cassian turned to her. “If you open this… there’s no going back. The thing sealed behind here is older than the Morivyn.”

“What is it?”

He hesitated. “The piece your mother couldn’t destroy.”

Raven’s breath caught.

She looked at Luna, who nodded once. A quiet trust. Then at the others,Auron and the girl with runes on her skin. They didn’t flinch.

She stepped forward.

Took the key.

And slid it into the door.

It turned with a sound like metal cracking over bone.

The door shuddered.

And then opened.

The smell of ash and memory and old blood rolled out.

From the darkness, a voice greeted her.

Familiar.

Terrible.

“Daughter of the Sealed. Welcome home.”

The chamber beyond the door yawned open like the throat of the earth itself,black stone descending in jagged steps, deeper than any staircase had a right to go.

Cold air poured out, carrying the scent of burnt magic, damp soil, and something older… rotted memory.

Raven stood frozen at the threshold. The voice that had spoken wasn’t just a sound. It had texture. It had weight. Like a hand pressing gently but firmly to the center of her chest.

“Daughter of the Sealed.”

That name didn’t come from the academy. It came from the thing her mother had tried to lock away.

Luna touched her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this tonight.”

But Raven shook her head. “I do. It knows I’m here now. Hiding won’t stop what’s already begun.”

Cassian stepped beside her. “This is the first gate. There are three more. Each deeper. Each harder to face. Your mother sealed the final one alone.”

“She didn’t survive,” Raven whispered.

“No. But she held it long enough for you to get here.”

Raven stepped forward. Her boot touched the first stair. The stone glowed faintly beneath her feet. One step. Then another. The darkness didn’t retreat,it welcomed her.

Behind her, Luna, Cassian, and the others followed, the path sealing behind them with every step, stone knitting shut in silence.

There would be no turning back.

And when they reached the bottom of the stairs, they didn’t find a monster.

They found a door made of bone and silver thread, pulsing with breath,alive.

And etched across it, glowing blood-red, were the words:

“To unmake the shadow, the blood must remember.”

Raven reached out, fingers trembling, heart steady.

“I remember,” she said.

The door opened.

And the haunting of Blackwood Academy

truly began.