Welcome to Wetherhall
1120 Words
The first time I saw Wetherhall, I thought it looked like a cathedral for ghosts.
The train had arrived late, and the driver—sent by the university—barely said a word as we twisted through the fog-wrapped countryside. When the gates came into view, I forgot how to breathe.
They were wrought iron, impossibly tall, with crawling ivy and bronze lettering that spelled out *Wetherhall University.
* Crows perched along the spires of the entrance like they were keeping watch. Behind the gates, the buildings stretched upward like they were trying to reach heaven—or challenge it.
I stepped out of the car clutching my portfolio to my chest, my fingers stiff from the long ride. The cold bit through my coat and the scent of wet stone and damp roses drifted in the air. Everything felt too large, too ancient, too beautiful for someone like me.
I didn’t belong here. But I was here all the same.
---
I was given a room in Bellgrave Hall—one of the older dormitories, with oak-paneled walls and stained-glass windows that flickered in the morning light. The bed was too neatly made, the wardrobe too empty, the silence too loud.
I unpacked in pieces.
Sketchbooks first. Then my journal. Then the old photo of my mother I kept hidden between pages of a poetry anthology.
She would’ve loved this place.
Or maybe it would’ve devoured her.
Orientation was a blur of names I wouldn’t remember and handshakes that left my palm damp. Everyone around me was polished—linen coats, expensive boots, laughter that didn’t quite reach the eyes. I moved through the halls like a ghost, invisible until someone’s gaze caught mine and lingered a second too long.
That was the first time I saw **Callista Pryne**.
She was speaking to a professor in the courtyard, her voice low and amused, her black trench coat flaring in the breeze like wings. Her lips were crimson. Her eyes glittered like secrets.
When our eyes met, she tilted her head as if deciding something.Then she smiled.I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning.The library became my refuge. Five floors of silence and dust, stained glass and forgotten histories. I found a spot on the top floor—north tower, farthest window—and made it mine.
I liked to draw there.Faces in the stone. Shadows in the woodwork. I was halfway through sketching the curve of a gargoyle’s wing when a book fell from the shelf behind me.No footsteps. No voices. Just the dull *thud* on the floor.I turned, startled, and picked it up.A leather-bound journal. No title on the spine.The pages were blank—except one. In the center, written in red ink:“She walks like a poem unfinished, waiting to be ruined.”My skin prickled.There was no one around.I placed the book back and tried not to run.
---
Classes began the next day. Art history at eight. Literary theory with Professor Bellamy at ten. He was tall and lean with ink-stained cuffs and a stare that could cut glass.
“Wetherhall,” he said on the first day, “isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ll either find your voice or lose yourself trying.”
He looked at me when he said it. Directly. As though he already knew I was teetering on the edge of both.
A week passed. Then another.
I started noticing things. Whispers that stopped when I walked past. Students disappearing into the east wing of the library after dark. Candles flickering in the chapel window when no one was supposed to be inside.
And the letters.The first was folded into my sketchbook.
“You draw like you're trying to remember something you’ve never seen.”
The second slipped beneath my dorm door.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like—to be wanted so badly it hurts?”
No name. No return address. Always the same handwriting.
Beautiful. Elegant. Male.I should’ve been frightened. But I wasn’t.I was fascinated.Because the words felt like someone had peeled open my ribs and written them on my bones.
---
The day I met **Rowan Ives**, it was raining.
I had forgotten my umbrella and was hurrying across the quad when someone with a cello case slung across their back called out, “You look like a drowned Brontë heroine.”
I turned. Rowan was soaked through, curls plastered to their face, grinning like the storm was a personal joke.
“I’m Rowan,” they said, offering a hand. “You must be the scholarship girl.”
“Eva.”
“You’re in Bellgrave. Which means you probably know how to make tea with a radiator and a stolen mug.”
I blinked. “I actually do.”“Excellent. We’re going to be friends.”And somehow, just like that—we were.
---
Rowan was a music major, a chronic flirt, and one of the few people who didn’t seem interested in status or whispers. They played the cello like it was part of their soul and claimed Wetherhall was a “haunted playground for over-educated narcissists.”
I believed them.They also knew everything,And everyone Including Lucian Vale.
“The writer?” Rowan said, when I finally asked.
We were sitting in the music hall balcony, eating stolen biscuits from the dining hall. Rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers.
“He’s brilliant,” Rowan said. “And a bit… unwell. Beautiful, if you’re into those tortured types. Most people are.”
“You know him?”
“Everyone knows of him. But knowing Lucian?” Rowan smirked. “That’s a different game entirely.”
---
That night, I found another note,Slipped inside my sketchbook, right beneath a drawing I had done of the library stairwell.
“I saw you today. You looked like the first line of something tragic.”
My fingers trembled as I traced the ink Something inside me ached.
---
Wetherhall was beautiful in the way old things are beautiful—full of decay disguised as grandeur. The buildings sighed with history. The halls echoed with footsteps that weren’t always mine. And at night, something shifted in the air.
It felt like being watched,Not cruelly,Not kindly,But hungrily.
And then, one morning, I woke to a letter under my door,Thick parchment,Crimson wax.
The seal: a moth, wings outstretched, entangled in thread.
*You are cordially invited to witness art in its purest form.
Tonight. Midnight. The Chapel of St. Dymphna. Come alone.*
My breath caught.
I read it twice,Three times,The wax pressed into my fingertips like a bruise.
And somehow, I already This wasn’t the beginning of something,It was the point of no return.
- Writer
