The gates closed behind Catalina with barely a whisper.
She stopped instinctively, glancing over her shoulder just in time to see the towering iron doors settle back into place. The moment they met, the faint shimmer surrounding the academy returned, sealing the world outside away as though it had never existed.
The road she'd driven in on was gone.
Beyond the gates there was only forest.
Ancient pines stretched toward the horizon, dense enough to hide every trace of civilization. Charlotte had vanished. The highway had vanished. Even the evening traffic she'd heard only moments before had disappeared beneath a silence that somehow felt alive rather than empty.
It was as if Primori Academy existed in a world that had folded itself neatly between everyone else's.
"Beautiful, isn't it?
