Silencer | Hiatus

Chapter 1: Eavesdropping- no, Inspecting!

Sereia awoke one particular morning with sadness rooted deep in her heart. It was but a week before her Choosing Ceremony, and she was unsure what to think of it. The once-happy moment was poisoned five years ago, when a dragon rampage killed her headmistresses and kidnapped her fellow classmates.

She knew she would never see them again. The only thing that had saved the majority of them was a freak accident and the frightening last words of the seer headmistress Arya. She needed to be stronger. A beam of light wasn't going to cut it next time.

Her thoughts sliced through her heart, leaving wounds of resentment behind. Her attachment to her headmistresses, Arya and the warrior Aiedail, had been their downfall. Her downfall. But feelings—they are persistent. Her feelings were not easily forgotten; they were locked away like an animal trying to break their caged reality.

Sereia shook herself awake, driving the painful thoughts from her mind. After visiting the headmistresses' grave, she found Kindra, and together they went into the Great Hall for breakfast. When they sat down, Sereia shared her thoughts with her best friend, hoping that Kindra could soothe her soul. "I think their presence is haunting me. I can't let go, no matter how hard I try. I just turned sixteen a few months ago. It's been five years, and it seems everyone has moved on but me."

Kindra attempted to console her friend. "Everything happens for a reason. Their deaths mattered. You are perhaps the only one with enough sense to notice that they live on, forever ethereal, blessed spirits. Perhaps it is meant to be this way."

Sereia scoffed, much like Aiedail used to do. "That's all a bunch of Oracle nonsense, Kindra. You know I don't believe in—spirits and the like." As she finished, she caught a glimpse of the newly established headmistress, in office in the months following Arya and Aiedail's death.

Headmistress Estrella Nova approached them, and Sereia watched in apprehension deeply rooted in her soul. Just as detested as Sereia herself was, she used to be on friendly terms with the new headmistress, but recent events caused Nova to become withdrawn, paranoid, and she noticeably avoided Sereia if possible.

Most people did, as they foolishly believed that Sereia was the cause of their misfortunes. However, there was no one Sereia blamed more than herself. It killed her every time she noticed their pointed stares. Their harsh glares. Sometimes it was too much to bear. As her soul yearned for company, her heart wept, locking itself away from the world.

Trying to dispel the feelings she so dreaded, she didn't notice that Nova had cleared her throat, and Sereia looked up from her state of pain. She saw a face full of grief and self-blame. Lifeless gray-blue eyes deep as a pool of tears. Facial wrinkles too early in comparison with her youth. A soul on the brink of lonely insanity. The palest blonde hair with one too many gray curls.

Here was the one person who truly felt and understood everything that Sereia had agonized over for so many years. She wasn't the only one after all this time. The only other one who was breaking and collapsing on the inside from their depth of pain.

Never saying anything, Nova studied her, and soon walked off, her eyes clouded and thoughts scattered. Sereia watched her leave, bewildered and strangely at peace at the same time.

"Well that was weird," Kindra commented.

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The next day, and the day after that, Sereia pondered endlessly over Nova's appearance and the headmistresses' absence. They were hounding her thoughts, consuming her until the next morning.

On the third day since Nova's appearance, she skipped past the dark wood floors to her next class, her favorite of them all. She passed several arched roof supports, that branched out to form crystal pillars on each side of the narrow corridor. The hallway connected the dorms to the main buildings of shining gray stone. Just outside the stained glass windows were second year students, staring at Sereia as she passed by.