The letter arrived at midnight.
It didn't come by mail, or courier, or slipped under the door by some overeager neighbor. Colt Rennick found it standing upright on his desk, as if a careful hand had placed it there moments before.
He froze in the doorway.
He lived alone.
His apartment was small, the kind of place where you could see every corner from the threshold. If someone had broken in, he'd know. Yet there it was: a black envelope, embossed with a symbol he didn't recognize. A circle split by a vertical line, like a closed eye that had been cut open.
Colt swallowed once, closing the door behind him.
"Very funny," he muttered to no one.
Because no one in his life had the imagination or audacity to pull something like this.
He crossed the room, picking up the envelope.
It was cold. Colder than it should've been, like it had just been pulled out of a freezer. He slid a finger under the seal, and a faint sound almost like a sigh escaped the envelope as it opened.
Inside was a single sheet of thick parchment.
Ink, deep metallic blue, formed a message in elegant strokes
Mr. Rennick,
You have been observed.
You are hereby invited to Veil Academy,
for the examination of your aptitude.
Your presence is required tonight.
At 01:13 A.M., stand at the corner of Holloway Street.
Bring nothing.
Speak to no one.
You will know your escort when the shadows change.
Fail to appear, and the invitation expires permanently.
The Ascension Board
Colt read the message twice.
Then a third time, because it made less sense every time his eyes traveled across the words.
Observed? By who?
Veil Academy? He'd never heard of it. And he would've remembered ,he was the kind of person who memorized every scholarship list in the region to keep himself afloat. Nothing named "Veil Academy" had ever appeared.
He checked the time.
12:19 A.M.
Whatever this was, it was too elaborate to be a prank. And the thing that disturbed him most wasn't the content of the letter.
It was the handwriting.
He had seen it before.
A year ago, his mother had vanished—gone without trace, leaving behind nothing except a journal filled with frantic entries about "hidden halls" and "the shadow that watches." Her final page had ended with that same elegant script:
If you find this, Colt… the Veil will come for you.
He had tried to forget that sentence.
But tonight, the memory rose like a tide he couldn't escape.
Colt grabbed a coat and stepped into the night.
He wasn't sure if he was walking toward answers or a trap.
He only knew one thing:
He was tired of running from the unknown.