Valemont Academy – Three days after the first dream
At Valemont, classes didn't just happen.They appeared.
Sometimes they were announced by a knock at the door. Other times by a note slipped under your pillow, in a language you didn't know you could read.
This time, Renji found a single envelope inside his boot.
No stamp. No seal. No name.
Just a phrase, handwritten in ink that smelled faintly of iron:
"Attend. Room E-313. Midnight. Alone."
It wasn't signed.
But the handwriting?
It was identical to his.
11:59 PM – East Wing – Corridor 3
Valemont's East Wing had long stopped pretending to follow architectural rules. The hall bent left where it should've ended. The windows looked into nothing. And the doors… some doors weren't always there.
Room E-313 didn't exist on any campus map.Which meant, of course, it existed perfectly well.
Renji found it at the end of a hallway that hadn't been there that morning.
The door was old. Wooden. Etched with a phrase in Latin:
"Veritas qui scindit animam."The truth that splits the soul.
He knocked once.
It opened on its own.
Inside was a classroom. And a corpse.
The corpse sat at the teacher's desk.Wearing a rotting suit. Glasses.A name tag still pinned to the lapel: Professor Lutz.
Renji didn't move.Didn't blink.
Then the corpse breathed.
"Mr. Kurogane," it said with the dusty exhale of a thousand forgotten books, "you're late."
Renji stared. "You're dead."
"Yes," the corpse said, adjusting his glasses. "And yet still better dressed than most of my colleagues."
The classroom lights flickered.And Renji wasn't alone.
Eight other students were seated. Silent. Stiff.
He recognized two. One was definitely expelled last year. The other?Was the boy who died in the library.
Renji sat anyway.
Because of course he did.
"Welcome," said Professor Lutz, ignoring the fact that he had no pulse. "To Archive Studies."
Renji raised a hand.
"Yes, Mr. Kurogane?"
"What exactly are we archiving?"
Lutz's eyes—milky, wrong—locked on his.
"Memories not meant to survive. Events that fractured time. Ideas that rot unprotected minds."
A girl at the back twitched.
"Your syllabus," Lutz continued, "has already been absorbed. You won't remember attending this class. You'll only feel… different. Like something was subtracted."
He smiled.
"Any questions?"
Renji didn't speak.
But he felt something in his pocket.Not his relic. Not the note.Something new.
A key.
Made of bone.
An hour later – Renji's dorm
He stumbled in, pale, sweating, no memory of how he left the class.
He pulled out the key.
Tiny, carved with runes.
When he set it on his desk, it rattled once.Then stopped. As if listening.
He tried to write in his notebook. Nothing stuck.The words wouldn't stay.
He tore the page out. Wrote again.
Still nothing.
He grabbed a red marker and scrawled across the wall:
"CLASS E-313 IS REAL. I WAS THERE."
The marker dried instantly.
Then the words rearranged themselves.
"I AM NOT THERE."
At 3:13 AM, he woke up sitting at his desk.
No memory of having fallen asleep.
No key on the desk.
No marker.
But the wall had changed.
Now it read:
"THE DOOR REMEMBERS YOU."
And in his notebook, a phrase in someone else's handwriting:
"Some truths must be sealed in minds that are already broken."
He closed the notebook.
But the page wouldn't stay closed.
It kept opening.
Even when he turned off the light.
Renji didn't sleep that night.
Because this time…
he wasn't sure he was the only one in the room.