The Council of Thirteen

Prologue

I remember it like it was yesterday, the day that I lost my friends, my normal life, and also the day that I died.

It was like any normal morning. I woke up in my dorm at 9:00 to the sound of my roommate singing Halsey in the shower (she's obsessed). Did my normal routine, checked my messages, ate my breakfast of a single energy bar, and headed out. Classes were boring as usual but had one redeeming quality to them, Chase. I never knew his last name but he was just so nice and cool, he had helped me with my homework and projects when I asked. My roommate definitely loved to make fun of me over the supposed crush I had on him, and I supposed I did. You know looking back on it I should've asked him out, another missed opportunity that I'll never be able to make up.

But enough about my dull life, you're here for the good stuff, right? Well, let's get to the good stuff. So after classes, my friend Andrew invited me and the rest of my friend group out to this old abandoned mansion that he swears he's never seen before even though he's walked this route "hundreds of times".

Normally I'd go home probably to study for our upcoming midterms but he really seemed like he wanted me to go. So I gave in, that was my first mistake. So me, Andrew, Sierra, Kyle, and his girlfriend as well as my roommate Oniek (the one obsessed with Halsey). So we headed off-campus in Andrews' old beater, drove about half an hour to this spot Andrew likes to go hiking through.

When we arrived, it was almost dark, Kyle suggested we go earlier on another day but Andrew insisted the best time to see this would be around dusk to about late in the evening, so we went with him.

In retrospect that was my second mistake.

So we walked through this forest, Andrew was focused on not losing his way while Kyle and his girlfriend were making plans for their future lives together and my roomie talked about how Halsey was revolutionary or something like that but I wasn't really paying attention. Everything about this seemed fine, yet for some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong but I continued anyway. Eventually, after an hour, we got to the "mansion" although it was more like-

"THAT'S A FUCKING CASTLE!!!" Kyle shouted, interrupting my thoughts and making his girlfriend jump. But yeah he had a point. This wasn't some simple mansion you might see in LA, this was like a huge Gothic European castle in the middle of a random forest in America.

I couldn't help but ask, "Andrew how in the hell did you miss this, are you sure you don't need glasses or like new eyes? This is pretty hard to miss."

"Hardy har very funny, but I swear one day I'm doing my normal trek and I notice this path that I'd never seen before and so I follow it and BOOM giant fucking castle."

"So you just saying this castle magically appeared out of nowhere?" Kyle asked mockingly.

"I don't know man one day it wasn't here and then one day it was."

"Ooh" Kyle's girlfriend uttered, "A magic castle well then this would be perfect for my Insta. Darling, be a dear and take some pics."

"Why of course my sweet," Kyle responded. Yeah, they were one of those couples.

After they were finished, Andrew turned to ask us with a devilish grin "You guys wanna go inside". I immediately said "absolutely not" still not feeling right about the whole thing and my roommate agreed saying "we probably shouldn't go into a building this old and run down."

However our words of concern were met with "oh come on, we came all the way out here and we're not going to go in" by Kyle and "yeah don't be a bunch of wimps" by his girlfriend. Andrew had a look on his face that said let's do it. We were outnumbered and so we went in.