St. Văduva's School for Prestigious Girls

𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖔𝖌𝖚𝖊

The concept of death is usually – hopefully – a foreign concept for the young. The idea of laying on your deathbed, weak and feeble, feels like something so far out of one's grasp that even with the looming figure hunched over her, Temperance still could not picture the death that was sure to come.

Cold sweat dripped down from her temples as she huffed in breath after breath of dank, musty air; her eyes stung with unshed tears and dryness. But she never blinked — never dared to as her eyes remained focused on the shape before her. The creature hovered above, defying gravity, weightless and elegant and horrifying in one breath. The white dress that clung to its body like a second skin flowed like water amidst the inexplicable whipping winds as they tore through the enclosed room, first one way then the next.

Steel medical trays, vintage instruments, and a hundred years' worth of dust became airborne with the wind, joining the bizarre tornado that had taken residence in the university's morgue. The debris clouded Temperance's lungs with her panicked breath, but she defied the urge to cough, desperate not to shatter the illusion, for fear of something worse happening.

The ethereally terrifying being, one that had most likely seen the dawn of time and will just as likely be here until the end of it, opened one of its several mouths as it pointed an ink-colored claw down at the young girl cowering before it.

"Temperance MacKenzie—" its several layered voices chanted over the roaring gale "—Your time has come."

With tears spilling from her gray orbs over her ruddy cheeks, Temperance finally squeezed her eyes shut tightly in preparation of her assured death.

☽☼☾

A big thanks to Jasmine Garcia for making the photo edit for me! She made it for me for my birthday a few years back when the book was still called St. Vladimir's School for Troubled Girls!