Sophie stood frozen before the towering iron gates of the School for Evil, her breath trembling as it escaped her lips in ragged clouds. Her pink nightgown, once elegant and carefully chosen for the night of her fairytale transformation, was now drenched in muck and clung to her skin like a second, shameful layer. Mud had splattered up to her knees, streaking across the delicate lace trim like cruel brushstrokes. Her golden hair — which she had brushed one hundred times before midnight — now hung in tangled, frizzy clumps, ash clinging to the strands like snow.
Above her, blackened gargoyles perched along the spiked arches of the gates, their stone jaws wide in frozen snarls. Their eyes glowed faintly red in the darkness, watching her like wolves with granite skin. One of them let out a slow, creaking hiss as if laughing at her.
The gates loomed like the mouth of some great beast, jagged, rusted, alive.
The air was thick with the stench of sulfur and rot. Smoke curled through the crooked towers beyond, where black banners flapped like torn skin. Vines curled up the walls like veins on a dead limb. The castle itself looked stitched together from bones and ash, as though it had grown from a grave.
Behind Sophie, the skies had already sealed shut. The shadows that had carried her through the air were gone, vanished into nothingness. There was no going back.
Students had gathered at the gates — figures in tattered black robes, their skin gray or green or scaly, their grins jagged and sly. Some had eyes that glowed in the dark. Others had claws, or one horn, or no nose at all. One girl's hair was literally on fire.
They all stared at Sophie like she was a wounded animal.
Fresh meat.
"This isn't right," Sophie whispered, her voice hoarse, cracking. Her eyes darted desperately across the crowd, looking for someone — anyone — who might help. "I'm not evil."
Her words disappeared into the heavy silence.
Then the iron gates shuddered and slammed shut behind her with a sound like a guillotine. The sound echoed through the halls like fate.
Sophie jumped. She turned toward the gate, reached for it — but there were no handles. No hinges. Just cold, merciless iron.
The others snickered and drifted away like shadows, disappearing into the stone paths that led into the belly of the castle. As if they had seen this all before.
Sophie was alone.
Alone in the wrong fairytale.
A cold wind blew through the trees, and a single leaf — brittle and black — fluttered down and landed in the mud by her slipper. Sophie looked at it and suddenly felt like it was her reflection.
Burnt. Broken. Lost.
She stood there for a long time, her fists clenched, her eyes wet with confusion and rage.
Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.
And someone, somewhere… would pay for it.